|
The Origin of the River
by Yaul Perez-Stable Husni '11
Poem read at CW's Poetry Café
performance, January 16, 2009
Listen and read (may not
be supported in Firefox)
or
Listen to audio alone
I follow the river
to where there are no birds on the trees
and no music to the water.
It is as before,
When the continents were one and they held you
as a plum holds its seed.
Now, I find you asleep atop a mountain
The origin of rivers
Your breath the immense silence of snow.
Awakened
You study your land.
Silent before everything you see.
Upon the wheat field you have imprinted
your thoughts
Into the foliage your memories
Like seeds, they are taken everywhere
so everyone may know you --
So you exist in the storyteller's voice
So a boy sees you in the rain
when he is not thinking.
You have slipped between each man's lips
Become a part of them.
Until is is your name on every grave
Your voice we hear as an infant first cries
Your pen that first wrote
Happiness and Sadness
On the same page.
<page top>
Kitchen
by Rebecca Straznickas '12
Pitted avocado
Pit of avocado
Streak of breakfast on my empty
Breakfast table
One chair, lone salt shaker
In a circle of salt dust
Age-spotted spoon curved slot in the
Soft avocado meat
Purple stains smudge my fingertips
The juice of the fruit half-eaten, rolled on its side
Strip of the plum's skin sticking to
My clay bowl I didn't make
But told everyone I did
Blatant afternoon sticks through
Flimsy curtains
Casts my breakfast table into unflattering
Shades of beige
Avocado shell nestled against my palm
As I scoop out the last of its value
Like Braille, the bumps could take shape
<page top>
The Hero's Quest
by Aly Robalino '12
Argonaut, astronaut, aquanaut, aeronaut,
juggernaut
Destined heroes
Explore space yet unbreathed in
Dingling bells on ships
Smelling the salt of the captain's breath
Putting on bulky gloves
Running trails against the ribbons of the moon
Unstoppable
Living under the sitting sea in a bubble
Beating the coughing engine of the plane
As you trail down through sweating clouds
Grounded to slay a hex-headed beast
And still keep your wits
So here I ask the dusty, musty book
Leaning against time
To be, or naut to be?
<page top>
Pretty-Boy
by Sayre Quevedo '11
rounds the plate,
he's looking out over the bleachers
for your voice
it keeps calling out:
Pretty Boy
catches your face as he passes first
eyes sweeping dust from the plates
those two words are all it takes
and he
grows up
pre-occupied with the place
between his legs.
grows up
pulling weights, his own mass
curving his back over uncertainty
Pretty Boy
just wants to be
Quarter-Back
Bacon-Bringer-
Gets-It-Done
Boy
not Pretty Boy
not that.
Plays smear the queer on the football
field
Please.
Just see him as he wants to be seen
not as the boy he will grow up to be:
married to his career,
conceiving stillborn ideals of your imagined respect,
crushed beer cans strung from each heel
beating the pavement
shallow metallic ball and chain,
a butcher-paper banner, it follows
it says:
Pretty Boy
and he calls me the same
and when he has a son
he'll call us the same
he won't let us forget
that we'll never be men
until we're suffering silently
just like him
<page top>
New Year
by Indiana Pehlivanova '09
Poem read at CW's Poetry Café
performance, January 16, 2009
Listen and read (may not
be supported in Firefox)
or
Listen to audio alone -- for Bono (after
Kite) If this year were a name
It would have had only one
Consonant, Apo -- late blossoming
Name belonging to a child
Letting go a name
A name as a locked book If this year were
a car
It would have had one eternal meter
It would have been repainted
With so many colors on top of each other
It would have become beige The beige sail
bags I lay on
To watch people cross the road
In the early afternoon If this year were
an animal
It would have been sleeping
In gravel, sprinkled with poison ivy
It would have been one with
Discolored irises, one saved, one last
One quiet as river water When the fog is
to my knees
I run forwards to catch
Never realizing I've caught it
Before so many times and my fingertips
Have gotten used to it I draw this year
on a map
I follow the pencil traces
Those are rocky mountains
<page top>
India's Traveler
by Abigail Schott-Rosenfield '14
Warm snow is covering my house of
sticks. Let me tell you about myself, though it doesn't
matter who I am. Today I walked fifty miles and
Met a fellow with seven wives. We sat in a drift soft as
a flannel-covered breast and he told me in an Irish
accent about his kits and cats and sacks. Bright,
many-colored batik sacks, the fabric rolled up on the
top shelf of a fabric shop, full of dust. His favorite
kitty is the tabby Blue Robinson who is so clever that
she can take the cheese out of the mousetraps for
herself and not get caught. He's watched her do it,
eating cold chicken and mineral water. He bears her no
ill will because she hunts and kills the mice with her
slender paws after eating their last their would should
be their last meal.
This is my foot song:
Transient, transient, blue blood is in my veins. My
molecules move along a
Transparent, transcontinental path.
