Poem by Luke Stromberg

A Dedication

I am surrounded by women.
They talk amongst themselves, ignoring me.
A cocktail party is in progress:
Laughter, the clinking of glasses,
conversations blending into one steady drone.
A brunette gracefully wields an unlit cigarette
between two fingers, always
on the verge of lighting up,
and speaks excitedly about work.
In a chair on the other side of the room,
a black-eyed blonde crosses her legs:
Looks around, bored.
She sips from a flute of champagne.

Someone laughs shrilly. A drink is spilled.
The room fills up with fog.
The women become indistinct, a crowd
of chattering shadows.
The starlight is locked out.
I’m closed in.
I open my mouth to speak
and produce a sound like shattering glass.

You out there, in the night, somewhere,
maybe sitting in your car at a red light, alone,
turn on your radio—
You might hear my song.

Luke Stromberg’s poems have appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer, The New Criterion, The Hopkins Review, Think Journal, and several other places. He lives in Upper Darby, PA and works as an adjunct English professor at Eastern University. People have often called him an oddball.

Ira Joel Haber was born and lives in Brooklyn. He is a sculptor, painter, book dealer, photographer and teacher. His work has been seen in numerous group shows both in USA and Europe and he has had 9 one man shows including several retrospectives of his sculpture. His work is in the collections of The Whitney Museum Of American Art, New York University, The Guggenheim Museum, The Hirshhorn Museum and The Albright-Knox Art Gallery. Since 2007 His paintings, drawings, photographs and collages have been published in over 160 on line and print magazines. He has received three National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, two Pollock-Krasner grants, the Adolph Gottlieb Foundation grant and, in 2010, he received a grant from Artists’ Fellowship Inc. He currently teaches art to retired public school teachers at The United Federation of Teachers program in Brooklyn.