Today is World Poetry Day! Every year, poetry is featured as one of the many cadet talents and achievements showcased at the John Calabro Night of the Arts, a Margin Of Excellence event hosted by the Department of English and Philosophy, USMA and the USMA Cadet Humanities Forum. Endowed by Fred Gretsch, a childhood friend of Calabro, and his wife, Dinah, the event honors the late COL John Calabro Jr. ’68, who spent nearly 20 years mentoring faculty members and cadets in the Department of English, including 15 years as course director. Keep an eye out for coverage of this year’s event on April 19, 2024!
Check out last year’s winners of the John Calabro Night of the Arts poetry contest!
Cadet Mess
21C.
We fill six of the twelve seats at the table
I more than the rest
How are you? Good, how are you? How are you really?
I am 4 ounces of chicken 3 spoons of rice 2 scoops of greens 1 roll of bread
good or bad or green or red or plus or minus
not both or neither
Whatever
I am good or bad or green or red or plus or minus
what widens the space between us
is all I have left
which is nothing right
suddenly five mouths are too far away for me to hear them
and my mouth is too full to call out for help and
my body takes up enough space without wordswordswords
echoing out of it
I am 1 hour, 2 times a day, 3 uniforms, 4 pounds to lose
another month bleeding from the wrong places
a pool made by a thick wad of my thin hair
my parents my poor parents who created this body
my body
We say goodbye, see you soon, have a good night
but I don’t think I will
When six becomes one and 21C. becomes the handicap stall of the fourth-floor bathroom
it will all come up
4
3
2
1
Then it will really be good.
Right?
Legacy
Perhaps it is best to appease the Dead.
Rotting headstones mark temples and beds
Made weak by time and fate,
But strong in a will to wait.
Asleep, these temples lie in silent peace,
Epitaphs refusing their faded voices cease.
Inscriptions of heroes and saints abound;
Though, are they true to original sound?
Too often do the living perjure the Dead
With remembrances now confused and bled
From a gushing wound called time –
Too large, too quick, the clocktower’s constant chime.
Perhaps we are frightened that honest epitaphs, conducive
In calling her “Absent” and him “Abusive,”
Should awaken the Dead to haunt us like ghosts
Enraged by justice – slithering, screaming spectral toasts.
Yes, perhaps it is best that the living
Appease the Dead – so “Beloved” it is, truth again relenting.
Permanent etchings now manifesting memories,
Marking fallen temples – lies as legacies.
I want a beautiful life
myself
to: ,
I want a beautiful life.
I know how that must sound—cliché.
Full of that melancholic angst
That consumes nearly everyone’s early twenties.
Until It fades into a mere linger
That only creeps out under the cover of late nights
When the bottle is empty
The world fuzzy and the lump
In your throat.
Perpetual motion
Interrupted by moments
too late
too drunk
to mean anything.
Despite all this, I mean it.
I want an existence of specificity
Amongst the universal
Engulfed in the grasp of contemplation
Seeped in passion
Unexplored depths and tethered souls
Enamored by the convoluted mess of quiddity;
Long conversations under city lights and
Stolen glances behind bookshop shelves
Chasing the fleeting present
Intoxicated by the intimacy of a stranger;
I want to live in the space
Between everything and nothing
To entangle my soul in that of another
Under the gaze of the green light
Still, find the peace in the simplicity of life
To reside in unapologetic absoluteness
Destroyable, but not defeatable.
To protest the limitations of the human condition
Escape the Hollywood movie ectoplasms
Yet romanticize its mystery chasing
The man in the crowd.
I want a life filled with
Beautiful
Reckless
Chaos
—to make my existence raw poetry.
To have the clarity and stillness to meet
Myself
As deeply as I’ve met others.
To escape the unequivocable
Ache of inarticulation
Embracing the pain
Beautifully scathed
From elation to deep sorrow
All raw and consuming.
An unspoken dialogue
Someone else’s words
Foreign on my lips
On the odyssey of euphoria
That is,
Until they see.
I met you under the lights
Of someone else’s city
An empty mirror
Refracted reflection
Tracing the outlines of your being
Slicing my finger
On the edges of my own;
Mimicry
A borrowed shirt
Plagiarized passion
A caveated kiss
Shades of solitude
Disguised in the exile
Of shared existence
And yet,
Totality’s tethered
To all that we touch,
Your hands on my waist
A conglomeration of collected spaces
My fingers on the corner of each page
Searching for the phrase
Line
Word
Syllable
To find
That the demarcations of my soul
Are inextricably intertwined
Within the narrative of humanity
A rhapsody of unrequitedness
Engulfed in contemplation
I want to escape uncut,
Drowning in the sea of myself
How far into the depths
Do I descend,
If our expiration date
Is last call?
Devoured by the
Consumption of nothingness
An ephemeral existence
Is our beauty mutually exclusive
Or,
Is this mimicry
A beautiful convolution
Of all that we are
And all that we touch?
