Category: Poetry

Torches dance above Providence streams.

Sparks rise to the urban stars.

The river mirrors our brightest passions.

Magic is all around, and the most peculiar thing happens:

Though my face is wrinkled and my hair is gray

I feel the hope and contentment of a child

I’m in Rhode Island to stay.

by Hellen Schweizer

I want to Be a Dog,

Except for that 

They get Killed by Chocolate,

Dump Trucks, and Rednecks

And cruelest of all,

Faithless neglect.

‘Cause I will never want for faithlessness.

I want to Be an Elephant,

Except for that 

because of the Poachers,

Lions, Droughts,

And Tuberculosis,

Their nights are sleepless.

‘Cause I will never want for sleeplessness.

I want to Be a Child again,

Subsist off Milk and Motts,

Sticky-fingered Cartwheels,

Sweat and sunsets.

And to look into into an adult’s eyes,

Unaware of the envy in them. 

‘Cause I will never want for enviousness.

This poem was originally published on the University of Edinburgh website for winning the 2022 Grierson Verse Prize. https://blogs.ed.ac.uk/writing/olivia-thomakos-what-you-wish-for/

Constantly pestered for coconut pancakes, 

Spencer threw together breakfast blizzards 

coated in white shavings and ice cream. Winter 

weekends left his boys sheltering 

from their cold father who forced prayer, whispered 

before they stuffed their bellies. Legs aching 

from growth spurts, the boys ached 

for their mother, Lina, the Saturday pancake 

designer. A Dairy Queen fiend, she first whispered 

I love you to Spencer over a Mint Blizzard. 

The sweethearts had married on a sweltering 

spring day. Autumn stomach scooping into winter, 

Lina cradled three hungry boys. By wintery 

cribs, white-curtained, her rocking chair ached 

under thick blankets while Spencer sheltered 

in chilly silence. The truth was he hated pancakes 

and children. When the three blizzard 

babies were announced, his whispered 

Jesus Christ was mistaken for prayer. He whispered 

swears at every “Triplets!” and “This winter? 

Some honeymoon!” When “strong swimmers” blitzed 

into their conversations, he ached 

for an escape, but Lina pleaded “Pancakes!” 

Ignoring the battle flipping in his head, she’d heard 

husbands take time, that newborns sheltered 

in his arms would make him stay. She whispered 

I love you to the boys, requested more pancakes. 

Insatiable, they screamed for Spencer’s bottles all winter 

while Lina moaned that her breasts ached. 

Her first drive alone in months was into the blizzard 

that crashed through February. Blessing her 

luck at an early escape from sheltered 

bed rest, Spencer packed, knees aching 

from suitcases hauled down the stairs. A whisper 

of doubt stopped him at the door. Winter’s  

blur clouded every window; Lina’s pancakes 

cold on the counter. He reached for the knob as the blizzard 

pushed an officer up the porch. Car pancaked in the shelter 

of a bridge, his wish granted: a life without her. 

The world is buzzing

but I am soft. 

The wheels are churning

but mine are stopped. 

How long until I find my heart? 

Oh, she calls from Northern Hills. 

From daisies, wild blues, indigo flower—

far beyond the waking hour. 

The cycle of my mind’s last wills. 

I fight every day

but it just gets harder.

I call beyond my page,

people have such luck.

Her mind is broken, 

how do we fix her? 

And how to stop 

her lion’s rage? 

Tucked in the middle 

of mossed hand me down sage? 

So how to start? 

Well, with her heart. 

For that is all but tattered. 

We bleed it dry,

to see her cry.

But see, none of it here really mattered. 

And then, go on,

Oh good! A Song.

Tucked inside her sparkling brain.

We wrench that out, the medley too, 

though it flits on through,

A soft jazz blue.

And then her head unscrews. 

Her brain, oh now, we pray. 

For shadows and dusk, 

And beauty and lust,

Are all now dripping 

On display. 

She doesn’t fight.

We then move on. 

Oh, there’s her song. 

We stuff it back 

in her brain.

And now the shadows

dance too and fro, 

And now really, we must go. 

She can’t fight back

her mind 

again. 

Not when a song

is all she knows,

it can’t pull 

her back out and so. 

We’ll be here next ‘fort

To do it all again.

Now she retreats

to her little den. 

Proving she’s stronger. 

She’ll last twice the longer. 

Till we rip her up away

and so to say. 

She’s here to see another day

Blue as the sky, and the ocean bay. 

It’s hard to imagine fish again

with their little black silksuits,

& the how they run to heaven as one. 

*

Menhaden feed the bees,

cormorants, gulls

and the black eye of the river’s sister: sky.

*

Providence was built

as a purple bowl: enamel, jade. That light. 

Tallest buildings fill with fishes’ glass, their eyes. 

*

Summer in this city

sits in the sunflower seed of yellow fire.

The bee’s side as it swims in summer, alive. 

Waking up screaming

From dreaming

to a black and white screen. 

Covering life, or so it seems. 

I flit like a ghost

and those that used

to care the most

are free from my scream, 

bursting free at the seam. 

Every dream just feels so real.

And the Devil cackles

As he reaps his deal. 

He watches me scramble

And dance and sing and die. 

Comes ‘round each year

To check if I still remember

The burning, flashing, reeling December; 

His demon’s perfectly casted lie. 

I’m drowning, I’m drowning, 

in all of my fears. 

And no persons 

living or dead

Can ever hear his lie. 

Because this lie was so crafted

Very carefully, you see. 

And used to trap 

the unlucky soul

Seeking love

through the screen. 

But tear apart the grains

of black and white static. 

The twilight hour

pulls close and traumatic. 

An obsession lurking 

behind every other line. 

It’s dark and deceitful, 

It’s playful, and it’s mine.