I will teach your child music
Enrich their mind
Summon the muse while
encouraging the joy

I enjoin the theory, history
And list charges
Against which they will
Warmup, scale, revel

Italian mostly, hi-lighter
only pencil yet always penned
Sheets and pages
Anthologies or albums
Etudes, method, sonata

And they will always ask for 
Beethoven, Mozart, Chopin
Or run screaming from Tchaikovsky,
Rimsky-Korsakov, Scriabin, Rachmaninoff and Mussorgsky

And I am not sorry
They have learned a universal
truth, a love, a soul
Through which they can speak
and be heard just as they are

Pedaling begets freedom
Legato and staccato their
friends-in-arms

Welcome the feedback they
must attain it in portato
Tempo furioso whether
digital or grand it
does not matter

And confidence there grows
for the wealth they acquire
Waiting patiently, dolce
Dolcissimo

Here's your notes!

© Doniell Cushman. All Rights Reserved. This poem or any portion thereof
may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever
without the express written permission of the author
except for the use of brief quotations in a review.

Small city rising between
the swells of hilly Palouse
and mountainous range
Often sun-dipped
Crazy falls once bursting with
Salmon and indigenous ones
Icy cold in the dull winters
Blooming in lilacs, roses and
ponderosa with needles, cones
and rippled bark vaguely
scented in a homey musk
Downtown, Northtown
Cannon, Comstock, Manito and
Mirabeau (which has turtles)
Where turkey and deer have
no boundaries, and the
sunsets are best viewed from
High Drive, overlooking 395
Once part of a fair now defunct
With crumbling houses and
mansions behind the hospitals
That many flock to from
three states or so
And boasts a grand wagon
slide for the inclined
Bearing three local universities
and scads of bars in all
forms of persuasion
This place where many
call home at a tribal casino
or an Idaho retreat, are
Purchasing tags for game
and frequenting community
farms, they live spread out
Cramped into a congested
trough, or drive in from
external county estates and
towns rarely worth mentioning
insomuch that most only
know it as
Spokane

​© Doniell Cushman. All Rights Reserved. This poem or any portion thereof
may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever
without the express written permission of the author
except for the use of brief quotations in a review.

Things that I was afraid to
tell you
made me yearn for a closeted
space where
with eyes, so haunted, I could
stream out rivulets from
long-clogged ducts.

I could close my mind there
and never hear your change
in heartbeat, or see the
sheet white across your
ruddy skin; rather I could
shut it out, scream out loud,
or crawl into fetal position so
I could die

I've kept these secreted past
doings so long that I have
conveniently lost touch
with them as if they never
existed.

© Doniell Cushman. All Rights Reserved. This poem or any portion thereof
may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever
without the express written permission of the author
except for the use of brief quotations in a review.

Rupi I hear you
Calling out into the dark
Creating cataclysmic candor
Riding my strength for
lack of restraint

I am ready to join this
sisterhood I used to cower from

Though I am white, privileged
and middle class
We are preponderantly akin

It happened to you
#metoo
Representational, still sincere
Speak out, alone we are not

Fear cannot abide
Our congregation is uncountable
As stars in the expanse
We are #heretoo

© Doniell Cushman. All Rights Reserved. This poem or any portion thereof
may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever
without the express written permission of the author
except for the use of brief quotations in a review.

Wither which
I
Slither,

Contemplating immense
attack!

"Sin, you are mine,"
Eve said.

For nothing so befitting
as adherence,
said the Lord.
Noe I say to you
in less words than more

kick back

And they were
evicted
stark naked and
humbled

​© Doniell Cushman. All Rights Reserved. This poem or any portion thereof
may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever
without the express written permission of the author
except for the use of brief quotations in a review.