Special Edition

November Zoom Poems

 Comments by Editor Sharon Waller Knutson

When poets from all over the country came face to face at the first Storyteller Poetry Journal zoom poetry reading Nov. 12, we learned that no matter where we are from, we connect through the personal stories we tell in our poetry.

Kavita Ezekiel Mendonca, the daughter of a poet, joined us from Canada and read her poem about growing up in India:

Give Me Oil in My Lamp by Kavita Ezekiel Mendonca

Grandmother took me to the old synagogue
Walking down the pot-holed sidewalks
Of a noisy Bombay street, close to her home,
Every square inch populated with humanity.
 
The oil lamp in the very old synagogue
hung high from the ceiling
For a few rupees we could keep the light burning.
 
She was afraid to climb the ladder
provided by the caretaker
In case she missed a step,
I was afraid for her too.
So he took the donation and lit the lamp.
I must cover my head with a handkerchief
she would pray to the prophet Elijah
for the oil never to run out,
The lamp must never die out.
 
Wanting to know in whose name he could make the receipt
(I did not have a Jewish name)
“Change it for the receipt” she said, matter of factly
“Or the caretaker will get confused”.
So I went from being called Kavita to Elizabeth
For the sake of a two rupee receipt
I really did not want, or need.
Mother did want to name me Elizabeth, I recall.
 
“It’s ok. When you get home
You can go back to your real name
Or your father will be upset”, grandmother said calmly.

From Light of The Sabbath

 
From California, Lori Levy shared her poem about visiting family in Israel where she lived for 16 years.

THE GOLDEN YEARS by Lori Levy

I'd rather talk about pumpkin spiced latte
than aging.  If anything's golden,
it's these 380 calories of sweetness I sip through a hole
in the lid of my cup when I order it for the first time
at LAX before my flight to Israel to see my sisters, brother,
nieces, nephews, and my parents, 86 and 87.

Who named them the golden years?  Golden smells young,
like coconut oil.  The gleam of lean muscles on a blanket
at the beach.  I don't understand.  Why not the walker years?
The bone-breaking years?  More like the rusty years,
says my father.  Corrosion, erosion.  The daily strain
to see, hear, remember.  To balance on tired legs,
the body no longer a friend.  He notes one benefit:
no worries anymore about the long-term side effects
of medications.  My mother models the new shirt I've brought her
and reminds us, in case we need reminding, it's important to laugh.

Late October now and the sun shines on two canes
slanting against their chairs in a restaurant at the beach
in Ashdod, where we take them for lunch, a table outside,
because they want to see the sea, haven't seen it for years.
 
At home, in the Negev desert, he grinds coffee beans,
and every day after lunch makes strong filtered coffee
from the beans she still orders from the shop in Jaffa.
Later, after dinner, they eat grapes, prunes, dates
and finish with espresso, sipping from cups they bought once
in Italy, perhaps, or received from loved ones.  They pour some for me.
We talk and pause, drink, listen.  I begin to believe that, as the body shrinks,
the self expands.  Raw, exposed, it opens like a gift
to any who will receive it.  Offering its gold, collected over years.  Nuggets
that come to me now with the gentle savoring of black and bitter—surely as good as
pumpkin spiced latte slurped through a lid before boarding a flight.

from What Do You Mean When You Say Green? and Other Poems of Color.

Tina Hacket from Missouri reminded us of the strength of the human spirit with her tribute to her cousin who survived Auschwitz and moved to Michigan right after the war.

Looking for Helen by Tina Hacker

"The worst part was the hunger."
My cousin Helen says this
about her time at Auschwitz.
It's all she'll say. She pretends not to hear
my pleas for more information,
lapses into Hungarian, fleeing to the words
of her youth and remaining there
until the all clear is sounded
by talk of other matters, other times.

Rabbis repeat reasons why Helen
should, must, ought to say more.
"For future generations, for past generations,
for all generations."
They smile at her, confident in their skills
at persuasion until they feel
gusts of her silence, hear the trumpet call
of her unspoken words sound retreat.

I can now meet with Helen
without asking about the camp.
I ignore the restless questions
tossing and turning in my mind,
catch them before they lunge at her
with impatient demands. Each year,
the unease becomes easier to bear.

But last month, when I called Helen's office,
a voice hollow with indifference said,
"No one by that name works here.
Maybe Julie can help you?"
My cousin came on the line.
She told me her real name was Julie
and didn't know why the family always
called her Helen. That's all she'd say.

I can now call her Julie without translating
her new name into the original.
I wonder if she will change her name again.
Where has she put Helen?
Is she in hiding so when the Nazis
come, her neighbors will say,
"No one by that name lives here.”

First published in Potpourri, Vol. 13. No. 3

From South Carolina, Jayne Jaudon Ferrer made us laugh with her fantasy of growing old.
 
Testament by Jayne Jaudon Ferrer
                
When I am an old woman,
I shall not wear purple.
I shall not wear anything at all!
I shall join a nudist colony
in the south of France and
stun sixty years worth of
friends and members at the
Holy Hallelujah Temple of Temperance
with my broad-minded acceptance
of my broad-beamed lovable self
and my amazing recovery from
a lifetime of latex dependency.
Or
I shall follow the example of
Miss Lillian and
perambulate with the Peace Corps
into the wilds of some
uncertain, uncivilized country
where my octogenarian expertise with
words and wood and mascara wands
will imbue untold numbers of natives
with the gifts of literature,
sturdy houses,
and longer lashes.
Or
I shall purchase a pavilion
near Walden Pond
and open a restaurant
for starving artistes.
The walls will be covered with
register tape sonnets and
luncheon napkin sketches
and I'll serve homemade soups
and play beach music
and Bach
until dawn.
But
whatever I choose to do
in my final days,
I shall not wear purple,
and I shall not go
quietly
into that last
good night.

