Keep an eye on that candle

My father did not like candles. When I was a kid, we brought out a couple of sugary angel candles every December. They were cheap plastic cylinders, but they were mesmerizing. There was something about a lit candle, even in a brightly lit room with a TV on, playing “Columbo,” that made everything special, that somehow made the night sacred.

Dad watched them, too — like a hawk. To hell with the angels. Visions of fire remediation and insurance claims were dancing in his head. He didn’t even like the idea of putting strings of electric lights on the Christmas tree. Back then, before LED lights, those bulbs got hot. Come Jan. 1, when the tree was bone dry, who knows what catastrophe might engulf the household as it slept?

But other people’s lights were fair game. Every year, Dad drove us around to look at the lights in our neighborhood. Sometimes we made the trip from working-class northwest Detroit to Grosse Pointe or Birmingham to see what kind of extravaganzas the rich people were laying out. (This was before the swarming bug lights and inflatable abominations of today.) Elaborate or simple, elegant or tasteless, it all looked magical to me.

When the year gets darker, colorful lights are a comfort, a delight and even a source of inspiration — especially if you are a poet. Welcome to City Pulse’s 5th Annual Poetry & Lights issue, showcasing work by leading local poets, juxtaposed with images of holiday lights around town, all taken by Leandro Martins — with many, many equally wonderful images left on the cutting-room floor.

The tradition began in 2020, at the height of the pandemic, with the idea of lighting a candle in a dark time. We hoped that connecting our readers with the meditations and memories of local poets would help them cope with pandemic isolation, and it did. The response was so enthusiastic we made it a December tradition.

This year’s participating poets run the gamut from celebration and appreciation to what is bright in their lives to melancholy, grieving and an aching consciousness of what’s been lost. They share memories of lost parents and delight in the promise of children. Some offer up a burning flame; others a fragile flicker.

Since the first Poetry and Lights issue in 2020, it has become clear that the theme of light in darkness fits any era, any form of worship and any winter holiday, beginning with the most obvious image, the Winter Solstice, the darkest and longest night of the year. This year’s poets were given the simple prompt “shine a light,” with license to interpret it in any way they saw fit. The qualifier “in a dark time” hardly seems necessary by now. Are these uniquely dark times? Maybe. Is darkness itself unique to our time? Of course not. I think of my own grade school days in the 1960s, when we were herded into fallout shelters in fear of all-out nuclear war. I thought of my Dad, that inveterate hater of candles, who was felled by a shell in Belgium in a catastrophic war that engulfed much of the world, and lost his leg as a consequence. Go back into the human past as far as you please, and you’ll find no end of plagues, famines, wars and other privations and disasters. There will always be darkness to fight off, using whatever light is available. Just be careful with that candle.

 

Rising Beyond the Mountain

Poverty and Ignorance—

Earmarked for destruction

 

Now sought to enslave and dominate

through corruption

 

Forced back to where many

fought to escape

 

Striving to be seen:

   Not for the color of their sheen

     Not for who they choose to love or be,

But for the size of their hearts

   for all to see

 

They will not be erased!

   They will rise from despair

     They will fight without fighting

And show that they care

 

Use Knowledge and Wisdom!

 

Be Those:

Who choose to see beyond the mountain

   Who choose not to hide

     Who choose to climb the mountain

       Who choose to conquer it for all   

 

Poverty and Ignorance earmarked for destruction!

 

— CRUZ VILLARREAL

Cruz Villarreal is a local published poet with a creative writing degree from Lansing Community College. A selection of his poems and other writings can be found at  https://cruzpoet.openlcc.net.

* * *

Seasonal memory served up by algorithm

         

It’s you in the long red sweater

hands and face glowing in firelight

 

your back to the tall pines whispering

in darkest of night    your eyes shine

 

from the flare of a log just carefully placed

you    always so good at catching a spark

 

In this image    the light of your spirit

was the seasoning the holidays needed

 

For Roxanne Frith

— Joanne Gram

Joanne Gram is a renegade poet with an MPA from WMU. Her work appears in publications from Of Rust and Glass, Livina Press, Elsker Literary, Tulip Tree Review, Haight Ashbury Literary, Peninsula Arts, and others. Joanne is locally active including Lansing Poetry Club and Write Hear. She hopes you will get to know her from both written and spoken  word presentations.

