These poems are from
Heart to Heart: New Poems Inspired by Twentieth-Century American Art, (2001) edited by
Jan Greenberg.
by Gary Gildner
Give me I said to those round
young faces a round word
and they looked at me
fully puzzled until finally
several cried What do you mean?
I mean I said round round
you know about round
and Oh yes they said but
give us examples!
Okay I said let’s have a
square word
square maybe
will lead us to round.
And they groaned
they groaned and they frowned
every one except one
little voice way in the back said
Toast.
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Standing Buffalo, Charles M. Russell, circa 1920 |
The Bison Returns
by Tony Johnston
Midnight and the world so cold.
The sky is holding snow.
On the stone flank of a buried cave
an old fire-smear awakes
and walks out, down the drifted miles,
down the smothered hills.
It steps into the yard to graze
just as snow begins
falling soundless in a dream
upon the shaggy ghost.
What will I say to keep it here?
What song will I sing?
Breaking Away from the Family
by Susan Terris
I’m there. See me in yellow?
Not the short one
with no visible arms. That’s
my sister.
I’m the frowning-smiling
girl, eyeing the family.
See us? Sister, Sister,
Mother, Baby. Then Brother,
at his board-like best,
standing in too-big overalls
trying to be Papa. We’re
caught there,
nailed and glued to a door
with no house,
a door that won’t open. Only
my half-laced
boots are real. The rest:
flat-tinted,
an odd two dimensional,
one-handed girl.
The part of met that’s broken
away
has grown tall, drives a car,
goes to work, lives
in a house with a real door.
She’s warm
and full-fleshed and dances
with boys under
a flower moon. But the
splintered girl I was
keeps coming back, returns me
here
to stare at Mother’s pork
sausage fingers,
At her dress with its
bear-claw flowers.
Overhead, black scrolls hold
her and them
like curved iron bars of a
jail insisting.
You may never leave
or charge or be part of any
family
except this one staring
helplessly outward.
Papa will not return.
Brother will not become Papa.
Baby will always be propped
in Mother’s lap.
Sister will never find her
arms.
The five of us will always
be
the last picture Papa saw
before he went,
a stiff wooden portrait left
behind.
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