Tag: News Poetry
News Poetry: I’ve been called names
I’ve been called names,
unhinged, wacko names,
un-American and treasonous.
The angry mob. Evil.
I’ve been called evil.
I incite Hondurans to walk
a thousand miles for refuge.
I’m hunger, nights on...
News Poetry: Food Chain
On your sofa, a visitor—
call it puma, mountain lion,
or panther, it is not
the fine mouser you left there
curled on your couch. That cat
has been...
News Poetry: A Day at the Library (and no, I don’t...
It could be any day, but let’s say it’s Sunday.
A little before one. The line outside the door
forms like a queue at the deli....
News Poetry: Paving Meadowlarks
A reporter stands knee deep
in swirling prairie
while wind bullies the mic.
Pushing hair from her face,
she tells viewers about plans
to develop this vastness.
The camera scans...
News Poetry: Three Bars of Summer 2018
Three Bars of Summer 2018
Karen Betstadt
I.
Hard brown coating constrains
the running of cold white cream.
I study the brown rectangle.
choose a corner; bite.
Like a skater falling
through...
News Poetry: Make Shift
—on viewing a photograph by Hamza Al-Ajweh/AFP
Loveland Reporter-Herald, February 24, 2018
I thought it was a sculpture in progress,
clay, a commission, this figure of...
News Poetry: The Last Rhinoceros
I take my daughters to the zoo, to visit Sudan,
the northern white rhino, who exists, now,
only as a vial of frozen semen.
My youngest wants...
News Poetry: Small Town
They moved in
far to the edge of things
Kept to themselves
Nobody heard the screams
The scratchings
on the safety glass
A neighbor saw the two girls once
Their shyness...
News Poetry: A call to arms
Recess becomes a drill,
the schoolyard a parade ground
and the squad—
thirty first graders
in raggedy formation,
their uniforms not
uniformly neat.
The sergeant wears skinny jeans
and Uggs. No one salutes
but...
News Poetry: Seventeen lines for Parkland
After seventeen
Comes eighteen
And the students
Feel the strength
Of their years,
Armed with ballots
Not bullets.
Greedy geriatrics
Will be free
To golf every day
As a new generation
Nails their diplomas
On Washington’s...