City Belt

POEM: OBJECT

My pink Jesus
Leaks blue blood
On Corinthian capital

When I got him last year
He was full
And I was full
And when I asked him
Anything
His answers made me laugh
I could make sense
Of them

POEM: BLESSED IN NEWARK

Orthodox in all but name,
We find ourselves between the apse and nave
Of two worlds where our reflections
Mimic blank expressions
And pepper mosaic windows.

The bus wends its way through Vailsburg,
My spiritual home, our Fatima,
Where we gained strength
On Friday evenings in April and May
And heard the Sodality Sisters gather and sing
The hauntingly beautiful Acathistos service
To the Mother of God.

This annual preparation for the Passion
Featuring sacrificial tin can banks,
Was shattered by a new wave of bloodshed,
The fifth attack in three weeks,
Which sparked a night of rioting near Bethlehem.

The suicide bomber on a bicycle,
Who may have been a woman, died.
When was the reincarnation?

Did I miss the body?

Which turn for Zarvanytsia?

-- Roman S. Ponos

POEM: ITINERARY

I consult a weathervane
But the wind disappears
Just a fallen arrow now

I open unsuspecting jars
And unleash my tongue
Lids stay sticky anyhow

I hail all rocks on water
That skip longer for less
Descent climbs offshore

Morning I steal for love
Afternoon I know is iffy
Night I see once on tour

-- Daniel Morris

POEM: POOR RECEPTION

Picture an apartment with
a rusty fire escape in a city called
"Somewhere, New Jersey."

A man in a black T-shirt sits
smoking and chewing, watching
George W. in a blizzard of static.

"What now?"
the man asks a sleeping
dog at his feet.

The mutt growls and
twitches, the channel flips to
a woman eating a spider. "Hell."

The man runs down three flights
to the street, stops to watch
the moon rise over roofs,

its bewildered face a mirror of his own.

- Michael Gates

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POEM: BUT FOR THE GRACE OF ...

Tucked in the lower corner,
the headline told the ostensible story,
“Former professor, to call girl,
then suicide, police say.”

Untold, unsung, are the thousands like Brandy,
those less picturesque,
less resonant to media,
as untold as the untellable millions
endangered by her passing.

In the battle against AIDS, against the virus that slays
through sex, drugs and their seductions,
Brandy was a brilliant coming star
who married bright ideas, research savvy, caring,
passion, and impatience —
all needed, all in short supply.

POEM: 111 FIRST ST. HAIKU

Formerly art house
Oh-so-modern Rem Koolhaus
And now we've "arrived?"

- Jon Whiten

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POEM: LITTLE-SKY COUNTRY

I live in the little-sky country,
where buildings shadow the setting moon,
and Orion spends his nightly frolics
skipping behind trees, bushes,
and the house next door.

We see him only dimly
through second-hand mall-lights
reflecting off organic clouds
excreted by the makers of wonder drugs
to cure the cancers
that fill this land.

Yet on a winter morn,
fetching the daily news
from snow drifts,
a glimpse of Vega or Mercury
brings scintillating tears
of nostalgic love
above my desiccated nostrils
and pluming breath.

-- Sam Friedman

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POEM: FINE DETAILS

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Remember when we learned we cared not for the modern
feminists;
the truth, thicker than whispers of a serpent though
it slithers, hissed
at as it is by forked tongues. Remember a smothered
sky
of fat leaves as we discovered the thinning sameness
of forest
trudges to breath-taking views, the berried shrubs,
the most high.

You made the ivory tower romantic, the deep sniff of
library:
a bed of books, sweeter than others' roses, in lean
clear lines free.
Then hatred bloomed as news came in, and cardinal
friends fell out.
Barricades rose as soldiers marched, rosy to the most
fined capillary.
Remember crosscut woods, concentric rings, thinnest
during drought.

-- Lee W. Jenson

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Lee W. Jenson is a graduate student at Rutgers Business School. Besides writing poetry, he also contributes articles under a pseudonym for www.wsws.org, a Trotskyist online newspaper.

POEM: THE BRAVERY OF LAUGHTER

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For Mike

Fourteen and fifteen
Give or take one
In either direction
Catching mass
Transit
From Jersey suburbs
Through factory high
Rise smog and
Ear pop of
Subterranean tunnel
Into Penn then out again.

You lead the way
Past the peanut-pretzel perfumery
Of New York City sidewalks
And wintertime subway exits.

We gathered our courage
Into the Chinese variety market
Hinted for a box of nitrous oxide
One cracker
Two balloons,
Laughed our
Oxygen levels down
Houston to the park.

Everything seemed possible
Then.  We bonded
Like brothers could.

