Sample poems

 

 

Frog

 

A green frog with orange

and black eyes stares

at me from behind the folds

of a green leaf.

 

It is two dimensional

and I wait for it

to round and wet

and make a sound I can hear.

 

Behind the leaf its soft

and pale green

body expands

with breath

 

as within its visible

mouth a tongue

is coiled, it waits

to eat, it is hungry.

 

There are suction cup

fingers on the frog’s

orange hands,

it grips the falling away leaf.

 

It waits to leap

frogs leap

and it is a frog.

 

I having nothing

like this on my hands,

nothing orange, no suction

but I grip and grip.

 

If I could keep you

from leaving would I

keep you? would I want you

here in this still water mosquito land?

 

I don’t want to wonder:

stay, I say,

grab hold a leaf, this leaf,

green and coming into life.

 

Grab hold never mind

the look in your orange black eyes,

never mind your pale

green body expanding with breath.

 

Stay i say

grab hold

grab hold

grab hold.

 

 

Petals

Öykü, age 10, learns English

 

In the schoolroom the girls

are given flowers

and this petaled warning: English only.

 

They are made to understand

that with each misspoken word

one petal will be pulled,

 

one petal is pulled with each

forbidden utterance,

with each appearance of the natal tongue.

 

As she utters and misspeaks 

the petals are pulled free

as promised, one by one,

 

she feels each pulled petal

as though skin or tissue,

thinly living, wet

 

(she has seen her brother

pull the wings from butterflies

neatly, with a quick tear).

 

One by one the petals are pulled

and let fall to floor

where she is not to touch them,

 

but later, secretly, she finds each one

where it lies, she hides them neatly

in the folds of her dress,

 

and when no one is looking —

sweet on her tongue and tender,

she eats them.