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Poetry

The Time Capsule Somewhere behind the mock mahogany, in the forty-year-old dark, cold and webbed like memory, sleeping in the basement under my parents’ kitchen, a treasure map waits to be unfolded in the light. To touch it might make it flake to pieces,

MICHAEL ANGELOTTI, EDITOR

A Woman of Long Days She feels the bones of a shape she has not known for years. The days, usually too tight, seem stretched to fit, and now, alone at the beach for a week, there is room. At sunrise, dwarfed by the dunes, she still can feel herself expand. The tides sweep away the voices of husband and children. She photographs the tracks of a sandpiper, ropes of seaweed splayed on a rock, knows suddenly she is tired, and rests without apology. On a postcard she writes: “Here the days are long enough to notice if I am happy or not.” She takes pictures of sunset, sleeps, then wakes at midnight, to study the night sky, a darkroom, for developing her life, for bathing it in time.

to open it I might break completely. Like the perfumed letter a girl in skates once gave me, this map is a mystery whose key leads to things I’ve long forgotten. Written in a time before life began running like a car in a closed garage, its ink may have faded altogether. But I suspect that in the breath of years, it has kept, and that were I to see it now, it would, like the face in the ice rink, show lines that I was sure I knew and could have drawn once. And following what the map says, I would walk to the field where the girl and I had planned to meet and where later, later, I’d buried a tin coffee can full of all the things I thought important. We were to have met at the carnival, that much I remember. It came each spring, as sure as the flowers on all the trees. Aside from her letter, I can’t recall what I put in the can, but I like to think, from this distance, that it contains something sad and yet hopeful, like seeing one’s home, as though for the first time, from a Ferris wheel. —Gary J. Whitehead

At dawn she snaps her footprints so they will not disappear.

GARY J. WHITEHEAD teaches English at Tenafly High

—Gail Kadison Golden

School in Tenafly, New Jersey. His work has previously appeared in The Christian Science Monitor and Yankee, and he is the author of Climbing the Tree of Heaven Back Down to Earth.

GAIL KADISON GOLDEN is a poet and psychotherapist. Her work has appeared in a variety of journals including The Baltimore Review, Vision, and Eureka Literary Magazine. She resides in New City, New York.

English Journal

Copyright © 2002 by the National Council of Teachers of English. All rights reserved.

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Burn All the Poems!

Mary (sea of bitterness)

Bring on the scissors and bring on the knives; All the words that fall like daggers on me— Scatter them through windows and sweep them through doors, Lest I be reminded of what used to be. Pierce them with plowshares and pelt them with rocks, Every word that plunged through steel and through bone, Every word that once whispered to me, Lest I be reminded of what used to be. Die, all you poets; see them cower in their beds; Bring me their heads so still and so mute; Nail down the coffins, cast them out to the sea, Every poet that once whispered to me. Give me no hearts growing cold, No eyes growing dim, No shining soliloquy; Give me no sad songs still wet with fresh tears, Heap them high like dead bodies till its ashes I see, Lest I be reminded of what used to be. Hurl them fast into ovens, every syllable, please; Set them all ablaze, every “How do I love thee.” Say that he was a fool, say that I was unwise, Out of the green pools of memory, I rise; Give me no grief stricken hours, no letters, no flowers, Love will come soon enough to me; Wrap me in sunlight and satins and lace, Lest I be reminded of what used to be. How like a sword of steel is a poem, to shield us from the blows of love’s decline; How like a song is a poem with passions flowing in three-quarter time; How like a breath of spring, who comes in with her perfumed hair; How like a hat to hide behind when sorrow fills the air. But give me no sad songs, no birds in the tree, No tides in their glory rushing in to the sea, No words that fall cold and dead or, for sure, I’ll be reminded of my love once more.

she was anger— a constant state of “pissed off ”

—Joan Geller

A former English teacher, JOAN GELLER is a librarian at Brandeis High School in New York City.

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novem b er 2 0 0 2

brought on by Nothing brought on by Everything & this was her wrestling with life her drowning in all that she had to do an irrefutable denial of what others said, what others tried to make her be, feel, say; it was her permanent mask her shield of distaste & fidelity & despite her committed role her determined histrionics we could see her eyes looking out from behind that façade; they were a young woman’s eyes cautiously watching childhood, adulthood and we tried to trust the eyes— to ignore the shrill voice from her young mouth bitter as an orange peel hiding the sweetness of fruit —P. L. Thomas

P. L. THOMAS teaches English at Woodruff High School in Woodruff, South Carolina, and serves as lead instructor for the Spartanburg Writing Project’s summer institute.

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September 11

Poem by Daniel John "True Story" True Story

Find Comfort In golden heart shaped leaves Firethorn bushes ablaze Yellowing willows Pines cupping their branches

truth is a pile of bones helter-skelter in the street

In sun swathed fields The slender curve of white birch Waving grasses near sunlit ponds Wispy Milkweed pods Find Comfort In early morning dew Rose streaked sunrise Autumn showers Purple hills rising from the mist In Mesozoic rocks of ages Lichen covered Shale and granite Amethyst quartz Find Comfort

Available in printed issue only

all true but some go to another dinosaur choose a skeleton suscitate those bones into a story you can ride into town cry hear ye hear ye and be believed fiction is the breath of truth be honest breathe —Daniel John © 2002 Daniel John

—Eleanor K. Haugh DANIEL JOHN is a gardener and landscape designer, as well ELEANOR K. HAUGH is English Department Supervisor at

as a poet, writer, actor, and playwright. He resides in Brookline, Massachusetts.

Summit High School, Summit, New Jersey.

African American Read-In Scheduled for February, Black History Month On Sunday and Monday, February 2 and 3, NCTE will join the NCTE Black Caucus in sponsoring the fourteenth national African American Read-In Chain. This year’s goal is to have at least one million Americans across the nation reading works by African American writers on February 2 at the designated hour of 4:00 p.m. EST, 3:00 CST, 2:00 MST and 1:00 PST. Monday, February 3, is the date designated for read-ins in schools. The event is an opportunity for schools, libraries, community organizations, businesses, and interested citizens to make literacy a significant part of Black History Month by hosting and coordinating read-ins. These activities may range from bringing together family and friends to share a book to staging public readings and media presentations featuring African American writers. For further information, write Dr. Jerrie C. Scott, National Coordinator, African American Read-In, College of Education, ICL-320-C Ball Hall, University of Memphis, Memphis, TN 38152; or Dr. Sandra E. Gibbs, NCTE Coordinator, Associate Executive Director, Federal Relations and Urban Education, 1111 W. Kenyon Road, Urbana, IL 61801-1096. Send e-mail requests to [email protected].

English Journal

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