THEA MATTHEWS ~

 

Huntsville

ALABAMA, 2021

FOR CHRISTINA NANCE

"Your great grand-daddy was a sharescropper here,"

my gramma would say, "until he disappeared."

Her skin was smooth like dark apple butter,

and her daughter, my mother, would look at me

like I was a whitetail.  The windows would crack,

and I'd be left with keloids and jars of pickled eggs.

The rest of my family were alligators.  I grew up shy.

Bobbing back and forth in my Sunday best,

I didn't talk much.  And when I did, I'd speak

as if my tongue were a sweet potato.

And when I'd sing, I sang making the Lord so proud of me.

I'd feel the Spirit rise within, swaying

my hips and arms like a church fan in one hand,

and frozen strawberry lemonade, in another.

O did I love to sing, and hum hymns in the halls,

and when my sister would say, "Sing, Christian!"

I would! I sure would, knowing my heart would be safe

for long walks away from the forest edge with my sister.

With my eyes hiding behind shelves, I knew to pose,

pay my taxes, write letters, pick passing

blackbirds as lovers.  They'd leave, I'd stay

I can smell anything., The scent of passion seeping

in through a man's skin.  I'd smell the sheets, Old Spice,

what lotion she was wearing.  I can even smell

the white lilacs on the day of my funeral.

To be a whitetail hunter, you must be so still.

I stopped singing the day I went missing.

Supposedly, I'm seen first lying on the lawn.

Supposedly, I'm then seen leaning on the hood of a cop car.

Supposedly, I take off my shoes.

                                                Twelve nights go by.

Somewhere, a whitetail hunter

dressed in camouflage smiles,

one arm around his doe for the trophy picture.

I'm found in the back of a police van.

___________________________

Thea Matthews

Grime

City Lights, 2025

NASSER RABAH ~

 

Rage

It wasn't you they saw on the television screen, it wasn't you

as they filmed you coming out crumbled from the rubble,

who then was applauding and clamoring for death?

This is what war makes you: it takes your skin off and gives

you a tent, and like a crumpled piece of paper, it throws

your home out with the trash—it plucks your pink heart

and plants gunpowder stones, no wheat fields gleam in

your eyes from now on, no hills of olive groves dream

to be picked, no bunch of kids play on your shoulders,

no grass of remembrance sits with you in the sunset

of the house, nothing here or there except limitless

rage, boiling over to the end of time and distance,

it was not you; it was not a stream of water, it was

a wolf snarling underneath the rubble, wanting

to rip the flesh of these tanks with its teeth.

March 13, 2024

________________________________

Nasser Rabah

Gaza: The Poem Said Its Piece

Translated from the Arabic by

Ammiel Alcalay, Emna Zghal, Khaled Al-Hilli

City Lights Books, 2025

WILL ALEXANDER ~

 

Ghostly Bonding by Kinetic

Since the living body persists

as strange accelerated crimson

what of its post-biology through ideas through ghostly bonding 

      with itself as kinetic?

does it persist within its after-state via chewn reindeer?

or does it unearth itself via post-mortem figment?

because kinetics reabsorb themselves

they remain trenchant

as certain owls

roaming the horizon as signs

___________________________

Will Alexander

Divine Blue Light

    for John Coltrane

City Lights Books 2022

MOSAB ABU TOHA ~

On A Starless Night

On a starless night,

I toss and turn.

The earth shakes, and

I fall out of bed.

I look out my window.  The house

next door no longer

stands. It's lying like an old carpet

on the floor of the earth,

trampled by missiles, fat slippers

flying off legless feet.

I never knew my neighbors still had that small TV,

that the old painting still hung on their walls,

that their cat had kittens.

Palestinian Streets

My city's streets are nameless.

If a Palestinian gets killed by a sniper or a drone,

we name the street after them.

Children learn their numbers best

when they can count how many homes or schools

were destroyed, how many mothers and fathers

were wounded or thrown into jail.

Grownups in Palestine only use their IDs

so as not to forget

who they are.

Sobbing Without A Sound

I wish I could wake up and find the electricity on all day long.

I wish I could hear the birds sing again, no shooting and no 

    buzzing drones.

I wish my desk would call me to hold my pen and write again,

or at least plow through a novel, revisit a poem, or read a play.

All around me are nothing

but silent walls

and people sobbing

without sound.

Hard Exercise

In Gaza,

breathing is a task,

smiling is performing

plastic surgery

on one's own face,

and rising in the morning,

trying to survive

another day, is coming back

from the dead.

A Rose Shoulders Up

Don't ever be surprised

to see a rose shoulder up

among the ruins of the house:

This is how we survived.

_________________________

Mosab Abu Toha

Things You May Find Hidden In My Ear

Poems from Gaza

City Lights Books,  2022

WHAT'S GOOD ~

 

R E A D    M E

CARMEN GIMENEZ SMITH ~

 

Lullaby

What does the poet call

a loss of words?

She calls it widest pupil.

They call it skewered sight.

