Red Letter Poem #281

  

 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 

 

  

  

 

 

  

Red Letter Poem #281 

  

 

 

 

 Sexuality  

  

My sexual orientation is Spring. 

––Canadian poet Kyla Jamieson 

 

 

My sexual orientation is November, Morrissey, and Maundy Thursday.  It is the toes of luminous humans peeping out from summer sandals, from Birkenstocks and high heels.  Anglican chant and second-hand bookstores.  Making jokes at my own expense, because I am resilient and I love a good laugh. 

 

My sexuality is tragic: bane and blight instead of blessing and boon.  My sexuality is part of the Male Awkwardness Epidemic.  My groove, the thing that gets me off, is Dylan Thomas.  My kink is society, the myriad communions and communities that give me life, breath, hope.  My safe-words are Easy Does It, One Day at a Time, Next Right Thing.  I’m just another meatball in the sauce. 

 

My sexuality is tongue-tied: reticent and reckless, silly and submissive.  Not knowing which way is up, not caring.  It is all the practices to which I am loyal: prayer-beads, poems, daydreams of humiliation and ecstasy.  My orientation is often dis-.  It is the kneeling namaste I offer to churchmates and to poetfriends.  My creak-boned homage to their ineffable splendor.  My fumbling veneration of their light. 

 

My lovelorn yearnings have made High Honor Roll, have received a certificate of Approbation with Distinction.  My ten-thumbed loves, my wacky crushes: boys when I was in eighth grade, girls my senior year, nobody from my twenties to my forties.  Today, my benedictions fall upon the fluid and the non-conforming; my celibate codgerhood venerates their holy footprints. 

 

My heart’s desire, the music to which it dances, the song it sings to me even as I sleep, is to behold a friend, to hold them and be held by them, to kneel beside their feet and unwrap them like Christmas presents, to solace them with kisses and with tears. 

 

 

                       ––Thomas DeFreitas 

 

 

 

 

 

What could possibly be more fundamental than the right of any individual to define the territory of the self and defend the borders of the communal?  And yet we are seeing an intensified and widespread inclination in recent years: people who are hellbent (and I use that term mindful of its etymological roots) on usurping the legitimate privilege of others.  There are tyrants who unleash the brutality of their armies to try to determine––for a separate sovereign nation––what they would never wish to see prescribed for their own.  And there are some tyrannical ideologues who would oppress certain individuals simply for demanding the choice of how they should be referred to, or whom they might love.  So I was not surprised to see a poet like Thomas DeFreitas––who is fond of musically elaborate verse and philosophically audacious conceits––exercising his right to self-determination via a radical act of the imagination.  And because his approach is both playful and provocative, I think his poem “Sexuality” accrues a kind of persuasiveness capable of skirting the defenses of partisan belief and rational argument. 

 

Thomas’ decision to make this a prose poem (a hybrid form which––I remember one creative writing teacher explaining, back in my ancient college days ––“looks like prose but behaves like poetry”) was, to my mind, a fortuitous one.  Sentences and paragraphs feel much more domesticated than lines and stanzas, and so our minds begin reading ‘for content’ and not style, not the more subversive allure of lyricism and imagery.  Right from the opening ––“My sexual orientation is November, Morrissey, and Maundy Thursday.”––I found myself backpedaling a bit, surprised by where the speaker was leading me.  Still, I could not resist smiling at the alliterative flourish, and the incongruity of sexual orientation being defined by what, at first glance, seemed to be random associations: the autumnal season, a pop icon, the religious holiday.  But on my second go-around, I had to pause to reflect on the emotional amalgam that was teased out so deftly: we begin with the dim and moody skies of November; compound that with the dark humor and sexual longing from the Smiths’ former front man; and intensify the collage with mention of the pre-Easter celebration marking the occasion where Jesus first gave his disciples the Eucharist, pairing it with the “new commandment" to love one another.  (And in the current political climate, doesn’t that, too, feel like a revolutionary proposition?)  The surface playfulness belies the urgent purposefulness of what’s being conveyed.  The poem reveals and conceals––sometimes within the course of a line or two––and so we experience a kind of tentative tenderness mounting as we read.  How revealing can the speaker dare to be in print’s public forum?  How intimate can a stranger become, using only inky signs instead of touch? 

