Love Rises

Sometimes poetry is unleashed from

A patch filled with weeds

Ripped out on a sunny afternoon

And planted with lilies

Love rises from

The ache of his muscles,

The steam of southern summers,

The toil of his hands

In unyielding earth

Grow

Children of the cannabis trade

http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/peopleandpower/2011/07/201172795838377646.html?utm_content=automateplus&utm_campaign=Trial5&utm_source=SocialFlow&utm_medium=MasterAccount&utm_term=tweets

In gutted warehouses

Of London’ backstreets

Behind blackened windows

Thousands of marijuana plants

Lie under florescent light

Children here enslaved

Stolen from Vietnam

Ferried across the ocean

Locked in strange greenhouses

Forced to live under harsh lights

To breath noxious chemicals

Where only the drug will grow

Baby Bride

Saudi Cleric Rules in Favor of Child Marriage

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903635604576472011907391364.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

When the child can bear the weight of a man

She must

Darken her eyes with kohl

Adorn her with heavy gold chokers

Pierce her nose with a diamond stud

Marry her from the crib

Daughter

Saudi Cleric Rules in Favor of Child Marriage

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903635604576472011907391364.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

When the child can bear the weight of a man

She must

Darken her eyes with kohl

Adorn her with heavy gold chokers

Pierce her nose with a diamond stud

Marry her from the crib

Poetess

The Bell Jar at 40

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/article/242402

Sylviah Plath sealed off the kitchen

Before turning on the gas oven

Virginia Woolf

Walked into the ocean,

Stones heavy in her pockets

Anne Sexton

Lowered garage door  

With the motor running.

No longer women

Struggling with words

Reconstruction

Bit By Bit, Afghanistan Rebuilds Buddhist Statues

http://www.npr.org/2011/07/27/137304363/bit-by-bit-afghanistan-rebuilds-buddhist-

Towering Buddhas

Of stone and sand

In Bamiyan

Exploded to ash and earth

By Taliban.

Slowly, shard by shard,

Immense Buddhas

Are patched together

I wonder if the pieces,

Shattered splinters,

And vacant places Buddha once presided,

Speak a greater truth.

If only muscle and bone,

Limbs and lives,

Could be rebuilt.

A nation exploded

To rubble and ruin

Who will cobble it together?

41%

A Young Mom Resists A Cycle Of Failure

http://www.npr.org/2011/07/26/138546792/a-young-mom-resists-a-cycle-of-failure

"41% of Latina girls leave high school due to pregnancy".

My former students dropped out,

One by one

First Maria, with her little girl laugh

and borrowed maternity dresses

Then Rosa, with her smoky, wide eyes and long brown hair,

Delicate waist already thickening

Mother sick,

Father working two jobs

Brother arrested

Uncle leering

A baby, her only hope

  

Survivor

Norway: A survivor's story

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-14260148

I could feel his boots

Hear his breath

Sense the warmth of the gun

My friends, dead,

Were piled on top of me

As I made my eyes go vacant

No longer seeing blood

Staining the water

The Weight of Shame

One Woman's Struggle To Shed Weight, And Shame

http://www.npr.org/2011/07/25/138606501/one-womans-struggle-to-shed-weight-and-shame?ft=1&f=1001&sc=tw&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

You recoil

As I fill my plate,

Buy my groceries,

Live and breathe

My skin,

Obscene in its excess,

Bulging under dresses,

Fills the distance between us,

Ensures my space

Shame clings to me,

Heavier than the weight,

Bowing my head,

As I empty my plate

Premeditated

City Is Stunned at Teenager’s Arrest in Parents’ Deaths

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/23/us/23murder.html?_r=1&smid=tw-nytimes&seid=auto

Stood behind his mother,

(Fair hair, fragile neck, sun-tanned shoulders)

For five long minutes

Before wielding the hammer

Her last word: “Why?”

