Photo:
"King Tut" © 2006 by Rochelle Ratner
Poetry
guest edited by Sharon Olinka
with
Photos by Rochelle Ratner
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RICH
and POOR: Feature, 2006-07
My
Brother Antonio, the Baker by Philip
Levine
Did the wind blow that night? When did it not?
I’d ask you if you hadn’t gone underground
lugging the answer with you.
Twenty-eight years old, on our way home
after a twelve-hour shift baking Wonder Bread
for the sleeping prisoners in the drunk tank
at the Canfield Station dreaming of a breakfast
of horse cock and mattress stuffing.
(Oh, the luxuries of 1955! How fully we lived –
the working-classes and the law abiding dregs –
on buttered toast and grilled-cheese sandwiches
as the nation braced itself for pate and pasta.)
To myself I smelled like a new mother minus
the aura of talcum and the airborne, acrid aroma
of cotton diapers. Today I’d be labeled
nurturing and bountiful instead
of vegetal and weird. A blurred moon was out,
we both saw it; I know because leaning back,
eyes closed on a ruined sky, you did your thing,
welcoming the “bright orb” waning in the west,
“Moon that rained down its silver coins
on the darkened Duero and the sleeping fields
of Soria.” Did I look like you, my face
anonymous and pure, bleached with flour,
my eyes glistening with the power of neon light
or self-love? Two grown men, side by side,
one babbling joyfully to the universe
that couldn’t care less, while the other,
practiced for middle age. A single crow settled
on the boiler above the Chinese restaurant,
his feathers riffling, and I took it for a sign.
A second sign was the couple exiting
the all-night pharmacy; the man came first
through the glass door, a small white sack in hand,
and let the door swing shut. Then she appeared,
one hand covering her eyes to keep
the moonlight at bay. They stood not talking
while he looked first left, then right, then left
again as flakes of darkness sifted upward
toward the streetlight. The place began to rumble
as though this were the end. You spoke again,
only this time you described someone humble
walking alone in darkness. I could see
the streetcar turning off Joy Road,
swaying down the tracks toward us,
the windows on fire. There must have been a wind,
a west wind. What else could have blown
the aura of forsythia through the town
and materialized one crow-town streetcar
never before on time? A spring wind
freighted with hope. I remember
thinking that at last you might shut up.
An old woman stood to give you
her seat as though you were angelic
or pregnant. When her eyes spilled over
with happiness, I saw she took your words
to heart as I never could. Maybe she recalled
the Duero, the fields asleep in moonlight,
maybe the words were music to her,
original and whole, words that took her home
to Soria or Krakow or wherever,
maybe she was not an old woman at all
but an oracle in drag who saw you as you were
and saw, too, you couldn’t last the night
Philip
Levine, the author of sixteen books of poetry, won the Pulitzer
Prize for The Simple Truth (Alfred A. Knopf, 1994) and
the National Book Award for What Work Is (1991.) He was
elected a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets in 2000.
My Brother Antonio, the Baker previously appeared in
Five Points.
Girne 1997 by Alev Adil
She wakes up from her siesta too late.
It’s already dark but she does not turn
the light on.
Her lipstick tastes of cherries.
Her kisses promise
the heavenly newness of expensive dollies.
She used to love to chew their faces,
not out of spite but out of love.
A one eyed car ambles down the narrow street,
the old women are going indoors,
taking their chairs in from their doorways,
their early evening surveillance is over.
In the distance the headlights of cars dance
as their claxons announce themselves
and the end of the day.
The ice has melted in the whiskey.
A silt of face powder covers the dressing table.
Well? Are you satisfied now? Now that you have
tracked her down to this crumbling war-torn port, to a
third floor apartment in the old part of town. This is a
dead end and you know it. She evades your attempts
at narrative coherence. You won’t make a story out
of her. She’s no fool. She’d only lose by it, she
knows
that. The night is smudging here, erasing her with
charcoal softness.
All you can see now
are her white bra and her reflection
which flashes momentarily
courtesy of the headlights
as she reapplies the melting lipstick
that makes her taste of her devoured childhood.
Alev Adil teaches at the University
of Greenwich, England where she is head of the Department of Creative,
Critical and Communication Studies. “Girne, 1997”
was previously published in her first book of poems Venus
Infers (NE Publications, 2004.) She is part of Poetz for
Peace, a UN funded Cypriot collective made up of musicians and
writers who are Greek and Turkish..
