THE HIGH SCHOOL BAND AT MADISON SQUARE GARDEN

by Martha Deed

1 The Students

Tonight!
Gigantic Rally
at Madison Square Garden 

Our high school band
invited to play

Admission Free

We will march up Eighth Ave
in a ticker tape parade

President Eisenhower in person!

We will play “Hail to the Chief”
for real

Was I playing clarinet that year?

We will play in Madison Square Garden
as sure as 
as sure as the Knicks
to entertain the crowd

Or was I playing glockenspiel?

2 The School Authorities and the Parents

We’ll let them go
even with the usual field trip worries
the bus could break down
a chaperon on the sauce
a kid throws up on the bus
or starts a fight

We shall vigorously lead the way
to a review and revision
of our immigration laws

after overcoming the fear of partisanship
we will not worry about the bomb threat
phoned to the New York Daily News
an hour before the rally began
because we won’t know about it

Four years ago
we wandered wearily
in the darkness
of a drifting war

because there is no internet to scare us bloodless
yet

we wondered how long a government
could effectively lead the free world
when it no longer commanded
the pride of its own people

We have welcomed an effective attack on inflation

Even as he speaks 

I have seen the face of our land
soil, rivers and forests
their richness and power conserved

and promises

to serve our national interest
to promote understanding in the world
to give new validity
to America’s role of leadership
in this world

they won’t remember anything he said.

3 Two days later

The letter from The White House
The letter copied for each band member
The words forgotten
The letter kept

Martha Deed’s third poetry collection Haunted By Martha was released by FootHills Publishing, July 2023. She has published ten books (poetry, mixed media, non-fiction) and ten chapbooks along with inclusion in more than 20 poetry anthologies. Individual poems have appeared in The New Verse News, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Earth’s Daughters, First Literary Review—East, Shampoo, Gypsy, and many others.

MARSH GAS

by Martha Deed

“The court will set a new schedule if and when the mandate is returned.”

—Hon. Tanya Chutkan, Groundhog Day 2024

Usually the worse it is

the longer I take

to say anything about it

but today

is not one of those days

Today is not a shock

Today rests upon absence of surprise

after decades of seeking fruit from the tree of justice

and finding only sick worms and fungi

feeding upon the softened spoiled

core of a tree failing to thrive

in a rotting swamp

that exploded long ago

as anyone knows

who was wronged in a lower court

say—family court

where a child’s future

was dangled over

the bubbling glop

so that even when

a rotten judge was later removed

it was too late for the child

and for at least one parent

or from a class

(yes, “class” in the United States)

whose voice is smothered in the court

while the other is entitled

(yes, “entitled” in the United States)

to call the shots in wars designed

to defeat the weaker class

through unequal monetary weaponry

and finding oneself trapped at the bottom of a bog

while the wealthier ones walk away

Justice like rich organic matter

sinks to the bottom

then deprived of oxygen

rises to the top

forms a hard crust

that leaves justice

trapped below

for the bottom feeders

Anoxic gases bubble to the surface

and singe the air

A thick crust of contaminate

preserves deep destruction

as marsh gas in the court grows and stinks

So it is that spoiled judges

rise through the judicial system

and prevail

We who have seen the lower courts

stood close enough to smell the smell

we knew this would happen

that it would lead to a decision that

rots to form a crust that prevents

oxygen from reaching

the organic material trapped below*

i.e. unthinkable

not merely spoiled

Poisoned

*Marsh gas.

Martha Deed’s third poetry collection Haunted By Martha was released by FootHills Publishing, July 2023. She has published ten books (poetry, mixed media, non-fiction) and ten chapbooks along with inclusion in more than 20 poetry anthologies. Individual poems have appeared in The New Verse News, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Earth’s Daughters, First Literary Review—East, Shampoo, Gypsy, and many others.

SOUTHERN BIRDS MOVE NORTH

gigan by Martha Deed

The dense, green woodlands of Germany that gave rise to the "Grimms' Fairy Tales" are turning gray and dying. Forest still covers a third of the country, but 80% of all trees are sick. Weakened by years of drought, they now face another onslaught—bark beetles. As Esme Nicholson reports, some blame commercial forestry, but others say it's climate change. —NPR, July 26, 2023

The trees have gone gray.
I can see the sky.