Transparent, transient, transient, song
How now stranger? I met one man going to St. Ives, he
left along the path of warm snow.
Today I saw tropical birds flying over
snowdrifts, plumed things, batik. Utopian and pieced
like snowflakes. Dragonflies become larger than larvae,
larger than life, and I find the markings of their
life-spans on reed leaves: peeled skins from when they
crawled out of the marshes. Yellow, waxy swamp flowers
are waiting. I am a traveler and this is what I want.
Mice are deprived of their last
pleasure. Mice become bloody liquid in a cat's stomach.
And on. My mind is running parallel to where the river
is frozen, shall I camp there tonight? My fat flannel
blankets are too much for this winter of warm snow
India. Thin cotton batik is all too hard to get. Batik,
bright like citrus red hot, all I need is to keep the
snow from my head and the tigers from my body and so I
sleep with one eye open, but hushed.
Jeans and tank tops are what I want to
wear, but the snow melts, curry and butter against skin.
Windbreakers are light but stop the wetness from coming
in,
Still I sweat rivers that run down my legs,
Into my socks. But I try not to wear
Socks. Flip-flops are the best things to wear, when snow
squashes into your feet and molded into the space
between foot and shoe as a fine, damp
Sand.
It squeaks back and forth, and still my song is
transient, transient, backpack straps, and on.
This is my grandmother's song:
Pull up your big girl panties! whoop!
Like a coot eating a waxy yellow marsh flower. I
listened, tingling,
Syllables crawling into my ears, until she finished
And I felt powder just under my skin,
Pressing upwards, like lemon color.
Kitties come in all different sizes. To
appease, I feed them tuna from the stores I pass by in
the morning, watching trees grow leafy and wet in the
humid wind, wishing I had something not fat snowmelt
while I sweat off my clothes one by one. Kitties follow
me and smile their delicate, yawning smiiles. Tuna? Do
they bring it to their tiger cousins? Am I their
provider?
This is the song of Blue Robinson:
hilarious, hilarious!
This is my joy song: dragonflies like jewels.
This is my joy song: Blue Robinson and pearls.
This is my joy song: I travel.
<page top>
Untitled
by Bryce Hidysmith '13 Take a drag in,
make the smoke yours,
take the warmth, the comfort,
look at the embers on the end
and know, this cigarette is the only warmth here
The sun's hidden behind the fog,
and sets slowly, taunting with a white glare,
nothing yellow or orange
no fire colors,
black and white,
the district like an old photograph
take a drag in, make the smoke yours
until you kill the last of it
dropping the butt in someone's trash can,
take out the tarot cards,
both hands out of pockets,
uncovered fingertips freezing,
shuffle, shuffle,
got one,
"The Sun" number 19.
One sun in the sunset,
Smiling baby on a horse, holding a flag, sunflowers,
another sun, and so on
Sounds of laughter
Sun sets back into the box
Light another smoke
Take the warmth in
Taunt the sun
Taunt the sun
<page top>
Running Pavement
by Midori Chen '14 This poem was
written for the unveiling of a new School of the Arts
mural, created by Special Education students with whom
Midori Chen worked as part of CW's 'Community Mondays'.
"The mural focuses on life in San Francisco and various
places the class visited as a group," says Midori. "It's
an amazing work of art that took a lot of time and
effort, so [in this poem] I tried my best to convey the
feeling of the mural."
Run
The pavement is running
across a stretch of sky called San Francisco
Sneakers pound to run
Three hundred pounds of pavement
Run
into Chinatown
rattling the street vendors and setting the red arches
into a tremble
Open-toed sandals that valiantly fight against slippery
pebbles
and a thimble topples in a thrift store drawer
Run
between a museum couple, side by side
One laughs with green hills rolling on its roof
the other stands proud in rusted red, rusted valor
They share the people as best they could
but still end up fervently counting ticket stubs
Run
up to the edge of the waters
to the curves of the Golden Gate Bridge
painted lipstick red inverse paunches
but not promiscuous
merely flaunting of the perfection we owe it
Run
towards the end of the rainbow
and end up in the middle of it
with pairs of paired loafers, paired sneakers
and curved balloons taped to the back of a flying man
Run
through a group of the hungry elites
Those so good at entertaining, people forget to pay
They run along with the pavement, throw their cases and
hats down
and laugh at the romance of starving artists
Take the hand of the pavement
and Run
towards up to into between and through
the sunny-but-cold, foggy-but-warm
City where accordions wheeze after a quickstep
and dragons prowl the borders
and every kind of life lives in chaotic order
Because San Francisco is a city
where you can run into every nook and hidden cranny
holding hands
with a stretchy blue sky
and painted red pavement
Painted red glory
honoring everyone and everything
upon the parted squared off walls
painted snapshots
of the Life of San Francisco
<page top> |
