1dianeham
Tom Clark
Things About You
1
I write this for your eyes and ears and heart
If it makes your eyes sore
ears weary
and heart burn
Stop!
I come to things about you
I didn’t use to understand
I didn’t mean to use you
I just summoned you
Then at the end you are soft and bent
The way a tulip is droopy a lilac is not
knowing this
is a joyous experience
for me
gives you endless pleasure
You are casual when the others are only easy
You go directly toward your own thought
There are some things about you I don’t understand
that’s why I married you
Do you think these are banal thoughts?
that IS what it’s all about
the portrait for instance
of the inside of the surface of something
The way You Didn’t Even Try is “about”
Do out and in exist?
and up and down
are lies about them
2
Did you say something?
From Paris Review issue no. 48 (Fall 1969)
Things About You
1
I write this for your eyes and ears and heart
If it makes your eyes sore
ears weary
and heart burn
Stop!
I come to things about you
I didn’t use to understand
I didn’t mean to use you
I just summoned you
Then at the end you are soft and bent
The way a tulip is droopy a lilac is not
knowing this
is a joyous experience
for me
gives you endless pleasure
You are casual when the others are only easy
You go directly toward your own thought
There are some things about you I don’t understand
that’s why I married you
Do you think these are banal thoughts?
that IS what it’s all about
the portrait for instance
of the inside of the surface of something
The way You Didn’t Even Try is “about”
Do out and in exist?
and up and down
are lies about them
2
Did you say something?
From Paris Review issue no. 48 (Fall 1969)
3dianeham
Jeffrey Harrison
Rare Bird
While we were waiting for the movie to begin,
my wife caught up with her old friend Maryann,
and because I could only make out every
third or fourth word, my attention fluttered off
in search of something else and landed on
the thirty-five-ish couple sitting three rows
in front of us—the backs of their heads
and then the bare left arm and hand
of the young woman, who kept gathering
locks of her long, straight auburn hair
between her middle and index fingers, pulling
each tress away from her head and through
her extended fingers with a dexterous twist
then letting it fall and gathering another,
over and over seemingly without thinking
as she chatted with her husband or companion.
There was something about that movement—
graceful but ordinary, not erotic—
that made me look harder, until, entranced,
I watched as those two slender fingers
transformed into the flexible beak of a bird
whose head was the rest of her hand and
body her forearm perched on the seat’s armrest …
as if this bird, without the woman knowing,
and through this repeated, fluid motion,
was stripping some minuscule form of nourishment
from the strands of her hair as from the blades
of seaweed, the way flamingos sift the shallows
for tiny organisms. The bird kept feeding,
and I kept staring, nourishing myself perhaps
impalpably. I wanted to show Julie
and Maryann, but not to interrupt
my looking or their conversation—then the lights
dimmed and the movie started. I don’t
remember what it was, some documentary,
I just remember that bird, and how it felt
as though I’d made a rare sighting, right there
in the middle of the movie theater,
of a species strange and beautiful,
the finger-billed whimbrel, an item
to add to my life list, if I kept one.
From Paris Review issue no. 232 (Spring 2020)
Rare Bird
While we were waiting for the movie to begin,
my wife caught up with her old friend Maryann,
and because I could only make out every
third or fourth word, my attention fluttered off
in search of something else and landed on
the thirty-five-ish couple sitting three rows
in front of us—the backs of their heads
and then the bare left arm and hand
of the young woman, who kept gathering
locks of her long, straight auburn hair
between her middle and index fingers, pulling
each tress away from her head and through
her extended fingers with a dexterous twist
then letting it fall and gathering another,
over and over seemingly without thinking
as she chatted with her husband or companion.
There was something about that movement—
graceful but ordinary, not erotic—
that made me look harder, until, entranced,
I watched as those two slender fingers
transformed into the flexible beak of a bird
whose head was the rest of her hand and
body her forearm perched on the seat’s armrest …
as if this bird, without the woman knowing,
and through this repeated, fluid motion,
was stripping some minuscule form of nourishment
from the strands of her hair as from the blades
of seaweed, the way flamingos sift the shallows
for tiny organisms. The bird kept feeding,
and I kept staring, nourishing myself perhaps
impalpably. I wanted to show Julie
and Maryann, but not to interrupt
my looking or their conversation—then the lights
dimmed and the movie started. I don’t
remember what it was, some documentary,
I just remember that bird, and how it felt
as though I’d made a rare sighting, right there
in the middle of the movie theater,
of a species strange and beautiful,
the finger-billed whimbrel, an item
to add to my life list, if I kept one.