IMMIGRANT WORKERS FREEDOM RIDE TO WASHINGTON,
--September 26th, 2003. The New York Times, A Found Prose
Poem
by
Daniela Gioseffi
A caravan of buses heads to Washington from
10 cities nationwide campaigning for immigrants’ rights.
In one bus speeding through New Mexico’s desert, Juan Gonzalez
talks of his dream to be an FBI agent. A Colombian immigrant,
he studied to be a police detective back home, but dropped out
because he was too poor to attend college in his war torn country
of US drug wars.
To support his wife and infant son, he moved to Arizona, took
a job as a roofer for $9.50 an hour. But 10 grueling hours a day
in 100-degree heat taught him the price of protest when he was
fired. “They tell me this is the country of free speech!
But immigrants can’t speak on the job because they get fired.”
Immigrants from Mexico, China, Sudan, the Philippines and everywhere
ride with him.
Gonzalez, 26 years old, keeps spirits high by drumming Latin rhythms
and rapping about soccer, salsa, and prejudice. “I can’t
wait until we get to Washington. I’m going to be singing
loud to my Latin drum. I want to make sure they listen. Immigrants
do rotten jobs that nobody else wants to do. They come here to
work hard. They build America.” When he formed a labor union
to improve wages and conditions, his employer fired him –
telling him his papers were not valid, even though his papers
had long been accepted. Gonzalez now digs ditches for minimum
wages and says “I always heard of the American dream, and
I’m still searching for it!”
Dhel Hakwak Mourchol, who sits beside Gonzalez, is a native of
Sudan come to the United States to escape his country’s
civil war. He wears a deep scar on his forehead. Mourchol fled
the Sudan for India, where he earned a law degree, and later the
US granted him refugee status. “Since my childhood, I’ve
never seen peace. The war started in 1983, and we scattered through
the bush to survive. I don’t know where my family is. I
don’t know if my parents are alive. We appreciate that America
gives us sanctuary, but I’ve applied to become a court recorder
and was rejected because I’m not a citizen. But, I’m
a law school graduate, I told them! They wouldn’t listen.”
Guillremo Rocha, a diesel mechanic in Los Angeles, says employers
exploit his fellow Mexicans because many don’t have legal
status and face deportation if they protest anything. “The
Mexicans have nothing and work like slaves day and night. Without
legalization, we have no rights, not even to a toilet or a coffee
break. My boss has fired me for joining this Freedom Ride.”
He attempts to hid his scarred hands with their blackened fingernails.
Maggie Dida, a rider from Malaysia, smiles a toothless grin and
says she’s blessed. A housekeeper at a Hawaii Resort –
she works with people from China, the Philippines, Cambodia, Malaysia.
“We’re very close. We take care of each other so the
boss listens to us a little. He’s a Puerto Rican from Jamaica
and understands.”
Maria Pichinte, a 23-year-old rider from El Salvador studies computer
science at Los Angeles Community College all day and works all
night until morning as a janitor. “Immigrants work more
than anyone in this country,” she says. “They work
16 and 18 hours a day!” Tears well in her faded eyes as
she tells of a visit to Nogales, Arizona, where immigrants told
of people who died trying to enter the United States. “Their
bodies were picked clean by buzzards. They had no prayers, no
burial, no eyes. My parents crossed the desert to escape violence
and starvation in El Salvador,” she says. “Finally,
after slaving for years they flew me to the US. Immigrants deserve
something for what they’ve been through. They crossed the
desert. They’ve made many sacrifices to find a future. Their
own countries are a mess because of covert US wars –but
Americans don’t understand that. And now it is happening
in Iraq in the same way!”
Mae Jackson Smith – a high school senior in 1959 when whites
in a Dallas suburb threw rocks and firecrackers at her to prevent
her from attending the local school – says, “Martin
Luther King Jr. flew to Texas to join our integration struggle.
Today’s ride is part of the same fight. I’ve used
up all my savings to come on this ride. Since 9/11 our rights
are threatened even more by the ‘Patriots’ Bill.’
What a joke! We’re still fighting for rights – what
Martin Luther King and Cesar Chavez died for! America is a stillborn
democracy!”
_______
Daniela
Gioseffi is an American Book Award winning author of fourteen
books of poetry and prose. Her latest collection of poetry is
Blood Autumn (VIA Folios/ Bordighera Press, Calandra
Inst. CUNY Graduate Center, 2006.) Her verse was etched in marble
on a wall of Penn Station near Whitmanís and Ginsbergís, 2002.
Her anthology Women on War: International Writings, with
an award-winning introduction written by her was a Touchstone/
Simon & Schuster Book, reissued in an all new edition by the Feminist
Press, NY, 2003, She has received a Lifetime Achievement Award
from the Association of Italian American Educators.
