The Banks of the Stream

by Anthony Bernini 

                                        I might not know the sundered heart of Palestine

if it appeared to me along the Poestenkill.

                                        But surely, just beneath the dead

leaves pressed rigid through the year

by each new rain

something living waits.

                                        What do I know about Jerusalem

where miracles are made

to wait for sticks and stones?

                                        I might not hear the broken beat of that lost heart

if it was pounding there along the stream

whose sounding has the shape of tiny

thousands of passionate voices,

yet who can say it does not wait for us

along the banks, where no death can

outlive the pomegranate tree.

~

Anthony Bernini, from Manhattan’s Lower East Side, now lives and works as a poet in Brunswick, New York. His third volume of poetry, Selected Poems, Anthony Bernini, 2024, will be published next month.

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2024 - A Synopsis

by Mimi Moriarty

January

glacier slow, hollow pearls of quiet against laughing snowfall.

February

love makes its annual journey, an imposter in the spare room.

March

the atmosphere turns jolly, we drink foamy brew as medicine.

April

buds sigh above the grit, wink at the daffodils waving their fronds.

May

the musk settles; my mother still rattles her rusted cage.

June

it’s official - the border is closed!  The desperate keep climbing.

July

we sing from pulpits patriotic psalms wrapped in stars and stripes.

August

clans slip into carefree mayhem and chaos - the lake will do that.

September

the month hinges on a creaky door - opens - there is a party!

October

the door remains ajar; you peek; there is another door, closed.

November

it’s all theater - the cast, the crew, the stage collapsing under the weight of thieves.

December

the virgins are hidden in the attic, the children in the basement. We stockpile cans of beans and rolls of toilet paper. We have been practicing since the epidemic, but somehow we are not ready.

~

Mimi Moriarty is a poet living in a log home overlooking the Hudson Valley. She is less active in the poetry scene than her younger self, but continues to write as she gracefully ages into a crone.

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Beauty Queen Brahmani

by Rhonda Coullet

From childhood, 

able to understand, 

cosmic ideas as home.

Once a year, 

my neighbor sold books,

on a card table in her front yard,

25 cents a copy, 

metaphysical words in depth,

matching my mamaw’s oral rules

for living a good life.

Pearls, jewels of wisdom, 

from an unknown world, 

beyond her country church,

and the circuit preacher 

passing through once a month.

Hanging on the wall by her door,

a picture of Jesus knocking,

“If you meet me and forget me,

you have lost nothing,

if you meet him and forget him,

you have lost everything.”

Forced to leave her at eleven,

puberty claimed me.

I lived in a shroud of beauty,

inherited from handsome parents.

I was tempted to compete and conquer.

Born to a man’s world,

I learned to fight for freedom,

but I always lost in the end.

A lifetime later, 

I heard mamaw’s  voice,

in a mantra sung by a Guru.

A Swami willing to teach me,

called her  a saint, 

inspired by faith in life,

love as its only purpose.

Fifty years, she lived in a shack,  

but her back yard was the universe.

At ninety-seven, in a nursing home,

a shining forehead of gold,

she met a friend in the hall each day,

to recite the Lord’s Prayer, 

and shuffle blind,

down to the chapel to pray.

Fighting for freedom, 

anger as your sword,

is killing yourself with a drug.

We’re only alive when we love,

the light of cosmic consciousness,   

lets freedom find you,

like a book from a neighbor,      

a mamaw singing children to sleep. 

Freedom is forever, and for everyone,

it’s a promise heaven must keep.

~

About Rhonda Coullet . . .

Poems “The Long Unraveling” Published 2023 “Lenticular” magazine. “Linghara” Published 2022 “Poem-A-Day” poem, Rensselaerville Library.

Playwright/composer/lyricist: "Runaway Beauty Queen” Production Resume: The Martha's Vineyard Playhouse, Florida Studio Theatre, (Barbra Anton Playwriting Award, Sarasota Magazine's "Most Intriguing Autobiography")

Lyricist/Composer: "West Heaven" (Tribute song to John Belushi, SNL), "Bigger than the Both of Us" (Jimmy Buffet Grammy nom.)

Actress: Broadway: Starred in "The Robber Bridegroom" (Barry Bostwick, CD) & "Pump Boys and Dinettes." Starred in LA "Hair"

Actress: Off Broadway: "National Lampoon’s Lemmings" (4 CDs, C. Chase/Belushi/C. Guest). Starred in “Cowgirls"