 

This Little Light

For weeks, my 8-year-old daughter prepares for her solo

in the Christmas pageant— not as Mary, Joseph, or Baby Jesus

not even as one of the three wise men like years past.

 

Her Sunday School teacher chooses her to

sing “This Little Light of Mine.” She glows with joy.

This year, she will stand in the front—

 

ahead of the homemade cardboard crowns

ahead of floral bathrobes transformed into wisemen’s robes

before Mary and Joseph in bedsheet holy garments

 

gazing down at a Baby Alive doll playing Jesus.

Soon it will be just my daughter and the spotlight.

Sunlight pierces through stained glass

 

bathing my daughter in a kaleidoscope of colors

her face a mosaic of rising fear.

As the pageant begins, so do her tears.

 

“I don’t want to sing,

she whimpers. “I’m scared.”

Mrs. Wilson, the Sunday School teacher

 

gently smooths her hair and whispers

“You’ll be great. You have the voice of an angel.”

The window casts diffracted light,

 

paints red, yellow, and green across

my hands as they find her shoulder.

I wrap her in a mother’s embrace.

 

“Show everyone your light,” I whisper.

“Because it’s not a flickering candle

or a distant star’s glimmer.

 

Make your light bright like the sun—

first a single ray, then expanding

until every corner of this sanctuary

 

is wrapped in its warmth and glory.”

Nudging her toward the altar, I say,

“Now, let your light shine.”

— Lisa Bond Brewer

Lisa Bond Brewer is a poet and storyteller whose work has appeared in Essence Magazine, Timbuktu, Literary Mama, and the Washington Square Review. The Chief Communications Officer for UST HealthProof holds degrees from Michigan State University and Central State University (Ohio), is married to her college sweetheart with three daughters and two grandchildren. She enjoys traveling, creative writing and reading.

 

Homes We Were Born To 

Welcome back Samia

to where you first took off into colors,

forms, poetry on paper and canvas.

This retrospective is your embrace.

 

Lilacs start the journey then and now,

Midwestern, the way we all make space

come together then disperse.

Vibrations of the sun.

 

I remember climbing my lilac bush,

like your gnarled ancient olive tree,

up to the flat roof

black tarred territory.

Looking down the alley,

such a big part of my world.

 

Rounded roofs like piano notes,

shapes that remain

forever, your geography.

Alleys that lead to home.

 

Now families in suburbia,

refugees from the city,

just 10 miles from here,

just half a world away from here.

War zones, at the same time.

Here, urban renewal of the 60’s, 70’s,

that’s what they called it,

take over of our cities.

Disinvest, redline, rubble,

the after life of a taken town

where 17 fires burn on Devil’s Night.

Deserted houses full of cast off needles

turn the night sky red,

temperatures melt the roofs.

 

My home, still there, has a childcare sign,

grass fills up the spaces where homes

lived, ghosts still gather on the porches,

widows ready to buy a piece of wood

worth nothing but a dime and a child’s smile.

 

For you, an arrival, a precious gift.

Vibrations multiply,

divide into wings,

angels, butterflies,

your children born on canvas.

 

We are both trying to return,

cutting the world into shapes,

displaced,

but always remembered.

 

At night, we are home

in our dreams,

lamps are brightly lit,

the old people call to us,

Come sit.

Come sit.

 

—Maureen Hart       

Written in response to the MSU Broad Art Museum’s fall retrospective of the abstract art of Samia Halaby, Palestinian-American abstract artist and activist who studied at MSU in the 1960s. November/December, 2024

Maureen Hart writes: I grew up on the eastside of Saginaw, Michigan, where my life was changed forever by moving to a new town’s suburban house. The books “The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East” by Sandy Tolan and President Jimmy Carter’s “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid,” read long in my past, gave me some background to help in my understanding of Samia Halaby’s art and my own experience. I am one of the winners of the 2022 Ritzenhein Emerging Poet Awards and published in a number of local and Michigan anthologies. 

