The Poet’s Festival Song by Thomas Locicero

The poet’s festival song
Is his joy and is his might.
But to write of every wrong,
To clench fists in every fight—
Is this to be expected?
Is it his duty or right?
Is the poet selected
To save because he can write?
Or is it a greater cause,
Despite the suffering seen,
To offer joy, then to pause
And write something in between?

 

Thomas Locicero’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Roanoke Review, Boston Literary Magazine, Long Island Quarterly, Jazz Cigarette, Antarctica Journal, Hobart, Ponder Review, vox poetica, Poetry Pacific, Brushfire, Indigo Lit, Saw Palm, Fine Lines, New Thoreau Quarterly, and Birmingham Arts Journal, among others. He resides in Broken Arrow, OK.

Guest Editor Roy J. Beckemeyer is from Wichita, Kansas. He was President of the Kansas Authors Club 2016-2017. His latest book of poetry, Stage Whispers (Meadowlark-Books, 2019), contains “…handsomely crafted poems…Dense with images, intimate and honest…” (Kathryn Kysar). His chapbook, Amanuensis Angel (Spartan Press, 2018) comprises ekphrastic poems inspired by a variety of artists’ depictions of angels. His first poetry collection, Music I Once Could Dance To (Coal City Press, 2014), was a 2015 Kansas Notable Book. He recently co-edited Kansas Time+Place: An Anthology of Heartland Poetry (Little Balkans Press, 2017) with Caryn Mirriam Goldberg. That anthology collected poems that appeared on this website from 2014-2016.

 

Advertisement

To Love the Unlovely — By Thomas Locicero

To love the unlovely as an old, lost art—

It is not loving on a bell-shaped curve,

Nor is it contrived as with a hollow heart.

 

It cannot be bartered at a local mart,

Nor decreed that the unlovely deserve

To love the unlovely as an old, lost art.

 

It’s not bearing a cross or plotting a chart

Of when it’s appropriate to reserve

The strange right not to forgive from one’s heart,

 

Nor is it a dramatic coming apart

At each unseemly seam so as to serve

To love the unlovely as an old, lost art

 

That few have mastered, and those who have depart

To sainthood on an unreachable preserve

Where their veins are grafted to one perfect heart.

 

In love, everyone warrants a virgin start.

Some bloom late and watch and wait as I observe.

To love the unlovely as an old, lost art

Is to love oneself as with a child’s heart.

Thomas Locicero’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Roanoke Review, Boston Literary Magazine, Long Island Quarterly, Jazz Cigarette, Antarctica Journal, Hobart, Ponder Review, vox poetica, Poetry Pacific, Brushfire, Indigo Lit, Saw Palm, Fine Lines, New Thoreau Quarterly, and Birmingham Arts Journal, among others. He resides in Broken Arrow, OK.

Guest Editor Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg is the author or editor of two dozen books, including the recent poetry collection Following the Curve, and collection of prose Everyday Magic: Fieldnotes on the Mundane and Miraculous. Founder of Transformative Language Arts at Goddard College, where she teaches, she leads writing workshops widely, and loves watching the poetry of others rise and glow.

The Undocumented – by Thomas Locicero

Guthrie addressed the “deportees” by name;
The undocumented are far less blessed.
In shadow and light, they hide, Pride and Shame,
As dead, without lament, headstone, or rest.

They’ve not raised-seal certificates of birth
Or nine-digit cards that voice who they are,
No forms to confirm residence on Earth;
Though here, still irretrievably afar.

It would seem, then, they can be who they choose to,
But they cannot be who they were meant to be.
And if hiding is all that they’re used to,
If safety is invisibility,

How does one incent their civil order
When Heaven resides this side of the border?

 

Thomas Locicero’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Roanoke Review, Boston Literary Magazine, Long Island Quarterly, Jazz Cigarette, Antarctica Journal, Hobart, Ponder Review, vox poetica, Poetry Pacific, Brushfire, Indigo Lit, Saw Palm, Fine Lines, New Thoreau Quarterly, and Birmingham Arts Journal, among others. He resides in Broken Arrow, OK.

Guest Editor Roy J. Beckemeyer is President of the Kansas Authors Club. His poetry book, Music I Once Could Dance To (Coal City Press, 2014) was a 2015 Kansas Notable Book.