Words for Glenis
Praise for Glenis
“Redmond doesn’t read her poem so much as she declares it in full-body motion.” ~ Orlando Sentinel
“Her main strength was her ability to draw all the students into what she was doing and to keep them involved…I saw some students blossom in a way they never had before.” ~ teacher, Anderson School District #5, Anderson, SC
“It’s the way her words draw you into a seemingly innocuous subject and singe you with the fury of intelligence scorned. It’s in another league.”~ London Time Out
“The best CETA (Changing Education Through the Arts) workshop to date.” ~ Kennedy Center workshop participant
She is able to take the wisdom
of the elders and make it relevant to the youth of today, and she
does so with a poetical magic that shines, be it on the page or on the stage.”~Dr. Benjamin Zephaniah
“I can't think of a greater honor for my father than to have you be a voice for him.” ~Helga Sandburg Crile (daughter of Carl Sandburg)
Poems for Glenis
Finding Poems
by Mark Prudowsky
I listen to the
soft rhyme of her newest poem --
she found it in her office, her lap piled,
looking for an address,
I’m in the living room,
begging Cuhulain and the Morrigan
to talk to me --
Instead I hear Glenis:
I’m gonna write a poem.
She doesn’t mean later, but right now,
in the office, lap piled,
pen tucked in her dreads,
writing on the computer --
I never write on the computer.
Why I’m doing that now
She's at the dining room table to pay a bill,
Looks for her checkbook
and finds another poem
tucked in the mind jerk
of a recovered invoice.
She’s headed upstairs,
two sheets of paper tucked under one arm,
a clothes basket tucked under the other.
Under a towel,
alongside the phone
she's been looking for all morning --
another musing, another poem,
about a dozen yellow roses awaiting
her at the hotel reception desk --
from an eighth grade teacher who
fostered her finding words
one finds in her poems
found in books her thirteen
year-old-self found crammed on shelves
of the Italian airbase neighbor.
Words found when she coaxed
vegetables out of the tired, Aviano soil.
Descending stairs,
basket stuffed with towels washed already
towels not emptied into
a closet's woven-cane baskets.
She's gonna toss ‘em in the machine
again, till I or the machine, remind her
they’ve been washed. She might
pause, smile at me. Instead
she smiles out the window --
dances with her front-fence sunflowers.
In the kitchen, marveling
at the orange of it all, Glenis finds another poem,
in the sink where Celeste's paint brushes
soak in a murky glass, trailing cobalt clouds
concealing another poem
a distant cousin to a sink poem from
an airbase kitchen
where a twelve year-old
scrubbed dishes, reading books propped- up
behind the faucet.
This Asheville kitchen has books too:
books on the counters;
books on the stove; books on the table;
books atop the refrigerator
covered with magnetic verses
snatches of poems she found when cooking
her daughters dinner.
In her daughters, reside other poems
she's found, poems she’ll find,
the words are baskets cradling her love,
nestling her hopes for Amber and Celeste.
Glenis found her abacus poem,
when she found Celeste telling Amber
her father lived on the hypotenuse
connecting his home to theirs.
Work-shopping with children
in a Greenville school
coaxing honoring poems from kids
who didn’t dare to honor themselves,
she helped Amber find her poem --
the smile she sings while telling it,
appears in the ninth poem
she found this morning, all before 11:30
A.M., before those sunflowers even
opened their petals, before the
cottage office down the hill even broke for lunch.
The cottage office books the poems Glenis finds:
Amber and Celeste found poems;
sunflower along the front-fence-found poems;
towels in woven-cane-closet -basket found poems;
nodding to Color Purple poems;
color orange as her kitchen poems;
color mute as her office cardboard cubby-hole poems;
Poems found looking for addresses,
paying invoices.
Don’t ask where this woman finds her poems --
or where she found the words found in her poems --
or found the time to find the words
of her found poems.
Else you find yourself in one of
her mornings,
in one of her poems --
find yourself found, discovered,
revealed, shaped and shook,
in one of her poems
in any one of her rooms,
in any one of her homes.