Light Leads the Way

What peace we gather

in this season to recall

a moment, a mission, a mystery

 

when light leads the way

 

Despite overwhelming darkness

riddled with disillusionment

 

Light leads the way

 

soothes broken hearts

heals deep sorrows 

reconnects sister and brother

welcomes the weary

speaks words to encourage

shares a warm smile

provides respite for a caregiver

visits the sick

invites the lonely

houses a transient teen

packs meals for the hungry

hosts a warming center

And rings salvation bells late into cold, wintry nights

 

Light leads the way

 

to a manger

where a babe slept peacefully

while all anticipated

for centuries

His light

as the light

of the world

 

reminding us

to share our light

as a city on a hill

to honor one another

serve one another

declare love one to another

majestically glorifying

God the Father

who summoned light

to illuminate all creation

 

Light leads the way.

 

“This little light of mine, I’m going to let it shine.”

 

— ROBIN PIZZO

Robin Pizzo is the Director of Education at WKAR, mid-Michigan’s local PBS and NPR station. After raising four children with her husband of 26 years, she is now embracing life as an empty nester by writing and reading every day. Her poetry collection, Disparities, was published in 2023, and her short story collection, D-Nice, is set to be released in late 2025 by Wayne State University Press.

 

When

it happens, you are never

prepared: the red Camaro rockets

through the stop sign, the hand

slips under the table to fondle your leg,

the letter from the student arrives saying

she has fallen in love. With you.

Your sister-in-law calls to announce

that you need to come now, your mother

has little time left. On the plane

you imagine how it will be when you

walk in the door, how she will smile

and say your name. You arrive.

She says nothing. You have six days

before she is gone. To prepare.

For your father, sitting with his face

in his hands, for days. For your brother,

disappearing into denial. Years later

when he tries to vanish from his pain,

when you show up at the hospital

to talk him back into life, you remember

the first dream where your mother

visited after her death, where she told you,

Take care of your brother. She turned off

the light, then left. What did she mean?

You walk into your brother’s room, still

dark. You turn on the light.

 

 — Anita Skeen
4/12/24

Anita Skeen is currently Professor Emerita in the Residential College in the Arts and Humanities at Michigan State University, where she was the Founding Director of The RCAH Center for Poetry at MSU and is the Series Editor for Wheelbarrow Books.  She taught students in kindergarten through high school, in college programs, in senior citizens’ centers, libraries, and at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico for over 40 years.  She currently serves on the Board of Trustees for the Friends of Theodore Roethke Foundation in Saginaw, Michigan. She is the author of eight volumes of poetry and she currently involved in writing and visual art projects with poets Jane Taylor and Cindy Hunter Morgan.

 

Looking for Christmas

 

I am looking for Christmas but keep getting lost.

 

One minute, I am sitting in a large blue armchair

drinking tea in front of a fire

happy to be alive . . .

 

The next, I unfold a newspaper and see myself

in a crowd of people sitting against a subway wall

underneath the city of Kiev.

 

Sirens are ringing.

No one has slept for days.

The drones and the missiles keep falling.

 

A Ukrainian soldier writes to me on Facebook

posts video of ruined buildings and fire

gives the casualty count.

 

I don’t know what to say except: Sorry.

 

In my jewelry box, there is a black button

with white letters spelling: G A Z A.

I see broken hospitals, broken homes.

 

The dead. The dead. The dead. And the wounded.

 

I want my hands to form an army of ambulances,

a cavalry of construction workers

ready to rebuild all.

 

I want to cast an invisible cloak

of protection over our beautiful wounded

world, put the leaders in detention

 

Make them attend conflict resolution seminars

draw up plans to share the resources

stop the wars.

 

I am looking for Christmas.

— Ruelaine Stokes, 12/8/24

Ruelaine Stokes serves as the current Lansing Poet Laureate (2024-2026), as well as the president of the Lansing Poetry Club. A teacher and arts organizer, she performs individually and with the spoken word group, Voices of the Revolution. She is the author of Jar of Plenty (2021). In collaboration with former Lansing Poet Laureate Laura Apol, she co-edited the book, My Secret Lansing, a collection of poetry and prose about hidden treasures in the Greater Lansing Area (2023).