From She of the Rib (CRM Books)


John Hicks, an Army veteran who served overseas, joined us from New Mexico and read a poem about the beauty of a night he spent in Bangkok.


Night by John Hicks
 
                                                            Bangkok
                                                           Monsoon Season
 
Silence in its silver light pours across my garden wall
through this monsoon break—a cloud-feathered frame
of moonlight tipping airy sprays of orchids, jasmine,
 
and hibiscus spilling flower to flower into shadow pool.  
Moon-filled potholes path the street with footlights
drawing me into the lane I came to live in hot season.  
 
Stillness drying on the pavement loosens sounds I’ve never seen.  
Behind a slatted wooden fence small frogs chirp a lily pond,
and as I pass, a khamoi bird calls out in two voices.

First published in Willawaw Journal.


Lorraine Caputo joined us from South America where she lives and read this poem about the wonders she’s encountered in her travels.:

UPON THE RUINS  by Lorraine Caputo
 
The cathedral lies in ruins,
the steps broken,
weeds growing between the gulfs.
 
I ascend to the atrium.
The bell towers are cracked,
the cross fallen to one side,
the clocks stopped 12:30 on the other.
 
Within the temple,
the altar is an island floating
amidst the grass-carpeted nave.
The chapels lie abandoned,
long ago stripped of their gold ornaments,
their altars of vari-colored marble
missing in all but a few.
The baptismal font lies on its side,
toppled from a disappeared pedestal,
no longer able to hold purifying water.
 
I cautiously walk up the steps to the gallery
and up beyond to the triforium.
The metal spiral steps
that once led to the towers
hang like rusting paper cut-outs.
 
Along the roof I walk,
looking down upon the empty nave.
Imaginary masses echo through the morning air.
The murals of Christ’s life
still continue their parade
around the apse.
And I continue my parade
around the outside,
seeing figures scream in terror
from the tremor,
from their abandonment.
 
Descending, I walk along the side porches,
among the fallen columns
and the statues of Spanish heroes.
Christopher Columbus’ hand
no longer rests upon his globe.
Out onto the plaza in front,  
I am surrounded by an earthquake-destroyed city.
Metal-latticed windows gaze  
upon the forgotten splendor.

First appeared in Dashboard Horus


Laurie Kuntz spent her entire adult working life as an expatriate living in Japan, the Philippines, Thailand, and Brazil before retiring to Florida.

“Living overseas and in different cultures makes one more aware of a shared humanity,” Laurie says. “Times when the world seems to be burning at both ends, one needs to remember what we all need to share: hope for a better world.  This poem tries to turn despair into all we can hope for.”


The Knocking by Laurie Kuntz
 
You are inside now,
a blizzard of loneliness
whispers through the keyhole.
Sadness locks in like the sleeping
cat on a windowsill.
You can’t remember where you were
When that door slammed
the heart out of you.
Inside and out,
it is the same cold front,
the door cannot close against—
but there comes a knocking,
there always comes a knocking,
that is why we have doors: inside, out, slam
There comes a knocking—
Open up.

First published in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, and That Infinite Roar (Gyroscope Press.) 

Jacqueline Jules joined us from New York to read her poem:

The Scripture of My Life by Jacqueline Jules

Embarrassing episodes, compiled in short narratives,
could fill a white Bible, embossed with blue letters.
Browse verses 1-20 for the list of personalities
tried out in my teens, like jeans in a dressing room,
discarding bell-bottoms for boot cut,
low-waisted for high-rise, size 6 for size 10,
only to find them all uncomfortable.

Subsequent verses record hours
of teach yourself guitar while watching TV;
journal entries on poems never finished;
hot tears over an early college rejection,
a cheerleader’s comment on my prom dress,
the boyfriend who impregnated a classmate.

It’s all there, including my silent mouth
when an English advisor offered salvation
for my Jewish soul, followed by months  
of pouring out the story in tall red cups
at every campus party. Verse 25 tells
how I waitressed half-blind, too vain
to wear old glasses. Verse 40 of too few calls home
after Daddy’s first heart attack. Don’t read Verse 56,
where I spilled coffee at an interview, snapped
at my mother-in-law, backed a car into a fence.

Youth shouldn’t be reread without wine
on a Saturday night. Still, I have faith
in the way one verse begot another
until my present good fortune
of standing on the mountain
with the tablets in my hands,
not sorry at all that my days of
dancing with the Golden Calf are gone.

From Manna in the Morning (Kelsay Books, 2021) 

 
Those who didn’t get an opportunity to read poems at the November zoom meeting will get a chance at 7 pm EST Dec. 10 at a Storyteller Poetry Journal meeting hosted by Joanne Durham
at which we will all introduce ourselves and discuss our poetry life.

Joan Leotta will also be hosting a zoom meeting at 2 pm EST Jan. 10.