Dd. Spungin

Solid Pistachio Shells

Dd. Spungin

At a moment’s notice, I can become The Hulk

So say my grandsons, unused to my scaly green outbursts

Nutcracker in hand, I conquer the almond

Its willingness to capitulate to my touch, a gift

In the supermarket aisle, needed items sit atop the highest shelf

Smaller now but caneless,

I need to choose:

Call for help or bypass my desire

It isn’t just the daily routines that turn me angry green

Ignorance can do it

Sometimes long lines of traffic

The late payment unforgiven

Talk of my patience has not been greatly exaggerated

But there is that limit:

The shell that refuses to crack

The burnt pot

Any declaration of war.

 

The Summer Gazebo Readings are held each Monday evening at 7pm in June, July & August. Each evening 4-5 authors and poets share their work from our Gazebo on Schoolhouse Green in Oceanside, NY. SGR is produced by the Kiwanis Club of Oceanside. Funds raised through sponsorships help send underprivileged kids to Kamp Kiwanis each summer. This summer marks our 7th season!

Lynn Cohen

Nostalgia
Lynn Cohen

Watching “Midnight in Paris”
I suffer nostalgia:
live in my past;
you in times that never have been.

I travel back in your life;
remember another lover you found
years after she left
because she was too young
for the passion you wanted.

Wandering the Paris Pontes
I pass a miniature Statue of Liberty
see all join the banks of the Seine.

Paris in the rain
suits me well
I do not need a parapluie;
I just want another time:
The twenties of Eliot, Fitzgerald, Hemingway and Stein.

The Summer Gazebo Readings are held each Monday evening at 7pm in June, July & August. Each evening 4-5 authors and poets share their work from our Gazebo on Schoolhouse Green in Oceanside, NY. SGR is produced by the Kiwanis Club of Oceanside. Funds raised through sponsorships help send underprivileged kids to Kamp Kiwanis each summer. This summer marks our 7th season!

George Held

Under the Escalator
George Held

I want to go all the way
around on the escalator
to slip under the plate
at the bottom and turn
topsy-turvy in that
chamber below floor
level where it rolls
under itself and climbs
back to the top where
I’ll come out of the
crack under the plate
and start all over again
unless the trolls who
control the machinery
in that chamber under
the floor exact a toll
from me that I can’t
pay, since I’m upside
down and unable to
reach my bills or coin
and they imprison me
in that dark chamber
forever to hear those
metal stairs whine and
those rubber railings
sigh in their grooves
as all the customers
silently, sullenly ride
over me, my screams
drowned out by that
indifferent machinery.

The Summer Gazebo Readings are held each Monday evening at 7pm in June, July & August. Each evening 4-5 authors and poets share their work from our Gazebo on Schoolhouse Green in Oceanside, NY. SGR is produced by the Kiwanis Club of Oceanside. Funds raised through sponsorships help send underprivileged kids to Kamp Kiwanis each summer. This summer marks our 7th season!

Pat Roth

Finish Line

Pat Roth

 

Night at the Races-K of C

Need a winner-let it be me

Put my money on “Sandy’s Hope”

Did I win? – NOPE!

I have no luck but I have true wealth

‘cause I still have family, friends and health

 

The Summer Gazebo Readings are held each Monday evening at 7pm in June, July & August. Each evening 4-5 authors and poets share their work from our Gazebo on Schoolhouse Green in Oceanside, NY. SGR is produced by the Kiwanis Club of Oceanside. Funds raised through sponsorships help send underprivileged kids to Kamp Kiwanis each summer. This summer marks our 7th season!

Maria Lisella

At last
Maria Lisella

we killed them, destroyed
the wasp nest, so formidable, dangerous.
So old I thought. The exterminator announced
the process complete. If the wasps had not
buzzed around my tiny 90-year-old mother,
they could have dwelled in peace.
Once they went into attack mode, they left me
no choice. Entwined by morning glories
twirling up the railings, tendrils tossing
from the roof, a lone wasp whips
so close to my cheek I feel its two pairs of wings,
a survivor searching for home.

The Summer Gazebo Readings are held each Monday evening at 7pm in June, July & August. Each evening 4-5 authors and poets share their work from our Gazebo on Schoolhouse Green in Oceanside, NY. SGR is produced by the Kiwanis Club of Oceanside. Funds raised through sponsorships help send underprivileged kids to Kamp Kiwanis each summer. This summer marks our 7th season!

Patricia Beckerman

WOMANDANCE

Patricia Beckerman

Through the sacred dance...

I will be still an instant, and go home.

Embattled hearts clash, bleed, and retreat....

Yet I can find a fountain flowing sweet, on this battleground!

The floods and quakes induce the Mother's labor

And I birth my

Self

And feel the birth pangs moving through my feet.

I will be still an instant, and go home.

And reach the sunlit eye of any storm.

A prison can imprison only form!

Let there be light!

While Mother Earth's sap pulses through my limbs this dancing night,

While sister-hearts are gathered

We are free to take a flight

Through ecstasy...

Into blissfulness!

