August 29, 2017

Hakim Bellamy

DICK GREGORY

you said war
was a joke

except
you meant it

not a mean bone
in your body

all funny ones
made it harder
to break you

served
your country
for eighty-two years

minus the two
you spent
in the military

served
your country
a plate
of mirrors

and told us
to smile

served
black people
a glass of
ourselves

and told us
to drink up

if we were still
hungry

from Poets Respond
August 29, 2017

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Hakim Bellamy: “Social satirist and civil rights icon Dick Gregory died on Saturday, August 19, 2017.” (website)

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December 27, 2013

Ann Eichler Kolakowski

TRIOLET FOR LAIKA, FIRST DOG IN SPACE

They sealed your steel sarcophagus;
they made no plans to bring you home.
(Perhaps they thought you Anubis.)
They sealed your steel sarcophagus
and let you burn—like Sirius,
the other dogstar in the dome.
They sealed your steel sarcophagus.
They made no plans to bring you home.

from Rattle #40, Summer 2013

__________

Ann Eichler Kolakowski: “I didn’t start writing or reading poetry until the age of 33 (I’m now 50), when my father died and I found myself channeling bad poems as a way of processing his loss. This set me on a journey to learn and practice poetic craft that recently resulted in my earning an MA in Writing from Johns Hopkins University. One of the strengths of that program is a focus on form, which I accepted somewhat begrudgingly but have grown to love. ‘Triolet for Laika, First Dog in Space’ started as a villanelle, which I chose for its circular, repetitive nature—a form that seemed befitting of a spacecraft. A wise person challenged me to revise it as a triolet, which is even more confining (but very rewarding to solve). Laika was a stray who was chosen for the mission because she had been especially eager to please during her training sessions. The Soviets had planned to poison her several days into the flight with tainted food, but she died of overheating and stress hours after the launch. Poor pup.”

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December 22, 2013

Mark Hendrickson

CUPCAKES

On the way to my grandma’s funeral I pick up cupcakes.
I’m the one in charge of the cupcakes
and if I don’t pick them up there will be no dessert
and that won’t be enough. The cupcake store is on Alton,
my grandpa’s name, and I wear a tie he gave me.
I must look like I’m going to a funeral because the baker says
sorry as she hands me the cupcakes. Or she might be apologizing
for something wrong with the cupcakes I haven’t yet noticed, but am bound to
once I set them out on the white tables in the church fellowship hall.
More likely I didn’t put my arms out quite right as she handed them to me,
something most people know inherently how to do,
causing her to have to set the four plastic trays of cupcakes
awkwardly down on my suit sleeves, where I held them out from my chest
so no frosting would touch my tie. Because she is polite
or because she has been trained to be,
she took the fault on herself by saying sorry,
though it isn’t my fault either to need
so many cupcakes as to make them nearly uncarryable dressed this way.
Fault is something there sometimes isn’t any of.

from Rattle #40, Summer 2013

__________

Mark Hendrickson: “I just finished my first year teaching high school math so I haven’t had a lot of time to read or write, which makes me anxious that I’m falling behind. Still, I say favorite poems to myself when I walk my dog. I like being reminded what keeps some poems whole in my brain despite neglect, and the dog doesn’t seem to mind that the other dogs see her with a guy who’s talking to himself.”

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