ALTE #14: NON-HUMAN BEINGS
(Best viewed on a computer, not a phone or other small device)
AN OLD LADY WRITES A LOVE POEM TO HER CAT
Joyce Greenberg Lott
It’s not that I don’t know
you could love Betty or Emily or Noreen,
that you seat yourself on their lap when they visit,
as though it’s your favorite cushion.
But I still pretend,
stroking tortoise-colored fur resting on my breast,
that you are mine and that
because of this, we are happy
to make no other mark in the world
except this indentation on the sofa.
I touch the satin inside your ears,
you fling your velvet paw
across the creases on my neck,
and (Maybe it’s my imagination
which used to cause me so much trouble.)
we reach someplace soft and still.
We have our fights. You on the page I want to turn,
in the midst of the paper I’m reading.
But territory’s not a big issue
because all seven pounds of you move easily.
And even though I know you could leave me,
under Betty’s coat or in Emily’s duffle bag,
not quite zipped shut,
there’s an agreement between us,
mixed up with love. Like the time I found you
at the Animal Shelter
(How many years ago?)
and you sat on my lap, making a permanent crease.
Or the way you snuggle your nose into my boots
as soon as I take them off.
Oh Maggie, how dare I attempt a love poem
when saying the word out loud
romanticizes our worst moments,
you pawing at the screen door, and me
grudgingly letting you in and out?
ONLY IN THE WEST VILLAGE
Roberta Curley
Some pasty-faced white ghost jangled a dwarf-sized tambourine embellished with lace threads of pink and lime green. Perhaps it was an Ambien waking dream. I was busy inhaling the scent of freshly baked cupcakes from Magnolia Bakery on Bleecker Street when this white apparition politely requested directions to the nearest pub.
What did I have to lose by engaging in a paranormal encounter? After all, it was mid-day and my motto of late is ‘Fortune Favors The Bold’. No knife rolling pin or rope with a noose was evident under his white cape. I could almost taste the nachos at the White Horse Tavern. I pinched myself. This had markings of reality — Village style. We agreed to lunch together.
He stood nearly three feet tall, emanated an aura of nobility kindness and love, and wore a light -gray baseball cap embossed with a ‘C’. I would bet my life that this nearly circular entity was Casper the friendly ghost. We laughed at the tourists. I kidded that he made a spectacle with his tambourine. At the White Horse Tavern, Casper was carded. He looked odd, like a mannequin. I was dying to know his age. Short and stout, apparently weight conscious and self-disciplined, he ordered spinach salad and a diet coke. I pigged out on nachos and a Bud. Knowing ghosts eat reassured me — in case I’d ever become one. It was time. Casper faded down Hudson Street, bobbing like a full moon . . . and faintly jangling.
Judith Sokoloff
Judith Sokoloff
“Purring” Lawrence Bush
FOR FRANCOIS, MY CAT OF MANY YEARS GONE MISSING
Mikhail Horowitz
The darkness made of itself a lap.
You climbed in, did your customary three little circles,
and got cozy. The forest breeze, soft as the end of summer,
purred in the pines, and smoothed you into sleep.
Forgive me if this is overly sentimental. You,
named for the vagabond poet Villon, were certainly
not. A thousand mice rejoice, along with as many moles,
shrews, birds, and baby rabbits, at your presumed demise;
your sisters don’t seem to acknowledge your
absence, and the cocky young tom we adopted
last fall is already curled up, chortling,
in the crease you left in Carol’s pillow.
But the jaunty air you affected, sir,
your tail straight up like Cyrano’s panache
as you trotted toward us, home from another
foray―that sense of invincible mischief,
of irrepressible rakishness, will be remembered
with fierce affection: something to carry, lightly,
into the furtive coming of our own darkness,
the wary wandering into our own last woods.
“I Bet You Smell Fabulous” Lawrence Bush
THREE POEMS
Sparrow
WINTER
It’s winter.
The insects are dead.
If you see a fly circling
in a room, you know
you’re dreaming.
SOUTH MIAMI HAIKU
a dead
frisbee in
the yard
MEMORIES OF CHILDHOOD
My teddy bear
hated my
stuffed rabbit.
“Mosquitos” Marc Shanker
“Gathering the Shadows” Rochelle Shicoff
PLASTIC
Jessica de Koninck
No man has ever written
A poem about Barbie
Growing up everyone was named Barbara–
Barbra Streisand, Barbara Walters, Barbara Boxer
Growing up, my daughter didn’t like to play with dolls
When I asked her as an adult
She said she found them creepy
I had to agree
Unemployed Barbie
After Mattel Trust foreclosed
the jumbo mortgage on the Dream House
she packed a small valise
and headed East
A barb — a thorn in the side
That sad poem by Jacques Prevert, R’appelle toi Barbara?,
the rain and the war. Must all my poems bring me back
to the holocaust?
