Sample Poems: Volume 28, Numbers 1 and 2

For the Man Who Practices His Saxophone In The Apartment Next Door

By Tom Fitzgerald


Ignore the calls and complaints.

Keep practicing Coltrane through the cold city night.
Forget the wind Advisory on the news,
possible flooding on poorly drained streets,
torrential downpours past midnight.
Play your heart out, loud, as if we all knew we had it coming.
Don't stop for anyone, not the police, your past,
the hand you remember once through your hair.
Forget. Wake us all.
And when you hear the knocking at your door,
Simply play louder, play for me,
pour yourself into the flooded streets of the world.



My Father at the Bone Factory

By William Neumire


He works making bones for the ones who need them:

a set for the woman whose husband has been MIA for three years;
Here's what we can offer now.
A parcel for the parents of a teenage runaway
who've quit their jobs, their friends, their evening
cuddle; this to bury or turn into ash and blow away.
At the end of his shift last night - he was in a giddy mood-
he made one finger bone and whittled it into a flute
for the little one who plays at the park between the factory
and home. Here he said it's a gift.



Across the Street

By Denise Bergman


Her feet land slowly one by one

on each wooden step -
a memorized (could do it
blindfolded) flight of stairs.
A million times she's walked
apartment to entrance to street.
In her sleepwalker-outstretched arms
a bundle, wide, flat
wrapped in a blanket soft as night rain
green as summer woods.
This is noon, clear skies, January.
She wears a shift, her other children
at most a pair of sweats,
the women behind her
short-sleeve shirts, a cardigan navy blue.
Across the street I hide
from the frozen fist of wind.
Who wouldn't move earth by handfuls
to spin this mother's journey into reverse,
to stop the hearse from parking,
unlatching its wide door.
To push back the stretcher
dangling like a tongue
from the open, waiting mouth.