Friday, May 23, 2014

new Split This Rock poem: Nicholas Samaras' "Anxiety Attack at 27,000 Feet"

 
                                                                               May 23, 2014
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Poem of the Week:   
Nicholas Samaras   
                Nicholas Samaras headshot



Anxiety Attack at 27,000 Feet



What is that red throbbing over the sound of engines?
Why is a distant war still being talked about in the media?
I can't see my home or Iraq or the Middle East
outside this bowed rectangle of blue altitude.
Who brought these children here?
How will this raven-haired girl grow into her life?
There is no way I can die with this room full of Bostonians.
Why is the serrated coast of New York approaching so.....rapidly?
How many of these faces will separate before the plane.....lands?
We go blind in this whiteness as my stomach descends
and, somewhere far in the back, I can hear an animal.....wailing.
Why am I wearing this black suit of my comfortable life?
Into what country will we even touch down? What if we.....splinter
and explode upon landing, the moment of our most hope and .....relief?
How will my body feel enjoined to metal, shrouded in.....upholstery?
I wish everyone peace, as we slam into the earth of our.....making.
But what is that red throbbing and these murmurs building?
What are all these stern looks of kindness and concern
as hands hold my hands and place the mask over my.....breathing face?

 
  
-Nicholas Samaras    
  
Used by permission.
  
  
Nicholas Samaras won The Yale Series of Younger Poets Award for his first book, Hands of the Saddlemaker. His new book, American Psalm, World Psalm, is now out withAshland Poetry Press (2014). He lives in West Nyack, New York.
 
 
***   
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View the poem on our site.
 
Please feel free to forward Split This Rock Poem of the Week widely. We just ask you to include all of the information in this email, including this request. Thanks!
  
If you are interested in reading past poems of the week, feel free to visit the blog archive.  
Poem of the Week Open Call Closed 

Split This Rock's Poem of the Week series is currently closed. We will be re-opening submissions later this spring. Keep an eye out. Thanks for understanding!
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Saturday, May 3, 2014

From David Tomas Martinez's poem "Forgetting Willie James Jones"

Poem of the Week:   
David Tomas Martinez                
David Tomas Martinez 

1.

(from the poem "Forgetting Willie James Jones")


It's not water to wine to swallow harm,
though many of us have,

and changing the name
of Ozark Street to Willie Jones Street,
won't resuscitate,

won't expose how the sun roars across rows of faces
at the funeral for a seventeen-year-old-boy,

won't stop the double slapping
of the screen door against a frame,
causing a grandmother, by habit, to yell out, Willie.

It can't deafen the trophies in a dead teenager's room.
That day in '94 I felt strong.

I walked down the street with nickel bags of weed
in the belt loops of my Dickies,

and a bandana strung from my pocket.

That's when I thought trouble could be run from,
could be avoided by never sitting
with your back to the door
or near a window.

I swore by long days and strutted along a rusted past,
shook dice and smoked with the boys

that posted on the corners:
and men cruising in coupes, men built so big
they took up both seats,
I rode with them that summer.

That was the season death walked alongside us all,
wagging its haunches and twisting its collared neck
at a bird glittering along a branch.

Willie was shot in that heat,
with a stolen pistol,
in the front yard of a party.

It poked a hole
no bigger than a pebble
in his body.

The shooters came from my high school:
we sometimes smoked in the bungalow
bathrooms during lunch.

A few weeks before Willie got shot,
Maurice had been killed--

An awning after rain,
Maurice and Willie
sagged from the weight.

Some say it is better
to be carried by six
than judged by twelve.

Some say the summer of '94
in Southeast San Diego
was just another summer.


-David Tomas Martinez

Used by permission.
From Hustle (Sarabande Books, 2014)

David Tomas Martinez's work has been published or is forthcoming in Forklift, Ohio, Poetry InternationalGulf CoastDrunken BoatRHINOAmpersandCaldera Review,Verse JunkiesCalifornia Journal of PoeticsToe Good, and others. Martinez has been featured or written about in Poets & WritersHoustonia MagazineHouston Art & Culture,Houston ChronicleSan Antonio Express NewsBorder VoicesBuzzfeed, and NBC Latino. He is a Ph.D. candidate in the University of Houston's Creative Writing program, with an emphasis in Poetry. Martinez is also the Reviews and Interviews Editor for Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts, and a CantoMundo Fellow. His debut collection of poetry, Hustle, will be released May 13, 2014by Sarabande Books.
***

 
We strive to preserve the text formatting of poems over e-mail, but certain e-mail programs may distort how characters, fonts, indents, and line wraps appear.
View the poem on our site.
 
Please feel free to forward Split This Rock Poem of the Week widely. We just ask you to include all of the information in this email, including this request. Thanks!
  
If you are interested in reading past poems of the week, feel free to visit the blog archive.  
Poem of the Week Open Call Closed 

Split This Rock's Poem of the Week series is currently closed. We will be re-opening submissions later this spring. Keep an eye out. Thanks for understanding!
Support Split This Rock 

Please support Split This Rock, the national network of activist poets. Donations are fully tax-deductible. 

Click here to donate. Or send a check payable to "Split This Rock" to: Split This Rock, 1112 16th Street NW, Suite 600, Washington, DC 20036. Many thanks!

Contact info@splitthisrock.org for more details or to become a sponsor.

Split This Rock