Bark Beetles take advantage
of the drought that has weakened the trees.
I remember the young professor’s wife in 1960

weeping that we are ruining the planet
when others were distracted by nuclear threats

when my father in 1950 had already said
Cardinals and other Southern birds

are moving North. They are building nests.
The trees have gone gray

weeping that we are ruining the planet
while the doomed children focus
on learning how to tie their shoes

learning to focus on what we can control
and to ignore the rest.

Author’s Note: Ruth Ellen Kocher invented the gigan form.


Martha Deed’s third poetry collection Haunted By Martha was released by FootHills Publishing, July 2023. She has published ten books (poetry, mixed media, non-fiction) and ten chapbooks along with inclusion in more than 20 poetry anthologies. Individual poems have appeared in The New Verse News, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Earth’s Daughters, First Literary Review—East, Shampoo, Gypsy, and many others.

QUEENS MAN INDICTED

by Martha Deed

“Lox Him Up!” tweeted by @DAMendelsohnNYC.

A Queens man was indicted Thursday for allegedly making hush money payments to a porn star before he was elected President of the United States in 2016. —Queens Eagle, March 30, 2023

Purple lilac buds double in size almost overnight,

defying snow and ice, while all across the country,

poets are writing small poems each day

for National Poetry Month to prove that they can. 

They seek images that split their lines wide open even in the rain.

Two House Finches—pinkish he, strong-striped she—

24th species of the year to feast at the feeder.

A lame Canada Goose crosses the yard. Green

leaves drip from its beak. A feral black cat

circles the base of the feeder, its eyes to the ground.

The sharp-eyed poets seek something novel,

like whalers persevering through fog.

Trump's first indictment ain't it.

Martha Deed's poems have appeared in The New Verse News, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Grand Little Things, BlazeVox Journal, Mason Street Review, Unlikelystories, and many others. Her third poetry collection Haunted by Martha is forthcoming from FootHills Publishing in 2023. Two Pushcart Nominations and one Best of the Net Nomination. 

EARLY VOTING

by Martha Deed

When the six year-olds in Miss Rumsey's first grade class elected Truman
one girl was practically the only one voting for Dewey.  She was embarrassed
and outcast. Her parents could not be convinced to change their minds
and she grew suspicious of polls.  Her place in life improved only slightly
in '52 when everyone agreed on Eisenhower and in '56 she won a quarter
from her Presbyterian father when the General defeated Adlai Stevenson
despite her father's prediction Ike would die before Election Day.  He fortified
his flawed opinion with a coin. And so it goes. Each election more savage
than the last. Each more desperate.
Probably Goldwater wouldn't have dropped the bomb. 

But now the grown-up child knows what desperation really means
when you have to vote with Gunslingers who think Others are Crooks
and Scoundrels and maybe Immigrants or Black, Have No Souls,
and Want To Eat Babies. When she voted today (early voting to avoid the rush),
no one stood outside armed-to-the-teeth. The election workers looked
like librarians. They were soft-spoken and gave clear instructions
like her second grade teacher Miss White who taught her pupils
how to tie their shoes and zip up their snowsuits so she wouldn't
have to do it herself. The election workers are not allowed to do it themselves.
They say The ballots have two sides. Color your choices inside the lines.

Martha Deed's poetry has appeared in The New Verse News and most recently or forthcoming in Moss Trill, Mason Street, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Grand Little Things, The Skinny Poetry Journal. Her poetry collections Under the Rock (2019) and Climate Change (2014) and a third collection forthcoming from FootHills Publishing. She is a retired psychologist who makes trouble with poetry inspired by crises and other mishaps around her house on the Erie Canal in Western New York.

LIFE EXPECTANCY

by Martha Deed

Gravestone inscription: Erected in memory of Mrs. Kezia Cutter, wife of Mr. Richard Cutter, departed this life Dec. ye 1788, in ye 63rd Year of her age. "Watch ye, that live, for ye don't know / How near you are to death. / Or what may give the fatal blow / To stop your fleeting breath."

