Linda Lerner | Painting with Sun

Photo by Paul Frangipane, Brooklyn Paper

Painting with Sun

On watching people paint: Black Lives Matter. Joralemon Street, Downtown Brooklyn. Late June, 2020.

struck by the sight of people holding
long poles, rollers at the end,
dipped into what surely must have dripped
down from the sun into buckets,
wipe sweating foreheads, stare at
color too bright for just paint,
can’t see the words it overshadows,
people, so old they can barely manage
the poles, young kids struggling with
something bigger than themselves,
every color of the spectrum visible
to a crowd transfixed by this joyous scene
before the words, they won’t forget.


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Linda Lerner is the author of 17 poetry collections, including her most recent, When Death is a Red Balloon (Lummox Press, 2019, Takes Guts and Years Sometimes, and Yes, the Ducks Were Real (NYQ Books, 2011, 2015). Her poems currently appear or are forthcoming in Maintenant, Paterson Literary Review, Gargoyle, Home Planet News, Cape Rock, Piker Press, Chiron Review, Free State Review, and Rat’s Ass Review.

Photo by Paul Frangipane, Brooklyn Paper

George Held | Yellow and Honey Moon

Yellow

Yellow crocus
bursts from snow cover
melting my heart

Yellow daffodils
bending in the April breeze —
sure signs of spring

Full moon in June
year’s lowest on the horizon —
honey-yellow moon


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Honey Moon

 

At ten the White Pine tops are backlighted

by a yellow glow that stops me in mid-

stride. Soon the etched disc of the Honey Moon

follows its aureole over the trees,

and I’m tempted to rhyme “moon” with “June,” but

such custom betrays the unaccustomed

glory of this nocturnal sight. One night

a year, this lowest of all the full moons

on the horizon gilds the east. I might

have been at the movies, or cloud cover

could have obscured this cool phenomenon.

From now on, for however many moons

I’ll be around, I’ll free my calendar

to let me keep this moonstruck rendezvous.

Previously published, in slightly different form, in Phased (Poets Wear Prada, 2008, 2010)

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George Held has published four children’s books with Filsinger & Company, Ltd. and over a dozen poetry titles with various small presses. His most recent book, Second Sight: Poems, was released by Poets Wear Prada in 2019. A collection of stories titled Lucky Boy is due out in 2020. Believing that smaller is better in poetry, he writes a lot of haiku. He wears his trousers rolled in Sag Harbor, NY.