Is there such a thing as “too sad?”
Chemo Barbie
Wishes the wigs
fit a little tighter
and wonders about implants
Some mothers would not let their daughters get a Barbie.
Mine did, for my 7th birthday. 1960
We had just moved from Brooklyn to Manhattan
I had that doll for years
Abused Barbie
Never understood the absence
of childhood memories
Forgets underwear
Cannot smile
I cut Barbie’s blonde hair
and drew on her with a blue ball point pen
The hair didn’t grow back
The stain didn’t wash out
I learned the consequences
Anorexic Barbie
Her mouth stays shut.
Fidgets, but does not say much.
Wears big T-Shirts
and baggy sweaters
My mother would not let me get a Ken doll.
She never explained why.
Maybe my mother thought Ken wasn’t Jewish enough for Barbie
It is more interesting to make up reasons
than to believe she might not have had any
Widow Barbie
Weeps at inconvenient times
Easily distracted when driving.
Sometimes falls asleep
fully dressed
If not for Barbie there would be more fossil fuel
If not for gasoline there would be more Barbies
Dead Barbie
Prefers burial over cremation
to avoid toxic fumes
Chooses an open coffin
Eyelids remain open
Don’t write about Barbie
Who will remember Barbie
The fashion will change
the topic overdone
like Covid
or pickleball
or sex or death
“As the Sun Wanders” Rochelle Shicoff
“Within a Garden” Rochelle Shicoff
FLAPPY
Norma Ketzis Bernstock
His bean bag body in cotton cloth sagged
when Flappy sat on the swing in his cage.
He lived in the school library, a contest
gave him his name. But he had no wings to flap.
He flopped on the floor of his cage when bumped
by rowdy kids. He flopped on the library floor
when pranksters grabbed him and squeezed
then tossed him towards the light. But mostly
Flappy sat in his cage, a bean-stuffed bird
with plastic eyes and yellow felted beak,
Low maintenance, the teacher said.
The children loved his wobbly girth,
his jiggly dancing eyes ─
his absurd, acceptable self.
THE RAZBASH ON EVOLUTION
Zev Shanken
The miracle is there is no design
A tree is a gift of random
Chance and luck and fate combine
The miracle is there is no design.
With woods like these who needs divine?
All elements work in tandem
The miracle is there is no design
A tree is a gift of random.
CLOSEST KIN
Susan Griss
Chimpanzees are our closest kin.
They rape.
They murder.
They bully.
They preen.
They love.
They fuck.
They share.
They steal.
They teach.
They impress.
They relax.
They laugh.
They fear.
They fight.
They communicate.
deliberate.
manipulate.
supplicate.
They fight.
“The Drowned Lawrence Bush
LONER: DAFFODIL’S LAMENT
Marina Cramer
Where is Violet? Lily of the Valley? Preoccupied with my own emergence, I have missed the wild meekness of their welcome arrival in the sheltered space of our shadowed spot. And the Morels, the earthy boys who congregated around my tree last year, have not returned.
Iris, I know, comes later. She takes her time, dressing in silk and velvet, purple, yellow, mauve. She weeps, her vivid tears stain the small-leaved vegetation around her stalk. I cannot guess her sorrow.
Rose roots far away, blushing her greeting at the door. We never see each other. Her essence drifts to me, when it pleases the wind to carry it; when the sun moves toward evening and my day is nearly done.
The first ones, Snowdrop and Crocus, are brave heralds of the motley assembly of us to come. I have only heard about them, though I am no stranger to the sting of early morning snow.
There are others who look like me, but we are not the same. They clump together, raise their trumpets to the air. Gossip. Caress each other's narrow leaves. I keep my distance, and my silence. I grow in solitude. This is my place.
Tulip stood proud in his vermilion shirt, his stem erect, his pistils irresistible to Squirrel. Mute horror seized me at his execution, his head removed in one ravenous bite of those murderous teeth. I grieved for him, bent low. Only the passing column of distracted Ants heard my sigh. And Hyacinth! So vain. She spreads her cloying perfume throughout the garden, preens her lavender cobs even when no one is looking. The less said about her, the better.
Over there, across the greening sea of grass, taking the best sun, Peony and her sisters unfurl their scarlet shoots. I will be gone when they parade their gauzy negligees, their bed filled with magenta petals in artless disarray, stirred by warm breezes with sensual abandon. Shameless, they revel in the legendary beauty I have never seen.