 

Thomas is no stranger, though, to the Red Letters, first appearing way back in 2020 when this poetry project was just underway.  His publisher, Kelsay Books, has issued four full-length poetry collections, including this year’s Walking Between the Raindrops.  A chapbook, Elegies & Devotions is in production.  Thomas’ style generally offers a more customary version of lyricism, but I’m always intrigued when he carves out a path into new territory.  The musicality is still present here (“…bane and blight instead of blessing and boon”).  But because he’s warned us––“My orientation is often dis-.”–– I was only too happy to buckle up and ride this emotional rollercoaster.  And despite the jagged twists and turns, in the end, who would not want to be ‘unwrapped like a Christmas present,’ to have some beloved friend ‘solace us with kisses and with tears?’  Of course, Thomas gets to answer for Thomas; Steven for Steven; you, gentle reader, for you.  Having paid the enormous fee to board this wild ride––our mortal vulnerability, our deepest attention––shouldn’t we each, at the very least, be able to determine what we’ll be called upon boarding, with whom we’ll share the experience, and how we will prepare ourselves for the conclusion when the rattling wheels come to a stop?  

 

 

 

 

The Red Letters 

 

* 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: 

Vijaya Sundaram: A Poet who reverberates and celebrates

   

As the publisher for the Ibbetson Street Press, I am glad that we are going to release a book of poetry titled " Reverberations" by former Medford Poet Laureate, and New England Poetry Club advisory board member Vijaya Sundaram. I caught up recently with Sundaram for an interview...

This collection of poetry embraces the senses with food , nature, etc... It is imbued with a sensibility of celebration even in the midst of loss. Explain.

Thank you, Doug. Yes, I cannot help but celebrate life, both the inner life of the imagination and spirit, and the outer life of the senses. Sometimes, I dwell morosely on death, and fondly contemplate Lao Tzu’s concept of Inaction, especially when I see how horribly our world is being treated by rapacious capitalists, climate change denialists, and genocidal maniacs. However, I also know that I cannot live in that mindscape, nor give in to despair – and that’s because my immediate, personal world is beautiful. I love everything – the trees whose green soothes me on jangled days, my dog’s snout, earnest and scientific as she inspects everything, my husband’s voice in the other room when he teaches Indian music, our offspring’s joyful presence in our lives, my own guitar and singing, the silly dog and cat reels online that distract me from human horrors, my students and our interactions when I teach, writing poetry, doing visual art, seeing the comedy in the midst of tragedy, seeing the kindness of friends, neighbors, strangers, the goodness of those who give freely, despite their own lack. Sorry, I’m getting carried away here! In short, yes, I celebrate life, even as I contemplate death.

Your father appears in the book, and he was quite the punster. ( My Dad was too) Do you think his play with words influenced your own work?

My Dad’s punning sensibilities definitely influenced all of us at home. He was always good for a chuckle, silly jokes, belly-heaving laughs. He was able to laugh through decades of pain, and taught us what it means to be fully human and experience moments of happiness in that way.

In my daily life, I pun in response to other punsters; I pun from time to time, but not necessarily for laughs, although there’s the accidental fun-pun. My husband Warren and offspring Sharada also pun. Warren is a brilliant and hilarious punster, himself. We all love punning – I guess a family that puns together stays together! However, I don’t think it influenced my written work, which tends to be more serious, and rarely indulges in puns.

It seems that your poems flow easily between the hard shell of the earth, and their transcendence from it. Explain. 

What a beautiful observation! For me, the membrane between the Seen and the Unseen is thin. I know I sound all mystical and super-Indian when I say it, but it’s always been true for me – I used to “see” things when I was young; the walls between my waking and dreaming worlds were osmotic. I am not an adherent of any particular spiritual belief or practice, except my own, self-generated, secret one. I know that life is an accident, and yet, in this amazing accident, we found consciousness, and developed morality, conscience, a spirit of inquiry. To me, that is the most breathtakingly magical thing, no matter how scientifically it can be explained – and yes, I love science, and prefer it to the mumbo-jumbo of religion, though religion can be compelling in its way for those who need it, and it cannot be slighted or denied.

So, going back to poetry, when I write, that “lift” from the mundane to the sublime writes itself into a poem – sometimes, I consciously try to subvert it, because it always wants to go there, but I end up surrendering to the impulse.

