Charleston Currents – Palmetto Poem

PALMETTO POEM: Stagnation (a letter 2 America)

By Marcus Amaker, poet laureate of Charleston, S.C.

Amaker (Image by Lisa Livingston)
America has built
too many monuments to war.
Man-made maladies
mounted on Mother Earth.
I’ve seen scars on the skin
of our country’s landscape –
blood-stained band aids
covering exposed bones;
a pain that has not healed.

by Palmetto Poem · 10/02/2017 · Comments are Disabled · Features, Palmetto Poem

PALMETTO POEM: Carolina Umbra

By Marjory Wentworth, S.C. poet laureate

Boats fly out of the Atlantic
and moor themselves in my backyard
where tiny flowers, forgotten
by the wind, toss their astral heads
from side to side. Mouths ablaze, open,
and filling with rain.

After the hurricane, you can see
the snapped open drawbridge slide
beneath the waves on the evening news.
You go cold imagining
such enormous fingers of wind
that split a steel hinge until
its jaw opens toward heaven.

by Palmetto Poem · 09/11/2017 · 2 comments · Features, Palmetto Poem

PALMETTO POEM: Eclipse 2017

By Marjory Wentworth, contributing editor

Astronomy flourished at the dawn of civilization;
between the Tigris and Euphrates, Babylonian
astronomers watched the skies closely.
We have the records. When heavenly signs appeared,
the ancients were both fascinated and terrified. …

by Andy Brack · 08/21/2017 · Comments are Disabled · Features, Palmetto Poem

PALMETTO POEM: Summertime

Summertime,
And the livin’ is easy
Fish are jumpin’
And the cotton is high

Oh, your daddy’s rich
And your mamma’s good lookin’
So hush little baby
Don’t you cry

by Charleston Currents · 08/14/2017 · 1 comment · Features, Palmetto Poem

PALMETTO POEM, Meyers: back from the woods inside me

By Susan Laughter Meyers

back from the woods inside me
chickadee silence

nothing I can say to myself so full
the not saying

when I opened the nesting box
what looked slight

by Palmetto Poem · 07/03/2017 · 3 comments · Features, Palmetto Poem

PALMETTO POEM: Three Maps

1. Perhaps tomorrow will be the day when we at last begin to listen to the rustling and murmuring that rises from the grasses of the world as they beseech us to grant them reprieve. For millennia, they’ve labored to cover the dead, and now it’s their turn— just a brief sleep, they insist, and then they’ll resume their work pending the general resurrection.

by Palmetto Poem · 06/04/2017 · Comments are Disabled · Features, Palmetto Poem

PALMETTO POEM: Strange Fruit

By Damarius Allen, special to Charleston Currents

Strange fruit swinging from those trees
The strangest fruit you’ve ever seen

Picked before it could ripen
Ripped from its home that tree of life
And hanged on another

by Palmetto Poem · 04/30/2017 · Comments are Disabled · Features, Palmetto Poem

PALMETTO POEM: A Suite to Ashley Marina

An excerpt from a poem by Ann Herlong Bodman

On Jeff’s boat, his girlfriend sunbathes topless,

cigarette smoke curling from the bowsprit.

Jeff watches—they never talk. Boats nod

as if they approve. Workmen sing,

by Palmetto Poem · 04/03/2017 · Comments are Disabled · Features, Palmetto Poem

PALMETTO POEM: Charleston, South Carolina

By Amy Lowell | FIFTEEN years is not a long time,
But long enough to build a city over and destroy it;
Long enough to clean a forty-year growth of grass from between cobblestones,
And run street-car lines straight across the heart of romance.
Commerce, are you worth this?
I should like to bring a case to trial: