by Gene Novogrodsky
From summer’s heat and exhaust fumes
To winter’s chill and the same exhaust fumes,
The grey cur takes its corner,
Sometimes on the sidewalk,
Sometimes on a lawn,
Sometimes in the street,
A living cur, thinning, wanting food and water,
Thinning, and still feinting at motion, any motion ….

[Read more →]

Poems by Gene Novogrodsky
Mouths
Never in light,
Never in awake.
The depth of a dream kiss.
A dream embrace,
A dream passion,
Uncomplicated,
Correct,
Together,
Before the light ….
Hands On Elbows
Guiding them
To doctors’,
To stores,

[Read more →]

By Gene Novogrodsky
Transition
Twilight passed,
Sliver of silver moon,
Dim outline in the south ….
Caged, Leashed and Free
She walks with a yellow bird in a dark cage,
The cage swinging, bird perched on a rod.
She walks with a white duck, leashed with clothesline,
Behind her, needing a pull, sometimes.
A white dove on the warrior’s fence,

[Read more →]

from Gene’s Notebook
…the skinny woman comes from under the underpass, and I tell her that the
homeless shelter beats the underpass.
“No, it doesn’t. I don’t want anyone telling me what to do,” and she goes back
to the underpass’ damp wall.
…and the young man is walking around at dusk. I hand him a watermelon that I
carried from [...]

[Read more →]

by Gene Novogrodsky
For Brenda N. Riojas
Black curls.
A cousin’s granddaughter,
A little girl, identification Israeli.
And as she grows,
She will hear hate of
Arabs, Palestinians, Muslims,
Hate severe,
Hate in jokes,
Or, might she hear words of
Commonality?

[Read more →]

by Gene Novogrodsky
He kept a ten in his wallet,
Had for years, just in case,
And when he died, we opened
His wallet and the ten
Was still there ….

[Read more →]

by Ruth Wagner
Pushed Aside
We see the wizened woman
With a cigarette butt in wrinkled mouth.
She nods and pushes her grocery cart.
He, about a half block behind her,
Pushes his cart.
They travel together:
Protection?
Companionship?
A week earlier another of the
“Pushed aside,” she, older now,
With peppered hair,
Sitting on the stoop of an abandoned house
Lifts her hand

[Read more →]

by Gene Novogrodsky
Snow covered the small town,
And my father walked me into
The wooden-floored library,
Where he told me to stand before
The librarian’s desk,
And tell her that I wanted a card.
She had to look down
To see me, my jacket dotted
With snowflakes ….
Books, ever books,
Many stories about
Wolves and lying boys,

[Read more →]

by Gene Novogrodsky
A U-Haul passes, and I wave;
They lamely return the wave,
Away by the second,
And far from mind and space they pass ….
A U-Haul passes, and I wave;
They’re tired, but energetically return the wave.
Away by the second,
To come to mind, to be recalled ….
A U-Haul passes, and I can not wave;
They cry, and I turn [...]

[Read more →]

By Gene Novogrodsky
Picked in heat,
Loaded in heat,
Then, on truck to shed,
Rain and wind,
And the okra (bombo)
With its white seedy insides
Falls to the road,
Is crushed into pulp,
Green slime on asphalt,
But most gets to the shed,
For gumbo, yes, gumbo with bombo ….

[Read more →]

by Gene Novogrodsky
We old men enter McDonald’s yellow
As dawn breaks and sharp Venus and faint Mars
Spend in the white dawn ….
We take separate tables, coffee, some cream,
Often sugar, open newspapers and sit and sit ….
The drive-in windows are busier than the walk-ins,
The walk-ins for us, the old,

[Read more →]

by Gene Novogrodsky
Leave the city green to see the drought,
To the country’s brown ….

Three goats bite for stubble.
Six hens scratch for stubble.
A funeral procession,
A hundred or more vehicles, lights on,
To the dry dirt heaped graveside.

[Read more →]

by Gene Novogrodsky
Why not?
Celebrate?
Newspapers scream narco violence.
Also femicide.
The economy.
The drought.
But take a break.
2010 nears, the start of Mexican Independence.
Year 200.
Failed state.
Pakistan of Latin America.
But take a break.
2010 nears, the start of Mexican Independence.

