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The Most Shoplifted Poet In America

Published on by Editorial Staff

Our poem of the week is not a poem at all, but a bit of flash fiction about poetry from a California author, Guy Biederman.


The Most Shoplifted Poet in America

    “Would Bukowski be in poetry,” I ask the young man who is reading behind the counter. I’d already gone to the poetry section and perused the ‘B’s with no luck.

    The young man smiles. “We keep Bukowski behind the counter here.”

    “Why is that?”

    “He’s the most shoplifted poet in America.”

    Once in a Venice Beach bookstore, I’d gone to the “B’s” and found the same thing.

    The clerk invited me behind the counter and I discovered a treasure trove of Bukowski titles I’d never seen.  Above Bukowski was John Fante, also on the endangered list. Interesting because Fante was not well known, but Bukowski admired him, was a friend. Did that mean the book thieves were actually reading Bukowski and then Fante to see what Buk saw? Feel what he felt?

    Who else? I wanted to know.

    “Murakami,” said the clerk.

    “Hmmm … what about Carver?”

    The clerk smiled. “No, Carver’s safe.”

    "Well, wait till the Murakami shoplifters find out how much he liked Raymond Carver. Those books will fly off the shelves.”

    The clerk grinned. There was a time I had to stop reading Buk. A magazine editor had rejected a piece of mine and said I had to quit sleeping with Bukowski under my pillow. I doubt he ever stole a Bukowski. I doubt he ever stole anything.

    I paid for a copy of Factotum, shook the young clerk’s hand. He was a screenwriter, taking a couple of years off grad school at UCLA. MFA? Yeah.

    Years ago I too had worked in a bookstore and was pleased to see young people still interested. It restored my faith, I told him. He smiled and turned to the register to make change.

    Then I slipped a copy of What We Talk About when We Talk About Love into my large leather coat.

    Ray deserved that.

               Guy Biederman
               Sausalito, California

Abandoned Detroit

Published on by Editorial Staff

Our poem of the week come to us via the Inside/Out Literary Project.

By immersing students in the joy and power of poetry and literary self-expression,
InsideOut inspires them to think broadly, create bravely and share their
voices with the wider world. Guided by professional writers and celebrated by
publications and performances, youth learn that their stories and ideas matter
and that their pens can launch off the page into extraordinary lives.

 

Abandoned Detroit (an erasure)

In the mirror of the man who cuts grass
a child once played. A mother
holding the skillet does not say a word.
A bird of a church is what our ashes have become.
The laces of sneakers say my name.
These are the stories we tell.
The records are a poem that cannot be
spoken. An imperfect shape that I can become.
Shining in the dark I shake your hand.
The dirt beneath the nails can’t be seen.
I touch it once before the house is gone.
Words become the sacrifice
and sorrow. The ground.
There is no door or no windows
on the other side of the city. Splintered wood never said
broken glass made a garden. If there were weeds
he would eat. The child learned through our mistakes.
To learn, memorize invisible scars to tell a story.
With a chair nailed to the walls that are ours to climb.
Abandoned Detroit is a poem
even if no one hears it.

Jamilla Russell
Marcus Garvey Academy
Detroit, Michigan

Blue Room

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Our poem of the week is by Ohio poet, Michael Cole, who puts us in an indigo mood with:

Blue Room  

When…you get that mood indigo,
when you slide down the rain-soaked
slope of regret or sorrow…

In the widening circle of music
there are no angles or corners,
no vases or lamps to knock over,

not even a tiny light to guide you,
or a bed to tumble into, or a dream
to get you out of this one…

Listen to a sax’s jazzy moan–
Coltrane, Rollins, Desmond–
the smooth glide around a blue room.

Michael Cole
Vermilion, Ohio

Arriving Tangier

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Our poem of the week is a preview of the Summer issue of 3rd Wednesday. Our featured poet, Lauren Tivey, sent a courageous group of poems, all set in Morocco. They begin with –