From Paris Review issue no. 232 (Spring 2020)
4FlorenceArt
I like both poems Diane. Nice way to start a new thread!
5dianeham
>4 FlorenceArt: thank you.
7dianeham
Today is Bernadette’s birthday.
"From the Point of View of Four-Dimensional Space-Time Geometry ..."
BERNADETTE MAYER
From the point of view of four-dimensional space-time geometry the topography and the history of the universe fuse into one harmonious picture, and all we have to consider is a tangled bunch of world-lines representing the motion of individual atoms, animals, or stars.
1. This space is a pace away from you. 2. This space is a mile away from you. 3. This space is a footstep away from you. 4a. This space is an acre away from you. 5b. This space is a township away from you. 6.1. This space is a bushel away from you. 7.2. This space is a tablespoon away from you. 8x3. This space is a minute away from you. 9x4. This space is a week away from you. 10x5. This space is the roaring twenties away from you.
March 2, 2016
"From the Point of View of Four-Dimensional Space-Time Geometry ..."
BERNADETTE MAYER
From the point of view of four-dimensional space-time geometry the topography and the history of the universe fuse into one harmonious picture, and all we have to consider is a tangled bunch of world-lines representing the motion of individual atoms, animals, or stars.
1. This space is a pace away from you. 2. This space is a mile away from you. 3. This space is a footstep away from you. 4a. This space is an acre away from you. 5b. This space is a township away from you. 6.1. This space is a bushel away from you. 7.2. This space is a tablespoon away from you. 8x3. This space is a minute away from you. 9x4. This space is a week away from you. 10x5. This space is the roaring twenties away from you.
March 2, 2016
8Julie_in_the_Library
We Would Never Sleep
By David Hernandez
We the people, we the one
times 320 million, I’m rounding up, there’s really
too many grass blades to count,
wheat plants to tally, just see
the whole field swaying from here to that shy
blue mountain. Swaying
as in rocking, but also the other
definition of the verb: we sway, we influence,
we impress. Unless we’re asleep,
the field’s asleep, more a postcard
than a real field, portrait of the people
unmoved. You know that shooting last week?
I will admit the number dead
was too low to startle me
if you admit you felt the same,
and the person standing by you
agrees, and the person beside that person.
It has to be double digits,
don’t you think? To really
shake up your afternoon? I’m troubled by
how untroubled I felt, my mind’s humdrum
regarding the total coffins, five
if you care to know, five still
even if you don’t. I’m angry
I’m getting used to it, the daily
gunned down, pop-pop on Wednesday,
Thursday’s spent casings
pinging on the sidewalk. It all sounds
so industrial, there’s nothing metal
that won’t make a noise, I’m thinking every gun
should come with a microphone,
each street with loudspeakers
to broadcast their banging.
We would never sleep, the field
always awake, acres of swaying
up to that shy blue mountain, no wonder
why it cowers on the horizon, I mean
look at us, look with the mountain’s eyes
we the people
putting holes in the people.
By David Hernandez
We the people, we the one
times 320 million, I’m rounding up, there’s really
too many grass blades to count,
wheat plants to tally, just see
the whole field swaying from here to that shy
blue mountain. Swaying
as in rocking, but also the other
definition of the verb: we sway, we influence,
we impress. Unless we’re asleep,
the field’s asleep, more a postcard
than a real field, portrait of the people
unmoved. You know that shooting last week?
I will admit the number dead
was too low to startle me
if you admit you felt the same,
and the person standing by you
agrees, and the person beside that person.
It has to be double digits,
don’t you think? To really
shake up your afternoon? I’m troubled by
how untroubled I felt, my mind’s humdrum
regarding the total coffins, five
if you care to know, five still
even if you don’t. I’m angry
I’m getting used to it, the daily
gunned down, pop-pop on Wednesday,
Thursday’s spent casings
pinging on the sidewalk. It all sounds
so industrial, there’s nothing metal
that won’t make a noise, I’m thinking every gun
should come with a microphone,
each street with loudspeakers
to broadcast their banging.
We would never sleep, the field
always awake, acres of swaying
up to that shy blue mountain, no wonder
why it cowers on the horizon, I mean
look at us, look with the mountain’s eyes
we the people
putting holes in the people.
