Welcome to “Poetry at The Arts Fuse.” A new poem every Thursday.

 

ARS POETICA

 

Too late for me to dance

a Merce Cunningham dance,

even the simple one with steps

like a series of yoga poses.

I tried baking bread,

fidgety waiting for dough

to swell like a puffball—

as dull as watching grass

dry. I stopped listening

to pundits, finished Tiger King

and The Dairy Restaurant,

book I’d searched for my grandpa

Gershoff’s Kosher Kitchen

where, after curtain call, Broadway

actors slummed uptown—

George Raft the only

star my mother remembered.

Those generations called

the atom their friend—

friendly atoms: that’s what

they’ve become. Unbecoming,

I rehearse what I know

like a prodigy at the piano

when the concert’s canceled

and baby geniuses crowd

the practice booths. Sometimes

they just want to play

“Tipitina” and watch

not Professor Longhair

but Dr. John the Night Tripper,

high in his video master

class, attack the bass line.

 

Petition, Joyce Peseroff’s sixth book of poems, was designated a “must read” by the Massachusetts Book Award. Recent poems and reviews are available or forthcoming in On the Seawall, Plume, and Arrowsmith Journal. She directed and taught in UMass Boston’s MFA Program in its first four years. Currently she blogs for her website SO I GAVE YOU QUARTZ  and writes a poetry column for Arrowsmith Press.

 

Note: Hey poets! We seek submissions of excellent poetry from across the length and breadth of contemporary poetics. See submission guidelines here. The arbiter of the feature is the magazine’s poetry editor, John Mulrooney.

— Arts Fuse editor Bill Marx