Sample Poems by Alison Stone

---

But Not His Name

Spring was lost to lockdown. Now it's summer,
the air thick with humidity and fear.

Returned to work, we sweat into our masks.
The scientists are taken off the air.

I AM NOT A RACIST, the racist yells
while bodies pile up like bags of gold.

Cars honk for protestors carrying signs.
The ground trembles when stone generals fall.

It's always about who has the power.
Years ago, at Ellis Island,

my grandfather, but not his name, allowed
to enter. Boats of Jews turned back to die.

What does it mean
to be American?

Official fireworks banned, my neighbor
provides a noisy, low-budget display.

Zimmerman autographs bags of Skittles.
Fake stallions watch through moss-covered eyes.

---

Grandpa Perry

I barely knew you
but named my daughter Peri
for my father's sake, remembering vaguely
an overweight, ruddy man
and the details my parents repeated -
bad with money but so generous you fried
giblets for the neighborhood cats.
You took my brother to the barber
his first time, a crew-cut
Mom never forgave.

Is this what life reduces to?
A handful of anecdotes
thinning with repetition
like spinach simmered to wisps.

Some people believe time
is just a metaphor for space,
that each moment still exists,
exactly as it occurred,
the seconds following in a line like beads on a string.

Others think that each choice point
branches like a river, with different selves
taking each possible action.
Maybe the Perry who made savvy
business moves had the ease
and medical care to live long enough
for me to know his jokes,
to have something robust
to tell my girl about her name.

Even if our death date's fixed,
and all that's changeable is how
we get there, still
I like to think of you
somewhere, fedora at an angle,
holding my brother's hand,
my mother smiling as she sees
his neatly-trimmed curls.

---

Celestial

I don't know how angels feel
about our struggles and hungers,
our fragile, beyond-control
flesh. Did these haloed ones
have bodies once,

and somehow get promoted to gossamer?
Or have they always lived on clouds
of our imagination, listening
to lyre hits as the sky
recycles its blues?

Why do we imagine we'd be happier
up there? Our natures being
what they are, we'd probably gripe
about altitude sickness or envy
the gold in another's curls. Isn't

their satisfied expression what we're
really after, a smug glow
available to all of us
if we could pause and listen
for the beating of wings.

---

Between the Devil

and the deep blue
of your eyes, I'd choose the pleasure
with the steeper price.
The lack-of-oxygen thrill.
Why venture if there's nowhere sweet
and dangerous to fall?
Nature shows - grab now
before things rot.
Why leave blackberries for some dumb bird
while your own hungers
whirl unheeded in your clenching
heart? We all want rapture's terror,
want to be forgiven and kissed,
stumbling through the world's mix
of come hither and thorn.
Knowing the possibilities each day
can hold, the wisest bodies tremble.

---

Elegy

A suicide in Spyten Dyvel
snarled the trains for hours,
thousands of commutes stalled
by a stranger's pain.

This is death's season, trees'
leaf-flames beginning to extinguish, strappy
dresses packed away.
The time of year you faded.

At your funeral, women stood in turn
to proclaim closeness. Silent, smug,
I sat, trusting the touch
that all these decades later burned.

Though we met when the media
began to warn of lesions,
wasting, cancer - a new penalty for pleasure --
still we spent our bodies in my art school dorm,
so small you joked I'd have to go
into the hall to change my mind.
And I did, fleeing the danger
and delight of us for naive British boys
and Wall Street hopefuls,
though years of phone calls
kept us loosely joined.

We spoke last after the towers fell.
Numb from the vile smoke in my throat,
I missed the weakness in your voice,
dismissed your fear that pills
no longer kept the virus in check.
Convinced myself you'd rally.

When your niece called and I flew
to your bed, I took off my wedding
band so that the hand holding your limp
and unresponsive one
would be the hand you knew.