These poems were nominated by the editor of Lips for Pushcart Awards and serve as examples
of the variety of narrative poems accepted for the magazine.

At a Roadside Memorial

What tragic end came to this young one
At what age In what instant
By what vehicle At what slight curve
of the lonely road What parent or perhaps
aunt has fashioned this cross
out of a mailbox post red teddy bear
plastic flowers tears and lost hope
Does she still pass this way and see it
every day or is it a deliberate trek
to the outskirts of grief Will there ever
be a grounding a resolution
dead ahead beyond the tumble
of sorrow and rage and bewildered love
A final blessing where one either one
victim or mourner could say I was here
and then l left: what I left was you

- Richard Radcliffe

Searching for Ferlinghetti
Venice, California, 1961

Lost. I drive my dead mother’s car, look for a purple door.
June twilight. Out the window, a black sea lashes.
Dank canals.
Old Jews with numbers tattooed on their arms play pinochle.
Propped against colonnades, junkies nod off, sleep.
I find a dark and smoky coffee house. Men with long hair
lick beards and lips, stare at me as if I am a juicy gumdrop.
17, I’m wearing my best sweater set, straight skirt
and flats. My hair shines from Tame conditioner.
I back away from the beat of bongo drums, wine bottles
with twine and candles,
strange cigarettes.
The voice of the poet coming from the front of the room
stops me. I can only see the curve of his arm in a dark shirt.
His poem sounds like a new song.
My heart begins a slow climb. I tap my feet, nod my head.
The clasps of my garter belt print bull’s eye targets
on my thighs.
A man in his twenties, no beard, a cap, smiles at me.
I smile back.
Oh the dangers of an older man, his appraising eyes,
his questions. He thinks I am his missing rib, returned
to fill him.
Oh the anarchy of a young girl. I want to beat the drums,
pour the wine, write the words.

-Penny Perry

Go-Go Girl

Sprinkle salt around the club,
along the walls for luck.
You'll make more money that way.
Pretend to love your job.
Pretend to love the customers, too.
You do, you do,
you really do. It doesn't matter
if you lie. Remember:
you are only worth
what someone is willing to pay you.
But make art anyway.
Make art like you make love.
No, make it better. Make it soft.
Let it soften the blow.
And sing. No. Love songs
are for sissies. But slick slink slither
and be soft anyway. Soften
the blow. Your beauty won't last
forever, and you will want to forget
what won't last forever,
will want to forget
that you won't last forever,
will want to be loved, forever. And if
you want to be loved forever,
you should sprinkle salt around
the club, along the walls for luck.

- Shelley Stoehr

How To Boil An Egg

First, one’s not enough.
Put two in a small pot, and
fill it with water.
Set on the burner.
Open an English muffin.
(You must use a fork.)
When the water boils,
turn off the flame right away.
Now, toast the muffin.
Right when it pops up,
run eggs under cold water.
Then crack with a spoon.
Scoop that perfectly
soft-cooked egg into a bowl.
Butter the muffin.
Think of your grandma.
She’s the one who taught me how.
I’m her egg, you’re mine.

- Christina Kelly

PAUL’S PARTY

When I was ten, I didn’t think.
I was a creature, one eye on safety,
one on danger, an invertebrate,
antennae alert for blood heat
and its potential for loving me.
I could be crushed at any minute
under the foot of an insult or snub,
thus killing off the foolish mistake,
the robber of my parents’ youth
and passion.

So when a group of us went
to Paul’s party, all the girls
wore slacks and sweater sets
in expensive colors: camel,
apricot, cream. My father was
an appliance salesman
and my mother was
a hate-to-stay-at-home mom,
who shipped me off to the party
in dungarees with cuffs as tall
as juice glasses, a patent leather belt
to glamorize the look from hell,
a puffy party blouse, and God knows
what kind of shoes.

I locked myself in the bathroom,
face bursting into fire and tears
and in the mirror, the clumsy loser,
girl-farmer, my presence in the world
so negligible my own mother barely
glanced at me, and on this fall day
sent me off like a lamb to the slaughter.

The girls knocked on the bathroom door
and begged me to let them in, and I must’ve
told them the truth because I remember
their grown-up words: Don’t be silly and the way
they escorted me back to the party, staring down
any boy who dared to laugh.

When I got home, I let the rage slither back down
to its pit, its hiss at a decibel so low I couldn’t hear it,
even as it fractured the ground beneath my feet.

