Tag: philadelphia

Two Poems by Robbi Nester

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My Mother Refused to Cook with Garlic

preferred her food sedate, polite.
She made the same meals every week,
with takeout on the weekends– Monday:
pot roast and mashed potatoes, Tuesday:
salmon cakes and corn, Wednesday: roast
chicken and potatoes, Thursday: spaghetti,
Friday: fish and chips. She seldom tried
new dishes, lest some foreign taste slip in,
some suspect new ingredient.

When the scent of neighbors’ dinner
penetrated our thin walls, reminding
everyone of where we came from, the past
we tried to hide, she wrinkled up her nose.
That smell exposed deep roots in Russian
shtetls, raw onion sandwiches on thick
black bread, like the ones my paternal
grandmother used to snack on.

Far enough away in time, I taste only
with my tongue, and not my memory.
It’s complicated tastes that I prefer,
garlic’s sweet aroma when I roast the bulb,
squeeze it over crusty bread, just baked,
inhale the scent of asafetida, cumin,
fenugreek, and dream of other places.

*

House

A line of red brick rowhomes clung to one another in a chorus line
on both sides of a narrow one-way street, children jumping rope
or roller skating, popping wheelies in the middle of the road.
Drivers had to blast their horns just to get by. We had
a playground, ice rink, and a pool, a library across the street,
yet I dreamed of living in a wood-paneled ranch
with a front yard full of fruit trees, horses in a field.
No trees grew on my block, shedding cool shade
in the summer. Tiny lawns, sometimes cemented over.
Even crabgrass could seem lush. I wanted something
other than I had. The house I dreamed of nestled
among oaks and pines on a twisty stretch near Tookany,
salmon pink, with a driveway of patterned stone.
I’ve moved many times from one house to another,
but never one with horses, standing all alone
among the trees.

*

Robbi Nester is the author of 5 books of poetry, the most recent of which, About to Disappear (Shanti Arts, 2025), was just named an Eric Hoffer Finalist in its category. Learn more about her work at robbinester.net

Selected Books by Robbi Nester:
About to Disappear
Balance
The Liberal Media Made Me Do It

HIT ME! by Grace Alvino

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HIT ME!

The man who juggles in
Rittenhouse Square stabbed
two people in 2020. He calls
my dog a scavenger when he
sees her at the fountain. It is
her favorite place to sit so I
don’t make her move.

I tell my mom about him
but not what happened to
my neighbor. She was walking
her dog when a man hit
them with his cane.

I have always wanted to
get in a fight.

I asked an ex to hit me
once, which he thought
was very funny. He could get
angry, so no one believed
he treated me well.

A man has started bringing
me gifts at work. He pays
someone to paint a picture
of my dog and I don’t know
what to do so I keep it
in my backpack.

It rides back and forth
with me on the subway.
My counselor would tell
me, Remember: you
got out.

That is, unbelievably, true.
I closed the door and left
their house by myself. I can
change my face so no one
bothers me on the subway.

You shouldn’t call yourself
crazy, my boyfriend says.

I have told him how, when I
lived in Charlottesville, there
were months when I was
afraid to go outside. I would
walk my dogs and there would
be no one around me.

I moved to the city to see
people on the street. I don’t
know what I expected them
to do: the other men in
the house had laughed
when I left.

Someone at work calls
me a people-pleaser. I
agree because I want to
keep my job.

What I should have said
is, How are you so sure?
I have never wanted to
make anyone else happy.

When I get angry, my
boyfriend says I should
beat him up. I don’t hit him
in case it doesn’t hurt.

I have started telling him
about the things men have
said to me in public. A few
years ago, in Rittenhouse
Square, a man told me he
wanted to fuck my dog.

Keep walking, my mom
would’ve said. Her favorite
piece of advice is, It’s not
worth it.

Once, at a Christmas
party, her friend tried to
kiss me. I told her and she
said that he was drunk.

When I mentioned it,
years later, to an ex, he
asked if I would still drink
if I had not been raped. It is
remarkable how easy it was
to answer.

In June, I took an early train
to work. I didn’t realize
there were cops a block
away; that after, I would
hear them laughing.

I thought I was alone on
the street. I only felt the
man when he tried to
smell my hair.

He said something that
I did not hear. It was not
an apology and I did not
back up.

I was not afraid of anything
he could do. I have only been
hurt by people who feel safe.

Move, I said, and it sounded
like, Hit me. I stepped forward
and it sounded like, Hit me.

I wanted what no one had
asked me for: permission.