As suns a billion bright

Might shine away the night!

We rise, we fall, we twirl

We whirl like dervishes...

And while we let the moonbeams spin us

Our planet spins within us

We celebrate this earth-space

And our dancing clears a birthplace

Of the spirit!

Let it dance,

Let it flow...

While it's flowing,

Let us know:

We are stillness in the center of a whirlwind of adverture!

In the center of you, I discover there's me!

Let us dance tonight, ladies,

Let us dance....

....and be free!

 

The Summer Gazebo Readings are held each Monday evening at 7pm in June, July & August. Each evening 4-5 authors and poets share their work from our Gazebo on Schoolhouse Green in Oceanside, NY. SGR is produced by the Kiwanis Club of Oceanside. Funds raised through sponsorships help send underprivileged kids to Kamp Kiwanis each summer. This summer marks our 7th season!

Harriet Slaughter

Boston Marathon

Harriet Slaughter

They stood behind the barricades
Runners in motion, legs outstretched.
A tempest boom bursts upon the scene,
Another in quick succession.

Spattered blood, spreading limbs
Line the street of runner’s dreams,
A dark, ghostly finish.

Our hearts heave in pain for those who lost
In an endless cycle of violence
Harbored deep in crevices of twisted minds
Making another grandstand debut.

The Summer Gazebo Readings are held each Monday evening at 7pm in June, July & August. Each evening 4-5 authors and poets share their work from our Gazebo on Schoolhouse Green in Oceanside, NY. SGR is produced by the Kiwanis Club of Oceanside. Funds raised through sponsorships help send underprivileged kids to Kamp Kiwanis each summer. This summer marks our 7th season!

Tim W. Brown

Heart
is a Drum

Tim W. Brown

"I
want I want I want"
is
a refrain you will hear
if
you listen close enough.
Its
source is the heart:
a
beat is heard as blood
reverberates
in ears, pulse
is
felt inside the wrist.
It's
a two-step rhythm that
everyone,
even the unmusical,
has
a feel for, vibrations
propelling
us on a march
in
this parade called life.
It
echoes and resonates
through
the chest cavity,
attuning
the listener with
just
how big and hollow,
like
a bass drum, we are,
how
much we ache to fill
the
world with our noise.

The Summer Gazebo Readings are held each Monday evening at 7pm in June, July & August. Each evening 4-5 authors and poets share their work from our Gazebo on Schoolhouse Green in Oceanside, NY. SGR is produced by the Kiwanis Club of Oceanside. Funds raised through sponsorships help send underprivileged kids to Kamp Kiwanis each summer. This summer marks our 7th season

Narges Rothermel

Don’t Give Up On Me

Narges Rothermel

 

I heard you say, I am not worthy of your time

I heard you say, “Wasting the space is a crime”

I heard you say, you are giving up on me

Don’t, I am on a crossroad of survival, you see

My father has not given up trying

My mother still hoping, she still is trying

The land I am born in struggling to open her heart

Acceptance by my countrymen is still, very hard

Not quite welcome at all desirable sites

Being different, repels so many God given rights

I’ve heard God created man in his image

I’ve heard a million forms of this message

Mom told me Jesus’ skin had a shade of brown

He became Jesus for every country and each town,

He became Jesus for every race, yellow red or brown

even for the ones with fair-skin and golden crown

Mom told me I’m also a child of God

when I’m among his other children, I hear the silent shout

Being poor and different makes me stand alone, and stand Out

Its odd that many still don’t see me as a child of The Only God

Like God’s other children I need to fit in. I need to survive

I too, yearn to exist. I too, need to dream I too, need to thrive

My dear teacher, I know you find it hard to cope

But you and this class are the only roads to my Hope

Invest in my future now, so you and your child

don’t have to face me when anger makes me wild

so, you don’t have to house me in windowless cells,

so you don’t have to buy iron-doors, alarms, and the bells

Perhaps spending some of your time, is the key

So, you don’t have to cage my child or me

in the other side of barbed-wire-fences

Please, try to see me with a pair of new lenses

My teacher, don’t condemn me and how I behave

Help me to be Brave in the Land of the Brave

Help me to feel Free in the Land of the Free

My dear teacher, Please, don’t Give Up On Me! 

 

The Summer Gazebo Readings are held each Monday evening at 7pm in June, July & August. Each evening 4-5 authors and poets share their work from our Gazebo on Schoolhouse Green in Oceanside, NY. SGR is produced by the Kiwanis Club of Oceanside. Funds raised through sponsorships help send underprivileged kids to Kamp Kiwanis each summer. This summer marks our 7th season  

 

Vicki Iorio

Brooklyn Invaded, 1969

 

When the astronauts took the moon

Nonna, broken by English,

heard the radio announcer say

the man in the moon landed in Brooklyn.

 

Windows were shut on that hot July day.

Hiding in the closet, Nonna breathed in

the musk of her dead husband

and said prayers for capture.

 

Granddaughter, dripping chlorine on the rug,

took Nonna's hand, sat her down on the ancient bed,

laughed piano keys and explained America.

 

Vicki Iorio