Category Archives: poem

"Theater of Shadows" by Derek N. Otsuji

To say that I loved this would be an incredible understatement…. enjoy my friends!

American Life in Poetry: Column 402
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
Shadow play is among the few free entertainments left, and it must go on delighting children all around the globe. Derek N. Otsuji lives in Hawaii, and here’s his reminiscence.

Theater of Shadows

Nights we could not sleep—
           summer insects singing in dry heat,
                       short-circuiting the nerves—

Grandma would light a lamp,
           at the center of our narrow room,
                          whose clean conspiracy of light

whispered to the tall blank walls,
            illuminating them suddenly
                     like the canvas of a dream.

Between the lamp and wall
           her arthritic wrists grew pliant
                     as she molded and cast

improbable animal shapes moving
           on the wordless screen:
                         A blackbird, like a mynah, not a crow.

A dark horse’s head that could but would not talk.
           An ashen rabbit (her elusive self)
                      triggered in snow

that a quivering touch (like death’s)
             sent scampering into the wings
                           of that little theater of shadows

that eased us into dreams.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2011 by Derek N. Otsuji. Reprinted from Descant, 2011, Vol. 50, by permission of Derek N. Otsuji and the publisher. Introduction copyright 2012 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

American Life in Poetry ©2006 The Poetry Foundation
Contact: alp@poetryfoundation.org
This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

wearing a dress of the dead

wearing a dress of the dead, lipstick just a shade deeper than yesterday’s
wear, my hair is longer, eyes lined blue, mind sharp, i have never felt such cathexis
for a polyester blend, it is she in my memory choosing this white clutch, she reminding

me of such joy in life with each swish of the bell of such brightly flowered dress,
she decorating all of me and preening like a grave site of daisies in fresh morning spring.

Rows of No Smoking Lights

Captain, turn off the seat belt sign
so only rows of no smoking lights run above.

Secure us passengers, upright us as
we wait in this obdurate silence.

Sleep eyes open to a hangover, dream
rocking against a tiny dark window.

Lighted wing belays the illusion, we are
underwater (again) in a primal world.

Feel this pressurized weight force
the lights to run on. Staring at

them blurs life into one long line
A long hallway I too will walk someday.

[revised from 2010 – about a plane ride home from Mexico to say goodbye to my dying grandmother]

Family Vacation by Judith Slater (American Life in Poetry)

Ah. This poem takes your hand and never lets go. Enjoy~
 
American Life in Poetry: Column 401

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

As children, many of us played after dark, running out to the border of the reach of light from the windows of home. In a way, this poem by Judith Slater, who lives in New York State, remembers the way in which, at the edge of uncertainty, we turned back.

Family Vacation

Four weeks in, quarreling and far
from home, we came to the loneliest place.
A western railroad town. Remember?
I left you at the campsite with greasy pans
and told our children not to follow me.
The dying light had made me desperate.
I broke into a hobbled run, across tracks,
past warehouses with sun-blanked windows
to where a playground shone in a wooded clearing.
Then I was swinging, out over treetops.
I saw myself never going back, yet
whatever breathed in the mute woods
was not another life. The sun sank.
I let the swing die, my toes scuffed earth,
and I was rocked into remembrance
of the girl who had dreamed the life I had.
Through night, dark at the root, I returned to it.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2011 by Judith Slater from her most recent book of poems, The Wind Turning Pages, Outriders Poetry Project, 2011. Reprinted by permission of Judith Slater and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2012 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

i am a ghost

i am a cold vapor— i feel
nothing when gliding above
wooden floor boards. Dust stirs slightly
but that is all.

i want to be a spirit who
throws china with a resolute crash.
i want to be memories
that raise hair on your arms.
i want to be a phantom
you call to in the night, when no one is around,
and darkness
provides a cloak of opportunity.

But silence is my lover.
Leave
the light on
to see glimmers like tears that
won’t wet my cheeks.

(revised poem from 2010)

Old Buidling on Keith Ave. in the Canton Industrial Park

She sighs over heavy machinery, coal, ship dock hands
a headless apparition
from a more affluent era
her sequin flapper dress just
metal window frames rusted
a shimmer from broken glass
against the backdrop of a dark
modern October cloud bank
she once was someone statuesque
the men couldn’t take their eyes off.
Now, phantom, feel the wind blow straight through your spine.

Let’s Go O’s!!! haiku

Hi everyone! As all my Twitter followers know, I’m a huge Baltimore sports fan… and today is game 5 versus the dreaded evil Yankees… sooooo in honor of the good guys, a haiku poem I posted on Opening Day a few years ago. Enjoy and Let’s Go O’s hon!
**************************

fresh cut grass trimmed neat
my glove browned tan and beat soft
one crack of the bat…

i remember days
playing catch with my dad and
imagining that

girls could play baseball!
i remember Cal’s card in
the cereal box

added a hometown
smile to my collection, says:
let’s go O’s, let’s go!

Charles (on the corner)


A prophet
preaches to the scratched
hood of my car.
Hidden beneath baseball cap, dark wool
suit too big for slight bones,
He bows beneath
the weight of a necklace,
trinkets only he understands.
The heat a cloak over
dry and marbled outstretched hands; yet
He does not sweat.

He speaks—
prophecies, poems,
ancient secrets absolved
into Baltimore humidity
Without
any recompense. Without
any baptized soul
noticing.

(revised poem, previously posted)