Reader Poem — Micki Blenkush

Micki Blenkush wrote this poem in response to the December Poetry Prompts:

Engine Red

When the Master who cast us
tires of our absurd stage
will directions come forth
beyond the signs foretold?
Not just the seven horseman
or the white buffalo calf
but actual words written on beasts.
Skunks with caution striped
across their backs or fish with listen
stitched in their scales.

Any language can already predict
propaganda past meaning
even as wolves and panthers arrive
with grief spelled down their sides.
In simple English we’ll call it luck
each time there’s a storm
and all we have to worry about
is what to eat first
when the power goes out.
No one yet at our door
with a machine gun
tells us how to believe.

This is the red of emergency.
Of persons stalled in the turn lane
unsure what to do for the sirens.
This is the color of a woodpecker’s head
persisting along the eaves
despite my banging at windows
and inspecting for holes.
This is the hue of a grandmother’s grief
when she wept my name.
I never heard that color before,
but wanted to move everything back
to let it pass through.

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Reader Poem by Henry Medina

I’m taking a poetry workshop in Whittier taught by Eric Morago (check out his web site ericmorago.com). He gave us this prompt: write a poem in which you imagine/describe your own death. Here is what I wrote:

LIVING ON THE EDGE

I will die
at 3 a.m.
trying to escape
the third-story apartment
of a sociopath
who swears
remembering
both parents
fucking him
in his crib
at age one,
cutting him
with blades
& even
inviting their friends
to the
bloody baptism.
Feigning
having to pee
to exit his bedroom,
I will lunge for
the front door,
after being
tormented by his
ice pick,
stapler,
two heavy butcher knives,
an arthritic gun
& dark rats
in that order.
(Miracle
I survived.)
I will run
into his courtyard,
him pursuing me
like an unstoppable memory.
As a last recourse,
I will climb
an eight-inch ledge,
cars honking
& fading far below me.
My right shoe
smeared in shit
from a streetwise cat
(that perhaps
in another life
could have been
loved indoors
by a caring family)
will slip
on the ridge,
& without time
to form a prayer
to accuse
or excuse my stalker,
without fully conceiving
the loneliness
that placed me on that edge,
I will fall
backwards,
my heart
beating
& beating
faster
& faster,
a parachute
trying
to open.
My head
made soup
will hear
the ambulance’s
distant howl,
relieved,
thinking,
“At last
comes
help.”

Reader Poem — Dalwyn

Dalwyn wrote the following poem in response to the December Poetry Prompts:

Simple English

In very simple English they call it good luck
On an old silver platter it is often served up
In old fashioned English they call it fortuitous
In just plain old English it is always gratuitous

Some call her Tyche, Some call her Lakshimi
Most call her the Lady who hasn’t come lately
I asked the Gypsy she said make no mistake
Luck is the place where destiny meets fate

In very proper English they advise you to bless it
Drop a coin in the well and then simply confess it
In very simple English they call it good luck
Took mine to the laundry and told them to press it

 

We invite readers to submit their own poems based on this month’s poetry prompts. The best poem we receive before December 31, 2015 will win a $25 prize. All poems are posted to this blog.

Reader Poem — Daniel de Cullá

Daniel de Cullá wrote this poem in response to the December Poetry Prompts:

GOING ON SIN

O sin i
My business daily
With the Seven Deadly Sins
Lust with the Sky
Gluttony with all its pearls on dishes
Envy with eye traffic
To facilitate explosions of creativity
In our king Pride day, livelong
Greed on a fried egg
On the floor of the Rainbow
Wrath blazing medieval shields
Of lives forgotten on a Planet drum
Bucking the Sloth
To begin this poem with a name.

Deadly Sins rise
From the Life’s current
Within the necessities of all the living
From sin to sin biting
As glad omelet from branch to branch
¿Why don’t we joy sins
If we’ll die tomorrow?
Says the scintilla of Life:
It’s lovely the Idolatry of Self¡
As Max Stirner said
In his “The Ego and It’s Own”
Knowing “the age of the mases”
And in his “The False Principle of Our Education:
Humanism and Realism
Are the history of the present experience
And tragedy of our time:
There is but one necessity for us all:
“Going On Sins”.
Everyone sin; Jesus sinned also:
“What is lovely? To sin for God”
Cheering us on his way to be full.
In a complete state of sin
One is in a sense with haughty eyes
Pride going before.