[Read more →]

by Gene Novogrodsky
Mid-day, and the eastern Guanajuato village shuts down
In the Sierra Oriental’s direct sun ….
A bull paces, caged in the back of a racked farm truck,
Is organs huge, and the owner takes a taco and beer break ….
Deserted streets, with lunch near, tortillas made,
Pick-ups parked; road builders dozing in shade ….
And up where the [...]

[Read more →]

by Gene Novogrodsky
The woman in jeans and a pink jacket,
Full of sleep and pop magazine reading
And some teacher-aide tasks and flat and bored
Goes into the mild night, and starts down an incline to a car in the dark ….

The woman in a tight dark skirt andv white blouse
Alert and awake, full of Neruda, Spanish-English and

[Read more →]

By Gene Novogrodsky
Early, before the all-you-can eat yellow eggs are placed,
The old man has coughed, bent-backed and false-stepped his way
Down the carpeted hall to the complimentary breakfast ….
Does he live in the roadside motel-hotel?
What was he?
What is he?
Why is he here?
Will he die with a next-door-neighbor’s sox on, and the neighbor will lose the
sox?
He totters [...]

[Read more →]

By Gene Novogrodsky
A golden doorknob from the Revolutionary War,
Seriously shown, touched ….
A four-page menu updated weekly,
Seriously discussed, pondered ….
The babies, babies to kids,
Their behavior,
Seriously discussed ….
And the sun on choppy waves
Before a southwest wind and storm,
The same sun reversing the green trees,
Sending them puzzle-like into the waves ….
Overlooked, gone, ignored, blindfolded ….

[Read more →]

By Gene Novogrodsky
“Go ‘head.
Yaw not a kar,”
The flagman says to the cyclist.
“The f—–’ trouble stahted
When yaw went to the f—–’ staw,”
The fat mother, scrubbing the front porch
Says to the fat daughter who’s standing on the porch.
…and where are the accent-division lines in the United States?
Deep South until New Jersey or Pennsylvania ….
Texas until Iowa ….
Lower [...]

[Read more →]

By Gene Novogrodsky
Harper Lee, you know her,
We’ve all read To Kill A Mockingbird – of course ….

Lee, from Monroeville, Alabama,
I’ve been there – twice.
I didn’t see the thousands
Of prisoners, black men in
Oversized white issue
Behind miles of wire
On my first trip ….
Now I did,
Red sunset behind the
Prisoners, the wire,
Cotton bolls tight, white inside in green,
Soybean oval [...]

[Read more →]

By Gene Novogrodsky
The customers drop,
Daily and weekly.
The paper thins,
Thins some more,
Threatens to close.
All over North America,
And the paper ladies,
Those sleepless drivers of dawn,
Lose customers, and their arms,
Tired in the past from backhanded tosses and flips and throws,
Rest, rest with a cost …as the paper ladies still need gas
And the routes are the same, just shrunken [...]

[Read more →]

By Gene Novogrodsky
Pop-ups to shallow right field,,
And the second baseman
Drifts back, the pop-up drifts,
To what should be caught – easily.
And usually is,
Like life: breathing, eating,
Drinking, defecating ….
But pop-ups can be dropped,
Can fall to the sides and
Front and back,
Like those functions – a shutdown ….

[Read more →]

By Gene Novogrodsky
Women in thick glasses
Hunch their shopping bags
On their way
On hot sidewalks.
My mother, also in thick glasses,
Never carried shopping bags,
Never walked hot sidewalks.
Oh! She humored me on
Occasion, taking the bus,
Even walking a hot sidewalk.
She hated it: the bus,
The pedestrians, the passengers,
The hot sidewalk ….

[Read more →]

By Gene Novogrodsky
“Hey, cold beer, light!”
Breaks from the background,
Into the announcer’s
Ball-strike narrative

[Read more →]

By Rudy H. García
High atop the bowing, fragrant guava tree branches
At times, I send my being to live as doves live
Cooing under crescent luna skies and star lit heavens
Kissing, cuddling, rubbing and flapping affection
Before reposing, nestled next to my love mate
Another dove, with golden pecks and perfect round eyes.
Other times, amongst the colorful flowering prickly [...]

[Read more →]

Two poems by Rudy H. García
Miss Boudreaux

She had traveled the world, a world traveler
With many acquired customs and languages
Her father, was a civil engineer, bridge builder,
Industrial and commercial, canal waterway digger
With accomplished jobs all around the earth.
She showed us pictures of the Panama Canal,
The Suez Canal, the Erie Canal and the
Intercostal waterways from Texas to [...]

[Read more →]