North by Northwestern » Poetry

Mixing

Tara Stringfellow — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 01:51:24 +0000

lord knows
i am difficult
like a watermelon
loaded
with inoperable seeds
i want to shapeshift
into something
easier for you
to love
like a mug of beer
or a white woman
this is a poem for you
and your blue stone eyes
and your hands
that do not shapeshift
or strike
but iron out my creases
not many women
not many black women
laugh all day long
like me
if i am ever
annointed enough
to carry your name
i will carry it
not like a cross
but like a petal
or the wings of a moth
in the cup
of my brown hands

T M Stringfellow (Tara Stringfellow) is an Weinberg ‘07 alumna and a budding poet living in the Chicago area. Her first book of poetry is entitled More than Dancing and is published by Third World Press. Her other work can be found at Voice and Vision: An African American Literary Magazine, decomP: a literary magazine, and Prompt Magazine. She is gathering up enough courage to attend more open mics and you can usually find her bouncing/dancing/shopping around Chicago.

General E. Lee talks of pines

Tara Stringfellow — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 01:16:19 +0000

my uncle gave me a rope
and said knot
and throw it over that pine
and call for Xerxes
because we have one less fowl
and will have one less nigger
it was a custom unarguable
and now, i look across this field
and there are thousands
more of everything
the findings — an arm,
a leg scattered
like the wood
chippings of pines
used to roast geese
in a honey sap
heated by Calliope,
wife of Xerxes,
crossing herself in curses
overcooking the potatoes
and my father leading
the hunt and declaring
gentlemen and the hounds
and horses and men
would scatter in a wilderness
unnamed save for Virginia
a word too small
for the beasts and pines
suffering and sap
so i whisper
gentleman — a word that fuses
the frush of cotton,
the one failure of god

Daylight on the stairs

Meriwether Clarke — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 02:30:02 +0000

On this open morning
Mossy bricks build
On one another.
There is a stair well
Leading to the attic
Asbestos filled, rafters sunk,
Where people do not go.
Beneath there is a table filled
By women, filled by coffee,
But I stare more at the winding vines
Strangling the cracking wood,
Hiding where I think I am invisible,
Listening to their hum.

The confession

Rachel Hoffman — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 02:29:28 +0000

I liked it.

That’s the problem-
Don’t you see?

Please stop staring
And glaring at me I
Can taste the salty tears
Falling from the corners
Of your eyes, rubbed raw
Against the cuff of a sweater
Sleeve and please-

Don’t look at me that way.

You can’t be afraid; look, I can
Explain she came home late, my
Car with chipped paint and
Bent fender gleaming, a
Contorted, twisted knot rotting
Off of my cherry red Chevrolet.

I had done her a favor.

How I savored that shrill-
Voiced excuse echoing in our
Bedroom but it was of
No use; it wouldn’t do.

My palms slipped I
Just reached towards her
Fragile frame, bird’s bones
Arranged in a wide-hipped
Human skeleton, so delicate
And dying to break-
I wanted to make
A point.

But on her neck remained
A bruise, brushed on like
Thick purple paint, the Japanese
Maple leaf-shaped stain
I had made.

Her limp wrists and
Glazed eyes felt so
Right, this warm feeling
Inside washed my skin
With warm panting
Breath and sweat I fell
To the bed and in tight blankets and
Slept soundly through the night-

And your silence
Bores through me
Like a hot iron rod
But you see…
I can’t help it, it’s what
I like.

Oh God.

It’s what I like.

Construction workers

Eric Felland — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 02:57:38 +0000

With hard-hats orange and lunch pails swinging to
and fro, construction men to their work go.
Their thick arms bronze from sunlight fierce and bright,
they bellow laughs and hail their buds on sight.
Their chests are broad but all their knees are sore
from marching through hard days of work before.
Their tan and chiseled faces fast face front
like statues on the building’s adornment.
Climbed high above the bustle of the street
they tramp along the scaffold-planks with booted feet.
Under their drills the building rattles, groans;
the office people strain to work the phones.
Outside the windows, dusty clouds the hammer frees
Mingling with righteous sweat, and twirled by cooling breeze.
Safety jerseys in the wind flutter and dip
Like herald-flags abreast a triumphant ship.
Amongst the screeching tools and clanking hoists
reverberate men’s husky tones of voice
which toss instructions, warn with forceful shouts
that joust and jostle each in battering bouts.
Once punched out at day’s end, men drive home weary,
quick shower, then recline in TV query.
Preparing for morn’s work, as yet in sight,
they sip a beer and smooch their wives at night.

