Poem of the Week: Barbara Crooker

Rewind

Oh, how we'd like to put this video in slow rewind,

go back to September 10th, refurl the chrysanthemum

of ash to a bud, pull the towers back up

from their soft collapse, harden their sides,

slap cement on with our bare hands, smooth it flat

with a trowel, return the sky to its flawless blue,

no plume of black smoke, just windows glittering

in the September sun, office workers breaking

for coffee and bagels, the world's commerce

humming on. Let the planes remain in their hangars.

Let the men who plan harm get caught in traffic,

misplace their tickets, miss their connections.

Let us all sleep again at night.

-Barbara Crooker

Used by permission.

Barbara Crooker's books are Radiance, winner of the 2005 Word Press First Book Award and finalist for the 2006 Paterson Poetry Prize; Line Dance (Word Press, 2008), winner of the 2009 Paterson Award for Excellence in Literature; and More (C&R Press, 2010). Her poems appear in a variety of literary journals and many anthologies, including Good Poems for Hard Times (Penguin, 2006) and Good Poems, American Places (Viking, 2011) -- both edited by Garrison Keillor -- and the Bedford Introduction to Literature.

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Poem of the Week: Vanessa Huang

Dear End of Terror,

May you rest

In peace

This night

Body of hurt

Breathe easy

May rest

Bring new light

Memory

Your heart

Space widen

May wide truth

Sink deep

Sing wide

True

To each part

May each war

Remember

Body

Holy body

Grow soul

-Vanessa Huang

Used by permission.

Photo by: Morgan Bassichis

Vanessa Huang is a poet, writer, and community organizer whose practice draws on a history of collaboration with and teachings from the prison abolition, migrant justice, gender liberation, transformative justice, disability justice, and reproductive justice movements. Vanessa's poetry manuscript quiet of chorus was named a finalist for Poets & Writers' 2010 California Writers Exchange Award. A Macondo and Kundiman fellow, Vanessa lives in Oakland, California and also works as a consultant for social justice organizations.

Please feel free to forward Split This Rock Poem of the Week widely. We just ask you to include all of the information in this email, including this request. Thanks!

Split This Rock
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August Sunday Kind of Love Featuring: YOU!

August Sunday Kind of Love

Featuring:

YOU!

Full Open Mic Event

Sunday August 21, 2011

5-7pm

Langston Room - Busboys & Poets
2021 14th St. NW

Washington, DC

Hosted by Katy Richey
Co-Sponsored by
Busboys and Poets and Split This Rock

Suggested donation: $5

For more info: www.BusboysandPoets.com
browning@splitthisrock.org

www.SplitThisRock.org
202-387-POET

Poem of the Week: Don Share

At Home

Greetings to the red-eyed clouds

from this, the house that sits

on the mound and faces the corner

that marriage built, where wine

was drunk and semen flooded

the egg which lodged in the uterus

that built the daughter who greeted

the man and the woman here

in the mound at the corner in the house

that education built, and you

know from home-schooling

that the woman can be the teacher

and the man can be the tender child

and ditto the actual infant, depending

on her sex, dependent on love and

income; oh our dear dependent

is ruining the new chair in the house

that nested ambition built, along

with naked sense, and the beak

of god, the job of love, the hurt

of older homes, the hang

of it generally, the hands of pain,

the haze of Zoloft and the pudge

of Prozac, the twins of failed

marriages that manage to live on

in the ardor of our redone arbor

here in the house that books built,

that Yiddish and the Book of Common

Prayer built, that Presbyterian pride

built, that pogroms built, that blue

and white collars built, that Bildungs-

romans built, that the Biltmores built,

that mad dogs bayed at, that the baby

was born in that the cat bit and mouse

whispered within, over which, mortgaged,

the thunder caught its tongue and brought

great downpours upon while the coffee boiled,

while the paper, delivered late again, said:

We fight the terrorists abroad

so we don't have to fight them at home.

-Don Share

Used by permission.

Originally published in Squandermania

(Salt Publishing, 2007)

Don Share is Senior Editor of Poetry. His books include Squandermania; Union; and Seneca in English. Forthcoming are a new book of poems, Wishbone; a critical edition of Basil Bunting's poems; and Basil Bunting's Persia. His translations of Miguel Hernández, collected in I Have Lots of Heart, received the Times Literary Supplement Translation Prize and P.E.N./New England Discovery Award. With Christian Wiman, he has co-edited The Open Door: 100 Poems from 100 Years of Poetry.

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Poem of the Week: Tim Seibles

Vendetta, May 2006

My thoughts are murder to the State and involuntarily go plotting against her.

--Henry David Thoreau

As if leaving

it behind would

have me lost

in this place, as if

keeping it

could somehow

save me from the

parade of knives,

I have held

my rage on a short

leash like a good,

mad dog whose bright

teeth could keep

the faces of our enemies

well lit. Is it

wrong to hate

the leaders? Am I wrong

to hate their silk

ties and their

secret economies?