- Linda Hillringhouse

LOST SUPERMAN EPISODES

Were there ever any episodes about
The Daily Planet’s company picnic,
Jimmy Olsen and Lois Lane amazed
at how hard Clark Kent can spike the ball
in the newspaper’s volleyball game, and
how far he drove the grapefruit-sized
softball which no one ever really saw
come down? Even back in the office
on Monday, Perry White commented,
Jesus Christ, Kent, what do you
eat for breakfast?

I thought there may have been an episode
where Superman slipped on a bar of soap
in the shower, resulting in a displaced
shoulder, but no one remembers anything
like that. He stops bullets and trains.
What made me think he would hit his
head on a faucet assembly?

Then there were lost episodes in my life story:
I thought I witnessed a UFO over the
future site of the New York State Thruway,
near our bungalow colony in Suffern,
a bright red spot lost in the blue sky.
I was sure I was there, but my brothers
talked me out of that, just like they talked me
out of seeing a single-engine plane
take a 90 degree turn downward, and
crash behind the Pascack Motel by our
bungalow colony in Spring Valley five years
later. Perry White would have said,
Great Caesar’s Ghost, Bob.
You were in the hammock, fast asleep.

‍ ‍- Bob Rosenbloom

Heaven

Do they drink coffee in heaven?
I would hope so.
And that it’s exceptionally good.
My father has been waiting
to have a cup with me since I was 15.
I’m wondering if they allow smoking
or if he had the desire to start again.
Do they even have desires there?
Why would they, having all.
No. No desire in heaven.
The Buddhists are right.
Still, I admire my father’s patience.
He was never one for that.
And finally, we have so much to say,
so much time to talk,
a cup that is always hot and full.

‍ ‍- Kenneth Ronkowitz

I Ask My Therapist Where the Sadness Goes

She says, picture a box. Every detail.
Picture it airtight, its intricate lid
sighing into place without a whisper.
Picture a ball of light the size of a
marble. Make it whatever color says
sadness: azure, amethyst, army green.
Picture yourself tipping your palm. Picture
the light dimming as the lid on the box
clicks home. Put the box on a shelf. Close the
door to the room where the shelf and the box
and the light in the box are kept. Lock it.
Never open it again. Drop the key
down a well in another state. I still
feel sad, I say. Oh yes, she says. Always.

‍ ‍- Frances Klein

It was just to feel something

some of us used razors
to mark ourselves and became
witness to our collective pain

some of us were terrified of the dark
and killed ourselves by remaining numb
to everything alive

some of us were reluctant to go there
unwilling to open ourselves to wonder,
but some of us embraced what seemed impossible
with each passing year

when I was little,
I thought that there were monsters under my bed
or in the closet that would take me away
to some unknown place,
that I would be thrown into darkness
and never would see light again

what seemed like a massacre
when we were young
was just the slow grinding of teeth
so as not to become numb

it was just to feel something.

‍ ‍- Howard Berelson

Ballad of the Bosnian Mother

Yes I raised him, but not to do what he did.
How would a mother think to warn a son,
“Don’t fake your death just to see who cares”?
Who thinks to advise, Don’t leave your shoes
and a note on the bridge? Don’t scatter clothes
on the shore, don’t bribe undertakers to prepare
an empty coffin. And for all that is holy, don’t
hide in the bushes to see who’s at the funeral.
I stood alone, needing a towel, not a hanky
for the tears. No hand to grasp as I walked
over the graves of your father and sister.
Amir Vehabovic, of course no one came.
You pushed any friends away, ravenous
for attention, love, always taking, resentful.
Of course they stopped calling. You wrote them,
complained about the cost of the fake death notice.
“I really thought that more of you, my so-called
friends, would turn up to pay your last respects,”
you wrote. “It just goes to show who you can
really count on.” Your mother, that’s who.
She who carried you through colic, cheered you
through all the bullying, never turning her back.
She survived the worst loss, the death of a child.
Faked. By you. Do not ask me what’s for dinner.

‍ ‍- Tina Kelley

Absolute Threshold

I look at my mother, her gaze empty of knowing
who I was before her loss of memory. My eyes aglow
in a cave, exploring the mystery of her walls. I search
for memories, to make them physical, permanent—
like the hunting-magic scrawled into animals in Caves
of Lascaux to multiply them, make them real. I find
glimmers—rituals, random memoir. I look at my mother,
draw outline over outline, impose what I know of her
onto her— form conclusions I’ve no evidence for.
When I try to fill the void in her eyes, it’s like watching
someone fall out of love with you, not over time,
but in the moment. She says my name, tells me I have
pretty eyes. I am a stick figure on the wall of her mind,
a permanence, slowly being erased.

‍ ‍- Diane DiCillis

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