El Olvido

BY JUDITH ORTIZ COFER

It is a dangerous thing
to forget the climate of your birthplace,
to choke out the voices of dead relatives
when in dreams they call you
by your secret name.
It is dangerous
to spurn the clothes you were born to wear
for the sake of fashion; dangerous
to use weapons and sharp instruments
you are not familiar with; dangerous
to disdain the plaster saints
before which your mother kneels
praying with embarrassing fervor
that you survive in the place you have chosen to live:
a bare, cold room with no pictures on the walls,
a forgetting place where she fears you will die
of loneliness and exposure.
Jesús, María, y José, she says,
el olvido is a dangerous thing.

*El olvido means forgetfulness in Spanish.

The Sacred

The Sacred
Stephen Dunn

After the teacher asked if anyone had a sacred place
and the students fidgeted and shrank

in their chairs, the most serious of them all said it was his car,
being in it alone, his tape deck playing

things he'd chosen, and others knew the truth had been spoken
and began speaking about their rooms,

their hiding places, but the car kept coming up, the car in motion,
music filling it, and sometimes one other person

who understood the bright altar of the dashboard and how far away
a car could take him from the need

to speak, or to answer, the key in having a key
and putting it in, and going.

The Rose that Grew From Concrete

by Tupac Shakur

Did you hear about the rose that grew
from a crack in the concrete?
Proving nature's law is wrong it
learned to walk with out having feet.
Funny it seems, but by keeping its dreams,
it learned to breathe fresh air.
Long live the rose that grew from concrete
when no one else ever cared.

Dandelion

Julie Lechevsky

My science teacher said
there are no monographs
on the dandelion.
Unlike the Venus fly-trap
or Calopogon pulchellus,
it is not a plant worthy of scrutiny.
It goes on television
between the poison squirt bottles,
during commercial breakaways from Ricki Lake.
But that's how life
parachutes
to my home.
Home,
where they make you do
what you don't want to do.
Moms with Uzis of reproach,
dads with their silencers.
(My parents watch me closely because I am their jewel.)
So no one knows how strong
a dandelion is inside,
how its parts stick together,
bract, involucre, pappus,
how it clings to its fragile self.
There are 188 florets in a bloom,
which might seem a peculiar number,
but there are 188,000 square feet
in the perfectly proportioned Wal-Mart,
which allows for circulation
without getting lost.
I wish I could grow like a dandelion,
from gold to thin white hair,
and be carried on a breeze
to the next yard.

from Poems & Plays, Number 8, Spring/Summer 2001
Middle Tennessee State University

Gratitude to Old Teachers

Robert Bly

When we stride or stroll across the frozen lake,
We place our feet where they have never been.
We walk upon the unwalked. But we are uneasy.
Who is down there but our old teachers?

Water that once could take no human weight-
We were students then-holds up our feet,
And goes on ahead of us for a mile.
Beneath us the teachers, and around us the stillness.

from Eating the Honey of Words, 1999
HarperCollins Publishers, New York, NY

Cartoon Physics, part 1

Nick Flynn

Today's poem is about the world of cartoons.


Children under, say, ten, shouldn't know
that the universe is ever-expanding,
inexorably pushing into the vacuum, galaxies

swallowed by galaxies, whole

solar systems collapsing, all of it
acted out in silence. At ten we are still learning

the rules of cartoon animation,

that if a man draws a door on a rock
only he can pass through it.
Anyone else who tries

will crash into the rock. Ten-year-olds
should stick with burning houses, car wrecks,
ships going down -- earthbound, tangible

disasters, arenas

where they can be heroes. You can run
back into a burning house, sinking ships

have lifeboats, the trucks will come
with their ladders, if you jump

you will be saved. A child

places her hand on the roof of a schoolbus,
& drives across a city of sand. She knows

the exact spot it will skid, at which point
the bridge will give, who will swim to safety
& who will be pulled under by sharks. She will learn

that if a man runs off the edge of a cliff
he will not fall

until he notices his mistake.

from Some Ether, 2000
Graywolf Press, St. Paul, Minn.