Later, Lily will have her day. I will not live to see her russet funnels line the flagstone walk. Tall and majestic, summer's queen, she offers her blossoms to the sky in abundant progression, replacing yesterday's withered heads with brilliant quiet energy.
We mourn the sacrifice of those who suffer the brutal assault of garden shears, cut down, some barely out of bud, to end their day in the indignity of a bouquet. As if immersion in a crystal bowl can replicate the sweetness of life-giving rain, or mitigate the sordid violence of their demise.
How do we know each other, when Nature's urgent schedule dictates the staggered hours of our blooming? We know. We are Perennials. Ours is to stand and sway in our turn, exhibit the tender innocence of our many varieties of beauty, display the lushness of our foliage heedless of the beholder's eye.
My sap grows sluggish. My petals pale, the dryness that will consume me starts to curl their edges, the brown rot creeps toward my still-vibrant orange heart. I bend, lower and lower still, toward the comfort of fallen pine needles on the ground. I gather in the stony aroma of aging resin and Oak's dessicated leaves. I sleep.
Marina Cramer
BEAUTY ISSUE
Roberta Curley
I open up warily, slowly — like any May rose
waking to its own intense beauty
is the coast clear of interlopers
who pilfer
crimson sweetness?
touch-touch they stroke, sniffing
my velvet petals — without permission
I display my thorns — my privacy
at stake,
my very rootedness
Can’t I boldly bloom? oh,
the pitfalls . . . of exquisiteness.
GRAYLING’S NINE LIVES
Ellen Kolba
The first of Grayling’s nine lives started in our attic, where his mother obligingly made use of the nest we had created for her. Our six-year-old son witnessed his birth, the last of a litter of four. His first life ended on the vet’s operating table, where his heart stopped, perhaps in protest to being “fixed.” The apologetic vet kept him, limp and virtually lifeless, for a month (without charge!). He came home with his long fur matted and his legs unable to support him. He lay on a cushion, seemingly unseeing, while we stroked his beautiful gray coat and fed him by hand. He was our object of adoration and hope.
But one day he staggered to his feet, and we moved him to the kitchen, where he would be protected by the door that kept him from the rest of the house and the door that kept him from the rest of the world. He spent his third life there, eating and drinking from two little bowls and navigating around the kitchen table and chairs.
Life number 4: It was summer, and Grayling now roamed the kitchen and the adjacent screened porch. But he could smell the outdoors, and that’s where he wanted to be. So we put a stake in the grass and leashed him to it. He could walk around, but he kept getting tangled up in the leash. Reluctantly we brought him in. Only Grayling knew where he wanted to be. He stood at the screen door and insisted: a meow that sounded like “out,”
It was time to take a chance. We opened the door and out he went. While we held our breath, he went to the spot where he had been tied up and lay down in the sunshine. Life number 5 had begun. Except one day he disappeared. Twenty-four hours went by before we got a phone call from a neighbor. He had crossed our busy street and survived — life number 6!
Living longer means getting older, and now Grayling was 17 and had kidney trouble. The boy who had witnessed his birth and given him his name had grown up and gone off to college, and we were turning old and gray ourselves. Grayling was on life number 7. The vet, who had put him on a special diet, didn’t expect Grayling to make it through the winter.
But spring came, and with it life number 8. Once again we let Grayling out into the sunshine. Once again he lay down in the spot that was his alone. Only this time when we went to let him in, he had disappeared. We called his name. We searched the yard, looking under and into every bush. He was gone. I thought he might have crawled off somewhere to die. But then why couldn’t I at least find his collar? There was nothing.
Until the next spring, when I looked outside and there, in Grayling’s spot, was a small rabbit — a little cottontail — sitting absolutely still and waiting.
Two Tunes Eldy Babushkin
AUTUMN SONG
Helen Engelhardt
Tying bamboo poles
above my sukkah. A skein
of geese unravels the sky.
INCIDENT IN THE LAKE COUNTRY
Helen Engelhardt
Summer twilight
across the pastures
keeping to the common right of way
opening and closing the throat of the double gates
the family whispered as they walked.
A sound — as though the earth herself
had moaned-stunned them.
“They have fenced in a bull too keen,”
the father told the child. “See him pacing
dark against the grass?”
The mother held her heart.
“That is not a lover on his leash. That is Demeter
lamenting her loss.”
The cow lifted her muzzle to the empty air
and called again and again.
“They always cry like that,” the innkeeper said,
“when their calves are taken from them. It keeps
the milk flowing.”