Stared into his father’s eyes

Unblinking, predatory, before attack

What flight of horror;

What deep red fog;

What dreadful recognition

Composed their final moments?

The son held a party

Kids smoked blunts, drank cheap liquor,

Danced and lived

While in the master bedroom

Corpses of his parents grew stiff

Sins of the Fathers

16 Die in Norway Shooting and Bombing

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/23/world/europe/23oslo.html

Young men and women

At camp for children of wealthy politicians

Run screaming into the water

Hiding under the wooden bridge

Shivering despite the harsh sun

The sins of the father shall be visited on the son 1,000 times

  

La Petite Maison

Playhouse Proud

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/21/garden/playhouses-childs-play-grown-up-cash.html

Children in monogrammed frocks

Frolic outside a miniature Victorian home

With crystal chandeliers and flat screen televisions

Pint sized sofas and child sized rocking chairs

Stainless steel refrigerators stocked with juice boxes and Popsicles

A must for girls named Sinclair and boys named Hudson,

Children as expensive accessories

To be stored in precious doll houses

Elbalmed

Despite Cancer Risk, Embalmers Stay With Formaldehyde

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/21/business/despite-cancer-risk-embalmers-stay-with-formaldehyde.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&seid=auto&smid=tw-nytimes

Ancient Egyptians preserved skin and organs

Bone and teeth

Rubbed with salt, annointed with oil

Wrapped in white linen

Civil War soldiers were preserved with arsenic

And sent home rotting in rough hewn caskets

Now formaldehyde gives our dead the “everlasting effect”

As it slowly embalms the embalmer

Henrietta Lacks

Tracing The 'Immortal' Cells Of Henrietta Lacks

http://www.npr.org/2011/03/18/134622044/tracing-the-immortal-cells-of-henrietta-lacks

Poor and black
Dying of cancer
White doctors in white gowns and white masks
Discovered you glistened with pearls and abalone,
Bejeweled with snowy tumors
Stole a mass of cells from your cervix
Multiplied like the cosmos,
A universe of constant division
Your cells thrive in every scientific lab on the globe
Yet your children can’t afford a doctor

Crowded with Life

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/18/world/africa/18sierra.html

In Sierra Leone, New Hope for Children and Pregnant Women

Wooden benches, once empty,

Now crowded with women

Pregnant, wrapped in cobalt and vermillion sarongs

Faces no longer creased with worry

Bright teeth smiling against skin of midnight

Hospital fees abolished

Now wooden benches

Crowd with life

Saving Face

Mauled by Her Husband?

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/07/16/muslim-honor-crimes-rumana-monzur-allegedly-mauled-by-her-husband.html

His fingers dug into my eye sockets

Bringing aching darkness

Blinding me as he is blinded.

He bit my cheeks, my nose, my neck,

His mouth dripping with my blood.

He ripped out my hair,

Called me unfaithful

All while our daughter screamed in the corner.

I will not be silenced by sharam*

I will not 'save face' for him

*Shame in Urdu

Torn Apart

Ritual Mourning for Slain Brooklyn 8-Year-Old

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/16/nyregion/ritual-mourning-for-slain-brooklyn-8-year-old.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

Black muslin drapes all mirrors

We look within

Sit on wooden crates and stools

Shun shoes

We rent our garments

Wear unwashed clothes the color of night

Burn candles

Seven days and seven nights

For our lost son

What man has torn apart

May God sew together

Shelter

The Shelters That Clinton Built

http://www.thenation.com/article/161908/shelters-clinton-built?page=0,1

Haitian children

Dark skinned, brightly clothed 

Sit at desks in a sweltering trailer

Donated by Americans

Walls laced with formaldehyde

Eyes burning

Minds aching, facts swimming by,

Gasping for air

Uriah Levy

The Levy Family and Monticello, 1834-1923: Saving Thomas Jefferson's House.