Arriving Tangier

The one-legged man is begging in the road.
Nearby, a boy is punching his horse
in the snout, dutifully, with neither wrath
nor glee. And the insane woman,

with her feet wrapped in bandages,
skin lesions oozing, is swathed
in a blood-red Moroccan flag
which barely covers her behind,

is muttering, is following us
down a dark street, is a nightmare,
a Burroughsian ghost, and we almost
run. Turning the corner, a street thief—

chased, caught, beaten with a shovel.
We are far from home, and we watch,
silent and grim: it is Ramadan and everyone
is angry. For comfort or for sport, we argue

as the night winds roll in, courtesy of the Strait,
scattering rats, lifting a sinister shroud off the city.
Gaunt strays whine among the garbage, while scraps
of newspaper surf over broken pavement, with some

sort of grace. But there is no grace anymore; not here,
not anywhere. You begin drinking more, to smooth
rough edges. This is not our first time—we have seen things
before. Tomorrow we will head inland, over scrubby plains

up to the Rif. We stand here at the tip of the continent,
all of Africa stretching in front of us, sensing the rumblings
of resentment shifting our marriage; that we may not
make it, that the times will try us, and break us

     – Lauren Tivey
     St. Augustine, Florida

Visit us at http://thirdwednesday.org/

Family Portrait

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Our poem of the week is drawn from our quarterly feature of “Inside Out,” an outreach program that brings poets into Detroit area schools to teach at all levels.

Family Portrait

by Morgan Evans (Grade 5, River Rouge STEM Academy at Dunn)

My father was a thief.
He stole some stars and put them in my eyes.

My mom is a tree with dark brown leaves.
So dark that they look black.

My skin is a dark brown coal.
My friends are my umbrella on rainy days.

My spirit is a wanderer who is never lost.

My heart is like a cherry blossom getting ready to bloom.

My mind is like a room with sticky
notes on the wall.

My feet are fish trying to
find the ocean.

Saturday

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Our poem of the week is by Michigan poet, Joy Gaines-Friedler. It comes from a series of poems, nine of which were just published in our Spring issue of Third Wednesday. This one was chosen for its wonderful images.

Saturday

The sea surprisingly warm,
the sky a blue room I wait in. Fearless
pelicans plunge headlong into waves.

I walk the imagery of my mother’s life.
There are no birds in these images,
I have never seen her dip her toe into the tide

never seen her startled by stars, no wonderment
at the way water ripples or forms clouds.
She is never looking up.

Here in the space between waves
where a kind of sanctity floats
I praise what I can:

A porcelain blue saucer,
the smell of Aqua Net & acetate
nails polished Frank Sinatra smooth,  

the Formica table worn pale from hours of Solitaire,
cravings to leave – hers
                                        as much as mine.

I return to her room –  keep shut the blinds,
the way she always liked them.

The day clings to the edge.

Outside a cloud of a thousand starlings
move in unison, left then right – then left.
They land. Settled-in for the night.

Morel Hunting

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Spring is finally here and some of us will soon be taking to the woods in search of the wily Morel mushroom,  Here’s our poem of the week from poet Brad Garber of Lake Owego in Oregon, who likes to talk to his prey while he’s stalking it. Whatever works Brad.

Morel Hunting  

It’s your wrinkled countenance I seek
There, beneath the duff, unassuming
Quiet secrets the mark of your being
Aspens, their young around you
Bowing in reverence. I have sought this
In others easier to discover, and louder
Voices calling out from the woods.

There are fireflies along the coast
Calling mariners home, confident
In their place, nothing hidden, nothing.
My boots scuff the ground, moving
Last year’s leaves, like ideas, aside.
All things lying in my way, hiding
Your delicacy, your mysterious choices
Like schools of fish, divert my advance.

In them, seeing myself, covering
The lens of the light until it sneaks
Into itself, erupting like a horn
From the animal beneath the earth
I will find the way to gather you.

Brad G. Garber
Lake Oswego, Oregon

Skiing In March

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We’ve had our first day of spring, but it’s still March.  Here’s a poem from Canadian poet,  Susanne von Rennenkampff, that reminds us that spring may not be just around the corner in all parts of the world, and for some people, that’s cause for celebration.

Skiing In March

Maybe
if you forget it’s March,
forget that elsewhere
they’ve been wearing shorts
for weeks;

if you are suddenly
stopped in your tracks
by the intricate pattern
rising on the white trunk
of a birch, the rows upon rows
of silvery beads;
if you feel the bright splash
of rosehips on fresh snow,
crimson like blood
from the queen’s finger,
and do not flinch;

if you kneel down,
put your two fists
side by side
in the prints
of the moose
that crossed the trail
this morning;

maybe then
you will be grateful
that you still can ski
while elsewhere
snowdrops and primroses
have bloomed for weeks.

     Susanne von Rennenkampff
     Alberta, Canada