The Baobab Tree by Rachel Sawaya

You know he is there, standing

in a field, like all the others,

but he is not like them.

The children do not eat his leaves,

or sugar coat his pulpy fruit.

His trunk has not been stripped

by women hoping to calm

a fever. He cannot soothe you.

He can only hold you after

your last shred is torn away.



You were told anyone can visit him,

as long as they are respectful.

You let

lost and found on the b train in winter by Walter Bjorkman

i
first heard the rumble, felt the roar, before i was born
in my mother�s own cave, on her doctor�s way
i first saw the white porcelain straps, felt the frayed straw seats
smelled the wet drying wool before i was one year of age

record
snow the christmas eve three months before my birth
then every month thereafter � i rode the rails in that womb
while dirt-crusted plowed snowdrifts piled to

A whimper after the bang by Emily Manger

Tenderness scorched from the planet
but she's got it, baby
strong as the cockroach and faded as a fable
she chews preserved meat open-mouthed
and when she declares
around the pride of survival
that she used to be a vegetarian
you can almost see
eyelashes gentle as tattered lace
nobody's beautiful
but in the arctic solitude of a crumpled climate
she slings that shotgun over her shoulder
like

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By Nishikant Tiwari

Romantic hindi poem

Carl Sandburg: I Wish I Never

Having read poems by Carl Sandburg in my elementary school English classes, I was not a fan. "Fog" was a cute little thing. I still recall a teacher using it to teach us personification.

The fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

His poem "Chicago" was in at least two anthologies in school and we read that too.
It begins:

Hog Butcher for the World,
Tool maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation�s Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders:
They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your
painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys...

Other than those painted women, it didn't interest me very much.

Then, in high school, I read "Mag" without knowing it was by Sandburg. It was bitter. It kind of shocked me. No curse words, but so cutting.

Mag

I wish to God I never saw you, Mag.
I wish you never quit your job and came along with me.
I wish we never bought a license and a white dress
For you to get married in the day we ran off to a minister
And told him we would love each other and take care of each other
Always and always long as the sun and the rain lasts anywhere.
Yes, I'm wishing now you lived somewhere away from here
And I was a bum on the bumpers a thousand miles away dead broke.
     I wish the kids had never come
     And rent and coal and clothes to pay for
     And a grocery man calling for cash,
     Every day cash for beans and prunes.
     I wish to God I never saw you, Mag.
     I wish to God the kids had never come.


It was first published in his collection Chicago Poems (1916). This volume, along with Cornhuskers (1918) and Smoke and Steel (1920), established Sandburg's reputation as a talented free verse poet, known for portraying industrial America.

I suppose the obvious prompt from the poem is about marriage. Too obvious.

What struck me about the poem initially is the negative wishing. I was more used to reading poems where the wishes were for things in the future. Good things. Better things. But Sandburg is wishing to change the past. To undo what was done.

Your task this month is to write a poem about a negative wish (or wishes) - a wish to undo, wishes that change the past. Those are the wishes that pull you right back to the present and have you thinking about the future.

Submission Deadline: August 31, 2014

Agnus Dei by Marty Smith

I carried the lamb in a sack on my horse

the tongue hanging grey and limp.

It�s buggered, said Dad, throw it in the
creek.

The creek leaped, dimpled. Small bubbles

whirled, it rumpled where I was looking

the water shadowed half-blue-black



deep just there with duckweed floating out

the yards behind all noise, the

A simple little school dress

I love the simple style
of these check school dresses.
They look lovely on my granddaughter
     who is five
A pretty and practical design.

The yellow check is not often seen
in my local area
so I ordered on line
I bought three.
     One to wear,
          one in the wash
     and one ready to wear.

I know they will wash well
and keep their fresh look
as long as my daughter in law
     doesn�t throw the jeans
          in the wash as well.



Taken from an online review of a Marks & Spencer Classic Checked Dress, posted on 17th May 2014. Submitted by Uschi Gatward.