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/The+Levy+Family+and+Monticello%2c+1834-1923%3a+Saving+Thomas+Jefferson's...-a0102102658

Monticello in shambles

Proud flower gardens, now strewn with weeds
Ingenious vegetable plots gone to seed
Hand-laid parquet, grown dull and scratched
Walls once bright yellow as sunshine, dimmed with years
Jefferson’s grave defaced by looters

You purchased the plantation for a pittance
To save it from oblivion
With love for the great man who lost it
You brought back his pawned furnishings
Intricate carved chess set from France,
Austere portraits and marble busts,
Leather bound library and quills,
Breathing life into a once gracious estate
As they tried to wrest it from
Your Jewish hands

Explosions

Mumbai: Explosions shake India's financial hub 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-14141454

Mumbai,

My memories of you are exploding

As terrorists destroy you, block by block

I remember your dirty streets

Crammed with begging children, oxcarts, fruit stands, fading murals

Thousands of bodies pressed into cramped, hot walkways,

Men chewing betel nuts, women wearing fresh jasmine

Everyone buying, selling in streets now in flames

Lost in Translation

Visa Delays Imperil Iraqis Who Helped U.S.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/13/world/middleeast/13baghdad.html?_r=1&hp

Forty years ago

Hmong men, people of the mountains,

Clasped to helicopter landing skids
Dropping midair

Abandoned by the US government they supported

Left to death or imprisonment

Or to languish in Thai Relocation Camps,

Victims of their own loyalty

Now, Iraqi translators

Pack bulky suitcases and pray for visas that never arrive,

Burn their notebooks and wish they could forget English,

Victims lost in translation

http://www.blogs.va.gov/VAntage/?p=1337

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/03/26/070326fa_fact_packer

Homegrown

The Troubled History Of The Supermarket Tomato

http://www.npr.org/2011/07/09/137623954/the-troubled-history-of-the-supermarket-tomato

Do you remember standing in grandma's garden, 

Eating tomatoes as if they were apples,

Sunshine and rain dripping down skinny arms,

Covered with red nectar?

Freshly plucked from caged green vines

Aching only for salt:

Homegrown happiness

How many sparkling flavors
(Bright as elderberries; quirky as key lime)
Have been forever lost to our tongues
In the pursuit of the easy to transport fruit?

Waning Days

When S’Mores Aren’t Enough: New Economics of Summer Camp

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/10/business/summer-camps-are-facing-new-economics.html?hpw

Waking early to reveille at the flag pole

Mosquito-bitten and  hungry

Retreat to cafeteria of timber

For powdered eggs and blueberry waffles

Towering plates passed by sticky little hands

Bug juice in day- glow pink or electric blue

Days filled with rowboats and canoes,

Archery lessons and horseback riding through wooded paths

Swimming in a pond rimmed with lotus

Chasing throaty frogs and running from thin snakes

Weaving ropy bracelets and writing letters home

Singing camp songs

By the firelight

In the waning days of summer

Relative Kindness

For Hire: a Visitor to the Grave of Your Dearly Departed

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/10/nyregion/womans-job-is-to-visit-graves-for-loved-ones-who-cannot.html?hp

Clean marble headstone,

Paying careful attention to names

Pull away tangles of weeds

And long dead plants

Leave only a simple stone

Or fresh flowers, as desired,

Bow head in pose of remembrance,

Snap photograph, and go

Confession

Sticky Fingers, Hidden Hams: A Shoplifting History

http://www.npr.org/2011/07/07/137627302/sticky-fingers-hidden-hams-a-shoplifting-history

Once,  I stole lipstick from the local Osco,

Buff shimmer,

The case, slick black polyhedron,

Bespoke sophistication

To my guilty palm.

Eyes darting at convex mirrors

Praying for easy escape

Past aisles of Hallmark cards; wine and liquor; school supplies and barbeque doo-dads

Out electric doors,

Unused bills leaden in my pocket.