Sample Poems by Lenore Weiss

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Pooling Together

It was the kind of hot New York City gets in summer,
air conditioning units piddled on sidewalks
beach chairs bowed open before apartment buildings
too steamy to sleep.

I spent days near Herald Square, streets filled
with cars, taxis, and delivery trucks that blocked traffic
the smell of Italian hero sandwiches staining bread
greasy orange.

I’d turned into a pillar of sweat
cascading between the crease of my thighs
stood at the platform of a subway station waiting
for the cool blast of an approaching train.

As hot as it was, nothing dampened our fervor
stayed at meetings for hours to plan the next demonstration
wanted the country to turn away from body bags of war,
and chanting the names of the dead, we sought our own liberation.

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Ben Levine at the Daily World

The elevator shivered as it climbed
the three, maybe four floors to the office.
I hurried to the copy editor’s desk
where a balding man unwrapped
a mid-morning snack, usually

a salami or tuna sandwich
but not before tucking
truant lettuce back into its bread
motioning with his free hand
for me to sit. Sit.

He reached for a red pencil
and went to battle, now
munched on Saltine crackers
swept crumbs into his palm
emptying them into his mouth

and shaking excess into the garbage
while circling the one or two words
he deemed acceptable.
Ben never wore glasses.
Start here.

In a few moments, it was all over,
patted his mouth with a white napkin
dismissed me with a sweet smile.
I thanked him and hid behind my desk
grateful for escape.

He said he needed 250 words
in ten minutes.
I rolled another sheet of paper
into the platen & shifted the carriage
all the way to the left with a sharp ding.

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Demonstrations of Belief

People chained themselves in the street chanting
from Rockefeller Center to Rochdale Village
Lenox Avenue to Columbia University, in Foley Square
where clerks protested the bombings of school children
repeating, Out of Saigon and into Selma, nearly every weekend
demonstrations at St Patrick’s Church
the Sheep Meadow in Central Park, banners along Fifth Avenue
waved against police brutality.

It was the Harlem People’s Parliament, May Day Committee,
the Bread and Puppet Theater whose outstretched hands towered 20 feet
above us, the Vietnam Peace Parade
soldiers who’d lost their limbs across an ocean,
teachers, steel workers, astronauts,
students for free tuition, mothers marching for peace
War is Not Good for Children and Other Living Things
picketing against segregation in housing, demonstrating
for a Civilian Review Board, Malcolm X
scattering questions like seeds.
I sat with women who blocked
the draft induction center at Whitehall Street,
a maze of police barricades and yellow tape
yanked to my feet and thrown into a paddy wagon
before I could assume the duck and cover position
practiced at lunch counters throughout the South
booked, jailed, and stuffed into a small cell
where we waited behind iron
bars didn’t change our message,
how nothing speaks louder than leaves of grass.

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Brigada Venceremos

Cinder blocks framed the sunrise orange
as I pushed aside the mosquito netting
to greet the jade-green frog who lived
beneath the toilet seat, found another stall
and grabbed my aluminum cup.
Ready for café con lêche and breakfast.
Every day I teased the baked calcium rock
into crumbling with a pick axe,
poured cement, straightened nails
and marveled at mangoes ripening on every tree.
Cuba, 1973, we built new housing
in Los Naranjos, northwest of Habana.
Together we visited places Fidel had made famous
the Moncada Garrison and the Sierra Maestra
trips to dairy farms where we met Raul Castro
and generations of women
who’d lived in a cardboard shack,
grandmother as tough-looking as the rock

I hammered every day, refusing to give in.
Saturday was party night, our group leaders,
students from the university led the charge
dancing as hard as they worked, hair curled
and shoes shined, spinning across the plaza.

I watched from the outside rim
could never hope to move with such conviction
kicking my legs, shaking my hips, laughing.