My Lola By: Mylinh Nguyen

My Lola

By: Mylinh Nguyen 

When I am asked

how I began to play

my Lola, the violin. 

I talk about my mother

for it was she that taught

me how to play.

She told me that if

I practiced hard enough

I could be like her someday.

Without a single lesson,

I tried to play a song.

My fingers on G and then on F

Back at it again,

I reach for high C and then E

Stroking to high, I almost break the vase

Trying to play the easiest song

of them all, Mary Had a Little Lam

turned into to squeaking and screeching .

Everyone covers their ears.

Dad pulled out his wallet

And gave me a ten.

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Poem of the Day: When I Am Asked

BY LISEL MUELLER

When I am asked   

how I began writing poems,   

I talk about the indifference of nature.   

It was soon after my mother died,   

a brilliant June day,   

everything blooming.   

I sat on a gray stone bench   

in a lovingly planted garden,   

but the day lilies were as deaf   

as the ears of drunken sleepers   

and the roses curved inward.   

Nothing was black or broken   

and not a leaf fell   

and the sun blared endless commercials   

for summer holidays.   

I sat on a gray stone bench   

ringed with the ingenue faces   

of pink and white impatiens   

and placed my grief   

in the mouth of language,   

the only thing that would grieve with me.