Speaking of poems, my friend Michele Madigan Somerville has a poem up on her blog today called Particle Collider (September 10) for Louise Crawford.

It is dedicated to me, which is thrilling. The poem was inspired by the poet’s thoughts on the day of my father’s funeral in 2008.

The poem is also about September 11th and thoughts about leaving or staying in New York City after that day.

Michele is a Native New Yorker, who writes frequently about religion for the Huffington Post. She is the author of the book-length poem WISEGAL (Ten Pell Books 2001) and Black Irish, her first collection of verse. Her verse has appeared in many literary journals.

Somerville’s work received an Honorable Mention in Dublin’s Ireland’s Eason Books Poetry Competition in 2003, first place in the W.B. Yeats Society poetry competition in 2000, a MacArthur scholarship for poetry at Brooklyn College in 1987, and the Louise B. Goodman Award for Women-Centered writing at Brooklyn College in 1988.

She curates readings at The Old Stone House in Park Slope, including the upcoming Feast (Writers on Food) on December 16th, 2010 at 8PM and Blarneypalooza on March 17th, 2011 at 8PM and has hosted readings at Ceol Bar in Cobble Hill Brooklyn and Cornelia Street Café in Manhattan. Somerville recently completed two collections of verse: Glamorous Life, and Stations of Light. She is currently working on a novel, Sucker Punch.

Read more to see my favorite section of her poem…

Should I spirit my

holy family off,

like the a Common Era

Joseph to Egypt

on an angel’s tip

like the dull suburban

at the family gathering said?

Should we flee

this sacred terrain

when “holy” war arrived

from the heavens

with shock and awe and signs

I wonder?

Should we flee,

in other words —

to other worlds, leave

that which makes us

bold and various and holy?

Or remain

in faith that who opened our wombs

might shield with

an outstretched —

arm? Shed this modest heroism? Leave

this promised land

your father gave to you?

This unforbidden fruit

emboldened by sweetness

and knowledge ?

His kind of town,

your kind of town —

Our town — with its birds and

bebop and commotion and

Irish Jews?

This sacred island of our birth

where mettle is tried

and a creative team

like no other anywhere

is forged.

That pig in the news

may look

better in lipstick

than without,

but here we know

what traif she really is.

Se habla the knack, aqui:

Aqui music wings articulate.

New York on a blue plate

for a pair of daughters

to split, or share.

A good death took no more

wind out of you

than it put there

in the first place.

With an outstretched arm,

you send your father off

and become someone else,

in not so much

a case of

vanishing as finishing,

I believe; this,

as he becomes

who was originally

imagined, having

lived a life

with women in it,

a life not still, not half

bad, just full

of wine, women,

soup and song!

“What a fortunate man

to have had such daughters.”

The circle squaring in my head

is a Jewish Saint

Francis entranced;

let the sloppy wreath of avian

navigators cuircumnavigating his head in lush formation

like proton beams,

flooding his periphery

with roses be your Daddy’s laurel. Let the pitch be

“Come on.”

The slogan: “You’re ready now.”

The jingle?
You already know it

by heart.

It’s called “Dizzy

Grace”: the song of all

we can neither hope

to keep

nor ever really lose.