Am I wrong? Am I?

Look how they

work the stage

like cool comedians,

ribbing the nations this

way, then that --

gaff after giggle

filling the auditoriums

with the empty

skulls. Maybe this

is the moment

to abandon

metaphor: shouldn't somebody

make them

suffer: now that

war is easy money,

won't the reasons

keep coming to see

how well

people die?

.....I guess this

is the world

I was born

into: moonlight,

sunshine--kind city

of my mother's lap, my

father....tossing me

up....and catching me --

I remember

the first time I saw

autumn....outside

my window: the colors

came with the smell

of burning

leaves....and starving

in our basement,

the crickets

trying to stave off

the chill, still working

their little whistles

after dark.

....I think, even

then, I knew a season

would come

for us: the wind

tilting slowly, but

suddenly everyone

is under the cold

still holding on

to their wallets

as the government

quietly turns....and day

after day, the terrible stories

cover everything.

- Tim Seibles

Used by permission.

Tim Seibles was born in Philadelphia, PA in 1955. He is the author of several books of poems including Hurdy-Gurdy; Hammerlock; and, most recently, Buffalo Head Solos. He is a former National Endowment for the Arts fellow and has been a writing fellow at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center in Massachusetts. Seibles also received an Open Voice Award from the 63rd Street Y in New York City. His work has been featured in anthologies such as Manthology; Black Nature; Seriously Funny; The Autumn House Anthology of American Poetry; So Much Things to Say; and Best American Poetry 2010. He has been a workshop leader for the Cave Canem Writers Retreat and for the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation. Seibles is visiting faculty for the University of Southern Maine's low-res Stonecoast MFA Program. His home is in Norfolk, VA where, as an associate professor of English, he teaches in Old Dominion University's English Department and MFA in writing program.

Please feel free to forward Split This Rock Poem of the Week widely. We just ask you to include all of the information in this email, including this request. Thanks!

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Letter Writing Campaign Continues: More Poetry in the Post

The Washington Post's Book World "Summer Reading Issue" published on June 19th included no poetry books. Zip. Zero. Zilch.

Continuing our letter-writing campaign to encourage Book World editors to include more poetry in the publication, Split This Rock 2012 Festival Planning Committee member and poet Yvette Neisser Moreno had her letter to the editor published in this past Saturday's Post.

You can read it here: Why no poetry in Book World special?

We encourage you to join in on the conversation in the "comments" section and if you live in the Washington, DC, area or read The Washington Post, please write a letter to the editor urging more reviews of poetry. We hope to continue to swamp the Post with scores of letters demonstrating the wide audience for poetry among its readership. Use our Sample Letter to the Post, or write your own.

For inspiration and more details, read our flyer and check out some of Split This Rock's favorite sites for book reviews! Please let us know what response you receive. Contact Yvette Neisser-Moreno for more information.

If you live outside the area, write a similar letter to the book review section of your local newspaper. Even better, launch a local campaign! Together, we can make this a national campaign to increase coverage of poetry books in major newspapers and begin to restore poetry’s place as a major genre of literature in this country.

Poem of the Week: Melissa Tuckey

University Kiss in a Time of War

Two slight young women--
the smaller one
reaches for hands
leans close to give a kiss
to the taller girl
an in between things kiss
a so long for now kiss
and nothing breaks
no alarms are sounded
no one is injured
Other students pass without
comment or craning.
As the rain that's gentled
our spirits since morning.
But the giver of the kiss looks back,
a quick glance over her shoulder
as if she's learned
that kisses can be dangerous.
I'm reminded of children who live
on the border between wars,
how farmers pay them
to go to rocky fields and find
landmines. Small hands
mostly agile enough to keep the bombs
from exploding; the farmers
hungry to return to their fields.

- Melissa Tuckey

Used by permission.

Melissa Tuckey is the author of Rope as Witness, a chapbook published by Puddinghouse Press. She's received a Fine Arts Work Center residency, among other awards for her writing. Her poetry has been anthologized in DC Poets Against the War, Fire and Ink: An Anthology of Social Action Writing, Poets for Palestine, Days I Moved Through Ordinary Sounds: The Teachers of Writers Corps in Poetry and Prose, and is forthcoming in Ecopoetry: A Contemporary American Anthology. She is co-translator with Chun Ye and Fiona Sze-Lorrain of Chinese poet Yang Zi's collected works, which have been published by Conjunctions, Manoa, and Witness, among other journals. Tuckey serves as Poetry Editor at the online journal Foreign Policy in Focus (a think tank without walls). She teaches at Ithaca College, and lives in Ithaca, New York.

Tuckey has been with Split This Rock since its inception and served as a founding co-director. She now serves on the Board of Directors.

Please feel free to forward Split This Rock Poem of the Week widely. We just ask you to include all of the information in this email, including this request. Thanks!

Split This Rock
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202-787-5210