Getting back to food. I love Indian food. Whenever I have it I feel this strange sense of contentment...the curry speaks to me. Some people think food is trivial. Not you evidently! 

Ah, yes! I LOVE food. I think of it often. It’s terrible, because I have to now be careful, pay attention to my health and all that, as I edge slowly towards the abyss (I’m only half-kidding!)

Food is the ultimate comfort; it’s no surprise that some of us gain weight as we get older (I have!) – when the world seems to be going down the wrong tube, at least food is there to comfort and console, despite its dangers. Oh, and Indian food is the best – it wakes you up; it cozies up to your taste buds; it reminds you that life is worth living (even if it’s only for that half-hour or hour when you’re eating). It reminds you that the pleasures of the palate are things to rejoice in, to share. And it definitely gives one that “strange sense of contentment” as you so eloquently put it!

It seems we are so divorced from nature these days, but you seem to be one with it. Does your Hindu background contribute to this? You seem to have a love relationship with flowers, etc. 

Being out among trees, flowers, the woods, a pond – any and all of it has always made me feel as if I’m stepping out of my own narrowly defined self, stepping out of the borders of my body. I’m hopeless about remembering the names of various flowers; I have to look up books or the Internet to remind myself of their names. I do love flowers, but I wish I were a more disciplined gardener! Also, when I walk in the Fells, and trip over root systems on the slopes, I am struck time and again by how all those roots hold the earth together. When I read what Suzanne Simard wrote about trees, or when I read the research done by others about how mycelium works underground, connecting trees to each other, taking nutrients from mother trees to younger ones, I was, and am filled with a kind of holy awe. When I step on roots in the forest, I thank them, and offer thanks to the earth that’s holding them, and being held together by them. Sounds silly, yes? Nevertheless, I whisper my gratitude to them all (when people cannot hear me). I am always reminded that I am part of it. When I was young, I loved looking up at the gold and green of sunlit mango and neem trees around me, and wanting to become them, to become a sun-filled leaf or branch, or the whole tree. I used to read a lot of William Wordsworth, and his poems about nature are a deep part of my poetic DNA. Apart from that, I used to delve deep into Greek and Roman mythology as a pre-teen, and remember being quite struck by the myth of Daphne, who turned into a laurel tree trying to escape Apollo’s clutches. I also loved reading the story of Hyacinthus (another Apollo-struck victim, sort of), and Narcissus – both turning into flowers, the latter into a rather self-obsessed one, haha.

To answer your question, it’s not really a part of my Hindu background, though - or maybe, it’s part of some mystical part of my ancient Hindu background of which I might be unaware. Mostly, it comes from how I feel, and from absorbing poets like Wordsworth, Keats, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Christina Rossetti, Rabindranath Tagore, Oscar Wilde, Tennyson, and other writers who influenced me when I was young.

Why should we read your book?

I loved writing it, and love what’s in it, and want to share it with others. No, I don’t think it’s some sort of unseemly pride, or anything like that – just the need to share what I have seen, or been, or felt. Poets did that for me, and still do that for me. We need to emit what light we have, and absorb more poetry, more beauty, more love, more of the good parts of ourselves out in the world.

_____________________________________________________________________________

Seaweed

When everything's been said.

And yet, I haven't said it all.

Should I speak?

And why?

What need is there?

Surely it is silence I crave.

All this noise, a railing

Against encroaching night,

Drives a stake into my eyes.

Eyes closed at night,

I wonder and wonder.

Lines from Prez's "Lady Be Good" solo

Run around like rats in a maze

Within my forlorn cranium,

Where tangled thoughts,

And sudden sorrows

Float like detached balloons.

Recycled lines from songs

Pound against my dovetail joints,

So that the sutures threaten

To come undone.

If I speak, it is to reveal

And yet, I wish to stay secret –

A decorator crab, seen and unseen,

Covering its shell with seaweed and seaglass,

Hiding within its little garden,

Hoping not to be noticed,

And yet, decorating away.

The pull and push

The yearning and repulsion

The silence and the speech,

Keep me tied to this post.

Untie me, let me go free,

And when I let go,

I shall walk on the waves,

Then sink below, and I shall

Bury me in sand under the sea

So I will hear the heaving of the waves

The endless sigh, its rise and fall,

And the comings and goings

Of silent, secret creatures,

And be glad of the company.

