Dear friends,

Let’s not forget this day in history when the U.S. was forced to enter World War II. My father could have died there, young. He was on the battleship the USS Arizona just two years before the attack. Luckily, he transferred to submarines. More than a thousand men were not so lucky.  My father had known most of them.

Here is something I wrote following a visit to Pearl Harbor. The memorial is a solemn, impressive place.

 

                        USS Arizona Memorial

            Bombs  smoke  fire  sirens  raid
            The harbor watchman stares with barnacle eyes.
            Watch your step, lap lap of healing waves.

            “Chip! Scott! This is like a church, a wake.”
            So the busload of tourists descends upon the site.
            Bombs  smoke  fire  sirens  raid

            Crisp white starch, crewcut sailor salutes the brave
            where number three turret below the surfaces lies.
            Watch your step, lap lap of healing waves.

            So much rust, there’s so much rust the seas have made
            how can that rainbow of oil from the engine rise?
            Bombs  smoke  fire  sirens  raid

            My heart stands at attention, someone reeks of Jean Nate
            while families shoot their photos and eat their fries.
            Watch your step, lap lap of healing waves.

            Oh, Hurricane Pearl, fling the hull from the base—
            honor the dead with a burial at sea, high tide.
            Bombs  smoke  fire  sirens  raid
            watch your step, lap lap of healing waves.

––Susan Zenker

photo from Pixabay

I love the following poem about the Canadian border. Think about how different the Canadian border in this poem is from the Mexican border now and throughout history. Doesn’t it make you wonder why it’s so different?

At the Un-National Monument Along the Canadian Border by William Stafford

This is the field where the battle did not happen,
where the unknown soldier did not die.
This is the field where grass joined hands, 
where no monument stands,
and the only heroic thing is the sky.

Birds fly here without any sound,
unfolding their wings across the open.
No people killed — or were killed — on this ground
hallowed by neglect and an air so tame
that people celebrate it by forgetting its name.

—William E. Stafford

 

 

 

(photo from Pixabay)

Check out my latest publication at Dreamers Magazine.

by Susan Zenker

On the curb at Hunter and Wilcox

on the pay phone at Michael’s Crafts

on the bridge marker, 15’11”

along the bench at the Baptist Church

back of Benny’s, doors and dumpsters,

stop sign, mailbox, brick wall, fence,

on a windshield scratched in rain dust —

you can’t catch me – chicken

scratchings.

 

Something torrid, territorial, bursts

the paint right out of that can —

the secret desire to touch

all things living and not

like a dog lifting its leg

like a sunflower stubbornly pushing

and shoving and kicking its way

through a crack in sidewalk cement.

They are out there.

Create create.

 

In the middle of the night

while I sleep in cotton

and dream of baby’s breath

and the clock on the wall needs

winding, they are out there

in the painless hours before the dawn

I fear

the moonflowers tiptoe fatherless

through darkened alleys

spray-painting

I ache I ache.

 

(previously published in Strong Verse)

(photo from Pixabay)

 

I lost a tooth today

a new empty space on the right

joining on the left the older empty

spaces of three. On this day too

John McCain was buried

Trump made a deal with Mexico

excluded Canada at the table

while I, I’ve lost a tooth today.

 

A dentist pried poked drilled

twisted yanked and swore

while I retreated in the chair.

For a tooth so full of decay

it certainly protested there.

What do X-rays know anyhow?

Sometimes a shadow is only a shadow

but I lost a tooth today.

 

Somewhere at this very moment

a village eats bowls of rice.

Somewhere a woman engraves

on her shoulder a rose tattoo for a man.

Somewhere a baby boy bathes

in a kitchen sink or sponging from a pail,

a soldier raises a rifle in battle bliss,

and I, I lost a tooth today.

Significant to me, my mouth, alone.

 

Or, in this spiraling universe

in which we live,

perhaps thousands of others around

the globe sit in dental offices,

perhaps thousands of others

they too have lost a tooth today.

What if we are infinitely connected?

I wish you well, all peoples of the earth.

 

I wish you peace in your back yards

I wish you happiness at your kitchen tables

I wish you prosperity with the bills in your pockets

And may you all lie in your caskets

With all your teeth intact.

 

(photo from Pixabay)

 

Launch date — August 23.

I’m happy you’re visiting my new author site going live today.  Though it is still under construction, you can read some of my poetry on my site.

Please come back for more.

I’m a new member of the Story Cartel Course and Becoming Writer Community under author Joe Bunting! I’m excited to start a blog about writing and reading as they go hand in hand.

My first recommendation is Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones. If you are a writer, you need to read this book. It will totally change the way you write. You’ll learn to write every day and you’ll learn to forgive yourself it you aren’t perfect every time you sit down to the page or at your computer.

More later! Thanks for reading!

https://www.poemhunter.com/susan-zenker/