-- Daniel McNulty

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Daniel McNulty is a founding member of Raconteur Publications who's first book, The Raconteur Reader, is due out in June. He was the general manager of The Raconteur's Word Fest, a four hour literary event held at Metuchen's landmark The Forum Theatre. He is a graduate of Rutgers University.

POEM: THEY HAVE STOLEN OUR WORDS

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Once the orgasm at the climax of philosophy,
“democracy” now connotes
lawyers, tobacco ads, CIA-choice cocaine,
and atomic bombs in your own back yard.

“Workers” are read as stereotypical rednecks
driving pick-up trucks,
stopping for a beer, gay-bashing, or rape
on their way home from a vanishing job.

POEM: AS THE PRESIDENT SPOKE

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Someone hung dolls from the chandelier and
a nun fingered an abacus in her mind.

Prisoners giggled in their cells, watching
a pederast pass cigarettes between the bars.

Grandpa wiped his glasses with a dishrag while
a sophomore solved equations with a cheese-slicer.

An amputee said he "didn't see it coming," and
a mother of three said, "Who uses a car as a weapon?"

An estimated two million illegals flushed toilets while
an emergency-room janitor mopped up blood.

It began to pour, and
citizens ran for shelter.

-- Michael Gates

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POEM: POLITICAL POEM

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Heavy eyes, crawling
over pavement cracking,
broken sweat,
breaking back,
sunk shoulders,
chin to chest,
inwardly ferocious.

What of your politics,
what of your inciting,
what do you penetrate
flinging your fecal forms?

People, listen!
Conversationally inept,
jittering jaw,
abraded breath,
nasal, hurried
healthless.

Should all your tenured priests howl,
preaching in unison under the full moon,
the darkness will lift not,
from the age that thee begot.

-- Lee W. Jenson

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Lee W. Jenson is a graduate student at Rutgers Business School. Besides writing poetry, he also contributes articles under a pseudonym for www.wsws.org, a Trotskyist online newspaper.

POEM: UNTIL ENCORES ERASE

Surprise with an unrehearsed split
After so much razing and rising
Like a predictable phoenix
This time, though
Retire your name
And let the ashes gather

Start in 1995 in Madison, Wisconsin
As uncomfortable bellwethers
Armed with instruments and intelligence
Scavenging below earth, sediment, clay
To develop a loamy new sound
Just three letters long

Follow the midwest, join the coast
Lose some authority and move on
A titular sovereign still trusted
Beneath a dyed, damaged crown
Roots recover and hues strengthen
Both return, improved, once more

End and begin without fumbling
Play songs older than any set list
The first ones now relearned
So that you get through, unruffled
Until encores erase too soon
The reason we kept cheering

-- Daniel Morris

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POEM: COUNTERFEIT CAB FARE

The pattern woven
was loneliness
on boredom
stitched with the finest
silks of greed and want
for a quilt called a
Calling.

POEM: MODERN DANCE IN CALIFORNIA

In Peoples Park I meet a girl.
We talk. She’s been to Harvard
for a Bachelor of Arts and now
a graduate student at Berkeley
studies modern dance
in China.

Studies, mind you, she
doesn’t actually dance.

For this she gets a stipend
of more dough than I claimed
on my taxes working full-time
all last year.

Later on, down Telegraph
a bum approaches
smelling of urine
(probably his own)
asks for some change to eat or grab
a bottle or do whatever it is he does
with his spare time. I direct him
to where the student admissions office
is located and tell him if he’s really
hungry he should sign up to study
something completely useless.

He does a little dance in the street.
He shakes his money-maker.
He must be overjoyed to hear
the good news, either that
or he has just crapped his pants.

- Daniel McNulty

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Daniel McNulty is a founding member of Raconteur Publications who's first book, The Raconteur Reader, is due out in June. He was the general manager of The Raconteur's Word Fest, a four hour literary event held at Metuchen's landmark The Forum Theatre. He is a graduate of Rutgers University.

POEM: STONER'S SONNET

A dissipating cloud of dark gray smoke
Unobscures in grades, unveiling the lost face
of a misled man, the butt of a stoke,
giving orders to logs in the fireplace.
Quite a master in his proud, ashen mind
He is; the logs, to him, the entirety
of nature, one by one, crumbling in kind.
The exhaust, he senses, flows quite lightly
Under the guidance of his breath and hand,
Fills the sky with the broadly visible
message of his presence; the whole land
lies contented, abiding to his glib will.
He- all foes fled fearing fumigation-
Revels, in half-wit intoxication.

-- Lee W. Jenson

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Lee W. Jenson is a graduate student at Rutgers Business School. Besides writing poetry, he also contributes articles under a pseudonym for www.wsws.org, a Trotskyist online newspaper.