There, the music will filter

Through my ears, and escape,

Like strands of seaweed,

Floating under a full moon

With shimmering algae.

Red Letter Poem #280

  

 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

 

 

 

 

 

 

Red Letter Poem #280

 

 

 

 

 Wise to the Sybil

 

 
Wise to the Sybil and my Nana

who at 90 wept God has forgotten me,

I don’t care to live forever.

That really sounds like hell.



But today, maybe. Gilded maples,

Blue sky, zephyrs teasing hair

on bare arms, the warbler’s sweet sweet

spiraling through a fall meadow––



if time stops, let it stop now.

I’d ask everyone I love to join me

at the event horizon, my old dog too,

snoozing and drooling beside



a water bowl––did you know the dogs

of war were real, trained by Saxons

to gut men in a shield wall? And I almost

wrote, “Blue sky, trees a living fire,”



but what a pestilential image now.

I try to banish war from my day,

but like a spaniel nosing the pillow

about to jump in bed with you––



the Sunday paper full of children who

won’t fuss another hour, their seasons

dust, skies a terror, wells a target––

it’s ready to be comfortable as hell.

 

 

                          ––Joyce Peseroff

                                   

 

 

“The Sibyl, with frenzied mouth uttering things not to be laughed at, unadorned and unperfumed, yet reaches to a thousand years with her voice by aid of the god.” So writes Heraclitus in 500 BCE. And what started out as a single prophetess––the Oracle at Delphi––grows to at least ten by the dawn of the Common Era, scattered throughout Greece, Italy, and Asia Minor. Today’s poem, from the estimable Joyce Peseroff, poses the most challenging sorts of questions and seems to call out for divine intervention. Can life remain worthwhile once you’ve witnessed the abundance of suffering (both personal and societal) that seems ever-present? In many faith traditions––and at the core of humanist belief––life is the ultimate good. As a boy, I remember the quiet joy in my own grandmother’s voice at family gatherings when she’d say, raising a glass: l’chaim, to life. But if life’s vitality is paramount, then suffering becomes a kind of evil, a repudiation of what we value. Can a mind accept the presence of both and still savor the day, affirm purpose? The poet is seeing her grandmother slowly wasting away––like the Cumaean Sybil whose wish for eternal life brought ultimate regret, her body deteriorating until nothing but a voice remained. When existence persists beyond any remnant of delight––is life still too precious to surrender? The very notion of “hell” worms its way into the conversation, highlighting what’s at stake. And could there be a more hellish and heart-wrenching sentiment than the one Joyce’s grandmother utters: “God has forgotten me.”



So today’s poem appears to turn away from any wish for eternal life. . .yet it equivocates: this particular sun-blessed autumn day might provide the counterargument. “Gilded maples,/ Blue sky, zephyrs teasing hair/ on bare arms, the warbler’s sweet sweet/ spiraling through a fall meadow––// if time stops, let it stop now.” Perhaps such simple peace is fulfillment, a kind of paradise––momentary and yet somehow enduring. Might this provide a fitting point of departure from what older poets termed this vail of tears? Still, that final closing of the eyes would mean that all of her life––every face, every memory––would be carried into that “event horizon” with her. So how is she––and we––to feel about all this? But then Joyce shifts gears, seems to break the fourth wall, acknowledging the presence of her readers as she wrestles with this unfolding poem. “And I almost/ wrote, ‘Blue sky, trees a living fire,’/ but what a pestilential image now.” Even her profound joy is interrupted by thoughts of climate degradation, natural and manmade disasters, headlines reminding her of “of children who/ won’t fuss another hour, their seasons/ dust, skies a terror…”. The poet’s little detour-exegesis about ‘the dogs of war’ feels like a demonstration of the mind’s turmoil as she grapples with these concerns, trying to discover the path forward. Perhaps heaven and hell both lie at the tip of her pen.