How precise the nerves

that bear the toll of language.

Once there were stories

I didn't want true about me,

but here I am, twisted

with appetite. My mother

said I was a curious child.

She meant it as a gift.

Pirate moon, the

rapture of deep sleep,

build me a fortress

for my mantle.

__________________________

Carmen Giménez Smith

Cruel Futures

City Lights 2018

JACK KEROUAC AT 100 ~

 

Don't use the telephone.
People are never ready to answer it.
Use poetry.

––Jack Kerouac
from Scattered Poems

photograph by

Allen Ginsberg, 1957

LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI ~

 

A

REDWOOD

FALLS

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

March 24, 1919 ~ February 22, 2021

I N T E R V I E W

POETRY IS ~

Poetry is the shortest distance              between two humans.               — Lawrence Ferlinghetti                Poetry As Insurgent Art

BOB KAUFMAN ~

I Have Folded My Sorrows



I have folded my sorrows into the mantle of summer night,

Assigning each brief storm its allotted space in time,

Quietly pursuing catastrophic histories buried my eyes.

And yes, the world is not some unplayed Cosmic Game,

And the sun is still ninety-three million miles from me,

And in the imaginary forest, the shingled hippo becomes the gay unicorn.

No, my traffic is not with addled keepers of yesterday's disasters,

Seekers of manifest disembowelment on shafts of yesterday's pains.

Blues come dressed like introspective echoes of a journey.

And yes, I have searched the rooms of the moon on cold summer nights.

And yes, I have refought those unfinished encounters.

       Still, they remain unfinished.

And yes, I have at times wished myself something different.



The tragedies are sung nightly at the funerals of the poet;

The revisited soul is wrapped in the aura of familiarity.





Walking Parker Home


Sweet beats of jazz impaled on slivers of wind
Kansas Black Morning/ First Horn Eyes/
Historical sound pictures on New Bird wings
People shouts/ boy alto dreams/ Tomorrow's
Gold belled pipe of stops and future Blues Times
Lurking Hawkins/ shadows of Lester/ realization
Bronze fingers—brain extensions seeking trapped sounds
Ghetto thoughts/ bandstand courage/ solo flight
Nerve-wracked suspicions of newer songs and doubts
New York alter city/ black tears/ secret disciples
Hammer horn pounding soul marks on unswinging gates
Culture gods/ mob sounds/ visions of spikes
Panic excursions to tribal Jazz wombs and transfusions
Heroin nights of birth/ and soaring/ over boppy new ground.
Smothered rage covering pyramids of notes spontaneously     exploding
Cool revelations/ shrill hopes/ beauty speared into greedy ears
Birdland nights on bop mountains, windy saxophone revolutions.
Dayrooms of junk/ and melting walls and circling vultures/
Money cancer/ remembered pain/ terror flights/
Death and indestructible existence

In that Jazz corner of life
Wrapped in a mist of sound
His legacy, our Jazz-tinted dawn
Wailing his triumphs of oddly begotten dreams
Inviting the nerveless to feel once more
That fierce dying of humans consumed
In raging fires of Love. 








[ The Night That Lorca Comes ]

THE NIGHT THAT LORCA COMES

SHALL BE A STRANGE NIGHT IN THE

SOUTH, IT SHALL BE THE TIME WHEN NEGROES LEAVE THE

SOUTH

        FOREVER,

GREEN TRAINS SHALL ARRIVE

FROM RED PLANET MARS

CRACKLING BLUENESS SHALL SEND TOOTH-COVERED CARS FOR

THEM

TO LEAVE IN, TO GO INTO

THE NORTH FOREVER, AND I SEE MY LITTLE GIRL MOTHER

AGAIN WITH HER CROSS THAT

IS NOT BURNING, HER SKIRTS

OF BLACK, OF ALL COLORS, HER AURA

OF FAMILIARITY. THE SOUTH SHALL WEEP

BITTER TEARS TO NO AVAIL,

THE NEGROES HAVE GONE

INTO CRACKLING BLUENESS.

CRISPUS ATTUCKS SHALL ARRIVE WITH THE BOSTON

COMMONS, TO TAKE ELISSI LANDI

NORTH, CRISPUS ATTUCKS SHALL

BE LAYING ON BOSTON COMMONS,

ELISSI LANDI SHALL FEEL ALIVE

AGAIN. I SHALL CALL HER NAME

AS SHE STEPS ON TO THE BOSTON

COMMONS, AND FLIES NORTH FOREVER,

LINCOLN SHALL BE THERE,

TO SEE THEM LEAVE THE

SOUTH FOREVER, ELISSI LANDI, SHE WILL BE

GREEN.

THE WHITE SOUTH SHALL GATHER AT

PRESERVATION HALL.

Believe, Believe


Believe in this. Young apple seeds,

In blue skies, radiating young breast,

Not in blue-suited insects,

Infesting society’s garments.

Believe in the swinging sounds of jazz,

Tearing the night into intricate shreds,

Putting it back together again,

In cool logical patterns,

Not in the sick controllers,

Who created only the Bomb.

