The Weight of a Dollar
What is the weight of a dollar? Atlas’ World was easier to carry.
The patient Turtle carrying Atlas and the World had an easier task
than carrying Lady Liberty on a silver dollar,
L I B E R T Y is bold among the rays extending from her head
likened to the images so many would see when upon first entering
the harbor, gazing from afar, and then up at the guardian –
no matter where the Sun was, she was illuminated and illumination.
From far and then coming closer, people will call out,
“I see her! She’s so big against the sky! We made it! We’re here.”
Still, she remains quiet with a gaze looking away.
Does she hear the words? Do their tones and vibrations touch her heart?
No matter what, she stays silent in return.
Tarnished from silver to sepia patinas, black shadows, and rich grays,
the coin brings heft, smooth surfaces, and delicate crevices
as fingers explore and discover a New World on the other side:
THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
E PLURIBUS UNUM
PEACE
All are raised on this dollar’s second face with
the feathered Eagle grasping an olive branch but
cut and scraped with gnashed wounds from the bladed
rock that has razored his wings and claws.
Lady Liberty stays silent.
The Eagle is present, but his back is turned away.
Young John and his sister Berneice
dreamt of seeing these two proud figures welcome them to a new home.
In 1951, they took turns holding this coin from 1922 on their long voyage.
As a “Peace Dollar” it chronicled years of prosperity for some countries, but
certainly not for these two children who’d spent childhood years in invaded Poland,
war-torn refugee camps, places of in-between for years longer than the war itself.
Still, dreams were fresh in their hearts, just like the eager anticipation of silky chocolates,
tart apples, sweet tomatoes, and rich pumpkins of this New World.
Back and forth they passed this heavy coin, growing stronger each time they held it,
for these dreams certainly grew lighter as reality became brighter with each mile.
Such a reality was heavy with despair for Svetlana, their mother.
This New World was not hers. Lady Liberty was remote; the Eagle, a vulture.
What is the weight of a dollar?
For her it cost the farm, the chickens Berniece tended, the rabbit Johnny loved.
It cost her little Stephanie who had cared so earnestly for the two youngest.
It cost her Frank and her husband, John.
4. Use one example of synaesthesia (mixing the senses).
5. Use the proper name of a person and the proper name of a place.
6. Contradict something you said earlier in the poem.
7. Change direction or digress from the last thing you said.
8. Use a word (slang?) you’ve never seen in a poem.
9. Use a piece of false cause-and-effect logic.
10. Use a piece of “talk” you’ve actually heard (preferably in dialect and/or which you don’t understand).
11. Create a metaphor using the following construction: “The (adjective) (concrete noun) of (abstract noun)…”
12. Use an image in such a way as to reverse its usual associative qualities.
13. Make the persona or character in the poem do something he/she could not do in “real life.”
14. Refer to yourself by nickname and in the third person.
15. Write in the future tense, such that part of the poem seems to be a prediction.
16. Modify a noun with an unlikely adjective.
17. Make a declarative assertion that sounds convincing but finally makes no sense.
18. Use a phrase from a language other than English.
19. Make a nonhuman object say or do something human (personification).
20. Close the poem with a vivid image that makes no statement but that “echoes” an image from earlier in the poem.”
