Images

On This Day

October 28, 1886 – The Statue of Liberty, a gift of friendship from the people of France to the people of the United States, is dedicated in New York Harbor by President Grover Cleveland.

On the pedestal was inscribed “The New Colossus,” a sonnet by American poet Emma Lazarus that welcomed immigrants to the United States with the declaration, “Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, / The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. / Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me. / I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

Coffee Shop

by Sandie Sherosirc

Why do poets sit in coffee shops?
Do we drown in caffeine
Like some kind of drug
Getting our fix through sleepless nights
And seven dollar paper cups
Hoping our muse
Will just come dancing in
With bloody knuckles
And ink stained skin
Why do poets sit in coffee shops?
Alcohol can be just as inspirational
But they lack the ability to watch people
To study human nature
Human emotion
To see yourself in the face of strangers
Wondering and regretting 
Loving and missing
Removing yourself for a moment
To see the world in all hours
Why do poets sit in coffee shops?
Because sometimes we have no where else to go  
Because we can’t be alone with our thoughts
And feelings
We can destroy others with out leaving a mark
We can destroy ourselves without turning pages
And we can rebuild and reshape
With a pen stroke
White noise of coffee machines and customers clear our thoughts
Leaving us with just our papers and ink smudges