June Poet of the Month Sandra Feen
Biography:
Sandra Feen was inducted as the 2022-2024 Ohio Beat Poet Laureate by the National Beat Poetry Foundation, Inc. She co-hosts the monthly online creative arts interview show The Muse’s Mic with James Bryant. She recently co-authored There’s a Rock on Martin Avenue (Venetian Spider Press) with Cliff Treyens. She is also the author of Evidence of Starving (Voice Lux Journal 2021) Meat and Bone (Luchador Press 2019), and Fragile Capacities: School Poems (NightBallet Press 2018). Fragile Capacities – nominated for the Ohioana Book Award – highlights her 32-year teaching career in Columbus City Schools. Her poem “Palms Monday” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
She is an avid photographer, member of the Ohio Poetry Association, Bistro Poets writing critique group, and member of the poetry troupe Concrete Wink, with Rikki Santer and Chuck Salmons. In addition, she performs work by Holocaust writers in Susan Millard Schwarz’s Anahata Music Project.
She created a generative workshop, You’ve Got the Beat, on the history of beat poetry and elements of writing beat poetry, with former National Beat Poet laureate John Burroughs. This year, she featured in Geoff Anderson’s Diverses interview and reading series.
Backstory:
This was written as my 3 September 2022 Ohio Beat Poet Laureate acceptance speech – in poetry format – for the National Beat Poetry Festival, in Barkhamsted, Connecticut. When I finished sharing the poem, I distributed a stone heart to each person in the audience.
Thanksgiving Stones
Parents steer other dimensions
and all their yesterdays score my floors.
A childhood desk learns my adulthood
by the dining room window, latest lap
for Connecticut writing shrine:
black and white photo of Grandpa Reynolds.
He pilots a Home Pride bakery truck on
Shelton Road, just below the Monroe Firehouse
and narrowing curve of 1939, the day
after Thanksgiving. A chase of snow.
A white shell dip pen edges photo’s frame
then clear glass ink well with pewter lid
and one flowered porcelain Limoges,
all once wrapped in aprons to preserve
Grandma Penczer’s Budapest:
dock them first on Ellis Island, before
New England, before Ohio’s Now.
But the pink marble. Marvel
this inkwell’s silk thrum:
how an old woman named Mrs. Becker
says, each time Ray Reynolds delivers
her orders, his spirit compels her to breathe
another morning. And on her front porch, she places
her favorite heirloom in his open palm, insists he must
own this blush of limestone, with its flawless glass
well for ink and possibilities, since he was her well
for hope, she says, and he hands it
to me on my tenth birthday, because it’s only natural
that the writer of the family keep this, well, that was
his declaration. So many hands
narrate its depth.
But the center of my literary altar
a rose bowl, no bigger than a silver dollar,
full of wisps of colorful stones:
my own story. I bought my palm treasure
for a dime when my grandparents sold
their cottage by Fall Mountain Lake
and I had to seize all their sacred
one last time:
plunge into the water the muck
grab a fist full of stones
your love chalice.
Stones. Solid. Permanent. More
resilient than all bodies.
My mother shared that jagged crevice fascination
spinning smooth; she knew how hard it was to seize
the call, halt the car on the middle
of my driveway three years ago,
miss the Connecticut festival, miss time with my Aunt,
breathe aura of childhood, ancestry, poetry: one root,
to lose, because of her dying, as if
dying were her fault. A sacrifice
for someone selfless who always
sacrificed for me. I’ll make it up to you,
she assured.
I look out at you, an audience of artists
who understand love scattered, love buried but still burning,
rooting/uprooting pain, renewal, resignation.
Here is a polished heart for each of you.
Unearth your story, your stone;
your stone’s depth.
Backstory:
This was published in an issue of the Gasconade Review. The day after Trump was elected for his first term, I marched in Washington D.C., then wrote about this absurdly undignified situation that occurred. It became a humorous poem that was often requested at readings, but then I eventually got tired of reading it. Today, I wildly dream of returning to Washington, purposely giving a repeat performance of the narrative, but on the White House lawn.
Getting Caught at the Women’s March on Washington
No one expected this many to come
No one expected pink pussy hats to soldier
their way through Washington DC in such
flowing abundance, that porta potties would
be in short supply, so that you would
enter a realm of urgency that reduces you
to crawling inside a thicket of bushes to
urinate on Hallow Ground, while your
Secret Service of friends surround the area
you contaminate, to protect and conceal you,
trying to look casual as they
sing, “This Land is Your Land, This Land is
My Land…”
It’s January, so there isn’t a single leaf
ready to be repurposed, ready to use for wiping,
not even one of 45’s thrown out toupees.
You try to crouch, with your pants partly
down and not fall over, thinking:
What if I get arrested for this?
Not for the sake of social justice
of any kind, but this?
Suddenly a kid of about five appears before you:
“Ahhh, you’re not supposed to pee pee
outside! I’m telling my Momma on you!”
Your dignity drops lower than panties.
“Get lost, kid. You don’t understand,”
you stammer, as if you could possibly make him,
as if he could possibly know that one day
he might participate in something
that culminates all his heart’s principles,
yet fate could surprise him.
He too, could get caught
with his pants down.