Vox Populi
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Leonard Gontarek: Coffee
1
For the young women going door to door, black dresses, fishnet stockings,
asking if we’ve thought about death on this beautiful fall Saturday.
For the light that has made it through the trees.
For the black coffee I drink from cracked Styrofoam.
For my neighbors settled on their steps, depressed.
For disembarking into a world of objects and calling bells.
2
Do you write political poems?
All poems are political.
To write a poem in these times is a political act. Roberto Juarroz
3
When I come home to my cat, my heart gives me away.
I’m quiet, withdrawn, nervous. August and expected rain.
I’m not talking about poems about Afghanistan.
We need those. I mean, I ate this, I read that poems.
When one wants to lie down in the shadow of hawk and pine.
When one wants to look into death’s crossed eyes.
It’s cooler, now. When the wind is toying with feathers and petals.
—
copyright 2015 Leonard Gontarek
— Grand Central
Vox Populi 
Awakening and consoling at once, like the black coffee and evening breezes that enclose this poem. It reminds me of something Seamus Heaney wrote about poetry (paraphrasing poorly here): that it can make us aware of our hunger and satisfy it in the same gesture. Thank you for that.
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Thank you for this wonderful meditation on the purpose(s) of a poem. On how they help us see.
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In Gontarek’s moving poem, death intrudes, even during the pleasures of life’s details that comfort. Cat glimpses inmost heart. Insightful.
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I nominate Leonard Gontarek poet laureate of Philadelphia and beyond!
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Such an honest account of life in poetry. Death is everywhere, as is poetry, and politics. We are all vulnerable to reality and cannot escape.
Beautiful poem!
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In “Coffee”, Gontarek, with keen sight and insight, asks me, the reader,”What do I think, care about? What do I notice? And what is a “political poem”? Love it.
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Love the pair, this one and Night.
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Love Gontarek’s work. So grateful for his overall contribution to the poetry landscape of Philadelphia.
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Love this very much. One of my favorites of the Gontarek poems I’ve read.
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Love this poem very much. A favorite of the poems Gontarek has written.
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Reblogged this on Mindfire Cantata.
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