May 2, 2026: "The Split," Son's Award, "Teenager Hacks into Heaven"

So, National Poetry Month is over.  I survived all the readings and workshops, a quick trip downstate to Ann Arbor and Detroit, plus the entire week of the Great Lakes Poetry Festival at the library.  Now, sitting in the laundromat on a Saturday morning, watching my clothes agitate and spin, I am both sad and relieved.  I’m sure, in a couple months, I’ll be looking back on the past four weeks with nostalgia.  Yes, I’m glad it’s over, but I’ll miss being in the thick of poetry and poetic events every day.  Sort of like the day after Christmas as a kid—you’re haunted by all the anticipation and excitement of Santa Claus.

Marie Howe writes about ghosts . . . 

The Split

by: Marie Howe

I.

She'd start the fires under the bed.
I'd put them out.

She'd take the broom stick and rape all the little girls.
I'd pull them aside, stroke their cheeks, and comfort them.
—How they would cry.

Brit would fight the German soldiers.
She'd crouch by the banister waiting for them
when I was too scared.

And sometimes, she would push me farther into the back woods 

than I wanted to go
But I was glad she did.

She was mean and she liked it.

She'd take off her clothes and dance in front of the mirror 

and she'd say things and she'd swear.

She'd laugh at the crucifix, turn him upside down and watch him hang.
And she'd unhinge that piece of metal cloth between his legs
and run when she heard somebody coming
leaving me.

Mean as she was, I miss her.

Only twice have I heard her laugh since then.
Once, lying on my back in a yellow field,
I heard something that sounded like me in the back of my head
but it was Brit,

and just now, making love with you, it's hard to tell you
but I heard her laugh.

II.

It began as a fear.
There was something, not me, in the room.

And translated into a dumbfounding
forgetfulness

that stopped me on the street
puzzling

over what year it was, what month.

I began to watch my feet carefully.
Nevertheless, I suffered
accidents.

The bread knife sliced my thumb
repeatedly

the water glass shattered on the kitchen floor
and in its breaking there was a low laugh.

Looking up, I saw no one

but felt the old cat stretch inside me
feigning indifference.

Marie, I'd hear in a crowd, Marie
the air so thick with ghosts it was hard
breathing.

One afternoon, the trucks were humming like vacuum cleaners
in the rain.

It was impossibly lonely,
No one but me there:

I called out Brit, the city is burning,
Brit, the soldiers are coming

and she laughed so sudden and loud I turned
and saw her for one second

all insolent grace, pretending
she wasn't loving me.

I’ve had many experiences similar to the Howe is describing.  You’re out and about, not really thinking about the past or future, just being present in the moment.  Suddenly, because of the smell of an orange  or a voice heard in the distance, you’re pulled back into the past (maybe even to childhood).  Last Saturday, walking into church to play the pipe organ for Mass, I saw an old man shambling into the sanctuary, and I swear it was my father.  Same gait.  Same stooped shoulders and back.  It made me stop dead for a few moments, until the present took over again.

The final event of the Great Lakes Poetry Festival is always the awards ceremony for the GLPF Teen Poetry Contest.  Teens are invited to submit one poem to be blindly judged by a panel of poets.  The winners receive gift cards to Snowbound Books, one of the local independent booksellers.  

My son, who will be graduating from high school at the end of the month, entered the contest this year, at my urging.  (He’s entered the contest one other time, and he was awarded second place, if memory serves.). He didn’t want to enter, rolled his eyes every time I reminded him of the deadline.  He’s a really good poet; I might even apply the term gifted to him, but only when he’s not within earshot.  

This year’s judges all agreed that the teen poems this year were the strongest batch we’ve ever received in the history of the contest.  I sat in the Zoom meeting, listening them debate the merits of each entry.  Usually, it takes a little bit of time to come to a consensus on first, second, and third.  Not this year.  Every judge picked the same poem as their number one choice.  

