Stephen Cramer
Poetry
Stephen Cramer’s first book of poems, Shiva’s Drum, was selected for the National Poetry Series and published by University of Illinois Press. Bone Music, his sixth,won the Louise Bogan Award and was published by Trio House Press. His most recent is The Disintegration Loops. He is the editor of Turn It Up! Music in Poetry from Jazz to Hip-Hop. His work has appeared in journals such as The American Poetry Review, African American Review, The Yale Review, and Harvard Review. An Assistant Poetry Editor at Green Mountains Review, he teaches writing and literature at the University of Vermont and lives with his wife and daughter in Burlington.
Choice
Tonight, it looks like the stars
have had a few. Orion
is skinny dipping in puddles,
choreographing sweet dance moves
with a streetlamp. Actually,
everything is clearly intoxicated,
from the scent of rain
laced with pine to the grass
tilting beneath our feet.
Let’s face it: as of the most
recent assessment, the day
seems to have had a deficit
of awesome. I mean, even if
the task we’ve been given
is to make a house
out of a hurricane, to make
walls with the whirlwind,
to board by board create
the floor we walk on,
what choice do we have
but to drive lightless all night
& honk at all the moths?
It’s far past time to walk
a shattered sidewalk that hasn’t
already memorized my stride, to speak
with an eloquence that tends to slur
into grunt & groan, time to
all night long hook elbows with awe.