Red Letter Poem #227

 The Red Letters

 

In ancient Rome, feast days were indicated on the calendar by red letters.

To my mind, all poetry and art serves as a reminder that every day we wake together beneath the sun is a red-letter day.



––Steven Ratiner



SAVE THE DATE!



The fifth annual Red Letter LIVE! reading

will be held on Saturday, November 9th 2024

Robbins Library, Community Room, 700 Mass Ave, Arlington

1-3pm, with a reception to follow

Free, and all are welcome!



Featuring poets:



Danielle Legros Georges

Indran Amirthanayagam

Heather Treseler &

Steven Ratiner



with a musical performance by clarinetist

Todd Brunel



***If you’re in the Boston area, we’d love to see you there

A flyer is attached with artist biographies



Hosted by

Steven Ratiner and Jean Flanagan





Red Letter Poem #227


Foretold

July 4, 2024


The white sheet I dreamed

floating over us: for sleep

or was it shroud



cloud of un-



We should have known

when they called him Our

David (adultery/murder), Our

Cyrus (not one of us but)



We should

have heard King



Two more tanks!

he said in the dream

as if he were ordering coffee



Retribution



They gave him the right

to remain



––Martha Collins







Sometimes we’ll wake in a lather from a disturbing dream, and quickly dismiss its threat: just the unconscious having a Chicken Little-panic attack––and the sky is certainly not falling. But other times, opening our eyes, we’ll find the residue of the dream still vivid and terrifying, leaving us to grasp the full measure of what seems to be our prophetic imagination. On July 1st this past summer, in the matter of Trump v.United States, our nation’s highest court ruled that the President of this Republic has a near-blanket immunity from criminal prosecution for “official” acts. For the first time in our 250-year history, this seems to put our chief executive beyond the rule of law. With a Constitutional interpretation like this, a would-be tyrant could nullify an election, foment an armed insurrection, and simply refuse the peaceful transfer of power that has been the very hallmark of our democracy––all by framing his actions as part of his ‘official responsibilities.’ Quite a nightmare scenario. So it is no surprise that, just a few days later (and on the anniversary of this nation’s birth), Martha Collins found herself grappling with the latter. Martha––a poet whose artistic antenna is remarkably sensitive, attuned to both the outer machinations of our society as well the inner voice of conscience––took a bit of her nighttime terror and turned it into this brief but chilling poem.



It almost seems unnecessary to reintroduce Martha Collins in these electronic pages. Poet, translator, educator, cultural advocate, Martha is simply one of the most honored American literary talents writing today. She published her eleventh volume of poetry, Casualty Reports, with the Pitt Poetry Series in October 2022. The collection just prior to that, Because What Else Could I Do, is a wrenching response to the death of her husband; it won the Poetry Society of America’s William Carlos Williams Award. Her trilogy about race and racism in America remains a monumental examination of our society’s most bitter fault lines and the source of our national grief. Other honors include fellowships from the NEA, the Bunting Institute, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, and the Witter Bynner Foundation, as well as prizes too numerous to detail in this small space.



As her readers have come to expect, her poems exploring societal turmoil involve neither political rant nor emotional histrionics. They are carefully-wrought, musically-restrained verse––and thus their power is derived from the small modulations of tone and attention, drawing us into her unfolding vision. Here, she opens with an unimposing image––a white sheet floating above us––but we are unsure of whether this is simply part of the bedclothes or something from the tomb. The aural quality of the poem is, by turns, comforting (those chiming words like shroud and cloud, dreamand remain) and unsettling (oh, that burgeoning phrase cloud of un-, lopped off at the prefix!). And when supporters of the former President attempt to cloak him with the dignity of Biblical allusion (David. . .Cyrus. . .,) the poet punctures the pretense by calling out what they really seem to be proposing: a King, governing by fiat, and no longer subject to the will of the people. At the most crucial moment, the poem seizes us with one simple and simply devastating image: Two more tanks!/ he said in the dream/ as if he were ordering coffee. Indeed, we need not strain at deducing this individual’s political intent––the candidate has laid it all out in televised speeches. Machines of war. . .directed against one’s political enemies or legal protests of the citizenry––painful to even contemplate. But it is the casualness with which he makes these suggestions that ought to make us tremble. We’ve seen such scenes played out in banana republics and thought ourselves immune. Will Martha’s dream prove to be exaggerated fear or prophetic warning? Her quiet jeremiad takes this candidate at his word and prompts us to reexamine our own responsibilities. We must imagine what such an America would be like––not simply for ourselves but the generations that come after us. Unless, that is, we preempt that nightmare and use our electoral voices to insist on another narrative. Will our beloved country wake up in time? The answer will be arriving shortly.

