Category: Poetry

Culture Performing Arts Poetry Visual Arts

ArtsCorps Student Showcase: Watering the Grassroots

Virtually every good citizen is aware of the massive cuts made to arts funding and arts education on a national scale over the past twenty years. Fewer people, however, are aware of the immense disparity between the haves and the have nots when it comes to the education their children receive in the arts. For that reason, programs like ArtsCorps have always been of utmost importance to me.

Poetry

Apology

I apologize for finding this dog to shadow
you even as you pace the attic from desk
to window, you and he, a pair now, contemplating
those tough computer programming issues
at which dogs notoriously shine.

Poetry

Tell Me the Hurt Thing

Push number four because the stairs are murder: a crooked rattle-
snake spine, windows painted shut, walls twice papered over,
built into catacombs you’re sure they know by heart: busted hall
lights & pitch dark landings, cul-de-sacs colored a murderous
blood-red.

Poetry

Elephant Song

On evenings filled with rain the elephants
believe my open door leads to a green stretch
of forest and trundle through.
Each concocts a song or howl of her own—
a moan of bassoon, a pitch of piccolos
and even agonies of strings to tell of elephant
tragedies coated in silt.

Poetry

Choose Life

Choose life until your last breath.
Choose life until you hear the Other calling.
Choose life while the lights are on and your eyes still focus.
Choose life while your heart beats out your days.
Choose life while your mind still has questions.
Choose life until you must, for intensely personal reasons,
Choose death.