9rv1988
'A Word on Statistics'
by Wisława Szymborska
(translated by Joanna Trzeciak)
Out of every hundred people
those who always know better:
fifty-two.
Unsure of every step:
almost all the rest.
Ready to help,
if it doesn't take long:
forty-nine.
Always good,
because they cannot be otherwise:
four—well, maybe five.
Able to admire without envy:
eighteen.
Led to error
by youth (which passes):
sixty, plus or minus.
Those not to be messed with:
forty and four.
Living in constant fear
of someone or something:
seventy-seven.
Capable of happiness:
twenty-some-odd at most.
Harmless alone,
turning savage in crowds:
more than half, for sure.
Cruel
when forced by circumstances:
it's better not to know,
not even approximately.
Wise in hindsight:
not many more
than wise in foresight.
Getting nothing out of life except things:
thirty
(though I would like to be wrong).
Doubled over in pain
and without a flashlight in the dark:
eighty-three, sooner or later.
Those who are just:
quite a few at thirty-five.
But if it takes effort to understand:
three.
Worthy of empathy:
ninety-nine.
Mortal:
one hundred out of one hundred—
a figure that has never varied yet.
by Wisława Szymborska
(translated by Joanna Trzeciak)
Out of every hundred people
those who always know better:
fifty-two.
Unsure of every step:
almost all the rest.
Ready to help,
if it doesn't take long:
forty-nine.
Always good,
because they cannot be otherwise:
four—well, maybe five.
Able to admire without envy:
eighteen.
Led to error
by youth (which passes):
sixty, plus or minus.
Those not to be messed with:
forty and four.
Living in constant fear
of someone or something:
seventy-seven.
Capable of happiness:
twenty-some-odd at most.
Harmless alone,
turning savage in crowds:
more than half, for sure.
Cruel
when forced by circumstances:
it's better not to know,
not even approximately.
Wise in hindsight:
not many more
than wise in foresight.
Getting nothing out of life except things:
thirty
(though I would like to be wrong).
Doubled over in pain
and without a flashlight in the dark:
eighty-three, sooner or later.
Those who are just:
quite a few at thirty-five.
But if it takes effort to understand:
three.
Worthy of empathy:
ninety-nine.
Mortal:
one hundred out of one hundred—
a figure that has never varied yet.
11Julie_in_the_Library
MY MOTHER SAYS
by Amy Chan
My mother says I sing like a bird
on a winter’s day,
my mother, whose grace catches,
light on water,
on her changing face.
But if I am the bird and she the sea,
I sing because she flows through me.
by Amy Chan
My mother says I sing like a bird
on a winter’s day,
my mother, whose grace catches,
light on water,
on her changing face.
But if I am the bird and she the sea,
I sing because she flows through me.
12Julie_in_the_Library
INSULT TO INJURY
by George Bilgere
I find an old air gun
and a can of ammo
down in the basement
in a cardboard moving box,
along with some other stuff,
flotsam from previous lives.
A teenager, a long-expired
me, used it to polish off
tins cans in the backyard,
and once a bright, golden
oriole, shot in mid-song,
blowing a hole through me
as it fell. Holding a pistol
is like shaking hands
with death. What the hell,
let’s see if the damn thing
still works. In the same box,
a volume of poetry, slim,
but not slim enough,
by a poet I never liked—
all smoke and mirrors—
a poet utterly, brutally
forgotten, although a blurb
on the back still calls his book
“an astonishing debut.”
I prop it against the wall,
pump, load, cock, and Blam
goes the gun as it hasn’t
in half-a-century. I inspect
the astonishing debut.
The pellet, as it happens,
made it farther than I ever did,
stopping on page sixty-two,
just deep enough to dimple,
not tear, a sonnet on the guy’s
divorce, how his wife ran off
with his best friend, how terrible
the betrayal, how deep his grief.
How losing her tore out his soul.
And now this.
by George Bilgere
I find an old air gun
and a can of ammo
down in the basement
in a cardboard moving box,
along with some other stuff,
flotsam from previous lives.
A teenager, a long-expired
me, used it to polish off
tins cans in the backyard,
and once a bright, golden
oriole, shot in mid-song,
blowing a hole through me
as it fell. Holding a pistol
is like shaking hands
with death. What the hell,
let’s see if the damn thing
still works. In the same box,
a volume of poetry, slim,
but not slim enough,
by a poet I never liked—
all smoke and mirrors—
a poet utterly, brutally
forgotten, although a blurb
on the back still calls his book
“an astonishing debut.”