“17 Years Later” Dana Jacobs
ANOTHER SHOT
Jane Schulman
I thought he was dead, the first time
I saw him lying on his back
on the bathroom floor and stepped
across him on my way to the sink.
The second time, his back legs
quivered so I flipped him on his belly
and he crawled leg by leg by leg
across the floor — black beetle shell
shiny and crisp. Life is tough
here in Abiquiu’s desert
though somehow there’s never
a shortage of spiders and ants,
scorpions, flies, and mosquitoes.
It’s always a challenge finding water
which is why that beetle was heading
for the sink on the white tile floor.
He’s long gone now, off to cross
the arroyo, on his way
to carry out his mission as we all
are called to do.
THE CROW
Lawrence Bush
Many, many years ago, we were hiking in Harriman State Park, two city kids looking for a place to make out. We came to a clearing in the woods and saw a crow on the ground, with its neck caught in the crook of a downed tree branch. What an eerie sight: this very large black bird, wearily flapping its wings, as if it had been trying to escape for long minutes.
We glanced at each other, found our courage, then approached and cautiously pulled the branch apart like a not-yet-snapped wishbone. The bird hopped several feet from us, then paused to recover.
Then the surrounding woods erupted into a chorus of caws. We were being applauded by at least ten crows who had been silently watching the drama from the surrounding trees.
We took a bow and walked out of the clearing.
QUESTIONS
Susan Griss
I don’t eat mammals.
Why do you?
I eat poultry and fish.
Why do I?
LARRY SUGGESTED GUT BACTERIA AS POSSIBLE SUBJECT MATTER
Esther Cohen
(Gut bacteria
the correct number of words
for a gut haiku.)
Gut bacteria
usually needs corrections
with probiotics.
They don’t always work.
Dietary restrictions:
No gluten ever.
Then there is sugar.
Sugar always bad for you.
No more M & Ms.
Many suggestions.
Impressive advice online.
Two kiwis a day.
Gut bacteria
peculiar subject matter.
Is it non-human?
MIDNIGHT PLUM
Norma Ketzis Bernstock
The 2013 Honda Fit is now available in five colors including mystic yellow, orchid pearl and midnight plum. —Honda USA
Midnight plum is not dancing sugar plums
or a midnight snack,
a secret rendezvous
in an espionage plot
or a lonesome dude diving
into despair.
Midnight plum is not a death metal band
gone postal
or the darkest hour when the house is still
and everyone breathes with ease in sleep.
Midnight plum is magic and moonlight on snow,
fairytale wishes on an evening star
that sparkles and glows below a sliver of moon
in a sky stained purple and pink.
CHASE
Helen Engelhardt
Children
run softly
through misty grass
hands cupped
expectantly closing
Venus fly traps
holding
for a second
life afraid
nuzzling and tickling with terror
their wings against tender skin.
Then releasing the song
into a breathless night’
and running once more
In pursuit
“Ghost Stories” Dana Jacobs
Judith Sokoloff
“Doorman” Carol Zaloom
“Mastodon Tooth” Carol Zaloom and Mikhail Horowitz
About Our Contributors
Norma Ketzis Bernstock lives in Milford, Pennsylvania, where she is a member of the Upper Delaware Writers Collective. Her poetry has appeared online at Your Daily Poem, has been been featured on WJFF Catskill Radio and has appeared in print and online journals and anthologies. Her chapbook, Don’t Write a Poem About Me After I’m Dead, was published by Big Table Publishing.
Lawrence Bush is an ALTE co-editor and author of HYMAN, a novel (Ben Yehuda Press). He plays guitar in the Starlight Duo. His books, music, and art are on display at Babushkin’s Playhouse (babushkinsplayhouse.com).
Marina Antropow Cramer is the child of post-WWII Russian refugees from the Soviet Union. Her work has appeared in Blackbird, Istanbul Literary Review, Wilderness House Literary Review, Bloom Literary Magazine, and Comstock Review. She is the author of the novels Roads (Chicago Review Press), Anna Eva Mimi Adam (RunAmok Books), and Marfa’s River (Apprentice House Press), and lives in New York’s Hudson Valley.
Esther Cohen’s newest book is All of Us: Stories and Poems Along Route 17 (Saddleroad Press). Esther is an ALTE co-editor and posts a poem each day at Overheard. For many years she ran Bread and Roses, a national culture program for workers. Esther started the program Unseen America and the Clara Lemlich Awards for women activists. See her books at www.esthercohen.com/books.
