New Poem: Election Day Eve 2020

 Election Day Eve 2020

by Stephanie Mesler

He commands an army of duds with nothing better to do and nothing much to lose.

They fly his machismo flag over their trucks with big dicks.

They stop traffic and make noise, demanding attention - 

dateless boys who can't get a girl into the backseat without threats or bribes or both.  

They're proud now,  their king is proof that human shit can be shitty and still bask in glory.

They shout for a while and laugh -- they think they own the road and that's enough for the moment, owning the road is proof they can own the world.

But no one pays attention to toddlers stamping their feet

Traffic backs away or goes around them, spinning gravel, ignoring their tantrum.

They are alone with just each other and their combined insecurities.

They have no binkies and no blankies.  

They are cold and hungry and afraid.  

They go home to bed without any cookies.

Perhaps tomorrow they will grow up.

Election Day Eve 2020 is © 2020 Stephanie Mesler 

New Poem: Remembering Love

 Remembering Love

By Stephanie Mesler

Will you think of me as the wind blows across a mountaintop and will you know that it's me brushing my fingertips across your back, shoulder blade to shoulder blade, so slowly that it's like not moving at all?  

Will you remember that my eyes are the color of borage just after it's rained and that I love the rain, even when there is work to be done in the garden?  

When you taste bergamot and lemon, will it transport you to that tea shop we found at the edge of that town that wasn't big enough to have a stoplight?  Will you wish for the cookies that were iced with rose water by the man who looked like he could raise a cadillac over his head and toss it into the river that ran outside his kitchen window?  

Will you hear my voice at night when you sit alone on the porch, waiting for moonlight to fall on our willow for the 100th time since I left?  

If a winter storm comes and icicles hang from the gutters, will you see how they sparkle in the sun and know that I would have cried for their glory?  Will you leave them hanging until they melt because that's what I would have wanted?  

Will you wish for me to return?  Will you waste the years after me, remembering?  

I want you to forget.  

Forget how much we needed one another and how we swore to be one another's one and only.

Forget the promises and the vows.

Forget the pain.  

Remember only that our life together was no miracle, 

That we had love because we were love.  

We earned love because we did love.  

Remember this - love begets love.  

I want you to love again and remember that we taught one another what is possible.

Do not settle for less.  

Remembering Love is © Stephanie Mesler 2020

Weeping For My Old Hometown

Weeping For My Old Hometown

by Stephanie Mesler

I weep.  

My old hometown is on fire.  

It is burning with the fury of a thousand mothers whose sons were shot just for living in dark skin.  

It burns with the fear of old men who once held power just because, but are now told they must earn a place around a table that used to be rectangular.

It burns with the passion of the ignorant who follow whoever makes them feel smarter than...well...smarter than they are.  

I weep.

My old hometown is shattered glass and broken beams.   

I watch on my phone as my old friends make themselves shields.

They use their white skin 

(not really white at all, BTW, more like slightly pink)

They use their pink skin to get between the men in blue 

(not really blue at all, BTW.

Except where they are swathed in camo, like they think they are going to war on Main Street, these men in blue are covered in black, head to toe, even the weapons strapped to their belts are shiny black.   

They look like they wanna join Vlad’s Alpha Group and fight for domination of a continent.  Their horses are black and so are the clubs they use to beat back resistance.)

My old friends use their pink skin to get between the men in blue that isn’t blue and the people of color.

And they really are colorful, these people; their skin comes in many shades of brown, from tortilla to umber and everything in between.  

I watch as the men in blue that isn’t blue open fire, sending rubber bullets into the shins and bellies and faces of the pink.

The rubber bullets bring my old friends to the ground where they are trampled as the men in blue that isn’t blue move on the people of color, raising their black cannons and firing orange gas at the crowd.  

All the while, even as they go blind and fall, they chant:  “No justice, no peace.”  

I weep.

My old hometown is flooded.  

Blood is in the streets.  

The river overflows with the blood of the city herself

She’s been cut by her native sons and daughters as they sort themselves out, 

many generations later than expected, 

probably too late to save my hometown.

She will die because she does not deserve to live.  

She will be a memory, a page in a future history book, a wikipedia entry about the city once ruled by men in blue that wasn’t blue.  

I weep.

My old hometown is gone.  

There are no more untended flames threatening the safety of the many.

All that shattered glass has been used to decorate a new city’s towers and spires that rise toward the sky.

The blood is gone from the streets and pulses through the veins of living men and women who come in enough rainbow colors to populate their own big box of crayons.  

From a distance, you can hear that blood thrumming and feel the city’s pulse.  

My old hometown glistens, reflecting the faces of its people, all of them.  

I weep because my old hometown has made me proud.  

