Cellpoems

Minnesota

Michelle Menting — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 08:24:10 +0000

Land of butter queens and lutefisk,
here spring is a kiss at dawn
before your lover leaves you
with nothing but the sidewalk
to salt.

I lived in Minnesota for two years after college. I think of my Minnesota time as a period of attempts: grad school, a relationship, home ownership. My first year there, I attempted conformity and went to the state fair. There I saw a sculpture of the state’s dairy princess carved entirely out of butter. Her eyes were slippery orange sockets. I was terrified. That same year, I attempted again to eat lutefisk, something I hadn’t thought of since childhood. The salt burned my lips. The gelatinous whitefish was piled so high, after that first burning bite, it slid off my plate and slipped away on the floor. I was sure of it. During my last year of Minnesota time, I co-bought a house with someone who was only co-there. And that was the wrong thing to do. But on icy mornings in early spring while walking outside alone, I’d crust my own square of sidewalk with a layer of salt. I never expected such satisfaction from defrosting concrete.

I wrote this short poem attempt after thinking about my Minnesota time. So much is unsaid. So much is better left unsaid.

Advice

Jonterri Gadson — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 21:11:08 +0000

Either a good man
never walks behind you
or you never stand behind
a good man. If I could recall
where my father stood
when he told me, I’d know.

Once I stopped struggling with my inability to remember this moment enough to write a poem about it, I finally realized that the fact that my memory failed me was the poem.

Winter Day

Richard Schiffman — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 21:10:29 +0000

Smoke of myself
today you are visible.
Only the fire is hidden.

Rosa

Jake Adam York — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 22:30:30 +0000

To rise without rising.
To move without moving.
Whole cities in your feet.

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested in Montgomery, sparking a 381-day bus boycott that would challenge the city’s segregation codes.

After +

K. Marrott — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 21:09:46 +0000

He admits seven years,
an ironic itch of minutes,
hours. Dazed, I swim
in Blue-Boy eyes, go home
homeless & test bloody
waters with a toe. -

“After +” has its roots in a longer poem entitled “homeloss,” which is an exploration of binaries. I was in the process of re-working “homeloss” and a particularly problematic stanza when I heard about cellpoems.org. “After +” is the result of turning that stanza into something new.

Soldiers

Giuseppe Ungaretti — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 21:09:03 +0000

are like
the leaves on
the trees in
the fall

(translated by Geoffrey Brock)

After spending a couple of years among the great young modernists in Paris, Ungaretti went to war. This poem, written in the trenches about 90 miles east of Paris, appeared in his pioneering 1919 collection, Alegria di naufragi (Joy of shipwrecks).

Epitaph for a Dead President

Geoffrey Brock — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 21:07:44 +0000

Here he lies no more,
But tells the truth at last,
The whole truth, in the clipped
Green syllables of the grass.

In the dream I am a strange dealer

Anne Marie Rooney — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 21:05:19 +0000

Pain is carried out of the wrists, breasts

Watered from
touch

Its central hook

But the aggregate
Line of me

Still
Is stealth bent.

Exodus

Les Kay — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 00:23:16 +0000

Cirrus whispers
splotch sky.

A plane severs
form, space–

fruit fly,
half-finished canvas.

Wind lifts scraps of news:
bombs in Jerusalem, baseball.

This poem began several years ago after a long walk down a few South Florida streets. The sky was enormous and blue, a near postcard image. I wanted, somehow, to catch the entirety of that experience—the sky, the palms, the refuse—as well as the relative smallness of the self and the comfort to be found in such an idea. At the time, I was reading a lot of Basho, Li Po, Tu Fu, and Su Tung-p’o (in translation). Thirteen years and several major revisions later, the poem reached this shape, and the final line, alas, still makes sense.

What the Snail Is

Jorge Carrera Andrade — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 08:39:18 +0000

Snail:
tiny measuring tape
with which God measures the field.

(translated by Joshua Beckman and Alejandro de Andrade)