We are grateful to Lauren Wolk, Assistant Director of the Cultural Center of Cape Cod for making it possible to have poets visit freshman and sophomore English classes at Sturgis East this year. Thanks to dynamic visits with poets Christine Rathbun and Greg Hischak, we can see interest in poetry is growing at Sturgis. For example, this year’s campus-wide Poetry Out Loud competition was well attended . We are delighted to see our students engaged and inspired by poetry.
After Christine Rathbun Ernst’s visit to her sophomore class, Alicia Watts wrote me: “I thought (Ms. Ernst) was inspirational. She encouraged students by saying: ‘You each have stories and they need to be told.’ Afterwards, one of my students said ‘she makes me want to be a writer.’ My creative writers were absorbed in her spoken word and spoke very highly of her in a follow-up discussion.”
Morgan Derby also teaches sophomores. She wrote “My students and I were all inspired – and humbled – by our visiting poet. When we debriefed the visit – which was the culmination of weeks of poetry study – my students unanimously agreed that they had all learned to enjoy reading, writing, and reciting poetry in ways they had never before imagined possible.”
My favorite student comment was about Greg Hischak: “Crazy yet lovable.” When I told him, Greg said he would like to have it carved on his tombstone.
Greg Hischak and Christine Rathbun Ernst have graciously given us permission to print the following poems.
The Temperature on Mercury
— Greg Hischak
During the course of a day here on Mercury
temperature fluctuates between terrible extremes
from nights of -320˚F—where even out of the wind
every night is the coldest night of the year to days
of 930˚F—where even in the shade it’s hot
and here on a planet totally devoid of even trace amounts
of Fresca—930˚ can sometimes seem like 940˚
But keep in mind those twenty minutes in the morning
and again those twenty minutes of late afternoon when
between these terrible extremes of temperature
it’s really not so bad out—consider that twice a day
here on Mercury there’s opportunity for a short stroll
or maybe a coffee—a hot beverage enjoyed in the glow
of a rising sun
perhaps a cold beverage quietly sipped
between the lengthening shadows—just you and I
We’ve always had these handful of minutes
here on Mercury
tucked between pan-seared day and freezer-burned night
these windows of opportunity offered us—you and I
here on Mercury
always entrusting within these twenty or so minutes
twice a day—everything
Holding
— Christine Rathbun Ernst
the piano is heavier than she’d thought
she had not counted on the leg falling off when she decided to
rearrange the living room that morning
and it is beginning to slip from her grip the piano the baby grand piano
easy enough to nudge it away from the wall its three legs were on casters after all
its three one-hundred year-old legs, though so
when she reached under the treble end corner and found purchase and took a deep breath and heaved it up
to try and kick the rug beneath the leg out of the way
the leg just dropped straight down and then over onto the floor thunk
then four fat 100-year-old screws plink plink plink plunk
and then a little pile of sawdust sifted down onto her bare foot
so blithe she was arrogant really
to think she could move a baby grand by herself without even shoes on her feet
martha stewart turned wile e. coyote holding a live grenade holding a listing piano
while her toddler daughter skips around the room
skips around the listing piano what you doing, mommy?
panicking, baby, mommy is panicking now get out of here this is dangerous
go jump on the bed while I figure this out
while she figures this out
as if she were removing a stain doubling a recipe folding a fitted sheet
figure this out
and not holding barely holding a piano
headlines of catastrophe now clog her panic
mommy crushed to death in tragic decorating mishap
mommy might have lived had she taught toddler to dial 911
mommy gnaws off own hand after piano pins her, now ironically will never play again
her grip feels wet from sweat or maybe blood and she knows
she has mere moments before this all truly goes to hell
but adrenaline or fear or god arrives and she manages
to hook like a side-show contortionist the piano bench behind her like charlie’s angels hook with her bare
saw-dust-covered left foot the piano bench slide that bench forward dangling from a cliff ellen ripley sarah connor that bench that miraculously happens to have upon it a stack of music books slide that bench like lara croft she is so between a rock and a hard place so close to disaster she can taste it slide that bench defuse the bomb destroy the asteroid save the baby slide that bench forward jam with her knee
the Big Book of Broadway Favorites under the corner where
thirty seconds or minutes or hours ago
a carved mahogany leg as thick as her thigh as old as she hopes to live
had just been for a century
until she thought to move it
life itself is peril, she thinks and hands bleeding sinks to the floor
the rest of the story is not as interesting
she gets the drill and reattaches the leg
she cleans the blood off the piano
she makes the toddler some lunch
she does not rearrange the living room
she wonders how she will explain her bandaged hands to her husband
