Poems

More Dangerous Air BY MARGARITA ENGLE Newsmen call it the Cuban Missile Crisis. Teachers say it's the end of the world. At school, they instruct us to lookup and watch the Cuban-cursed sky. Search for a streak of light. Listen for a piercing shriek, the whistle that will warn us as poisonous A-bombs zoom close. Hide under a desk. Pretend that furniture is enough to protect us against perilous flames. Radiation. Contamination. Toxic breath. Each air-raid drill is sheer terror, but some of the city kids giggle. They don't believe that death is real. They've never touched a bullet, or seen a vulture, or made music by shaking the jawbone of a mule. When I hide under my frail school desk, my heart grows as rough and brittle as the slab of wood that fails to protect me from reality's gloom.

The Aim Was Song BY  ROBERT FROST Before man came to blow it right      The wind once blew itself untaught, And did its loudest day and night      In any rough place where it caught. Man came to tell it what was wrong:      It hadn’t found the place to blow; It blew too hard—the aim was song.      And listen—how it ought to go! He took a little in his mouth,      And held it long enough for north To be converted into south,      And then by measure blew it forth. By measure. It was word and note,      The wind the wind had meant to be— A little through the lips and throat.      The aim was song—the wind could see.

Ritmo /Rhythm BY  MARGARITA ENGLE Mad has decided to catch a vulture, the biggest bird she can find. She is so determined and so inventive, that by stringing together a rickety trap of ropes and sticks, she creates a puzzling structure that just might be clever enough to trick a buzzard, once the trap’s baited with leftover pork from supper. Mad and I used to do everything together, but now I need a project all my own, so I roam the green fields, finding bones. The skull of a wild boar. The jawbone of a mule. Older cousins show me how to shake the mule’s  Quijada , to make the blunt teeth rattle. Guitars. Drums. Gourds. Sticks. A cowbell. A washboard. Pretty soon, we have a whole orchestra. On Cuban farms, even death can turn into music.

Indigenous Elvis at the Airport BY HEID E. ERDRICH Indigenous Elvis works security: Chief Joseph hair, blue-black and pomped, turquoise and shell dangling from one ear, silver chunks of rings on every bronze knuckle. Indigenous Elvis works security: X-ray glances at your backpacks, laptops, empty still-moist shoes. Indigenous Elvis waves me to his line. A perfect gentlemen at...

My Doggy Ate My Essay BY  DARREN SARDELLI My doggy ate my essay. He picked up all my mail. He cleaned my dirty closet and dusted with his tail. He straightened out my posters and swept my wooden floor. My parents almost fainted when he fixed my bedroom door. I did not try to stop him. He made my windows shine. My room looked like a palace, and my dresser smelled like pine. He fluffed up every pillow. He folded all my clothes. He even cleaned my fish tank with a toothbrush and a hose. I thought it was amazing to see him use a broom. I’m glad he ate my essay on “How to Clean My Room.”

Nature Knows Its Math BY JOAN GRAHAM Divide the year into seasons, four, subtract the snow then add some more green, a bud, a breeze, a whispering behind the trees, and here beneath the rain-scrubbed sky orange poppies multiply .