Poets Against War continues the tradition of socially engaged poetry by creating venues for poetry as a voice against war, tyranny and oppression.
Linda Leedy Schneider
LINDA LEEDY SCHNEIDER
is a poetry and writing mentor, psychotherapist, and faculty member at Kendall College. Her work has appeared in Rattle, The Spoon River Poetry Review, Pudding Magazine, Midwest Poetry Review, and The Pedestal Magazine. “Through My Window: Poetry of a Psychotherapist,”was published by Pudding House Publications, 2007
War Games
The orchard is a white cloud wanting to be cherries. Across the highway, children go round and round their block like bees circling blossoms.
*** Bikes abandoned by the highway, the children enter the forbidden orchard, rip off blossoms, look into their hidden pink centers, taste nectar, and dance.
Find a wooden box buzzing with bees. Both remember being stung, pain like a flaming needle. They have fire. The orchard needs to be saved.
Wrinkled leaves flare as the matchbox is struck. “Bees sting. Bees might hurt us. Let’s kill them all,” the children chant as blue flames rise carrying clots of flaming bees,
flying torches, like flaming children running from napalm in Viet Nam. The bees zigzag, circle, fall. The orchard is gone-- just one match.
Previously published in Pudding Magazine and "Through My Window: Poetry of a Psychotherapist" Pudding House Publications, 2007
Sunset-February, 2003
(epigram in italics Just before the bombing began)
The leafless trees on the far shore of her frozen lake stand in rows like soldiers on review.
She remembers a guitar player, painter of pictures whose deferment ran out-- He left her that June with a bouquet of promises that finally fell lifeless from their stems.
Again-- the trees across the lake cast long dark shadows toward the East.
Iraqi Woman Attends a Wedding
They drove across the border to Jordan, rented a room. She unpacked the black denim dress large enough to hide a pregnancy or a suicide belt. She took a taxi with her husband to the wedding at the Radisson. Did he kiss her good-by before he ‘pushed her out of that ballroom as she fumbled with her belt,’ did they lie the night before like familiar spoons in a drawer, his arm cradling her breasts, read newspapers over omelets, leave their belongings or pack efficiently and… No, they would never need those things again
It must all be there in that furnished room the woman ran back to, the belt packed with fifteen pounds of explosives and metal ball bearings ‘ to kill as many people as possible,’ still strapped around her waist.
published in Miranda Literary Magazine and "Through My window: Poetry of a Psychotherapist, Pudding House Magazine, 2007.
Seven Daffodils, Iraqi Woman Attends a Wedding, Sunset, 2003
Seven daffodils rest on her table. Six scalloped petals surround each ruffled throat. She remembers the musk of his body, two glasses on a tray with chocolate, soft white sheets, a bouquet of daffodils, the man who painted pictures, talked of love with his music, and touched her in places no one had ever been. When the ground froze and his student deferment ended, he left her with a bouquet of promises that fell lifeless from their stems. Married to a good man, she hides the memory of musk Today, her daffodils trumpet taps, a song the girl never expected to hear.
Poets Against War, Canada
Iraqi Woman Attends a Wedding
They drove across the border to Jordan, rented a room. She unpacked the black denim dress large enough to hide a pregnancy or a suicide belt. She took a taxi with her husband to the wedding at the Radisson. Did he kiss her good-by before he ‘pushed her out of that ballroom as she fumbled with her belt,’ did they lie the night before like familiar spoons in a drawer, his arm cradling her breasts, read newspapers over omelets, leave their belongings or pack efficiently and… No, they would never need those things again
It must all be there in that furnished room the woman ran back to, the belt packed with fifteen pounds of explosives and metal ball bearings ‘ to kill as many people as possible,’ still strapped around her waist.
Through My Window: Poetry of a Psychotherapist (Pudding House Press, 2007)
Sunset, 2003 Just before the bombing began
The leafless trees on the far shore of her frozen lake stand in rows like soldiers on review She remembers a music man, painter of pictures whose deferment ran out-- He left her that June with a bouquet of promises that finally fell lifeless from their stems.
Again-- the trees near her lake cast long dark shadows toward the East.
