Your Wednesday Morning Poetry

From Beacon Press' Beacon Broadside seres, here's poetry in memory of the Robb Elementary School shooting victims by Martín Espada, Ross Gay, Liz Rosenberg, Matthew Olzmann and Meghan Privitello.

Stone Soup Croutons, 8-7-17, Take Off

Stone Soup Croutons is a weekly poem I write using lines and impressions butchered picked up from poems overheard from Stone Soup's open mic readers and features. I figure out a title (and sometimes the rest of the poem) later. You can read the other ones I've done since 2015 here. To paraphrase Lorne Michaels, this poem doesn't go up because it's ready, it goes on because it's Tuesday morning.

Another Monday, another all-open mic. We had a lot of good voices tonight. Special thanks to Julia Carlson reading the work of recently departed poet Denis Johnson and Andrew J. Padilla, who read a poem by Ross Gay on the death of Eric Garner. My poem won't do the night justice, but that's why you should come and see for yourself.


Take Off

Swear yourself to sleep,
counting expletives until