Let the voices of dead poets

Ring louder in your ears

Than the screechings mouthed

In mildewed editorials.

Listen to the music of centuries,

Rising above the mushroom time.

_________________

Bob Kaufman
Collected Poems of Bob Kaufman
City Lights Books
2019

AT THE GOLDEN GATE ~

At the Golden Gate


      At the Golden Gate

    A single plover far at sea

                             wings across the horizon

  A single rower almost out of sight

                                                 rows his skull into eternity

And I take a buddha crystal in my hand

                               And begin becoming pure light



______________

Lawrence Ferlinghetti
San Francisco Poems
San Francisco Poet Laureate, Series No. 1
City Lights Books
2001

GROWING UP ~

L I S T E N

City Lights Books

TOSH ~

L I S T E N !

TOSH is a memoir of growing up as the son of an enigmatic, much-admired, hermetic, and ruthlessly bohemian artist during the waning years of the Beat Generation and the heyday of hippie counterculture. 

A critical figure in the history of postwar American culture, Tosh Berman's father, Wallace Berman, was known as the "father of assemblage art," and was the creator of the legendary mail-art publication Semina.

TOSH takes an unflinching look at the triumphs and tragedies of his unusual upbringing by an artistic genius with all-too-human frailties, against a backdrop that includes The T.A.M.I. Show, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Easy Rider, and more. Includes a preface by actress/writer Amber Tamblyn (daughter of Wallace's friend, actor Russ Tamblyn).

The book also includes dozens of rare and previously unseen photos.

City Lights Publishers

JULIO CORTAZAR ~

To Be Read in the Interrogative



Have you seen

have you truly seen

the snow that stars the felt steps of the breeze

Have you touched

really have you touched

the plate the bread the face of that woman you love so much

Have you lived

like a blow to the head

the flash the gasp the fall the flight

Have you known

known in every pore of your skin

how your eyes your hands your sex your soft heart

must be thrown away

must be wept away

must be invented all over again

Happy New Year


Look, I don't ask much,

just your hand, to hold it

like a little toad who'd sleep there happily.

I need that door you give me

for coming into your world, that little chunk

of green sugar, of a lucky ring.

Can't you just spare me your hand tonight

at the end of a year of hoarse-voiced owls?

You can't, for technical reasons. So

I weave it in the air, warping each finger,

the silky peach of the palm

and the back, that country of blue trees.

That's how I take it and hold it, as

if so much of the world

depended on it,

the succession of the four seasons,

the crowing of the roosters, the love of human beings.


12/31/1951



___________________

Julio Cortazar
SAVE TWILIGHT
Selected poems
translated by Stephen Kessler
CITY LIGHTS Pocket Poet Series
2016

FRANKS ~

edited by Garrett Caples & Julien Poirier

H A I K U


for Frank O' Hara



I

The lights are out

The cats are hungry

The room is full of gangsters



II

The dishes are dirty

The icebox is empty

I dream of celery and a compass



III

The roof is upstairs

The window next door

A guitar in the shower




IV

The hours disappear in my room

Where is my blue pistol

The door-god is knocking

F R A N K   O' H AR A



My heart wears a pair

Of shoes that once belonged

To a young poet.



Whose blood was as fresh

As water.

Whose seatbelt was the hair

Of beautiful women.



Who slept in a thousand dreams

Made of beds.

Who had a friend whose heart

Was a kite tied to a string.



Who was eaten by a taxi

Lost on a beach of fire



My dear friend still comes to me

After all these years.

To die once again and to stare

At the holes in my heart.


4.19.98







O K L A H O M A     A M E R I C A



          The fathers of America
have ruined the mountains
          The mothers of America
have dried the river beds
          The children of America
are dying at play
          Our forefathers watch our
neonates mouse the words of freedom
          Worms vagrant fallopian worms


Are birds freedom?
Are children sheep?

This is the year of the bullet
Of white professional homework
Of Nagasaki fertilizer
Of cheap fuel oil
Of tender SS movies
This is oncotic Americana
This is why fish will fly to heaven

We are the widow of our dreams
We are shrinking in their skin
We are attached to their wisdom

Look at the thermos colored sky
Fame flying on TV
They wash their hands in our womb
Where the dead know the stars
Are sleeping children
Like the procession of equinox
Condensing our fate

We are the Furies of entropy
We have killed
A hundred million
Human trees this century

Who will wear their clothes?
Death is as round as an apple
Holding a child ever so gently

They no longer see the kangaroo
They cannot touch
The innocent mirror
With their wet hands
The tears are drowning
In their sand pails
Like lyrical lips
The mothers will never be
The sun on their faces

O my beloved country
Where is the antelope of love?
Why does the earth
Turn away from the sun?
Why are the children covered
With concrete
Rain
And neglected
Specks of freedom?


4.25.95


___________________

F R A N K     L I M A
Incidents of Travel in Poetry
City Lights Books 2015