Cheryl Caesar's Blog

Thanks to Katie Manning at Whale Road Review for publishing my review of Grace Carras's book, Quiet Kid.

http://www.whaleroadreview.com/grace-...

Thanks to Poetry Super Highway for featuring my poem this week!

“Show strength!” intoned their leader – he for whom
strength never had been anything but show.
“We’re marching to the Capitol!” — but then
he turned away as they began to go.

He lumbered home and watched it on TV:
the fallen barricades, the broken glass,
the painted bull behind the podium,
the selfie sticks, the guards who let them pass.

“We’re taking back the people’s house!” But then?
Nobody there to tell them what came next.
They stole a laptop, tore a Chinese scroll,
smoked joints and pissed on statues. Sent a text.

What follows “show” and “take”? They didn’t know.
Their leader had no other verbs to share.
Within a few hours they had wandered off,
leaving their garbage and their feces there.

At 1 AM, New Jersey’s Andy Kim
son of Korean immigrants, took up a bag,
began to clear the waste. The water jugs,
the pizza boxes, torn and trampled flag.

His only comment on the tawdry coup:
“It really broke my heart … what could I do?’

https://www.poetrysuperhighway.com/psh/

Each morning so far

Each morning I get in the car and find
the center convex-prism rear-view mirror
turned up to day position for my spouse:
that is, set to night vision for my height.
I see a flattened world in tones of grey,
but clear enough, I think. It’s good enough.

And yet each day I pull the mirror down.
Sunlight pours in, forever a surprise.
Each day, I think, the world hands me the choice
of Plato’s cave. Give thanks! each day, so far,
I’ve turned away from shadows to the light.

Page 19 in the City Pulse's holiday "Keeping the Lights On" issue!

We have buried my crystal beads out in the yard.
Rose quartz, pink as a young and loving heart,
and bloodstone to strengthen it.
Black obsidian, standing guard against evil.
Clear quartz and amethyst, to soothe and balance us.

Prayer beads are not enough
in a time of social distancing.

We need to return them to the earth, to spread
those good vibrations,
up through the grass to breathe out the air,
into the worms to nourish the robins,
through the groundwater and back
to the humans who need them most.

I haven’t seen anything come up yet,
but this morning the lawn is humming.

http://www.highlandparkpoetry.org/dai...

Post-MS, my legs are clumsy,
half-numb. Dumb to earth’s
unevenness, I stumble to the shore.

Half-in the water is hardest. Currents pull,
seaweed sways, leads me this way and that.
I trudge through unseen mud.

But then the feet lift, turn to fins.
My movements grow smooth. Cool fingers
of water stroke my limbs.

Now all is calm. Swallows swoop;
dragonflies hover. I’m a slow-moving head,
no threat. Fish pass oblivious.

…………………………………………………………………………………

Coming out, my legs have forgotten
to be legs. Thigh muscles cry weakness. I stay
horizontal almost to the shore.

When I stand, my knees tremble. Birds take flight.
Bent over, I wait to regain
my vertical life. And I wonder

what the whales thought, returning to water.
Abandoning legs, letting paws
revert to fins. Did they weigh
what they were losing? Irredentists,
what was the call they heard that brought them home?

Author’s note on “irredentists”: For this metaphor I am indebted to John Noble Wilford, and his delightful New York Times article, “How the Whale Lost Its Legs And Returned To the Sea” (May 3, 1994).

“Amphibian” has appeared in
— The Blue Nib, Issue 39 | Sept 2019;
— Snapdragon: A Journal of Art and Healing, Sept 2019;
— The Reo Town Reading Anthology!: Rejoice, Everyone!, October 2020.

https://behives.org/cheryl-caesar/

Transition: Poems in the Afterglow | 11 26 20 | Cheryl Caesar
Posted on November 26, 2020 by Michael Broder

Thanks

Let us be thankful for pumpkins.
Not for the grainy and soapy-taste pies,
nor for the hideous lattes.
But, perhaps, for the seeds, when they’re salted and roasted.
Each crunch an explosion of nutrients, recalling
that we are all concentrates of energy.

Thank them for their carved faces, which so quickly
wither, like victims of bad plastic surgeons.
The eyes and mouths expanding, until
they touch, and all caves inward. Fading
before us, time-lapse flowers in reverse.
Dorian’s portrait out on our front porches.

Thanks to the pets, the cats and the dogs,
whose lives are measured in decades, making
them markers of family eras. “Back when
we had Rocky,” we say. So simply, they give us
the whole of their earth span. Bracketing us

on the other side, tortoises live to a hundred
and fifty, but moving slow, and carrying
their dwellings. Or you could surrender
motility altogether, and be a redwood, learning
to speak with your roots, underground. If you

are willing to give up your spine, you can be an immortal
jellyfish and never die, they say. When bad times come,
you revert to a polyp, and start again. They call it
“transdifferentiation,” but if you wish, it can be
transmigration of souls—that is, if you agree
to grant the jellyfish a soul. If not

I leave it to you to decide: When all
the cells are replaced, is it still the same
creature? I doubt if the jellyfish cares.

https://www.indolentbooks.com/transit...

Some great old songs on acoustic guitar, a hilarious storyteller and me reading the last (I hope!) of the anti-Trump poems. Many thanks to Steve Findley for organizing!

https://www.facebook.com/TheCoffeehou...

Thanks to Larry Upshaw and the Ageless Authors Executive Committee for naming my poem "The Mask" as a finalist in the Coping with Crisis competition!

The mask

A gilded mask obscures the planet’s face.
Fool’s gold, factitious metal, but enough
to smother us. We cannot breathe. We pace
and sweat. Abandoned like unhappy dogs
in summer cars. Tortured like hapless ants
under a cruel magnifying glass.
Or like caged boxers, fighting in a trance.

Below, the planet dies. Above, the mask
is glittering at the sun. It has no eyes.
It wears a rigid grin, like Pennywise.

https://www.agelessauthors.com/ageles...

Blessings on you, all my friends,
as you go out to vote today.

May no pillow malfunction, no mis-set alarm
delay you. May your coffee perk
and your toast pop up unburnt.

May no deer or bottleneck
block your journey. May the lines
be short, your ID and registration ready.

May you find the real drop box,
and no Republican fake.

May the levers pull smoothly,
and the rectangles fill with black.
May your reward sticker stay stuck
to your lapel all day.

Because you deserve it.

You love animals; you may hate hunting.
But this was a rogue elephant, insane
in musth, crushing cars and villagers.
It had to be killed.

We will not take trophies,
no ivory keepsakes, no foot-on-head selfies.
We will burn it decently and with regret
for the noble animal it once was.
And then we will start to rebuild.

Published on What Rough Beast, 11.2.20

https://www.indolentbooks.com/what-ro...

A planet is dreaming

In the last battle
Humans fire seeds for bullets;
Make compost for trees.

https://www.lastleavesmag.com/last-le...