THECREATIVEREALM
BOOKS
POETRY.
POEMS.
ALTAR BOY
BY ORLANDO RICARDO MENES
I am the altar boy with feet flattened by the catechist’s paddle, my skin toasted like stalks of sugarcane at Lent, my shorts baptized in the salt pans of saints. I don’t wear a mask (God hates carnival) but a wool hood, Holy Week’s, that Sister Rose knitted by the charcoal altar, her wooden teeth clacking as she hymned in Latin, the moles on her jowl like prickly pears for penance. My own teeth are those grates that grilled the martyrs, & my little lamb’s ears quiver each afternoon when the wind coughs in fits and pale skies smoke with incense from a clandestine Mass, perhaps on a runaway shallop with sails sewn from stolen cassocks, perhaps on a newborn isle with a thatched church, novices crawling like iguanas around stations of the cross. There’s no home for orphans like us raised in a convent by the wharf where the footless angel blows his trumpet for vesper, and the abbess marches us to the clapboard altar when the cock crows. We sleep in straw cubbies, our sheets those crinkled newspapers that swaddled us like groupers in the foundling’s basket. Hey, you, girl with the twisted neck, your dollhouse will keep on shrinking between your dirty legs. Not even holy water can make you clean. Hey, boy, the more you pull on the kite, the more your house of dreams will get lost in summer’s wayward clouds. Let us live in the meadow, our true home, every bush a hearth, every pond a font: O blessed loam of nettles whose fireflies light the shrine at night, whose blue brooks spread out like veins of  Calvary.
BILLIA CROO
BY ALEC FINLAY
culture is richest where there’s
the greatest ratio
land : coast
— After Barry Cunliffe
•
this patch of the western
ocean’s coruscating garden
recalls my favorite song
(mishearing) the sea’s very hum-
drum ... — but no, there’s not
one ocean, not when such an
infinite mix of blues can
outshine the map’s cerulean
•
the sea is there for a solan
to push his wings against
or plunge in, reinventing
the medium — when the light
comes right through them
the waves let slip wrack
and tangle, pitching round
until they go breaking on
the boulder beach, crashing
under Row Head, hassling
brittlestars and urchins, or splash
near the shelducks dozing
on their green sun shelf — 
there’s no need to worry
that any wave is wasted
when there’s all this motion
•
along the bay there’s
the promise of a new world
from each new device connect-
ed to the cable that runs
out under the wild rocks,
into the diamond space
inside those three buoys — 
this is where the metal
gets salt-wet: and that’s
the only true test — the problem
is elastic: what kind of roots
will grip fast with moorings
subject to ebb, flood, flux,
in a surge of such force?
•
what’s solid was once liquid
as with rock and sand
which nature divided — 
like us — these waves were
tugged and formed, in
slowness, slowness that
we’ve lost, for there’s no
way to relearn the tide’s
happy knack of infinitesimal
growth, except by sloshing
around, or waiting, stranded,
on the heave of the moon
BROWNIES OF THE SOUTHWEST: TROOP 704
BY LAURIE ANN GUERRERO
Three years before I’d hear the word / beaner /
from the / white boys / who’d spit first in my broccoli,
then in my hair, / my mother / dressed me
each Wednesday in that / brown / sheath: I was seven.
It’d be the only time I’d wear a sash — 
Miss / America, / she said.
Twenty Miss / Americas, we made /
kitsch from clothespins, pipe cleaners — 
our / brown / socks / banded and complicated /
with orange tassels just below the / brown /
/ rosettes / of our knees, little / skulls / knocking
together in our elementary / school / cafeteria.
How we jumped the day / we heard / voices
raising there instead of / at home, / when Tracy’s
mom slapped our / troop / leader / and Tracy
cried. And Tracy’s / mom was white /
and only her / dad was brown / and Tracy
was a little / prettier than the rest of us. /
At the lunch tables, / white bitch / stuck to our fingers
like glue; / fucking Mexicans / landed like glitter
onto the sashes laid across our / small / hearts. /
With Tracy, / we watched / manifest between us
/ a line, / risen from the tiled floor where / we shared /
meals as tears clung to the eye-rims of my seven-year-old
/ compañeras. / Lorena chewed her nails till blood
/ bloomed / on her ring finger. Andrea peed quietly
/ on her brown knee / socks. None of us knew
where to hide. This was not / home, /
where / we could run / to the / broom / closet
or to the / feet / of our big / brothers. /
Poetry is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and rhythmic qualities of language—such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre—to evoke meanings in addition to, or in place of, the prosaic ostensible meaning.
Poetry has a long history, dating back to the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh. Early poems evolved from folk songs such as the Chinese Shijing, or from a need to retell oral epics, as with the Sanskrit Vedas, Zoroastrian Gathas, and the Homeric epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey. Ancient attempts to define poetry, such as Aristotle's Poetics, focused on the uses of speech in rhetoric, drama, song and comedy. Later attempts concentrated on features such as repetition, verse form and rhyme, and emphasized the aesthetics which distinguish poetry from more objectively informative, prosaic forms of writing. From the mid-20th century, poetry has sometimes been more generally regarded as a fundamental creative act employing language.
Poetry uses forms and conventions to suggest differential interpretation to words, or to evoke emotive responses. Devices such as assonance, alliteration, onomatopoeia and rhythm are sometimes used to achieve musical or incantatory effects. The use of ambiguity, symbolism, irony and other stylistic elements of poetic diction often leaves a poem open to multiple interpretations. Similarly figures of speech such as metaphor, simile and metonymy create a resonance between otherwise disparate images—a layering of meanings, forming connections previously not perceived. Kindred forms of resonance may exist, between individual verses, in their patterns of rhyme or rhythm.
Some poetry types are specific to particular cultures and genres and respond to characteristics of the language in which the poet writes. Readers accustomed to identifying poetry with Dante, Goethe, Mickiewicz and Rumi may think of it as written in lines based on rhyme and regular meter; there are, however, traditions, such as Biblical poetry, that use other means to create rhythm and euphony. Much modern poetry reflects a critique of poetic tradition, playing with and testing, among other things, the principle of euphony itself, sometimes altogether forgoing rhyme or set rhythm. In today's increasingly globalized world, poets often adapt forms, styles and techniques from diverse cultures and languages.
THE CREATIVE REALM'S RECOMMENDED POEMS
1. Orlando Ricardo Menes - Altar Boy
2. Alec Finlay - Billia Croo
3. Laurie Ann Guerrero - Brownies Of The Southwest: Troop 704