Rosal
by D. Nurkse
1. The
Visit
Many identical metal detectors
and the guards in strange moods:
one cups a hand for your change,
lets it spill, and fingers his gun
while you bend to scoop up pennies:
another is reading Revelations
and waves you on without a pass.
Was it your shoe that triggered the beep?
You will pad in socks, a yellow nail
poking from the seam.
Six gates where clerks ask,
how did you get to this point?
as if there had been choices.
As at the entrance to a concert
an old woman stamps your wrist –
here the ink is invisible.
You will walk these dim corridors
while a megaphone calls your name
gently, then in anger, then panic.
Still a trustee will usher you
through ribbonwire and sensors.
And there in a floodlit cell
Rosal is drawing keys
on a scrap of paper--
ancient keys, to immense locks,
though here the doors are opened
only by a beam of light:
so little margin, soon
he will draw on his own hand,
his wrist, his belly,
then the music will blast,
all bass and reverb,
and no one left to dance.
2. The Record
We made a chapbook
and called it My Life
(underlined twice)
(nothing happens after prison)
but the staples were confiscated
- weapon, weapon -
and held in a safe at Command:
there the brassbound book
lies open to a marked page.
3. Parole
Three months I practiced
my reunion with Maria
in the kitchen in Rego Park:
it happened exactly as in dreams:
a kiss, the promise,
a red-check tablecloth,
the cat watching indignantly,
a candle, the deep kiss,
except we had a few sips of Hennessy
and her brother came by
and commented on punks from prison.
The cat slithered under the credenza.
Then that three-month trance
fueled a drink, another drink,
a hard laugh, a soft laugh,
a shove, and I was back
at Command, nine-to-fifteen,
staring at the whitewashed wall,
hearing myself talk
louder, louder, softly,
then never again.
4. Incident at Ira Cross
It hurts to see it
even with the white of the eye –
everything has a beginning and end
except the beating –
but a roll of toilet paper
sails blazing over the grillwork,
splaying in midair:
even in Section Eight, Isolation,
someone unknowable owned a match.
5. Lockdown
A glove searches the anal cavity:
is there really a drug
this bloody, or a weapon
so infinitesimally small?
6. Male Minor Detainee
Rosal hung himself
on Riker’s Island,
with a nylon sock –
how could it hold him
so securely in death
when the whole block shook
with the roar of jets
circling LaGuardia? –
to be free and walk
without meeting men’s eyes
across the bridge to the city.
D.
Nurkse is the author of eight books of poetry, most recently Burnt
Island and The Fall (Knopf, 2005 and 2002.) Recent
poems are in The Times Literary Supplement and The
Kenyon Review. In 2006, he was nominated to the Board of
Directors of Amnesty International, USA. “Rosal” was
previously published in American Poetry Review.
Lottery
Tickets by Sharon Olinka
Season of mishaps.
Sudden tulips. Desire raw
as soot-flecked snow.
From the chipped ice of deprivation,
pushing its way. Rooted in friction,
ridiculous mixture of warm brown
manure, hyacinth. My chapped hands, collar
open to this wind. My feet
that know where they’ll go,
though the news is dark, treading
what’s yet still frozen.
And I trust
coughs, sighs, fingers roughened by
paper cuts, legs and arms
in scratchy wool. Labial pulls
to earth. I believe my body,
more than what I see at
a local store, say Kapil’s Stationery,
all the hopeful ones: Quick Pick
tickets in hand. Take Five. Instant Millionaire.
Rheumy-eyed, keys jangling at waist,
the thick-set plumbers. Myra, a dental
assistant. The young guy from Christos Grocery.
And what to make of old Anna dressed up
on a nice day, tickets tightly clutched? Spending
all her pension money?
I want to say,
you’re being drained dry
for profit and wars.
It’s the wrong dream.
Get out. Get out while you can.
But they won’t believe me.
Sharon
Olinka is a poet whose work has recently appeared in Barrow
Street and Confrontation. Her first book of poems
was A Face Not My Own (West End Press, 1995) and “Lottery
Tickets” is from her second collection, The Good City
(Marsh Hawk Press, 2006.) In 2005 she won a Barbara Deming Memorial
Award for her poetry on the destruction of the Turkish city of
Smyrna. Olinka is the guest editor of this feature, RICH &
POOR.
The
above poems: Copyright © 2006 by their authors. All rights,
including electronic, are reserved by the authors and may not
be used without permission..
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Levine |Alev
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