O sin i
I sin many a day
These:
“I have yet to ask to myself
What do we use for Lifeboats
When the Ship goes down?” (My)
And answering:
Women have in her Bust two lemons
And more down the devil
Near the lemon tree’ flower:
I want to sleep with him¡
Or
As a little sea boat
I’m coming and going with ups and downs
Goodbye¡
I’m going away from World
My lust unloved¡

Reader Poem—Jennifer Hernandez

Jennifer Hernandez wrote this poem in response to the November Poetry Prompts:

MONTAGE

Huaraches across the borderlands or
dinghies on the open sea. Which shall
we choose, people of color — infantilization
or demonization? Migrants. Refugees.
Illegals. Terrorists. The rhetoric bears only
a partial relationship to reality.
Swaddle us and stick a big old plug
in our mouths. Restraint and silence.

You want to know why Latinos
like horror films? Maybe
because we know that kind of scary
is fake. We got enough real. Los narcos.
La inmigrácion checking for papers.
Le deportaron a mi tío. His baby girl cries
herself to sleep. Hatemongers splash venom
like red paint. Why can’t they see that the rapists
are the pinche coyotes that steal our money
and leave us in the desert?

So the Day of the Dead dances on.
Esquéletos draped in marigolds spin
clackety-clack before altars to the music of mariachi
and banda. If we stop dancing, we’re already dead.

Winner, dis•articulations Reader Poem for October — Liz Belile

Liz Belile studied poetry at the Naropa Institute and her work has been published widely. She lives in Austin, Texas with her family, where she  teaches screenwriting at a local film school and occasionally produces poetry readings and teaches yoga, among other subversive activities.

Her poem, “When You Call for the Dead, Don’t Say His Name” was published on this site on October 9, 2015.

To read it go to: https://disarticulations2015.wordpress.com/2015/10/09/reader-poem-liz-belile/

Reader Poem — Jennifer Hernandez

Jennifer Hernandez wrote this poem in response to the October Poetry Prompts:

I never thought Michiko would come back
after she died

Bobbed hair glistening black,
pedicure blood red. Some ghost. Five inches
of air between the stoop and her Jimmy Choo’s
gave her away. “Hey, Michi-chan,” I croaked,
“What’cha doing back here?? I thought –”
“Don’t say his name,” she warned, her raspy
voice from inside a black hole. Talk about
conspicuous omission. He was the reason
for this strange encounter, Michiko hovering
over the front steps and me sprawled out
in the gutter, blood and sewage a-swirl.

He couldn’t stand our friendship, always
wanted Michiko for himself. Ironic,
self-absorbed as he was. I told her
to dump him. He was too into himself.
Would never care about anyone else.
The first three steps are the acceptance
steps, they say, but Michi-chan wasn’t
interested in acceptance. She was interested
in revenge, and since no one can be slain
in absentia, she planned to find him
and drown him. In his own reflection.

Reader Poem — Shloka Shankar

Shloka Shankar wrote this poem in response to the October Poetry Prompts:

Solace

She looked at me
with sad, hurtful eyes

almost half-wishing that
I hadn’t said his name.

A death-like silence,
just enough to

weigh a
black hole the size

of my fist
balked about in

darkness,
in absentia.

Reader Poem — Liz Belile

Liz Belile drew her inspiration from the October Poetry Prompts to write this poem:

When you call for the Dead

Don’t say his name

A father curled up in bed

skinny as a hound or

Christ on the cross

A boy in full flower

head thrown back laugh

knuckles green with morning glory

I wake up in sweat

I turn like a cyclone in my too-small sheets

the phone vibrates

I don’t know the number

so I pick up & pray

Don’t say his name

The bullet dodged

the ship I grazed

while at sea

the one who got away

with it

when I thought

the chamber was hollow

buried me in a shallow rut

that one

Don’t say his name

There is a god

so dark and unknown

unwilling to enunciate he drowns us all

in his muck

Don’t say his name

When they fuck

and all she can think of

is

the piercing blue

or the wolf scent

of the other

Don’t say his name

You can call me

tumble me in your open air

but when it all comes down

and the awards are handed over

Don’t say his name

Reader Poem — Charles W. Brice

Charles W. Brice wrote this poem in response to the October Poetry Prompts:

I Wrote Your Name in the Lake

then my name,
our son’s name,
our daughter’s name,
then the universe’s name,
then god’s name
in the lake. I swam

in our names, dove
below and felt how cool
our names were, how fresh
when our surface cracked.

I wrote your name on the brow
of your budded green profusion,
the leaf you became
stout, proud, frim—
how you trembled.
The season you had was grand
then gilded, crinkled, beldame,
you dropped
weary winds
blown undisclosed
unknown.

I breathed your name
over snail, slug, toad and turtle
their days spent
from spore to tadpole to crick scum
the abundance of life
in your name
in every writhing arroyo
of your body.