Poems for Persons of Interest

  It's the start of the Labour Day (or, if you like, Labor Day) long weekend here in North America , and we're celebrating with another contest. Like all our contests, it's a 50/50,  meaning half of the (modest) entry fee goes to the winner and the other half goes to PFPOI's hardworking but penurious staff. Which means if you think you have a winning poem, it's to your benefit to cajole your friends, relatives, colleagues and acquaintances into entering too. How do you enter? Glad you asked! Between  7:00 PM EDT, August 29  and  7:00 AM EDT, August 31 : Send a word doc or pdf with one or more poems, each no longer than 50 lines, about work (broadly construed) to  poemsforpoi@gmail.com .  This part is tricky, so pay attention: The submission fee for the  first poem  you submit is  $5 CANADIAN.  The fee for each additional poem is  $2 CAN . So if you submit 5 poems, the fee is $13 CAN. Send the fee via PayPal to  poemsf...

Peace from the Ashes For Hiroshima, eighty years after   And so it was— The sun, jealous of itself, Split in two above Shima. It bloomed: A second coming of silence, Without trumpets nor angels, But a shrine of screaming light— Even silence had pores to bleed from. Children’s laughter froze mid-breath. Bone-chimes shattered into shadow-scrolls. Cicadas shrieked like red-lipped sirens. Peace was not born that day. Peace was a barefoot girl— Ghost-skin unraveling— Cradling her brother’s ribs Like reed flutes Blown by breathless gods. She limped across the red river Where koi turned belly-up, Like censored verses Scribbled in soot. They called it Little Boy. It spoke in the accent of an orphaned sun. Mothers embraced dust. Fathers swallowed fire. Yet we define peace in palaces, On parchment. Peace is a ghost Learning to dance in bone shoes, Haunting alleyways Where laughter forgot its echo. O Hiroshima— First psalm of t...

Peacely Reparations for Imaobong War is to men what childbirth is to women. E.P. Bali   call : Childbirth is a war, but at least the enemy cries when it arrives.   response: Your first scream outshouted the mortars.   call: I cut your cord like rope off a rebel’s throat.   response: You breathed like a god entering its mask.   call: Milk is peace, but peace bites when the child grows teeth.   response: Still, I gave. Even when peace ran dry.   call: I held you the way I held my brother's corpse, tight, so it wouldn’t fall twice.   call: A baby is a war without bullets. Does it not come after your name & sleep?     response: Does it not break you then call you Mother?   call: You sucked my breast like it owed you reparations.   response: And since the soil refused to grow anything but graves, I paid in blood and bodywater.   call: Each night...

Shells after June Jordan You came with shells. And left them: shells .   Everyday I listen for the sea inside me. Some days, it pulses, Most days, the tides Never come back . The war I was trained for had moved underground. No more sirens, Only the scars from dying in installments. I’ve outlived so many orders. Eat. Work. Sleep. Swallow. Don’t ask: Shells There’s no ceasefire in a body that keeps waking. From what law do you judge a soul that pays no allegiance to a god? The universe says: survive. But never says how. I light matches in the open, in the greening wheat field; so no one else can say they lit the fire, so I can feel the burn belongs to me. Peace is the moment I don't aim at myself in the mirror.

A Lesson from a Dove From jungle lushness to the rolling plains, A sanctuary for life, both great and small. Cardinals, hummingbirds, and doves call it home, but the planet fades with passing time.   Through storms of sorrow and floods of war; Fields burn, skies weep, and hunger gnaws. Bitter cries echo near and far, Silencing the hummingbird, dimming the cardinal’s fire.   Shadows stretch as dusk descends, Darkness dances with the sun Like in the days of Noah, when waters swallowed earth, Life ground against ruin, desperate for survival.   Then came the dove, returning with an olive branch. A sign of receding floods, a whisper of hope. She had no voice, no words to utter, Yet her act spoke louder than any tongue.   The dove bore a branch of peace, Marking the end of storms, the arrival of calm. Much can be debated, much can be said, But wisdom finds its lessons in quiet gestures.   That day, the dove was more th...