image by edith lüthi, on Pixabay
A Crisis of Faith
Questions riddled
with bewilderment,
the soul pinioned
at every breath,
psychic terrain
unmapped,
redolent of myth,
twisted in the risk
of being human
*
Honor the Poet
Who
laughs with the earth, sheds tears with each cloud
gathers song from the wind and offers it up
draws the well’s water and hands you the cup,
from the very first breath to the rattle of death
warps the loom, weaves the cloth, wraps the shroud
*
Last Stop
His smell precedes him as he staggers in bare feet down the aisle of the rocking subway car, thrusting a paper cup first one way, then the other as the train hurtles toward Coney Island. “Spare change? Please. Can you help me out?” Passengers glue their eyes to
the floor or gaze blankly into space. No one reaches into pocket or purse.
beggar on the subway
not a coin all day
his cup’s so heavy
_________________________
Brian Kates is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist.
His non-fiction book, The Murder of a Shopping
Bag Lady, a saga of modern American homelessness, was acclaimed by the New York
Times as “a book in the grand journalistic tradition.” His poetry has appeared in Spirit Fire Review, Amethyst Review, Paterson Literary Review, Gyroscope, and elsewhere. He is a founding
member of Hook Mountain Poets, which seeks
to make poetry part of the landscape of New York’s lower Hudson Valley.
February 2025 issue
The aching impact of "Last Stop."