Welcome to Five Spice Poetry
Constance Norgren, Lois Adams & Patricia Markert
Five Spice Poetry is a group of poets who write, publish, and perform readings in the New York City area and beyond. We have worked together for over twenty years.
Latest Work
PLEA
Wind-swept length of worn black spot-lit street,
night nurse street lamps bending,
street fed with wheel-hum,
with quick-step patter,
with pauses for thought, bits of murmur,
shouts sometimes --
watch him please, that one who wants
what shines out there in the dark,
he who woos what dazzles down there,
a little farther on...
Wander him, weary him,
summon him home again soon now
and ten times more, ten hundred times.
Posted March 17, 2009 by Constance Norgren
How Things Start
The bevel of a blade of grass
deflects right down at insect level.
A sidelong look can press
the pressure system.
Soon there's serious weather,
a wind as biting as sarcasm
raising hackles
at the backs of our necks.
Next sleet.
Some stinging words,
the frostbit tongue and throat.
Afterward
I'll wish I hadn't said that thought.
Posted March 17, 2009 Lois Adams
AT&T Building
You wouldn’t know to look at me
with my tailored suit and single string of pearls,
my pantyhose and pumps,
that I was once a lively dancer,
that every Friday night I danced at the bluegrass tavern
with the bus driver whose keys dangling from his belt loops
made up half the music along with the banjo picking, or
that I could strap plastic explosives to my waist
then walk into the AT&T building and blow it sky high.
In the lobby is a brass plate inscribed with seven continents,
seven seas, four oceans and the words:
Telephone and radio wires unite to make neighbors of nations.
The lobby is always immaculate, its tiles rubbed smooth
from mopping. The sign heralds an ideal we
no longer feel. The big building has changed its logo
from a mammoth bell to a bar code.
On its roof the ziggurat shape is disfigured with
two antennae for its telhotel business.
I could easily slink in with my mission,
like the men who took flight lessons
then flew the planes into the Trade Center.
Here you are, go ahead
look at me.
posted by Patricia Markert March 29, 2009
Contact Us
For general questions or comments, email Five Spice Press.
You may also email us individually:
If you would like to order our books by mail, please download an order form (link opens as PDF) and send your completed form to:
Five Spice Poetry
303A 16th St.
Brooklyn, NY 11215