A Poem by Stefanie Bennett
for Paul Celan
Take one time-lapsed
Crying boy child -.
Parents? Yes! Distressed
To death…
A trickle of tanks
Daringly
Mixed into a milk-
Toothed cavity
Along with a millennia\’s
Woebegone religiosity -, then
Come. (He will be king)
Sit down.
From the reputed
Abyss see him walk
On egg-shells.
On fire-brands.
A Poem by A. J. Hufffman
Falling still, flat as the preconceived
earth in history’s tomes. No waves
to watch in awe or fight
to conquer on boards layered
with wax. Carnivorous
hunters, de-toothed,
bottom feeders filed away in corner
caves. Massive emptiness
echoes: Nothing.
A Poem by A. J. Huffman
The sky fell suddenly
from its perch, pulling streaks
of clouds to cover its tracks.
But the last one — the darkest
one — got caught on the stars
and ripped itself into shadow.
Left inside out, it seems
to have bloodied the sea.
A Poem by Robert Holman
I remember sitting out in the front yard
with my granny and papa beneath the wings of an oak.
A plump bird landed on the power-line.
“Na’, look, that there is a dove!” my grandpa said.
Pressed against the sky a grey-brown bird
nervously rolling its head in its speckled breast.
Between the smell of gasoline and sweat
my mind flew away. I’d forgotten what he said.
“Ain’t n’ dove. That’s a witch-a-ma-call-it: a pigeon!”
“Damn it, Eunice, let me teach the boy!”
“Whooo Lord ham mercy, jist right about er-thing.”
He pointed his rough, cracked finger and whispered,
“Na’ look, Eunice, that dove can fly off
–I can’t.”
A Poem by Kenya Diamond Liddell
I had not seen much I had not been much
My age the only thing mentioned
I had no wisdom I had no voice
I had many friends but no choice
I had much hope
Did not know much of the world
I made it a joke
I did not know cold cruel world
Or of the things that lay awake in darkness
I did not know one day I would have to fight
I was a child of the night
I did not know life contained chains
I found myself Imprisoned for no wrongdoing
I did not know shackles would be placed on my feet
I did not know my mental state would no longer define me
I did not know there was a wrong from right
No way to obtain truth from madness
I could not wake from the nightmare of tragedy
Please Lord look down
Take mercy on me
I was the child of daydreams
I had no aims of destruction
Images turned memories
Life beat me with a whip
A slave to my own mind
Life gave me a horror trip
Now I have hope in my sight
And I live to worship
I was the child of hope
Who Only lived to know Him.
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