Read a Poem
Caesura
by Scott Minar
At four in the morning the streets in Cleveland
break up and roll themselves away
only to be planted again by the front wheels
of cars rolling downtown at daybreak. No one
sees it, but I know it happens that way.
There are people I used to work with
who would call thoughts like that crazy. Maybe
they are. But I need to explain
the sex workers on Carnegie, the gun in every
other locker at the factory where my friend works,
the body face down in the lot where I saw it
first. I knew a black man, fifty and
strong as an ox, who tore down his painting
from our locker at Christmas. It was
beautiful and someone made him take it down. He tore
it from the wall in pieces. Some answers
are hard to get: places don’t mean much anymore and
the smaller pains in a lifetime—
small because they weren’t yours or they happened
long ago— fade away. But I know
there is something wild beating in our hearts and
sometimes it gets out, you can almost hear it.
Caesura by Scott Minar from The Nexus of Rain. Ohio Review Books. 1986. Used by permission of the author.
About the Author
Scott Minar, a native of Cleveland and Cleveland Heights, is the author/editor of eleven books, including Gilgamesh and Other Poems (Mammoth Books 2018—Arabic edition Linda Books, Al Sweida, Syria 2018), Arctic Accordion: Selected Poems (Mammoth Books 2021), The Working Poet (Autumn House Books, Pittsburgh 2009), and Exercises for Poets: Double Bloom (with Edward Dougherty) (Pearson, New Jersey 2006). His work has appeared in The Paris Review, Poetry International, Crazyhorse, The Georgia Review, The Newfoundland Herald, and other journals in the U.S., Canada, Sweden, the Middle East (Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Israel) and Australia.
Write a Poem
Write a poem on a bridge (a footbridge, covered bridge or another type). You might work into your poem other definitions for bridge, such as of the nose, in music, on a ship, or in dentistry.
Leave a Comment
To Build A Bridge
To build a bridge is not an easy task
Because ultimately you must cross a gap
And bind two sides together
That otherwise could never meet.
A bridge must be strong designed to hold
The weight of cars or other forms of traffic
Bridges can be built to swing, lift or jackknife
To allow everyone beneath clear passage.
I want to build the type of bridge
That provides everyone a way to travel
To where they want to go
Not hindered by nature or human nature.
To Build A Bridge
To build a bridge is not an easy task
Because ultimately you must cross a gap
And bind two sides together
That otherwise could never meet.
A bridge must be strong designed to hold
The weight of cars or other forms of traffic
Bridges can be built to swing, lift or jackknife
To allow everyone beneath clear passage.
I want to build that type of bridge
That provides everyone a way to travel
To where they want to go
Not hindered by nature or human nature.
The Old Žepa Bridge
Over the river by the mountains
an ancient bridge sprang its wing
which mornings fill with mist and
silence that makes you stand face
to face with time itself along with
the timeless and, as you peek, you
start to sense that the same, both
the one and the other are not only
out there, but also within where
ones eyes cant turn and move
and crack its guarded meaning.
But there by the honored bridge
you see the stirring, risen wing,
and a Muse, an angel, gives a lift.
Thank you, Mary, for your lovely note. That it was written at 4 a.m. makes it even better. I am familiar with that hour a little, sometimes because of working a midnight shift, sometimes because I was returning at that hour from my other life as a musician. I hope you will send me one of your own poems to read at my OU email address. I would like that! Many thanks again.
Day 18. Write a poem on a bridge (a footbridge, covered bridge or another type). You might work into your poem other definitions for bridge, such as of the nose, in music, on a ship, or in dentistry. Easier to read on website: https://tovlis.wixsite.com/tovliwriter/tovlis-writings
Bridges
Dont rely on bridges
the spiritual joints
that collapse inward,
bow outward, moving solitude
from border to river.
Neither Ibuprofen nor surgery can restore cartilage.
Stand on a bridge
your boots fill with water.
Walk the bridge.
Youll crave globalism, or
mistake nationalism for gristle.
Bridges summon the lost, then collapse. They make poor homelands.
Blockade a bridge,
youll die from arthritis.
Burn a bridge,
breathing becomes a wall.
Even if time howls, dismiss the child who gave charity.
So what? You live alone. Comb the snarls from your hair.
Build yourself a bridge.
Stand on it. Waist deep.
Occupy someone else's space.
Think Chopinsome catchy bridge section
is it the same thing?
How would you know? Youre never home long enough to hear the melody.
Forget about it.
Move north, in fact, take flight.
Bridges are like an arrhythmia,
an out-of-sync moment,
a structure meant to frighten;
yet, no one truly crosses over. Not really.
2024 Tovli
A beautiful piece, Scott. Four a.m. is my natural start of the day, a club of the some of us who love the literal stillness and the figurative dark and light places of the heart. I love your "pause" to salute it all.