Roberta Curly has lived in New York’s West Village for over forty-five years. For much of that time Roberta worked as a senior administrative aide for the New York Police Department, and she has volunteered as a reader and sighted guide in the community. A voracious reader and dedicated journal writer, she draws her inspiration from her love of nature and from her interaction with, and fascination for, her fellow New Yorkers.
Jessica de Koninck, an ALTE co-editor, is the author of the full-length poetry collection, Cutting Room (Terrapin Books) and the chapbook, Repairs (Finishing Line Press). A winner of the 2023 Stephen A. DiBiase Poetry Contest, her work has been featured on the Writer’s Almanac andVerse Daily, and her poems, reviews and articles appear in numerous publications.
Helen Engelhardt is a poet, writer, storyteller, activist, and independent audio artist and producer. Her Midsummer Sound Company has produced three audio documentaries aired on NPR stations. Her book, The Longest Night: A Personal History of Pan Am 103, was named a Best Indie Book of 2014 by Kirkus Reviews. Helen is the author of the original audio drama, Never Again War: The Sacrifice of Käthe Kollwitz.
Susan Griss is a veteran educator who specializes in teaching elementary curriculum through creative movement. She plays electric bass in the Starlight Duo.
Mikhail Horowitz is the author of Slapstick Gravitas (Station Hill), a selection of poetry and prose spanning the last forty years, as well as two ALTE books, Ancient Baseball and My Stuff (co-authored with Lawrence Bush and Caol Zaloom). His performance pieces have been featured on nine CDs, including The Blues of the Birth, a collection of his jazz fables. An obsessive maker of collages and monoprints, he is also an actor, a blues harmonica cat, and an adequate improvisor on alto, soprano, and sopranino recorders.
Dana Jacobs is an artist and photographer who takes up residence, but not too much room, in other people’s minds.
Ellen Kolba is an 83-year-old parent, grandparent, former writer/editor/teacher who lives in Montclair, NJ, and belongs to the Reconstructionist congregation there. She co-founded and co-directed The Writers Room Program, a center-less writing center that served students in grades 3-12 in the Montclair public schools.
Joyce Greenberg Lott fell in love with poetry at the Atlantic City Library when she was very young — she took a book by Walt Whitman because she thought it had something to do with the sampler of chocolates her father gave her mother on anniversaries. She has taught high school English and creative writing. She is 86 and lives by the ocean.
Jane Schulman is a poet and fiction writer. Her book of poetry, Where Blue Is Blue, was published by Main Street Rag in 2020. In her work, Jane explores themes of love, death, disability, and wonder in the everyday. She works as a speech pathologist with children with autism and developmental challenges. You can reach her through her website: www.janeschulman.com.
Zev Shanken’s recent publications are Teachings of the Razbash (Babushkin’s Playhouse) and a selection of his poems in JEWels: Teasing Out the Poetry in Jewish Humor and Stories (JPS/University of Nebraska Press). His full-length books are Memory Tricks (2016) and If I Try to be Like Him, Who Will be Like me? (2019), available on Amazon. He is a member of the on-line poetry group, brevitas.
Marc Shanker is a prolific self-taught artist who creates paintings, drawings, artist books, prints, and collages. A frequent contributor to ALTE, Marc is the author of Traces of Sepharad (Huellas de Sefarad), Etchings of Judeo-Spanish Proverbs, and numerous other collections of images and words. View his work at www.marcshanker.com.
Rochelle Shicoff was recipient of the Rome Prize Fellowship in Painting. During her fellowship year, while painting in Italy, Rochelle also traveled throughout Europe and the Middle East photographing architecture, landscape, and historical sites. She is currently a member of Gallery A-3 in Amherst, MA. She co-authored The Mural Book: A Practical Guide for Educators. View her paintings at https://shellyshicoff.weebly.com.
Judith Sokoloff, an ALTE co-editor, is a ceramicist and photographer whose work can be viewed on Instagram and Pinterest.
Sparrow lives in a double-wide trailer in Phoenicia, New York. He has published eleven books, including Small Happiness & Other Epiphanies, and has had work in The New Yorker, The Sun, The New York Times, The American Poetry Review, and Reptiles of the Mind, among other publications. Sparrow is a frequent contributor to ALTE. He plays flutophone in the pro-Zoroastrian pop group Foamola. and has a new band, Truffles, an acoustic anarchist quartet.
Carol Zaloom (d. 2022) was a linoleum cut printmaker and illustrator whose work has appeared in many publications, including Sky and Telescope and Yankee magazines, and in books published by Random House and David Godine. In 2002 she co-created My Stuff, a gallery-in-print of household treasures, with her longtime partner Mikhail Horowitz and Lawrence Bush.