Illuminated Ink

Edited by Susan Brennan

The Split This Rock Poetry Festival took place this past March in Washington DC. “Celebrating this nation’s great tradition of witness and resistance” is the call to pens for this new, powerful organization. Poets, activists, workshops, panels and a march to the White House drew poets from around the nation to unite forces and exercise our freedom of speech. I’m proud to feature STR organizers, Sarah Browning, Regio Cabico and Melissa Tuckey. They energized a population of writers with both their passion for poetry and desire to see poetry in action. www.splitthisrock.org

Fingers, Hands, Gathering

I am a useless noise sometimes,
a sputtering pipe. Sometimes
a scratching pen or the slow
beat of a song gathering
in the fingers and hands and wrists
of a ten-year-old girl. The car
alarm, guard dog, siren, wail.
Sometimes I am bulbs in the little gardens,
sleeping the winter away in darkness.
The buds premature on the azaleas,
the city’s army of squirrels jitter
and clattering on rooftops.
Sometimes I go to sit among
the stones in the old cemetery.
Sometimes I am the stones, the gate,
the yew trees, the church, the dead
senators and judges and cabinet
secretaries. I smile or nod
to the men who tend the graves.
Sometimes I am the men
who cut the grass and tend the graves.

Sarah Browning is director of Split This Rock Poetry Festival. She is coeditor of D.C. Poets Against the War: An Anthology and coordinates the group of the same name. Her first book of poems, Whiskey in the Garden of Eden, was published by The Word Works in 2007. Read her blog at sarahbrowning.blogspot.com.

Spring Poem That Was Supposed To Be A Sestina

Living with another poet
can make you crazy

like the waiting list to use the computer

or the way he sneaks up behind you
to check
what’s on
the screen

You’re tempted to steal
each other’s metaphors

like the loose change hidden
in his crumpled trousers

Take the Dove
on our fire escape, who we’ve named Rita

and her babies: Paz, Bishop, Ai & Neruda

he wants Rita for an upcoming elegy
and I want them all for a spring sestina

You understand how difficult it is
developing allegories

with little money-

but we still drive in each other
a hard bargain

Regie Cabico appears on two seasons of HBO’s Def Poetry Jam and is anthologized in The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry and Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Cafe & Spoken Word Revolution, among others. He is a spoken word pioneer, having won top prizes in the 1993, 1994 & 1997 National Poetry Slams. He resides in Washington, DC where he is the artistic director of Sol & Soul and on the Executive Steering Committee for Split This Rock.

The Wheel

“We are the wheel to which we are bound.” —Frank Bidart

Animal therapists at a nearby zoo build
a treadmill for the elephant because
all he does is lay around

Even the bulbs this spring
bloom out of turn each one waiting
for the other to open

One exasperated soldier
to another: How can I demolish
the house of my enemy

the house is my own suffering
and inside the children
of my suffering multiply

Refrain

A cricket in the closet is the closest
I’ve come to home I leave
the windows open nothing comes inside

Late night birds carry the weight
of war I wake with alarm
instead of love

I tell you now I admit it I’m jealous
horses die and you bury them

but here on my street people disappear
without ceremony

Melissa Tuckey is a literary activist and poet living in Washington, DC. Her chapbook, ”Rope as Witness,” is published by Pudding House Press. Her poems have appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Painted Bride Quarterly, Southeast Review, Terrain, Verse Daily, and others. She serves as Assistant Director of Split This Rock Poetry Festival and teaches in the Professional Writing Program at University of Maryland.