Want (a fan poem)

We  encounter characters
we want to live in
want to go to bed with
want to stay in mind with
want to repeat and repeat in
want to lodge in and over
someplace far from bodies
and yet deeper
than any body dreams

Don't let go,
we say.
We can leap
into  book
and become,
for you,
re-enter

word

Under Water - for Charlie

Under Water

for Charlie


A drop
Hydrogen oxygenized
If you do an MRI
you have a city,
parts and particles
become plantlike
and animalcules
and ribbons fluttering
in water's version
of a breeze

Suddenly you know
that if you did an MRI
of the world
it would come out
much the same.

Air 1 and 2

Air 1 and 2

Frannie Zellman


1


So they voted
to charge people
for air.

But not just one charge,
and not just one kind
of air.

There would be
your somewhat clean air,
the kind you let
into your bathroom
because most people
don't spend more time
there than they can help
(with some exceptions).
Then there would be
your pretty clean air,
the kind you would want
in somewhat traveled areas,
like the stairs, the vestibule,
the outside steps.

And then there would be
your premium air,
breathed in the dining room,
the kitchen and the bedrooms.

The fourth kind
was spoken only in hushed tones,
as if to confer holiness
on its very being:
the party air, the business air,
piped in and filtered
within an inch of its literal life:
gatherings of the sedately moneyed
most illustrious citizens only
to merit

There was, however, one more kind,
 researched by one group,
not placed before
any  committees.
The few who heard
 jumped on waiting lines.
All they would say if asked
was that it would make those
you knew very very well
want to know you even better.

"Friendly air," was
what they called it online.


Air

2

"Some people can't
afford to pay for air,"
a congressperson said.

"Too bad,"
the Majority Leader said.

"They should have thought
of that
when they were buying food."

Girl on Fire

I post this every year during the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire commemoration. I wrote it in 2012.

Girl on Fire

Frannie Zellman

In remembrance of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, in Manhattan, Lower East Side -March 25,
1911

The last thing I thought before I jumped

was not that the doors were locked

or that I would die

if I missed the net

and my body splattered

but of the new theater

they were building on Second Avenue

and that spring was coming.

King Lear lost his daughters.

The factory owners lost us.

They pretended in court

that the doors were locked

to prevent theft.

My fiancé put three rocks

on my gravestone

and sobbed.

Fire fought fire –

We were on fire, they said,

in 1909,

when we walked out

and even thugs sent by the bosses

could not quench the fight in us

as our eyes mocked them.

Two years later

after smoke curled

and flames crackled through the doors

and singed our clothes

and hands and faces

and some of us jumped,

100,000 people marched.

One hundred years later

little ones

around the world

chained to their work

as smoke rises

cannot jump.

Their owners do not bother

to lock the doors.

Yet somehow somewhere

a girl takes flight

laughs

at those who own the world ,

soars above them

and with eyes on fire

dares the owned souls of the world

Slowly a Warning

Slowly a Warning

When the weather people
Keep changing the forecast
From hour to hour
And still miss

When cops stun
A murderer
And shoot
An unarmed child

When the post office
Says it’s been delivered
But it hasn’t

When someone
On the education committee
Doesn’t know
About rising water levels

When the doctor
Won’t treat
What you have
But something he can medicate

When the streets
Are silent
Because people fear guns

When kids
Are not allowed to
walk seven blocks

by themselves

No warning

No warning




Not with storm troopers,
but with a blockade
manned by paramilitary
or imitation police
who stop people
without rhyme
without reason
without warning

with a lynching
in a state they said
was embracing tolerance

with mandatory
voter id
for people
who never broke a law
in their lives

with a new law:
businesses
can refuse to serve
those they don't like
because you know -
who knows how
to sniff out gay people?

with police
walking around
looking for reasons
to yell
handcuff
fire new weapons

or no reasons

and then

with no warning

at

all

Who says you can't smoke grass on the Riverline?

Not where I'd expected,
but who says
you can't smoke grass
on the Riverline?

Twenty five years
says you can't remember

Twenty five years
can go shove itself
up a butt

Would I laugh
as hard
and spill grapefruit juice
over our chins?