*

Grace Alvino’s work has been or will be featured in Four Way Review, Barrelhouse, Cleaver Magazine, Mudroom, The Ex-Puritan, Grist, and more. She earned her PhD in English from the University of Virginia, and she lives in Philadelphia with her boyfriend and their dog and cat. You can find her on Instagram at @gray_cious.

Together Downtown by Lois Perch Villemaire

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Together Downtown

Mom held my hand
along the streets
of Philadelphia
making our way
through the crowd
from Wanamaker’s
to The Automat for lunch.

She placed coins in my hand
allowing me
to unlock a glass cubbie
displaying my choice:
an egg salad sandwich,
slice of lemon meringue pie

Walking back to the train,
side-stepping metal grates
on the inner edge of the sidewalk
leading to basement areas
afraid if they gave way
I would tumble into a dark abyss.

My eyes turned from
unfortunate souls
disabled in some way
sitting beside buildings
with a bowl and a cardboard sign.
Mom took my hand
leading me along to Reading Terminal.

*

Lois Perch Villemaire is a poet from Annapolis, MD. She is the author of My Eight Greats, a family history in poetry and prose and a chapbook, Eyes at the Edge of the Woods. Her work has appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, Spillwords, Third Street Review, and elsewhere. Villemaire, a Pushcart nominee is a contributing writer to AARP-The Ethel. She enjoys art journaling, works at the library, and propagates African violets.

Two Poems by Magda Andrews-Hoke

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Fig

Life is a crystal fig
dropped
from a great height.

It’s not
that it might break,
but will.

Inevitably,
it glitters
in the plummeting.

* 

At the Walnut Lane Bridge

Over the bridge, the sun set
in a peach perfume.
Standing by the railing,
I peered into the creek below
and watched the dark
increase by small stitches
of indigo. What I hoped
to find there, I did not find.
And in that searching,
I was blind
to what was there. But
peace, but patience, waiting
stillness, have brought silence
to this qualm. And in its place
a subtle hymn, of softer colors
than the scene.

*

Magda Andrews-Hoke lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where she works at the Kelly Writers House. She studied Linguistics and English at Yale University and was a 2019 recipient of the Frederick Mortimer Clapp Fellowship for poetry. Her poems can be found in Commonweal Magazine, Philadelphia Stories, and elsewhere.

Two Poems by Sean Webb

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It is Snowing. My Country is Dying.

Those are two states of things
among countless states occurring
at once. Trees stand stripped.

All insects dead or dormant.
People hustle through deepening
snow accumulating in Love Park.

Up the street, the Liberty Bell sits
behind unbreakable glass. The shops
on Jewelers Row are closing down.

I want to believe we are wrapped
in a chrysalis; some coming spring
we will unfold into better selves.

Meanwhile, unseen overhead,
an asteroid named Akhmatova
drifts silently through the void.

*

Letter to the Doomed

Riding a train over the Schuylkill river
tilting a bottle to my lips
I am a body of water
drinking water over a body of water.

There is nothing but temporality in that.

I hope at the end
I have enough willing personal energy,
enough functioning body systems, enough
spiritual accord with a grand internal acceptance
of all vaguely understandable universal systems
to defy my inherent fear,
that I might find the power of perambulation
to carry myself out to an open sea, tundra, plateau,
whatever cycling biome is nearby
to find beautiful the relentlessly tangled
wilderness and give my solitary self to the rigors
of death and the continuing struggle
of countless enduring life forms that will
propagate from the end of my being.

*

Sean Webb has received many honors for his work. Most recently, he won the Tucson Festival of Books Literary Prize for Poetry, the Asheville Poetry Review William Matthews Poetry Prize, the Gemini Magazine Poetry Open, and was a finalist for the Laura Boss Narrative Poetry Prize. He is a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop and a past Poet Laureate of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. His work has appeared in many journals and anthologies including The North American Review, Prairie Schooner, december magazine, The Seattle Review, Nimrod, and two chapbooks, What Cannot Stay Small Forever and The Constant Parades. He currently lives in Wilkes-Barre with his wife, the artist Colleen Quinn. More information can be found at seanwebbpoetry.com.

Phanatic by John Arthur

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Phanatic

the day you swung my Louisville
Slugger at me and I caught it
with my bare hands
you smacked my bare ass
while Jimmy held my pants
at my ankles and I was
getting hard, harder
each week from dead
lifts, lunges, and power cleans
until mom poured a gallon
of milk on my head,
the lactose sticky on my skin
as I let it soak in
laying there on the dogsmell couch
where dad drunkslept during Phillies
games. we were there at Citizens
Bank Park when they broke
the record for most
innings played in a game,
at infinity, and everyone
left the stadium except for us.
They’re still playing.
We’re still there.