 

Why We Light the Candle

for Irene McKinney

Not ten minutes after I wrote our friend Jane

telling her of your passing, she wrote back

a brief note: Thanks for letting me know.

 

I’m lighting a candle now. She’s in Oklahoma,

headlamp of the sun rolling along the plains.

In Michigan, it’s February, there should be snow

 

but the day is bright as July, not a storm in sight.

Still, I strike a match to the Frasier fir candle

beside my chair. The flame sputters,

 

chipmunk chatter. It’s Christmas,

the tree Daddy and I cut each December.

We lugged it home, cloaked it with light

 

and ornament, tinsel shivering

like the rain. It stood, a midnight

radiance, something more than tree,

 

now grandmother, tricycle, cinnamon.

I didn’t figure how lighting this candle

would return me to those West Virginia hills,

 

where you are now, or were

before your feral self

slipped loose the skin of pain.

 

How many times do we,

in grief, strike flint to wick to light

the path ahead, to light

 

our own diminished cosmos?

Just a small snap of flame

to dispel the lowering gloom,

 

one flicker in the catacombs of loss.

Words you gave us beam like carbide lanterns:

Talbott Churchyard, bones and plots,

 

how tiny what I loved was,

the unknown buried in the known.

A simple word, an ordinary tree.

 

How particulars attach, go luminous.

What you leave us: the bloom of your voice,

the deep vowels of the church organ, their release.

— ANITA SKEEN

[for Anita’s bio, see her poem “When”]

 

Saving stars

Winter came sudden this year,

dark and cold. It feels somehow

final, like the world’s last

night. But it might just be

my own. It might be that I

am unable to tell the difference.

 

At Thanksgiving dinner we looked out

at the yard, covered in oak leaves, said

to be toxic. A raccoon wandered in circles,

slow and clumsy. Old? Sick? Dying?

We put out food and warm water. The animal

seemed half blind, past noticing. There was nothing

left to offer but our wishes for an easy death.

 

Do you feel it too?

We are moving forward in the dark

with our tiny candles cupped in cold hands

against the wind. We are burning

twists of hay, like homesteaders,

in the endless labor of staying alive.

 

We are trying not to dwell

on the entropy: planetary

or only personal. Eventually,

all our stars are going out.

There is nothing we can do about that.

 

But on this winter afternoon,

I am setting out my own stars, bright

spots like the yellow maple leaves

on the tannic oak lawn.

Will you join me there? I’ll begin.

— CHERYL CAESAR

Cheryl Caesar is a writer, teacher of writing and visual artist living in Lansing. She has published a chapbook of protest poetry, Flatman, with Thurston Howl Publications. In summer 2023, her piece “Silver Balls in the City” won first prize for prose in the My Secret Lansing writing contest, and appears in the subsequent anthology. Her micro-memoir “Poor Little Sausage Puppets” won first prize for creative nonfiction in the East Lansing Public Library writing contest in spring 2024. Cheryl serves as president of the Michigan College English Association.

 

Winter Solstice

8 witches’ holidays

Two equinoxes provide balance.

Four forgotten cross holidays mark the exponential movement of

light and dark.

Summer Solstice frolics among the burgeoning.

Birth, Life, Death, Rebirth

Maiden, Mother, Crone

Play out around us in quarters.

Winter Solstice begins our gestation

dark nights made holy.

We give birth to ourselves.

It is the flint in all of us, inspiration

our moment of exhalation

blowing the embers into blazing red

sparking the fire.

Ancient knowledge that the sun

will be slightly higher in the sky

the next morning.

 — Tari Muñiz

Tari Muñiz is long-time Lansing Lesbian Latina poet, performer, and producer. Her poetry and essays cover the span of topics from gardening to radical justice. Her work has been published in Sinister Wisdom and other obscure feminist presses that bring her joy. She is the founder of 2 Broads and a Butch productions and Voices of the Revolution. Tari’s superhero name is Big Mama.