Life expectancy in the U.S. fell in 2021, for the second year in a row. It was the first time life expectancy dropped two years in a row in 100 years. —NPR, August 30, 2022

You could die of a sudden attack in church
be run over by a buffalo in Montana
be felled by a tree if you wielded an ax unwisely
or TB, smallpox or Typhoid
in a bomber over Northern France
starve
drown at sea
die in childbirth
fall off a horse or a runaway train in the Rockies
be kicked by a Union officer’s horse between battles
be killed at Deerfield or in Narrangansett Swamp
by a rogue at a card game in Deadwood

Death was just around the corner in those olden days
Everyone knew that life was a delicate thread
stitching oblivion before birth to oblivion after death
survival provisional and linked to mere chance

The old-timers knew
You can’t turn your back on death
Death can find you any place any time

But now—now we 21^st Century descendants
in a time of shrinking life expectancy
think we control our destiny
having survived hiding under desks
to fool the atom bomb

Now we do not await the trickiness of Fate
Now we have to look for the nearest exit
the place to run, hide or fight
at the grocery store or church or school
because we have turned nasty
or have not silenced others who have turned nasty—
the nastiest among us declaring supremacy
and the right to kill at will
die quickly on the street
or slowly by telling all the scientists
to go to hell

Martha Deed's poetry has appeared in The New Verse News and most recently or forthcoming in Moss Trill, Mason Street, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Grand Little Things, The Skinny Poetry Journal. Her poetry collections Under the Rock (2019) and Climate Change (2014) and a third collection forthcoming from FootHills Publishing. She is a retired psychologist who makes trouble with poetry inspired by crises and other mishaps around her house on the Erie Canal in Western New York.

ENDURANCE

by Martha Deed

" ...the appearance of Odessa is very handsome, the harbor is excellent."

—Capt. Seth F. Sprague, Smyrna log, July 15, 1830.

He whistles “Yellow Submarine” as he passes by my window.

He is pushing a wheelbarrow loaded with large blocks of broken concrete.

Studied music in college, he tells me later. Now this (with a smile).

When they found the Endurance in 10,000 ft of water

videoed the stern still bright in red and gold, did they think

about the men who did not die there, but who now are long dead

or about what those seamen thought making their escape

across the living ice mindlessly crushing their ship, did that crew

have the peace of mind to consider the irony

of a shipwreck with no fatalities, the lifeboat journey

across a frigid ocean, the self-rescues, the endurance?

The digging continues—the rescue of a room less carefully

constructed than Shackleton's barquentine, the room

that did not endure, the room that is a small matter

in the universe although important to me, that may not

last 106 more years even if not sunk again, even if built

right this time like the shipbuilders of Marshfield

built the Smyrna, whose captain logged its voyage to Odessa,

the first American ship to anchor there in 1830,

the crew of 27 with a 5th cousin (6x removed) who

departed this life in 1887, said to be most proud

of the Mayflower ancestors that bind us into cousinhood,

could not have anticipated Putin's carnage in 2022.

All day, the wheelbarrows roll over wooden panels

laid across the spring mud yard from street to dig—

the thin young man with long black beard

now whistling the theme to Star Wars.

Martha Deed's poetry has appeared in The New Verse News and most recently in Moss Trill, Mason Street Blog, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Grand Little Things, The Skinny Poetry Journal.  Her poetry collections Under the Rock (2019) and Climate Change (2014) were both published by FootHills Publishing. She is a retired psychologist who makes trouble with poetry inspired by crises and other mishaps around her house on the Erie Canal in Western New York.

IT’S PERSONAL

by Martha Deed

for Ruth Bader Ginsburg

It's spring 1973 and the trees are budding
on 111th Street along the south edge of Columbia
and I, ripening also, am walking home
from the obstetrician's office at St Luke's
The walk is weekly now
Ready
Pass by a smiling female undergraduate
She waves and says
"Next time you will have a choice."
Yes
She does not know
This time I did have a choice
though others haven't
and while pregnant
I met with women at the clinic
(We negotiated my obvious condition delicately)
as I sent them to Puerto Rico or elsewhere
our male director having said
Psychotherapy is not the answer
for women who've been raped
or secretly abused
and so we linked with doctors*
who had licenses and safe offices

Five women
We looked at each other
We saw each other
We understood that what is good for one
could be catastrophic for the other
We understood that freedom does not include
dictating what should happen to someone else's body

but only what should happen to our own 

*Our clinic utilized Clergy Consultation Service.