Long story short (too late, I know), my son won first place this year with his poem “Falling Leaves.”  He was so geeked about it that he dropped his indifferent, cool teenager persona for a little while and allowed himself to be excited and proud.  It was really good to see.

My son struggled so much in elementary and middle school.  Bullies and ADHD and suicidal depression, among other things.  His younger self still haunts me on a daily basis.  I made so many mistakes in those years.  I should have pulled him from the school he was attending.  Should have insisted on an IEP and additional help.  There were some people at the school who really did their best to assist him, but, by the time he reached eighth grade, he was labeled a “bad kid.”  My last interactions with the school district’s superintendent in the weeks prior to the end of that final middle school year proved to me that my son was doomed if he stayed in that educational system.

Thus, my son started attending an alternative high school as a freshman.  He was an unknown quantity.  Clean slate, as the saying goes. And he has thrived.  He went from receiving C’s and D’s on his report card to being one of the people at the top of his class.  The teachers at the high school quickly discovered he had many talents, especially for math and English and writing.

I’m not saying there haven’t been some setbacks, but I am completely convinced that the decision to switch schools saved my son’s life, literally.  The ghost of that struggling little boy was in the room last Saturday when he won the Teen Poetry Contest, and that tiny spirit jumped up and down, hollered and clapped.  It was an amazing moment of triumph that, five years ago, I never would have predicted.

Poetry saves lives.

Saint Marty wrote the following poem as a challenge . . .

Teenager Hacks into Heaven

by: Martin Achatz

Maybe he’s like Matthew Broderick
playing Global Thermonuclear War
with Joshua, something as innocent
as tic-tac-toe triggering Armageddon.

Or maybe he’s prompted to change
his password by a link sent
from his dead grandmother’s
email, and he clicks on it because
he misses her chocolate chip banana
bread still warm form the oven.

Or maybe, just maybe, he craves
everlasting life, like Elizabeth Báthory
simmering in a hot tub of virgin blood,
Keats spying on a nesting nightingale,
Donald Trump carving his face on Rushmore.

He doesn’t want to be a lost soul
knocking at strangers’ houses, hoping
to find the back door to paradise
where Amazon packages are delivered,
garbage bags hunch, and feral cats prowl
for leftover Communion table scraps.

Now that he’s a poem, perhaps
someone in a hundred years
will read him, encounter him
like a forgotten classmate
at a 50th reunion, you know, that kid
who always sat by himself at lunch,
waiting for the cafeteria ladies to give
away the leftover pizza and tater tots.
If you get close enough, you might
be able to read his name tag.

April 13, 2026: “Death, the Last Visit,” Emily Dickinson, “Writing a Poem”

It’s Monday night.  Just got home from the library after showing a movie about the life of Emily Dickinson.  A Quiet Passion.  I’d seen it before.  Thought it was a perfect choice for National Poetry Month.

I’m not going to write a whole lot tonight.  I’m tired.  I think it has something to do with the dreary weather.  Driving to and from work today, the fog was so thick I worried I was going to run into a deer that got lost in the woods and wandered onto the mist-choked highway.

Marie Howe gets a little Emily Dickinson-esque . . . 

Death, the Last Visit

by: Marie Howe

Hearing the low growl in your throat, you’ll know that it’s started.

It has nothing to ask you.  It only has something to say, and

it will speak in your own tongue.

Locking its arm around you, it will hold you as long as you ever wanted.

Only this time it will be long enough.  It will not let go.

Burying your face in its dark shoulder you’ll smell mud and hair and water.

You’ll taste your mother’s sour nipple, your favorite salty cock

and swallow a word you thought you’d spit out once and be done with.

Through half-closed eyes you’ll see that its shadow looks like yours,

a perfect fit.  You could weep with gratefulness.  It will take you

as you like it best, hard and fast as a slap across the face,

or so sweet and slow you’ll scream give it to me until it does.

Nothing will ever reach this deep.  Nothing will ever clench this hard.

