I wrote the following poem in one day for the online community poetry project which marks the death of every person killed by police this summer, and every police officer who loses life in the line of duty, with a poem. You can find it at: www.lamentforthedead.org

or read the lightly revised version here:



Friday in the Subdivision

 

Lament for an unnamed man whose last words were, “Babe, I’m sorry. It hurts so much.”

 

 

In the calm of mowed lawns

and identical drives

no taboos are broken.

Doors are left open.

Sprinklers arch their summer tongues.

Unfolded lawn chairs

left out at night

shine in shameless places.

 

You planted your garden

but told no one,

held your grandchildren

like  a wandering amnesiac

all the while grafting a plan.

 

No one knows the real weight

of what they thought they heard

or of what you carried

or how, as you fired you begged

the lifeless form you once loved to breathe.

O nameless one, when asked to drop

your gun you knew it suicide to refuse.

Yet that is what was done.

 

And now the world has less of you and more.

Investigations yield unwieldy prayers.

Dogs lapse across barren yards.

When death comes to you as soft as air

glide patiently from the sleeve

of your body’s crumbled coat.

Forgive the neighbors

for what they are about to say:

their stunted shrubs,

the even mow, stems of bleeding hearts,

rows of shadow we all walk across.

This month, I am a feature poet in the latest issue of Muddy River Poetry Review. In their words: 

Elisabeth Weiss, our other feature poet in this issue, teaches writing and literature at Salem State University and North Shore Community College. Her commitment to poetry includes teaching in prisons, nursing homes and other venues.  Her MFA is from The University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop, and she is widely published in leading poetry magazines.

Visit the Muddy River Poetry Review site to view my featured works, or view the PDF here.

Today as I glance out at January’s first whiteout, obliterating the world from my window, I happily nestle back under blankets to recharge with Nick Flynn’s first book, Some Ether. First books read as coming of age novels in that they make a stake in outlining a poet’s primary obsessions and concerns. In Some Ether the poems ache for interconnectedness and express fear of drowning in that need. Full of uncertainties, Flynn longs to find beauty in what is often an ugly and terrible world.

Lis Weiss Horowitz: The Bicyclist 

      In Memorium
      Ondar Goekce 1952-1995 

We buried you on the hottest day
while your children, impatient with grief
and the long ride in the limousine,
jumped through the fluid hoop
the sprinkler cast in the neighbor’s grass,
the sun directly above. The sermon
on how briefly we love meant nothing
when the priest in his Turkish folds
opened the top of your pine box
and rolled you onto your side,
turning your weight to face Mecca.
My envoy, who slipped off your bicycle
on a clear day without traffic, as you were turning
to your wife to say something, could anything
have broken your fall? Did you know
you were pedaling away from us forever?
She said the bike sailed out from under you
as if it had a mind of its own.
You who go before us, at the turn
of the block, a turn we all have taken,
where houses begin again after the marsh
where will you be this winter while we skate
on the strange calm of the time we have?

republished from MassPoetry Poem of the Moment