POEM: EIGHTH AVENUE BROOKLYN

The brick fronts and
                     jagged roofs
cut creases in the
clear blue sky.
America, end of the century,
new millennium,
calendar pages turned to
something new or --

POEM: BABY, LET'S NOT TALK ABOUT THE RAIN

Let's not talk about the rain
The next world war is waging.
This globe's really beginning to cook.
A flood is rising to claim us.
The old messiah is coming
but it's only to take a peek.
There's not much we can say or do
to change the fate of tides.
So baby, while the ground's still dry
and before the dirt's awash
let us take our fingers
off the windowpane
and wrap them till they knot.

- Daniel McNulty

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Daniel McNulty is a founding member of Raconteur Publications who's first book, The Raconteur Reader, is due out in June. He was the general manager of The Raconteur's Word Fest, a four hour literary event held at Metuchen's landmark The Forum Theatre. He is a graduate of Rutgers University.

POEM: AFTER THE FIRST DEATH, THERE IS NO OTHER

No other to speak of
no other to know -

There are bodies, nameless, soulless now,
empty carcasses, profound loss
turning mundane, TV news offering
tales of gunshots and fires and
an air force bombing raid that
incinerates as it goes, the faceless others
(call them victims, perhaps,
call them what you will)
of no concern, of less importance than
the quarterback of a losing team or
a random drug dealer shot
when a bust went bad -

After the first death -
What? -
What do you expect,
a fanfare, a public condemnation,
or maybe some level of remorse
appropriate to the occasion,
the mayor stepping forward, offering
platitudes and observations,
saying how this small child
was just an unlucky victim,
caught in the web by chance?

Just a headline, that's
what you get, in small type somewhere
back inside the paper,
or, maybe, if you're lucky,
there will be 30 seconds of video,
a mother's grief, a neighbor's shock,
but nothing more,
nothing.

-- Hank Kalet

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The poem's title is the last line of "Refusal to Mourn the Death, By Fire, of a Child in London" by Dylan Thomas.

POEM: NO SHIRT NO SHOES NO SERVICE

Out of work
I walk into
the Hindu
convenience store
downstairs from
the crummy
apartment
ask the proprietor
for a pack
of smokes
on credit. 

POEM: IN THE AIRPORT

In the Airport

In Newark, New Jersey

I went with James to keep him company before his flight

And sat and waited for the plane to be announced

POEM: WORKING VACATION

Only in an infomercial is a hot spring a village
I am ready for the heat and neighbors are fine
Except it's colder and smaller than advertised
I know you're gonna love it, the actor intones

Although testimony should never be irresolute
Trips to backwater America aren't giveaways
Free visits demand increasing belief in return
Weekends fill up so fast when we script them 

- Daniel Morris

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POEM: POLITICAL POEM

Politics is
waking up in the morning,
crust-eyed until
the shower and the coffee jolt
us back to life,
send us to work.

POEM: GENUFLECTION

Into details I go, after hours, craving lateness
Overdue, I am overridden; suspense gives up
I knock, in code. I only get speakeasy access
Even then action looks closed for renovation

Stories hold me up, not delaying, but robbing
I hand over everything, turn, and count to ten
The gunman*plot*knows I can wait longer
Deadline: deliver me from mistaken ambition

-- Daniel Morris

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POEM: SATURDAY AT THE CAR WASH

six Spanish guys
in blue caps and t-shirts
attack the car
                            with rags
in haste
such alacrity that the
wet droplets can't
dry in the wind
or slide
                arcing downward in
gravity's pull

Talking no talking
looking on with suspicion
murmured Spanish
a distant hum that
stops
            when I approach
voices hushed in
ragged fragments
                                        obscene and
angry
eyes spearing the fat white guy
who barks orders
like he's reprimanding a
caged dog.

-- Hank Kalet

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POEM: GAZA GRIND

How often we fish, yet hardly a nibble
We curse our rods, condemn our casts
The sea likes to hide how we lost aim
Happy to keep it an underwater secret

Time stinks, sweaty from all the unrest
And, still, we plant seasonable flowers
Few are the lives aided before avenged
Dirt and petals fail to unbind any hand

Sky fills up now with tight-lipped stars
Night refuses to say whether day went
Searching for remnants of the unafraid
Only dawn, arriving early, may tell us

-- Daniel Morris

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POEM: STARVED

Pain it eats my soul out hollow
And feeds my thoughts to follow
Hungry for the taste to last
As I see the love that I crave pass
It sucks the sound out of my voice
As I bite my lip and lick my choice.

-- Jayne Gourgiotis

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POEM: [SIC]

Editors' Note: From time to time, we will feature poetry from contributor Daniel Morris at City Belt. We hope you enjoy.

Our slips should not stand out
They should stand at attention
Words are just average cadets
Learning how to salute better

Some mistakes really instruct
Once I was told to sleep tide
When I asked, why not tight?
My eyes pulled from below

-- Daniel Morris

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