Martha Deed, PhD has published two poetry collections (Under the Rock, 2019 and Climate Change, 2014, both with FootHills Publishing) 5 other full-length books, a half dozen chapbooks since her retirement as a Psychologist, dozens of poetry publications.  Her work is frequently anthologized. She received a Pushcart Nomination from The New Verse News in 2011. Lives on the Erie Canal in WNY.

TO JAMES TATE

by Martha Deed

Image source: Tin House

To James Tate who died ‒ The New York Times and other places say
"after a long illness" at age 71, it is certain, Mr. Tate, that you are not dead
because the poet James Tate, the man this obit purports to bury
is a man wild with words and metaphors and would not "die after a long illness,"
but expire actually only after being hit by a meteor in broad daylight
while taking a break in a green, white, and yellow striped canvas covered, oak-
framed lawn chair purchased for a dollar at the very same tag sale where the coffee blender
was offered ‒ insultingly ‒ to anyone willing to take it off the crazy seller's hands
for free and now it appears that the coffee blender should have been accepted for the rotten
gift it seemed and no money should have changed hands over the lawn chair whose faded
cover harbored screws rusted at the core that sent the poet into oblivion just as he was
contemplating the next line in his next new poem the perfect nonsense of a next line replete
with toy guns and real ammunition unearthed by a small boy with dark skin and brown eyes
whose future would include 1600 on his college boards and admirable physics scores as well
who would grow up thinking a trip to Pluto was not out of the question whose inquisitive
nature matched James Tates' who cannot be dead at the premature age, barely biblical age,
of 71. We do not believe this, because we are great admirers of James Tate and we know
he does not have much truck with death and, in fact, he welcomes conversations with dead
men whom he meets at every opportunity and whom he challenges to live past their prime
even as they peer down his fevered throat and declare a person hopeless while extracting
every dime from their wallets and this in 1976 before the rest of us understood doctors
or invented Safe Patient Projects or petitioned Congress for relief which Tate already
knew ‒ before 1976 ‒ was at best a captious notion indeed, for Tate was a wise man
who understood it is every man for himself in this ungainly world and the women are smart
but the men are the drivers and often deaf to women who advise them to avoid the potholes
and bumps in the road and the men age and look gray and grumpy and finally the women
capitulate and love them anyhow because those silly old men remind them of Black-capped
Gnatcatchers rare in Arizona but cousins of a comfort commonplace Blue-gray Gnatcatcher
in the white birches in their front yard at home in North Tonawanda by the sea.


Martha Deed is the keeper of a tumblr blog Sporkworld and has published several poetry collections.  Her most recent is Climate Change (Foothills Publishing, 2014).

PARIS 1974, 2015

by Martha Deed

Photo by Ian Berry

What has the sun said to you, my child ‒

that the world is a dangerous place

and this is a day to stay in bed?

But, No. It said

Do you see the shine of morning dew

on the cobblestone streets

and the spires of Notre Dame

kissing the clouds

The cafes bursting with coffee

and croissants in the hands of kids

on their way to school

on their way to work?

This is a day

the sun said

to take a good walk

along the quay

This is a day to look for a book

to visit the market of live birds

to hear them call

to admire their feathers

shining in the sun

the light flashing on them like sparklers

not like bullets at the newspaper

not like flash grenades

at the grocery store

This I tell you:

Because you heeded the sun,

you will live another day

your survival as accidental

as those held hostage

as those who died

at your grocery store

you did not visit

because you were taking 

a walk in the sun 

In this poem, Martha Deed has woven the close call she had in Paris in 1974 or 1975 when Millie was a baby.  They usually went to the news stand for the Sunday paper at 10:30 AM.  Regular as clockwork.  But that day, Martha simply thought to take a walk to a farther away news stand instead.  Carlos, the Jackal, had planted a bomb at her usual place, and it exploded, killing people, as Martha pushed Millie in her stroller down the Blvd Saint-Germaine.