Learning to Fly

“The Road Not Taken” ~ Robert Frost, 1915
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy [...]

All good things must come to an end…

Early last January, I found myself with eight other grad students waiting for Frank X. Walker to introduce himself to his Advanced Poetry class. Within a few minutes, I found myself wondering what the hell I had just gotten myself into.
“This is a graduate-level poetry class. I assume you’re all advanced poets, and I expect nothing short [...]

An Ounce of Prevention (Salk’s Miracle)

I could have prevented the epidemic.
Now everyone knows someone
or knows someone who knows someone
who knows the loss of limbs or lungs.

I’ve never met those beneath sterile sheets
attended to by white-capped nurses
in beds adjacent to large rooms crowded
with angled missiles that power breath and life.

Parents gather around over-polished Zenith TVs
to watch Walter Cronkite report on [...]

Coffin Nails (10/10/35 – 5/4/04)

(a villanelle)
I step ouside and smoke a cigarette.
Your death’s the final verdict. I’m afraid,
and there’s nothing you can do about it.
 
I’d quit smoking last winter, but fuck it.
Addiction–no match for this bed God made.
I step outside and smoke a cigarette.
 
I thought your stroke punished you enough yet
your basal cells made other plans. I caved,
and there’s nothing [...]

Dora Salk’s Lament (NYC, 1916)

[During the summer of 1916, infantile paralysis--or polio--raged through New York, home to Jonas Salk, announcing its arrival in several homes where one morning, for no apparent reason, children awoke paralyzed. Befuddled city health officials blamed the outbreak on their usual suspects, immigrants, whose communities were overcrowded and assumed to be filthy.  The epidemic began [...]

Nigerian Independence Day (a tale of two African postcards)

 

Cast in metal, carved in stone–
fear painted on a cotton cloth–
he seeks comfort in his mother’s arms
amid swords and soldiers, a death on a cross.
 
His eyes find a window where
an Igbo child waves then performs
cartwheels and acrobatics choreographed
to the groove of an udu and an ogene.
 
Mom, he says, mind if I play with him?
Go ahead, she says, you need a break.
But don’t make us have to [...]