(John Yarbrough, Laurie Reznik, Peter Austin)
The Summer When I Was Ten
I sat on the creek band
Watching the other kids swim
Splashing and laughing
They called me a chicken
But if I took my pants off
They’d see the bruises
John Yarbrough
What Will Happen to the World?
In future years,
We will spread tears,
because many animals have become extinct
The world changed after I blinked
What about wars, when a rocket soars?
This causes pollution,
But is there a solution
Be careful with natural things
and all they bring.
Try to walk to school,
And keep the house cool.
Litter, pesticides and smoke, get rid!
And become an Eco-kid.
Laurie Reznik
The Lesson
The ghetto: dawn. A deathly light
Distempers, in the cobbled square,
The spindly scarecrows, stiff with fright,
Assembled at attention there.
A truck, usurped for Nazi use
Brings lumber, men who hammer, brace,
Upraise a gallows, hang a noose,
Depart. The kapitän, his face
A mask of granite, spits commands.
A stick man, limp, in rags attired
Is frog-marched to the gibbet, stands,
A flimsy puppet, tangle-wired
– “loaf, a life [the hands make mime]
Possess, in Warsaw, equal weight.
That contrabandage is a crime
Who dares to question shares his fate!”
The hangmen, by a finger cued
Upheave their victim, shoulder high;
Too flaccid, he’s at last lassoed,
By strangulation left to die.
His neck, they could have broken first
(It’s how they would have killed a hen),
The crowds as quickly have dispersed,
But where had been the lesson, then?
Peter Austin