Joyce is a poet, essayist, and educator; her sixth collection, Petition, was designated a “must-read” by the Massachusetts Book Award. She was the editor of Robert Bly: When Sleepers Awake; The Ploughshares Poetry Reader; and Simply Lasting: Writers on Jane Kenyon––working to illuminate the poets and literary traditions she sees as most vital. For that same reason, she directed and taught in UMass Boston’s MFA Program, and currently writes a poetry column for Arrowsmith Press. I consider her voice a vital element in the Red Letter community, and so I happily contend with the emotional crosscurrents enlivening her poems. And now I’m thinking: why not add Nana to that Sibylline sisterhood (Joyce’s grandmother, or mine, or yours, for that matter), because where else do we turn when needing sage advice, a dire warning, or the balm of a knowing smile? Should we not focus our deepest attention––and our inky skills––on those unexpectedly satisfying moments when life shines most brilliantly? Perhaps that’s all we ever have. If, perhaps, another such moment is given to us. . .and yet another. . .raise your glass, your pen in salute: l’chaim!

 

 

 

 

The Red Letters

 

* 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 BlueSky

@stevenratiner.bsky.social

and on Twitter          

@StevenRatiner

 

All Red Letter installments and videos will be archived at:

https://stevenratiner.com/category/red-letters/

Review of HEADLESS IN HANCOCK 1882 By Sebastian Lockwood

 Review of HEADLESS IN HANCOCK 1882

By Sebastian Lockwood

LUX Press 2025 395 pages

Review by Tom Miller

Sebastian Lockwood is a story teller and a good one. He makes use of his skills in his most recent publication Headless In Hancock 1882 which he sets in the Hancock Inn and Fox Tavern, an establishment that has actually been in existence since 1789, and in the surrounding Mondack region. Lockwood is unabashedly in love with the area which he pays homage to in the book. In the introduction he declares the work to be “historical fiction” which indeed it is, allowing him the freedom to tell a good story without letting mere facts get in the way. Having said that, one needs to understand that Lockwood went to great lengths to “get it right” in the sense of the political and social sensibilities of a small town in New Hampshire in 1882. After all the Civil War is just seventeen years in the past and many of the societal opinions regarding slavery and abolition still circulate. The radical Puritans still rule south of the Merrimack River. Electricity has not quite brought the onslaught of modernism to the area. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 is in effect. Boston and New York are intriguing but frightening places. Railroads are sort of the thing...elsewhere.

While the book follows several main characters throughout, each chapter brings a new set of visitors to stay at the Inn. Each new visitor is unique and we find literary folks, cads, hunters, intellectuals, in other words a variety of interesting people. Lockwood is playful in introducing these characters. Washington Irving shows up as Benjamin Arbor, writer, who adds some gory details to the Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hallow, hence the tie into the title of this book. Emerson is there as Waldo, an aged fellow whose caretaker is Aunt Moody. In real life Mary Moody Emerson, Ralph’s aunt who predeceased him by some twenty five years was a great influence on his thinking. Fly Rod Cornelia Crosby, the first registered guide in Maine appears. James Freeman Clark interested in freedom and equality in real life was a minister and a editor for several literary magazines. Clerk Maxwell, an inventor, in real life was a renowned expert on electricity and magnetism. Eddie Gibbons, a writer, could be today’s Scottish poet of the same name. Roger McGuinn, something of a recluse living on the mountain, is perhaps named for the fellow who founded the current music group The Byrds and composed “The 1882 Survivalist” in their Folk Den collection. There are others if you care to delve into historical fact.

Lockwood also introduces in detail a special libation and a unique meal in each chapter. The instructions for each drink are included in the narrative and the menus for the meals are in an addendum. Quite the epicurean Mr Lockwood is.

The main characters in the book are quite likable, a little mercurial perhaps but very real and had me cheering for them as they dealt with the adversities, none of which were outlandishly disastrous. Their stories evolve in each chapter and are the threads around which the other stories are wound. Skillfully so.

All in all this is a charming, nostalgic, and pleasant read evidencing the author’s enchantment with the town, the area and the time. Well done.

Ibbetson Street 57 Pushcart Nominees 2025

 

The Pushcart Prize is an American literary award that honors the best poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction published in small presses and literary magazines each year. Editors of these publications can nominate up to six works they have published during the year, and a panel of editors and past winners selects the final winners to be featured in the annual anthology. Being nominated is considered an honor in itself, as it recognizes work singled out from thousands of submissions

Full Pushcart Prize list for Ibbetson Street magazine:

Charles Coe The Arrangement

Ruth Hoberman Oh! Obituary

Karen Klein. HENENI

Lee Varon DEAR POETRY, DEAR CRUMBLING HEART

Ted Kooser If you take time

Wendy Drexler Whether A Forest is like quicksand, and if you are lost in it...