 

 

 

 

Red Letters 3.0

 

* If you would like to receive these poems every Friday in your own in-box – or would like to write in with comments or submissions – send correspondence to:

steven.arlingtonlaureate@gmail.com

 

 

* To learn more about the origins of the Red Letter Project, check out an essay I wrote for Arrowsmith Magazine:

https://www.arrowsmithpress.com/community-of-voices

 

and the Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene

http://dougholder.blogspot.com

 

* For updates and announcements about Red Letter projects and poetry readings, please follow me on Twitter           

@StevenRatiner

 

"Lunch in Chinatown" by Mary Bonina

REVIEW BY LEE VARON

Mary Bonina’s latest chapbook “Lunch in Chinatown” (Cervena Barva Press,2024), is a window into the lives of immigrants who come to this country seeking a new beginning. In her work as an ESL teacher Bonina taught English to adult students from all over the world .

I wish everyone in our country could read “Lunch in Chinatown” and have a glimpse at how hard those coming to the U. S. struggle to learn the language and culture and forge a fresh start— many fleeing unspeakable atrocities in their native lands. In “the makeshift classroom” at the edge of Chinatown in downtown Boston, Bonina met with her students.

As you can imagine, with students from all over the world , all trying to learn English, lessons often go off-topic and into interesting new areas . Or as Bonina writes “Someone always gets a discussion moving/ on a different track, a related subject,/ one that comes with its own set of problems.”

And sometimes Bonina, as teacher, becomes enthralled with the stories her students bring to class, as when Andre , one of the Haitian men in class, tells the story of when he met his wife in the streets of Port au Prince. You can almost feel the electrifying moment as : “He puts me on that bright street brimming with activity in Port / au Prince. I can see Giselle a young girl with her friends all standing / around her. They don’t giggle . They feign aloofness/ And Andre approaches the group, as he approaches his English class:/ shyly and respectfully. “

Or in the powerful poem , “Teaching the Past Tense” when all of her students chime in with the names of the countries where they came from: “Haiti. Guatemala. Ethiopia. China.”
A benign run of the mill lesson ends with the devastating stanza: “Hagos, the Ethiopian says — not somberly,/ just matter-of-factly—‘My country./ Lots of people dead.’”

Bonina has a wonderful ability to mix short lyrical lines with longer prose-like lines. This reminded me of the way so many of her lessons must have gone— some short and to the point and others discursive and taking many twists and turns .

One of the most moving poems was the title poem “Lunch in Chinatown.” In this poem one of Bonina’s students— Wei Wei— takes her arm as they walk , the day after Christmas, along the sidewalks “slippery with snow and ice.” Teacher and student are going to a restaurant to order Dim Sum—“The air was bitter cold ,/ smoky and scented with ginger and sesame,”.

Looking down, Bonina notices that her student “wore bright yellow summer shoes,/ like ballet shoes, but with hard soles.” Wei Wei, she learns, had “worked as a doctor / in China’s largest hospital.”
It seems that her fear of falling on the slippery sidewalks and holding onto Bonina is a metaphor for how these new immigrants hold onto these English language classes, and their teacher, to help negotiate living in their sometimes precarious and often confusing new world .

This is a richly imagistic and meaningful book of poems that speaks to our shared humanity beyond cultural and linguistic differences. Though only twenty- six pages, it is packed full of memorable vignettes that resonate long after we close its pages.

Lee Varon is the author of “My Brother is Not a Monster: A Story of Addiction and Recovery,” and “A Kid’s Book About Overdose.”
She is co-editor of “Spare Change News Poems: An Anthology by Homeless People and those Touched by Homelessness.”