Alone for Glenis
by Patricia Starek
Dear Friend,
Friday night
I sit in this restaurant
alone
and think of you
alone
how many restaurants have you graced
alone
in all of your
alone
presence
how many plane rides
no one to claim you at luggage
alone
you claim yourself
how many sheets know only your name
how often do we choose alone?
so much alone
to reach so many
so much alone
to reach so many
your solitary courage
give others permission
to breathe
relieve
grieve
joy
you are all of the 4th of July on Stage
huge unsuspecting audiences of
white
sullen
teenagers
in Connecticut
are roused to their feet
Episcopalian Sunday School Class
brought to tears because you
pointed them in the direction of their souls
and said
praise
small polite audiences
rural ass
tiny ass
Louisiana
watch you like a silent auction
and buy every one of your books
25 black students at 1250 student College of Charleston
find
black
human
light streaming out of you mouth
illuminating their white world
people
purses
tennis shoes
hearts
all rise to their feet when you read
poetry
neglected poetry
has it's day in the sun when it rolls out your mouth
you she poetry her you
your tincture
they stand and they praise
hands hands hands
applaud poetry you
stage you
clarity you
bold you
I Glenis
applaud
alone you
diluted you
end of the day
vulnerable you
confused and clear spiritual you
eats mostly right
has a hard time sitting down you
laughter
easy laughter
you
mother you
tired
no voice you
alone you
is the you that let's
alone p be alone me
p + g = alone we
we is what you find
in the dictionary under friends
under sisters
under poets
under coconspirators
under my God when the
world feels ugly and big and your battery
went dead in the rain in Newark and the love
of your life pressed the pause button on your
song and dinner is burned and the rent is due
and the rent is due and no health insurance
find this friend
find this friend
find your breath
grieve relieve joy
eat salmon croquettes
and be
For Ms. Poetic
by Mrs. Beaver’s Fourth Grade Class
Poetry Lover,
Spunky, brilliant Sis-tah!
Makes us feel energetic.
Poet of great peace and
freedom.
Generous to your Heroes…
Benevolent to your Sheroes.
Left us feeling witty yet serious.
Smiling like geeks
And grinning like nerds.
Watch!
by Mark Prudowsky
Watch!
her craft memorials
big as Langston’s Alabama sunrise;
fashion pauses in the
too-busy lives
of those watching her
strut a stage,
shaping the languid air
with her butterfly hands,
her swaying hips.
Burnished eyelids
descend softly on
an eagle’s passage through
Taos’ scarlet sunset.
Watch her:
her flash reflections.
Momma’s Magic --
broom whisks urging her children
you’ll get there, you’ll get there.
hang doors, hinges
howling with the rage of ancestors
packed in the holds of the middle-passage;
other side of the family
ancestors force-marched
from these three billion
year old locust clad mountains
to Oklahoma’s red-budded copses.
honor Grandma Katie
sharecropping cotton-fields
dusted with red and black
bottom-land clay,
languishing in her one-hundred-
two year-old Carolina sunset.
weave her awe of
Carl Sandburg’s spiders, among radishes
and button weeds,
honoring the man who honored
every man born under the sky.
Watch!
this woman,
brow-lines deep as pockets,
school her daughters
to move like the ancestors
on the other side of the pond.
speak like their sisters
this side --
Clifton and Walker
Zora and Belle.
Watch her:
urge fence-row
sunflowers up-out
the soil of her home
where locust hulls still
conduct water underground, past slave beds --
their disrespected
stories climbing to her uneasy,
second-story sleep;
pay big dollar for her gifts.
In-tune-itions drag on her,
like the yoke
of Grandma Katie’s plow mule
in the Carolina clay –
Red’s Up
by Debra Roberts
Red bird
Red wing
Red deer
Red fox
Red herring
Red snapper
Red squirrel
Red skin
Red Indian
Red injun
Red jacket
Red october
Red potatoes
Red tomatoes
Red clover
Red cedar
Red wood
See red
Red sea
Red tide
Red tape
Red eye
Red neck
Red cent
Red center
Red carpet
Red cross
Red china
Red October
Redmond
Redmonde
Red world
Red man
Redwoman
Well re(a)d
Red head
Red Hot Mama
And
Red light
Red blooded
Red breast
Read alert
Red (eem)
Re(a)dy always
Love you always
Red red red red red red red red red
Red’s up what’s up you’re up
Redmondwomanworld
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