milk. Pray for me that I remember
to give up my milk. Pray for me that I am the milk.
Here is a solidarity that goes beyond rhetoric. Here is a prayer that even an atheist (like me, or like the poet for that matter) can say out loud, for this prayer directs itself, not at God, but at the best in humanity, and the best in ourselves.
In that spirit, praise the poetry of Lauren Schmidt. Praise the Psalms of The Dining Room. Let us be thankful for this clear, strong voice, singing for all of us.
Martín Espada
July 2011
Acknowledgments
Fifth Wednesday Journal
“Unwintering”
Little Patuxent Review.
“One Week After Christmas”
Mayday Magazine
“Urban Legend”
“Gridlock”
“Elimination Half-Life”
“The Men Who Grow from Curbs”
The New Verse News
“The Indication”
“Reasons”
“Under the Blows”
“Pac-Man”
“Justice”
“The Perpetrator’s Guide to Thrill Killing:
Lesson One: How to Kill a Kitten”
Nimrod
“What I Learned from Birds”
PANK
“Kenneth’s Purse”
“Marlon’s Fingers”
The Progressive
“Manny”
“Far From Butter”
Provo Orem Word
“A Prayer”
Ruminate
“The Magic Trick of the Table”
The Splinter Generation
“The Coffee Station”
“Her Name is Sarah”
“The Volunteer”
Several of these poems were included in a chapbook called The Voodoo Doll Parade (Main Street Rag Publishing Company).
“What I Learned from Birds” was a semi-finalist for the 2009 Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry.
Ask Me
After William Stafford
When graffiti becomes gospel, ask me
if I’ve ever believed in anything.
When telephone poles carry saviors,
when they conduct the Word, ask me
if I’ve posted my inky prayers on them. Ask me
if any tabs with my number are missing,
or if I’ve gotten any calls.
When psalms lift from sewers, ask me
if I’ve let mine go up in a rising wind,
if I can hear them in the stillness of coming and going
and going again.
Some time, when traffic raises the dead, ask me
if I believe in Heaven, and I’ll show you the world
underneath my shoe where we must cover our mouths
from the manic stench of a man who lives there.
His hair clumps into horns at his forehead,
and the wolves of his eyes click corner to corner.
Some time, when pedestrians are the faithful, ask me
to hold out my hand for peace. Ask me if anyone
reaches to touch me. Some time, when transients
are the prophets, ask me if I ever read their signs.
When crosswalks are the stations, ask me
to lift my back into the oaken wind, ask me
to follow the bridge of skeletons to the safer side.
And when the stoplight changes green to red, ask me
if I can begin again, if I know to pause for a miracle, ask me,
as I’m almost run over, to follow the blinking light
of a man who seems to know the way. Ask me
if my feet need a bath when I get there.
What this city says, that is what I will say.
Gridlock
A teenage girl in too-high heels stamps past a line of cars.
Held by a stop sign, drivers wait for her
patent leather daggers to pass. Her stagger begins
to slow: she knows they cannot go until she’s gone.
She idles in the crosswalk, stages herself before the cars
in a half-deserted plea to be seen. She needs someone to see her
studded belt, her stockings like an electric fence, the tear
that reveals her knee. She needs someone to see her
hood— trimmed in exhaust-gray faux fur— about to drop
over her face. She needs someone to see the gaze
behind those thick black straps of eye-lining wax,
streaks