TV/Film: "Mr. Mike's Mondo Video" singer with Paul Shafer, SNL Spinal Tap

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Lines Composed A Few Light Years Above Tintern Abbey

by Larry Rapant

Hi! I am the kind of vegetable that can water itself

Or I am a fruit because I have free will

Or I am a toy pretending to be real

Almost leap enough squirrel enough to catch onto things

I am a piano played by random fingers

I tingle in the upper register - mingle and mangle

I’ve been nibbled on by tropical birds and dragonflies

Now I’m ready to rip the clothes off language

Suck on the atmosphere

From the music box called poetry

With an opening bunch of ding dong pirouettes

A self-scented reasoning brute - that’s me

I got unlinked from my apishness 

And wreaked communiques blurts and havocs

Tooth and nail

In my Udopia, brooks of blood tumbling by

War is me

Words stuck on the sticking points

Protected by high mass weapons and bioillogicals

While the naked billions of late stage terminals

Starve and perform for CNN

Casually and warmly I welcome

The disappearance of the poles

Devolution takes place in my topdown motor vehicle

Full of waving and singing drunks

Fool on the hill says nothing 

And everyone else screams:

“Sure it’s easy for you

But we have kids in the back seat!”

“As if rubbers had never been invented”

Sings a cherub with a lute winging by; and

“Please, be fruitful and multiply no more!”

~

I'm a dotty old man who lives next door to Assisted Living. I’m trying to Hack into Gene’s mind and break the story. I’m also in love with a local poet named Jill whose last name escapes me. I take 5 mgs of Tadalafil every day which makes me a very happy man. My poems are all jokes on me.

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Granny's Cottage

by Sylvia Barnard

After they sold the farm, 

they moved to the main road

to a little three-bedroom house

like a hobbit house under a bank.

On the other side, my father planted 

an English-style hedge and behind

the house were big trees and my

mother's compost heap frequented by

all the little animals that still

lived along this road, avoiding the cars

whizzing past their lairs and burrows

on the way to town to get groceries.

In the summertime, we went there 

for long periods, my daughter

going to Vacation Bible School

at the Congregational Church

and playing with her third cousins

along the brook and in the woods.

~

I am a native of western Massachusetts where this poem is set and came to Albany in 1967 to teach in the Classics Department at UAlbany, which I did for 43 years. I have read and published my poetry in the area throughout that time.

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What It Means to Not Have a Grandchild

by Edie Abrams

No smooching a bellybutton.

No caressing a cheek or sniffing the scent of innocence

from the top of a head.

No holding, hugging, enfolding, rocking back-and-forth 

as if nothing else in the world exists. 

No counting fingers and toes in a warm bath 

with baby balanced against knees.

No hearing the giggles of peek-a-boo, 

that delight better than ice cream on a sweltering day. 

No reading aloud with an exaggerated “I’m coming to get you,” 

fingers spidering from toes to the Michelin Man neck. 

No singing silly songs like “Beautiful Doody” to the tune of “Beautiful

     Dreamer,” 

or the ones your Mom and Bubbe sang in Polish, German, Spanish, or

     Yiddish. 

No watching each breath when each new puff is a sign

that a robin will sing in the dawn of a new day.

~

Edie Abrams retired from the NYS Assembly 100 years ago, and has been writing poetry since she developed the typical mother-daughter relationship during her teenage years, a million years ago.

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Elegy: Shot List For An Art House Obsessive

by David Gonsalves

And what, after all, of jealousy

     the future of measurement

          a meadow that plunders the calendar

a day out of tolerance

     moon without memory

          wave after wave of oakleaf

blind eye at the edge of uncertainty

     free of what is often brilliant

          the liberation of liberation

a series of speckled rose buds

     the liveliness of even-tempered swallows

          even as protocol locks out the tide

knowing only weightless reassurance

     the need to avoid some staccato obstruction

          or fall into a featureless distance

footprints ravaged before the peat bog

     raw and inquisitive tapestries

          prelude to a dose of ambiguity

falling snow, the end of anniversaries

     the inability to understand the unrehearsed

          progression of last-ditch vanishing points

a jet stream as strange as it was simple

     glad that the body has no disregard

          a way to keep the sundial unmannered

twilight and the return of humility

     brief mastery of something delicate

          divine indifference made intelligible.

~

David Gonsalves should have been born in Nepal, but wasn't. Lives in a cave beside a river that flows both ways.

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Lust

by Elaine Kenyon

in my intention

I drive to Salem

knock on your door

let myself in

we contemplate, meditate

on the wonderment of words

their dance, delight and design

the cat purring perched and listening

you say why you liked my poems

I wrote as I read your Green Midnight

I am humbled by your sentiment

I tell you I am easily carried to comfort

with each line of your poetry

I am drawn to you 

this is not lust

this is affection

adoration

I did not take that drive

and now

there’s nothing 

but a carcass to caress

lines and curves on the page

to trace

I am emptied

~

Elaine Kenyon is the host of the 2nd Wednesday Poetry Night at the Schuylerville Public Library. She enjoys reading and listening to poetry at local open mics. She currently tutors children with dyslexia and is the owner of Olde Saratoga Literacy and Learning, LLC.

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Our NINTH annual POEM-A-DAY
celebrating National Poetry Month
opens April 1
with the first of 30 poems!
READ . . . COMMENT . . . ENJOY
and SPREAD the WORD(S)!