*

John Arthur is a writer and musician from New Jersey. His work has appeared in Rattle, trampset, Maudlin House, Third Wednesday, and other places. His band is called The Deafening Colors.

What I Loved by Robbi Nester

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What I Loved

As a child, I often visited my grandmother and cousins
in West Oak Lane, straight lines of dark brick rowhomes,
old trees, so wide you couldn’t get your arms around them.
In summer, people sat out on the stoop and watched
neighbors in their somber suits and hats parade
to service in the tiny synagogue where my uncle
served as sexton. In the back of each house, there was
an open space, a paradise of gardens, some gated.
I loved the ones with a reflecting ball, precisely
in the center, mirroring the bees and sulfur yellow
butterflies. I thought I saw some other country
there, one that I’d explore on some dull day
when my cousins were busy with their chores
or their piano lessons, and I was left to roller
skate for hours on the cracked concrete behind
their house. I didn’t like the other decorations—
plastic flamingos or painted plaster gnomes,
objects with no mystery about them, far preferred
to peer between the iron filagree or wooden slats,
pretending that I stood on soft green grass
instead of forever banished, on the other side.

*

Robbi Nester is the author of four books of poetry and editor of three anthologies. She is a retired college educator and elected member of the Academy of American Poets. Her website is at http://www.RobbiNester.net

Holmesburg Prison, Philadelphia by Leonard Kress

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Holmesburg Prison, Philadelphia

The guards circulate among the prisoners
asking, who wants to sell a patch today? Meaning a
patch of skin—detached—to test the effect of toxins
on living flesh. There are takers, eager to escape
the crowd inside their 5 x 8 cell, selling what’s left
to the Penn professor, well-funded. I was here once,
waiting—my wife visiting her cousin from Poland,
sitting Poles say, for brawling at the Polish Eagles
Club, threatening to bomb the dance at Saint Adalbert’s,
shipped back to the village, a harmless drunk farmer with
a moped and Ursus tractor. The prison abuts
Pennypack Park and surely inmates thought of what kids,
did under the stone bridge, baring fresh unexcised flesh.

*

Leonard Kress has published poetry and fiction in Missouri Review,
Massachusetts Review, Iowa Review, American Poetry Review, Harvard
Review, etc. His recent collections are The Orpheus Complex and Walk
Like Bo Diddley. Living in the Candy Store and Other Poems and his new
verse translation of the Polish Romantic epic, Pan Tadeusz by Adam
Mickiewicz were both published in 2018. Craniotomy Sestinas appeared
in 2021. He teaches philosophy and religion at Owens College in Ohio.
www.leonardkress.com

Two Poems by Joseph Chelius

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The Franklin Institute

All the wonders of science and invention
stood before us in the distance: if only
we could decode the pattern of the Parkway lights—
our grandmother in her green coat and hat,
the scent of Jean Nate,
leading the three of us with our blond crew cuts
on the day’s expedition: the trolley ride
into town; soft pretzels from a vendor.
And then, as amused Ben Franklin looked on,
peering through his tiny spectacles,
our stepping into the crosswalk—
the talk so many years later
not of the Planetarium, nor even the Giant Heart,
but our awe of tall buildings, the bewildering
phenomenon of commerce and traffic;
our linking hands as if entering
a panorama—sun glinting off metal and chrome.

*

Stopping Between Errands to Watch Little League Baseball

Forget the hardware store,
the broken clapper
on the running toilet.
And the wilting asparagus,
the half-gallon of mint chocolate
sweating it out
in the sauna of the trunk.
Unlike my fellow spectators in the stands,
I have nothing invested here:
no regard for the score
or, as I’d had years before,
no son to cheer as he stands at bat
or maintains his poise on the pitcher’s mound.
But like some roving ambassador,
a retired neighbor filling his days,
I have taken these moments
to play anonymous fan
for both the reds and the yellows
as they compete on the field.
To feel the sun on my arms,
on the back of my neck,
to be a man interrupted—
kindly, avuncular,
without a list or an agenda,
who if only just briefly
on a Saturday afternoon
can put out of mind
the unpacking of groceries
and querulous fixtures.
Can resist even the call
of the pent-up mower—
shrill and exacting,
that disciplines grass.

*

Joseph Chelius works as a principal editor for a health care communications company. His poetry has appeared in journals and magazines such as Commonweal, Poetry East, Poet Lore, Rattle, Schuylkill Valley Journal, and THINK. He has published two full-length collections with WordTech editions in Cincinnati: The Art of Acquiescence (2014) and Crossing State Lines (2020).