Our poetry book Moody Gardens is now up on Amazon! Yay!

Moody Gardens: A Collection of Travel Poems

I invite you to read my latest publication in the online magazine Better than Starbucks. It’s a sonnet called “Cinema Park.” But it’s hardly an archaic form.

The sonnet form typically has 14 lines and usually 10 syllables written in iambic pentameter. I bet you hardly notice it here in my nostalgic poem at the drive-ins of old.

Better Than Starbucks online magazine

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)