The Cord

Leanne O’Sullivan


I used to lie on the floor for hours after
school with the phone cradled between
my shoulder and my ear, a plate of cold
rice to my left, my school books to my right.
Twirling the cord between my fingers
I spoke to friends who recognized the
language of our realm. Throats and lungs
swollen, we talked into the heart of the night,
toying with the idea of hair dye and suicide,
about the boys who didn’t love us,
who we loved too much, the pang
of the nights. Each sentence was
new territory, like a door someone was
rushing into, the glass shattering
with delirium, with knowledge and fear.
My Mother never complained about the phone bill,
what it cost for her daughter to disappear
behind a door, watching the cord
stretching its muscle away from her.
Perhaps she thought it was the only way
she could reach me, sending me away
to speak in the underworld.
As long as I was speaking
she could put my ear to the tenuous earth
and allow me to listen, to decipher.
And these were the elements of my Mother,
the earthed wire, the burning cable,
as if she flowed into the room with
me to somehow say, Stay where I can reach you,
the dim room, the dark earth. Speak of this
and when you feel removed from it
I will pull the cord and take you
back towards me.

From Waiting for My Clothes, 2004
Bloodaxe Books

Bandaids and Five Dollar Bills

Sharon M. Draper


My students wrote essays for homework this week.
The usual stuff for grade ten.
I asked them to write how they'd change the world
If the changing was left up to them.

His name was Rick Johnson;he was surly and shy.
A student who's always ignored.
He'd slouch in his seat with a Malcolm X cap.
Half-sleep, making sure he looked bored.

His essay was late - just before I went home.
It was wrinkled and scribbled and thin.
I thought to reject it...(Why do teachers do that?)
But I thanked him for turning it in.

"You can't cure the world," his essay began,
"Of the millions of evils and ills,
But to clean up my world so I could survive,
I'd cut bandaids and five dollar bills.

"Now bandaids are beige - says right on the box
'Skin tone' is the color inside.
Whose skin tone? Not mine! Been lookin' for years
For someone with that color hide.

"Cause bandaids show up, looking pasty and pale,
It's hard to pretend they're not there,
When the old man has beat me and I gotta get stitches,
Them bandaids don't cover or care.

"And now, you may ask, why would anyone want
To get rid of five dollar bills?
Cause for just that much cash, a dude's mama can buy
A crack rock, or whiskey, or pills.

"She smokes it or drinks it, and screams at her kids,
Then passes out cold on the floor.
By morn she remembers no pain, just the void,
And her kids wish the world had a door.

"So my magical dream not out of reach,
Like curing cancer or AIDS, or huge ills,
All I ask from my life is a little respect,
And no bandaids or five dollar bills.

My Room

Joe Powning


My room
My haven
My block of peace
In a hectic world

My room
My own personal disaster area
Of piled clothing and blaring music-
A comfortable chaos

My room
My harbor of fantasies
“Gee whiz, Ace, what kinda room is this?”
asked Ace’s detective’s sidekick
“I don’t know,” Ace replied, “but I like it.”

My room
My ongoing rationalization
Joe’s brain: Joe’s room is messy
Joe: What’s new?

My room
My responsibility
The subject of many
“Go clean your’s”

My room
My prison
The subject of many
“Go to your’s”

My room
My cubicle of terror
harborer of nightmares
sinister when dark
shelter of my angst

My room
My haven
My organized chaos
My responsibility
My harbor of fantasy
My prison
My terror
My block of peace
in a hectic world

I Can't Forget You

Len Roberts


I Can’t Forget You.
spray-painted high on the overpass,
each letter a good foot long,
and I try to picture the writer
        hanging from a rope
between midnight and dawn
the weight of his love swaying,
        making a trembling
N and G, his mind at work
        with the apostrophe—
        the grammar of loss—
and his resistance to hyperbole,
        no exclamation point
        but a period at the end
that shows a heart not given
        to exaggeration,
a heart that’s direct with a no-
        fooling around approach,
and I wonder if he tested the rope
before tying it to the only tree I can see
        that would bear his weight,
or if he didn’t care about the free-
        fall of thirty or more feet
as he locked his wrist to form such
        straight T’s,
and still managed, dangling, to flex
        for the C and G,
knowing as he did, I’m sure,
the lover would ride this way each day
until she found a way around,
a winding back road with trees
        and roadside
tiger lilies, maybe a stream, a
        white house, white fence,
        a dog in the yard
              miles
from this black-letter, open-book
        in-your-face missing
that the rain or Turnpike road
        crew
will soon wash off.