At last (the little girls are clapping, shouting) someone has pulled

the drawstring of your gym bag closed enough and tight.  At last

someone has knotted the lace of your shoe so it won’t ever come undone.

Even as you turn into it, even as you begin to feel yourself stop,

you’ll whistle with amazement between your residual teeth oh jesus

oh sweetheart, oh holy mother, nothing nothing nothing ever felt this good.

It’s funny.  I wrote a poem this evening about death, as well.  Most poets are pretty obsessed with mortality.  It’s one of the pitfalls of being a poet.  Death kindly stops for you all the time.

Here is Saint Marty’s new poem . . . 

Writing a Poem

by: Martin Achatz

Doesn’t it always start with a question,

like why is that snowman standing alone

in a field or how did Mom make perfect

pancakes every time or did my sister

feel my hand holding hers in those last

breath moments before her lungs went

to sleep and heart became a drumbeat

on a distant battlefield, when hearing

was all she had left, my voice entering

her ear canal, slowly drifting toward

the shores of her mind—a kid’s

inner tube blown across the lake by

a summer squall until it washes

ashore, finds a home in cattails where

it waits to be remembered, claimed

like a lost soul?

April 27: Shatter Like Glass, Book Club, Donald Hall

Billy didn't want to drop from the car to the ground.  He sincerely believed he would shatter like glass.  So the guards helped him down, cooing still.  They set him down facing the train.  It was such a dinky train now.

There was a locomotive, a tender, and three little boxcars.  The last box car was the railroad guards' heaven on wheels.  Again--in that heaven on wheels--the table was set.  Dinner was served.

Billy is a little disconnected from reality.  He's traveled for days in a dark railroad boxcar, without sleep, without much food.  He feels fragile, like a piece of crystal that would splinter if exposed to sudden movement or operatic high notes.  So he sits, stares at the guards and their food.

It is Book Club night.  My house is prepped, the casserole is in the oven.  This month's selection (in honor of National Poetry Month) is former U. S. Poet Laureate Donald Hall's book Essays After Eighty.  It's a beautiful collection, and Hall, pushing into his ninetieth decade of living, is undiminished in talent and wit.  He's an inspiration to me as a writer and person.

I remember, a few summers ago, an occasion where I was able to attend a dinner held in Hall's honor.  There he sat in his wheelchair, signing books, looking a little grizzled and wild.  When we started speaking together, Hall's years seemed to melt away.  He spoke of a mutual friend we had, and, I swear to God, he giggled as he told me a story about the friend.

That moment, speaking with Donald Hall, was a Billy Pilgrim disconnect moment for me.  If I had shattered into a pile of dust, I would have died a happy man.

So, the table is set.  I am wearing my old man flannel shirt in honor of Donald Hall.

Saint Marty is thankful tonight for his Book Club friends.

The great man and Saint Marty

May 30: Crossed Paths, Poet of the Week, Janeen Rastall, "Release"

I have know Janeen Rastall for several years.  The first time I met her was at a poetry reading in which we were both participating.  She was coming off a challenge of writing a poem a day for the entire month of April, National Poetry Month.  If I remember correctly, one of her poems was about caring for her elderly mother.  And I also remember thinking, this is a writer I have to watch.

Over the years, our paths have crossed.  She is tireless in her pursuit of the art of poetry.  Every once in a while, I'll receive an e-mail from her.  She's a gracious and lovely person, and she's become a really great poet.

And that's why I have chosen to feature her as Poet of the Week.

Release

by:  Janeen Rastall

The surf lays out featherless wings
and sanded birch limbs,
pieces once bound by ice.
Does a wave batter debris into something better?
A woman goes to the lake.
shorts and t-shirt taunt early May,
faded welts dapple wintered flesh.
She carves the sand with a stick,
draws two names inside a heart.
In an hour the beach will be blank.
She has predicted this end,
tasted it on his menthol tongue,
felt it in each whorl and callus,
every knuckles’ edge.
When waves encroach, she snaps
a photo with her phone.
She will not stay
to see her name sucked back with the sand.