Copyright © Stephanie Mesler 2020

Tough As Nails Triolet

Tough As Nails Triolet

By Stephanie Mesler

Tough as nails,
like Grandma's legendary will.
or alligator scales.
Tough as nails,
with the strength of a scorpion's tail,
ready and willing to kill.
Tough as nails
like Grandma's legendary will.

© Stephanie Mesler 2019

On Meeting and Parting Not So Long Ago, An Anniversary

On Meeting and Parting Not So Long Ago
by Stephanie Mesler

Not so long ago, you were a thousand miles off.
I felt you in the night, heard your voice as if in dreams.
The tendrils of your breath reached across miles and warmed me in my dark.  

Not so long ago, shyness prevented me from taking you all the way in.  
I stole glances of you, feigning interest in objects behind and beside.
When finally I looked directly into your eyes, reserve dissolved
and all I knew I knew of you was enough.

Not so long ago, you laughed when I kissed your bottom rib.  
There was nothing at all manly about the ticklish giggle you tried hard to retrieve
but once I knew your secret place, there was to be no un-knowing

Not so long ago,  dawn crept around drawn hotel room blinds.
The clatter of uneven housekeeper’s cart wheels caused you to stir.
I pulled you closer, stroked your arm, whispered you back to sleep.

Not so long ago, my face nestled against your fur,
I fought to keep tears from splashing over your belly,
They came, unstoppable, bathing your body, wetting the sheet beneath us.
Your tears mixed with my own, assuring me it was ok to come apart before goodbye.  

Not so long ago, you kissed my palm,
It was all you could safely reach while riding the clutch in heavy tourist traffic.  
I looked straight ahead, wondering how I could possibly return to the life that did not include you.  

Not so long ago, I left you standing at the station.
Through tinted window glass, you could not know how I trembled.
You could not see a stranger hand me a tissue to wipe tears I could not even try to hide.

Not so long ago, alone again in my dark, I reached for you.
Your laughter echoed in my mind and your embrace took me home.
In your arms, a thousand miles fell away, and I breathed you in.

On Meeting and Parting Not So Long Ago is copyright 2011 Stephanie Mesler and is included in the poetry collection, Love Lines.

Mother's Reflection

Mother’s Reflection
By Stephanie Mesler

Mother told me Erik Estrada needed to take more baths. 
She said the same of our housekeeper, Lupe, and the boy who took me to the prom. 
His name was Manuel. 

No matter the temperature outside, Mother rolled up the car windows, when we crossed 110th Street.  She told me never to look a black man straight in the eye and not to sit next to a brown one on the bus. 

Mother skipped my wedding to a man who spoke with a Caribbean lilt and never held her grandchild.  Mother disowned me until my brown baby girl was in the ground and the ink on the divorce papers was dry. 

Mother was the only mother I had, so I let her forgive me.  I tried to play the role of returned prodigal daughter.  I tried to do my duty, but she died alone and spends eternity in an unmarked grave, prepared by a man with midnight skin. 

Mother was not white.  Her skin ran from summer tawny to winter taupe and her eyes were the color of dark roasted coffee beans.  Her hair was thick and curly and she carried herself with the straight-backed pride of a long denied akhsó’tha*. 

Mother was afraid to see her own reflection.  She owned only one family photo of her blue-eyed daddy.  I never knew mother’s mother’s face nor the faces of any of the women before her.  Mother bleached her skin and panicked when I turned a rich brown in a Florida summer.

I have to stop myself from crossing the street when I see a black man coming toward me on the sidewalk.  I am not afraid; it’s a habit learned before I knew I was being taught.  I will myself not to share that lesson with my own child. 

I do not scrub my skin until it is raw as Mother often did hers.  I do not drench my hair in lemon juice or attempt to control the brows that grow thick above my eyes.  I look at myself in the mirror and I see Mother looking back.

© Stephanie Mesler 2019


*akhsó’tha is a Mohawk word, for "my grandmother."

Three Haiku

As many of my readers have surmised, I enjoy writing haiku.  It is a form that comes easily, easily enough that I don't have to waste creative energy struggling to keep to the form.  That makes it a good tool for jump starting my poetical processor when it doesn't seem to want to start (or jump) at all.  A couple weeks back, I attended a short haiku workshop.  We were given a very simple prompt, winter, and a very few minutes to write several haiku.  Following are three haiku I created that day.


Roof Leaking Haiku

Monster wind, sky dumps
gallons; front makes tropics cold.
Roof leaking again.



Boardwalk Fog Haiku

Palms bent, sand swirling...
Cold mist blankets the boardwalk.
No clue what's out there.



Night Sky Haiku

Night sky blinks starlight
heavenly bodies zoom toward
morning's dread waking.

Roof Leaking, Boardwalk Fog, and Night Sky Haiku are © Stephanie Mesler 2019