One fine morning

Edwin Rios — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 00:58:03 +0000

Step by step, I walk toward the door.
Light shimmers, falling through the cracks.
The blinding brightness
Shadows the fallen figure, dressed in menacing black
The antiquated wooden floor creaks
And bears forewarning
To the impenetrable silence that darkness
Awakes to each fine morning.
The stranger reaches out blindly
Toward the illuminating door.
He hopes to feel, to touch
But the effort alone becomes a futile chore.
“I see such pleasant light
Brightening my dreary blue-green eyes
Yet as I trudge into the incessant darkness
My mind drifts apart.
Like shells on a shore, I spread
In a river of lost hope, filled with unceasing dread”
But here lies the palpable light
Unless just eyes deceive
Resting behind the steel fortress
Awaiting the gleaming heart with the right key
Malevolent clouds fill the ominous skies
With each tearful day.
Yet the light still rises with each fine morning
At any time, in any way.

Cuba Road

Hira Khan — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 00:29:18 +0000

Before my eyes, the road and sky
are black alike — the stars snuffed out
by God who’d left his post for bed,
who took the moon and left the dark

and me. The trees trapping my car,
the sky is lost amid their leaves,
I hear the whispers in the wind
that aren’t alone in watching me.

I lock my doors and shake. The road
has taken me to graves where fog
sits still upon the ground and where
the angels guard the dead — how now

have they forgotten those that live?
And why? — The terror breeds! I turn
my head and hazy figures walk
the earth and orbs of light appear

and wane and come again, now close,
yet closer still; the shadows reach
for me. I gun the engine, break
an angel’s arm, its marble arm,

and speed toward the distant gate.
A frantic eye upon the ghouls
I flee the dark – the moon is back
– and Cuba Road is left behind.

An observation outside Deering

Denae Dietlein — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 01:34:30 +0000

Good Afternoon,
Chinese Maple.
Or should I say
‘Evening,’ as you
have already grasped
the dusk in your
pigment-roasted
fingers.

Would you mind?

Lucia Campbell — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 00:42:56 +0000

What about me?
I’m not much of a dresser,
a pretty good looker.
(Or is it watcher?)
Got beer on my old shoes,
glitter on my new ‘Crew pants.
An artist—
at least for the children of
my part-time.
Still searching for a good girl,
and still finding the bad bitches.
And then—
I’m at your doorstep.
In your crusty Old New York
apartment corridor where
everyday you shuffle languidly to
a job you hate to love.
Even though I love your hate-shuffle,
your morning curses,
and especially your sleepy stumbles
Out the bathroom door.
Would you mind?
Of course not,
nostalgically holding your grocery bag.
You eat celery, veggie chips,
Greek yogurt, and cheese.
But I guess you forgot the juice you like…
Would I mind?
God no.
I live across the way now,
work with children,
look messy, but
I have virtues that might
make your hair flip,
or your eyes twinkle,
or your skirt flutter,
or simply fall.
And you have such a way
of alive-ness:
A voice that is audible even to my
twitching ear bone;
Hands that could tear me
gently apart—
I watch violent
tears streaming down your
unnecessarily massive umbrella—
Or is that the season’s downpour
On my featureless face?
And you have such a way
Of novelty:
Of enlivening us,
the un-enlightened;
Of finally reinstating—
please forgive my trite reference
to this-us-me-you—
our pillar.
No phallic jokes please.
My muse is with me now.
So then—
Would you mind?
Yes.
You would?
No, but would you?
God no.

The Encounter

Rachel Hoffman — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 02:47:52 +0000

“What color?”
People ask me,
Their faces reflected in my
Eyes and squinting in the sun.
Eyes like small slits,
New cuts
In a child’s knee.
Seconds drip by slowly
And I offer the obligatory
Conclusion for simplicity’s
Sake. “Green.”

I invite the dissection of
This gaze with analytical instruments
Of cold steel.
Only dirty lakes
Wait for you here.
An army of brown spots
Invades navy scratches
In orbs. They wrestle,
Desperate hues, mixing
Vibrant blood to form
Questionable green.

Faded light
And film of gray
Envelopes iris islands.
But a heathery wash is the
Jealous brother of green in
The cruel spectrum display and
Staring too long leaves a
Sour taste.

What color?
The question echoes in my
Mind in this room
And escapes through cracked
Window to scrape the sleeping sky
But…It’s not important to me now.
And I close my eyes in a
Saturation of sun.