April 17: Some More Yellow Dog, Judith Minty, Spring

I have a few more poems from the Yellow Dog tonight.

Last night, I found out that nobody signed up for a poetry workshop that I was going to conduct next Tuesday at the local library.  It's canceled.  It was a little depressing when I got the e-mail.  Of course, poetry is always a hard sell, even if it's National Poetry Month.

I have sort of recovered.  Still feeling a little ego-bruised, but I plan to drink a little bit tonight.

Saint Marty is glad it's Friday.

from Yellow Dog Journal, "Spring" section

5

Mice in the woodbox.  The fire
still warm, they must think
I am like Gulliver, either dead
or asleep.
They poke their little heads out,
they rattle over newspapers
to eye intruder
who writes in their giant bed.
Later, in the dark, they will
tie me here
with fine threads from their nests.

13

Though nearly midnight,
the sky is dawn's, shadows
of trees balanced against gray.
When I step onto the chill porch
to look for her, the moon
is there,  Nearly full
she forms a cross through the screen:  north, south,
east and west, reaching out
to mark us all in lunacy,
to set us mixing days and night.

Anybody want to get naked and dance under the moon?  Yeah, me neither.

March 18: Recording Poems, Andrea Scarpino, "Homily"

I was once more at the studio of the local Public Radio station this afternoon, this time to record some of my poems for National Poetry Month.  Sometimes when I read many of my poems in one sitting, they all sort of blend together for me, create one large poem.  I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing.  I don't like the idea of writing the same poems over and over (although it worked for Walt Whitman).  It was a little disconcerting.

Anyway, I do have another Andrea Scarpino poem for you.  It's a moving little prose poem.

Saint Marty needs to stop obsessing about his poems this evening, or he's never going to get to sleep.

Homily

by:  Andrea Scarpino

Notre Dame de Paris, Christmas Day.  She didn't believe in God and yet, the smell of evergreen, of wooden pews, incense swung in metal balls.  Tourists walked the sides of the nave past paintings, glass.  She bought a pencil sketch, gargoyles spouting water from the eaves.  She didn't believe in God and yet, she saw awhile, edge of a pew, listened to the priests, mass in Latin, hymns in French.  Morning sun warmed the glass, the smell of evergreen.  On her knees, she lit a candle, prayed, believed, Keep my father safe.  Amen.

Where's a hunchback when you need him?

April 1: Choosing and Recording Poems, a Little Dip in the "Rye"

Yes, it is the first day of National Poetry Month.  At 12:30 p.m., I have a date at the local Public Radio station to record some of my poems for broadcast this month.  It's something the station has been doing for quite a few years, and it allows listeners to hear the work of local writers.

My problem is this:  I'm not sure what poems I've recorded in the past.  I was going through my poetry binder, picking out possibilities, and suddenly realized I'd already recorded one of them last year.  I really need to keep better track of what I've already used from year-to-year.

Anyway, I have a good stack of poems that I'm sure I haven't recorded before.  Now my nerves are beginning to kick in.  I can usually read my poems straight through, without a mistake.  However, now that I've put that out there, I'm sure I'm go to turn into a stuttering mess.  It will be like Mel Tillis reciting Shakespeare.

My question for Rye Dip Monday is this:

Will I be able to record my poems this afternoon in one take, without any mistakes?

And the answer from Mr. Salinger is:

She was sore as hell, but she got up off my goddam lap so that I could go over and get my wallet off the chiffonier.  I took out a five-dollar bill and handed it to her.  "Thanks a lot," I told her.  "Thanks a million."

I'm not sure what this passage says about recording poetry this afternoon.  Maybe I'll run into a prostitute on my way to the studio.  Maybe I'll get through my recording easily and be really grateful.  Maybe I'll have to pay the radio station to put my poems on air.

Saint Marty is getting mixed signals.

To b-be or n-not t-to b-be...