BRING IT ON: A NEW YEAR'S POEM

by Aaron Poochigian

I.

For several decades I have been one cold,
one fall, one monthly bill, away from living
derelict under cardboard on the street.
Why is it, now that I am halfway old,
my mug a mug of damage and defeat,
that New Year’s has become its own Thanksgiving?
Why do I sit here typing words of praise
about the world’s largess? Why do I sing
heart-felt ballads about each silly fling
and psalms of hope about the coming days?

II.

From California I can see Times Square,
one of the chakras of America.
The ball has dropped. I’m sorry I’m not there
to add my whoop to the hysteria.

Tourists and buskers mob the streets, and you,
my friends, are wild among them. Pop the cork,
loose the confetti, sound the shrill kazoo.
I heart the mess of you, New York, New York.

Midnight has come to Minneapolis.
While, here and there, a raucous air-horn blares,
my friends from school, as wives and husbands, kiss
on couches, with their kids asleep upstairs.

Oh Uptown rife with music, theater
and Madeleine—the things I love the most.
In memory of a twenty-something blur
of poetry and wine, I raise a toast.

Cheers have gone up all over Salt Lake City.
Futurity has driven out December!
I wrote my first book there and kissed a pretty
red-haired girl (whose name I don’t remember).

I see her, hunched and fearless, on the slopes
of Alta, snowboard-footed, goggles on.
I hope that she has Rocky-Mountain hopes
for 2020 and is up till dawn.

Finally, in Pacific Standard Time,
I feel fireworks erupt at Disneyland,
and I can see my niece in Anaheim
agog in bed, stuffed elephant in hand.

Just so I journey westward, zone by zone,
while sipping whiskey at my laptop here
in Fresno, at my mother’s house, alone.
How should I resolve to spend the year?

III.

This year I will bottle
my animal candor
the way Aristotle
honed Alexander.

The redolence of
this martial spirit
will vanquish like love
all who come near it,

and a sip will lay
the taster out.
This year, I say,
will know no doubt.

Aaron Poochigian earned a PhD in Classics from the University of Minnesota and an MFA in Poetry from Columbia University. His first book of poetry, The Cosmic Purr (Able Muse Press), was published in 2012, and his second book Manhattanite, which won the Able Muse Poetry Prize, came out in 2017. His third book, American Divine, won the Richard Wilbur Award and will come out in 2020. His thriller in verse, Mr. Either/Or, was released by Etruscan Press in the fall of 2017. His work has appeared and is forthcoming in such publications as Best American Poetry, The Paris Review and POETRY.

WINTER STARS

by Buff Whitman-Bradley

Winter Sky Rising by Alan Dyer at The Amazing Sky

Stepping outside
To watch the winter stars
Those dazzling divas of illumination
Perform their seasonal pageant
In the infinite amphitheater
Of the cold black sky
I can almost hear the old Earth
Creak on its axis
As it rolls toward another new year.

There have been better years
Than the one just past
When for one thing
The medicos found cancer in me
And had to carve it out
And radiate the environs
To prevent a recurrence.
So far that's worked.
For another, my country
By hook and crook
Selected a new president
Of such surpassing vulgarity and venality
Of such mendacity and bigotry and corruption
As to alarm all people of good will
And those most vulnerable to the predations
Of the greedy and powerful
Of racists and misogynists
Of xenophobes and homophobes
Affirmed and emboldened
By this man's ascension to power.
There is widespread concern
That a kind of civic and social malignancy
Is gnawing away at the body politic
And people all over the land
Are struggling to determine
What treatments will work best.
The prognosis is uncertain
And fatalism seems most apt.

But I remind myself that last year at this time

I was not at all sure
I would make it to now
Yet here I am
Pulsing with life and good health
Bundled up on a cold bright winter night
Shivering happily under the stars.

Buff Whitman-Bradley's poetry has appeared in many print and online journals, including Atlanta Review, Bryant Literary Review, Concho River Review, Crannog, december, Hawai'i Review, Pinyon, Rockhurst Review, Solstice, Third Wednesday and others. He has published several collections of poems, most recently, To Get Our Bearings in this Wheeling World. His interviews with soldiers who refused to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan became the book About Face: Military Resisters Turn Against War. He lives in northern California with his wife Cynthia.

NEW YEAR'S EVE

by Buff Whitman-Bradley

Image source: Sessions College

Wars bleed
From one year to the next
Greed takes no holiday
Poverty and desperation spread
Like black mold
Across the pages
Of the calendar
I see no reasons to believe
That the coming year
Will be any better
Than the last and
Likely it will be worse
Nevertheless at midnight
I stand outside
In the shivering blackness
And feel myself elated
Once more
By the ancient tableaux
Of winter constellations
Settled into their familiar places
Among the icy stars . . .

No sound no sign
No flash of light
No message from heaven
No harps or bells
But a moment of beauty
On a winter’s night
And an old pessimist’s blind hope
That all will be well


Buff Whitman-Bradley is the author of four books of poetry, b. eagle, poet; The Honey Philosophies; Realpolitik; and When Compasses Grow Old; and the chapbook, Everything Wakes Up! His poetry has appeared in many print and online journals. He is also co-editor, with Cynthia Whitman-Bradley and Sarah Lazare, of the book About Face: Military Resisters Turn Against War.  He has co-produced/directed two documentary films, the award-winning Outside In (with Cynthia Whitman-Bradley) and Por Que Venimos (with the MIRC Film Collective).  He lives in northern California.