Tag Archives: poetry

The Chameleon

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By Charissa Gingerich

 

The chameleon spoke.

“Become like me,” he said. “Become like them. Let go of yourself and become what you are not.”

No, I cried. To release me so fully is torture. I would lose myself. I must remain.

“I do not lose me. I stay of shape and size. But I join. Join me.”

If I blend, what of my color? I will become a pale Nothing, a homeless one.

“The Homeless Ones are not what you think.”

What are they? They are without meaning.

“They give meaning.”

But I cannot. If I let go, who will hold me up? What will happen to my story?

A sigh. “To let go… I know. To surrender, ‘knowing nothing of the fall.’”

I pleaded, silently, for release from this call.

But the chameleon would not.

“To become what you cannot but what you would, you must.”

To become what I would… but perhaps I no longer desire.

“You will never stop wanting.”

I want, but I cannot.

“You cannot. Therefore you must.”

But…

A whisper: I will die.

“You will die.”

A moment.

I let go.

Charissa Gingerich lives in Ohio and is a student at Rosedale Bible College. She enjoys writing fiction, including short stories, and poetry.

Back in the Midwest

By Posted in Poetry Tagged ,

By Candice Mast

 

Ablaze in my rearview mirror

The sun rises from battle,

Blood-soaked but brilliant.

I drive past frosted round bales,

Golden harvest in rows of neat containment.

Pencil drawing of a tree on sky,

Leaves excised from precisely half of one oak

By a prevailing wind.

Light, dusty corn soldiers mown down;

Miles of empty fields, rolling to the sky.

The bump of railroad tracks

And the haunted train’s ghostly wail echoing;

The tracks going on to somewhere else.

Back porches with torn screen doors

Chimneys, adding clouds to the gray sky.

Rounded barn, hunched solitary in a field, an old widower

Watching the cars go by.

The sycamores in the woods that border the fields

White lightning among  dark trunks.

A curve of river fills with the fire

Of the turning autumn trees.

A buried pioneer graveyard slides into view.

Choked with forgotten dead

Tall, brown weeds grown over graves;

Only the tops of markers reaching through,

The long sweep of blacktop narrowing into the distance,

Leading me on to somewhere else.

 

Candice Mast lived for seven years in Bangkok, Thailand and now lives in Columbus, Ohio. She likes writing simple poems, trying to capture some of the beauty around her and the thoughts on her mind.

Lucky

By Posted in Poetry Tagged

By Candice Mast

I drink my caramel latte and feel the heat from his arm bleeding into mine.
I watch the bouncy girl in the movie get her hair pulled violently.
My stomach is a fizzing acid burn
Remembering her pain as I walk with him from the theater out into
The shadows of the city.
On the dim street in a press of bodies, cook smoke clouds,
A teenager with an ad pinned to his shirt sells big-eye contacts
To other teenagers who want to look more Korean.
A girl sits at the bottom of the escalator, hunched into her knees,
A begging bowl cupped over her head
Still as a country night in the chaos around her.
The man in black looks normal
Then he bends over the garbage, poking, hooking bags
Takes a long pull from a cup of trashed ice.
On the train home, a man is wearing a beret and talking on a cell phone
As she slips into a seat behind him, head down,
At first I’m not even sure they are together and he doesn’t look at her at all.
With him. Not with him.
Scum and victim, vain and lost, I stick my labels on them all.
I tuck my lucky hand into his arm.
As we go toward the exit
I see one perfect petal on the platform, alone, glowing from inside.

The Boom Inside

By Posted in Poetry Tagged

By Candice Mast

We watch from a distance,
From a parking lot smelling fish and lemons.
Tiny spark and shower.
Remote as stars
The children dangle their feet from the hood of the car
The radio blares songs about American pride.
“Where at least I know I’m free.”
We’ve been gone so long now
Am I immigrant?
Citizen?
Adopted child?
Am I any freer here under the same moon?
Homeland love, homeland hate.
Are my children still your children too?

We are so far away, we can’t feel the boom now,
The one I remember from my childhood
Watching fireworks lying on my back on the New Market
battlefield,
Where I could feel them inside my small body,
Like an wild and alien heart,
Overriding my own heartbeat;
Panicked delight.
I look up now at my children’s lit faces,
Want them to feel the boom inside.

The Draft

By Posted in Poetry Tagged

By Jason Ropp

Listen up!
Vagabonds, down and outs,
Embittered, addicts, and wounded,
(even self-shot in foot).
And dare I say it,
Open your ears you
Like-me self righteous,
Apathetic regarding and numb to the
Pumping heart that brings life into
Most repugnant places.

Stop. Don’t read. Listen.

Did you hear it?
Did soft wind work gently
Through leaky old house of heart
With poorly hung doors
And unsure locks?
Did furious love-gale
Raging against needless fall
Bend walls groaning
Further out of square?

Did draft chill you?
Did howl and creak turn you
Again to child with somersault heart?

Listen.
Because fanner of waterless wave
Is magnificent worker of wood —
A carpenter,
Hanging new doors,
Furnishing home with finest antiques,
Mouth-made by supreme artisan,
Origin of all chair-crafters.
And He finds greatest pleasure in
Well working over
Timbers once carved fresh for
Current tenant ungrateful
With deposit insufficient
To make good on damages due
When time comes to vacate current residence.