I prop it against the wall,
pump, load, cock, and Blam
goes the gun as it hasn’t
in half-a-century. I inspect
the astonishing debut.
The pellet, as it happens,
made it farther than I ever did,
stopping on page sixty-two,
just deep enough to dimple,
not tear, a sonnet on the guy’s
divorce, how his wife ran off
with his best friend, how terrible
the betrayal, how deep his grief.
How losing her tore out his soul.
And now this.
13dianeham
>12 Julie_in_the_Library: love it.
14dianeham
That poem just gave me an idea for a writing "exercise." It’s called exquisite corpse. Each person writes 2 or more lines and conceals all but the last line. Like the last line of the poem above - "And now this." Then revealing only the last line you pass it to the next person and they do the same. If people are interested, i can start a new thread. We would have to use the spoiler code to hide all but the last line. (How do you do that again?)
Wanna play?
Wanna play?
15Julie_in_the_Library
>14 dianeham: Ooh, that sounds fun. I'd love to play!
16dianeham
>15 Julie_in_the_Library: oh cool. I’ll contact some of the other people who posted poems but who I haven’t seen for a while.
17Julie_in_the_Library
Counting Backwards
by Linda Pastan
How did I get so old,
I wonder,
contemplating
my 67th birthday.
Dyslexia smiles:
I’m 76 in fact.
There are places
where at 60 they start
counting backwards;
in Japan
they start again
from one.
But the numbers
hardly matter.
It’s the physics
of acceleration I mind,
the way time speeds up
as if it hasn’t guessed
the destination—
where look!
I see my mother
and father bearing a cake,
waiting for me
at the starting line.
by Linda Pastan
How did I get so old,
I wonder,
contemplating
my 67th birthday.
Dyslexia smiles:
I’m 76 in fact.
There are places
where at 60 they start
counting backwards;
in Japan
they start again
from one.
But the numbers
hardly matter.
It’s the physics
of acceleration I mind,
the way time speeds up
as if it hasn’t guessed
the destination—
where look!
I see my mother
and father bearing a cake,
waiting for me
at the starting line.
18Julie_in_the_Library
The Death of the Bee
By Linda Pastan
The biography of the bee
is written in honey
and is drawing
to a close.
Soon the buzzing
plainchant of summer
will be silenced
for good;
the flowers, unkindled
will blaze
one last time
and go out.
And the boy nursing
his stung ankle this morning
will look back
at his brief tears
with something
like regret,
remembering the amber
taste of honey.
By Linda Pastan
The biography of the bee
is written in honey
and is drawing
to a close.
Soon the buzzing
plainchant of summer
will be silenced
for good;
the flowers, unkindled
will blaze
one last time
and go out.
And the boy nursing
his stung ankle this morning
will look back
at his brief tears
with something
like regret,
remembering the amber
taste of honey.
19Julie_in_the_Library
The Deathwatch Beetle
By Linda Pastan
1.
A cardinal hurls itself
at my window all morning long,
trying so hard to penetrate
its own reflection
I almost let it in myself,
though once I saw
another red bird, crazed
by the walls of a room,
spatter its feathers
all over the house.
2.
My whole childhood is coming apart,
the last stitches
about to be ripped out
with your death,
and I will be left—ridiculous,
to write
condolence letters
to myself.
3.
The deathwatch beetle
earned its name
not from its ugliness
or our terror
of insects
but simply because of the sound
it makes, ticking.
4.
When your spirit
perfects itself,
will it escape
out of a nostril,
or through the spiral
passage of an ear?
Or is it even now battering
against your thin skull, wild
to get through, blood brother
to this crimson bird?
By Linda Pastan
1.
A cardinal hurls itself
at my window all morning long,
trying so hard to penetrate
its own reflection
I almost let it in myself,
though once I saw
another red bird, crazed
by the walls of a room,
spatter its feathers
all over the house.
2.
My whole childhood is coming apart,
the last stitches
about to be ripped out
with your death,
and I will be left—ridiculous,
to write
condolence letters
to myself.
3.
The deathwatch beetle
earned its name
not from its ugliness
or our terror
of insects
but simply because of the sound
it makes, ticking.
4.
When your spirit
perfects itself,
will it escape
out of a nostril,
or through the spiral
passage of an ear?
Or is it even now battering
against your thin skull, wild
to get through, blood brother
to this crimson bird?
20rv1988
Leave-Taking
By Louise Bogan
I do not know where either of us can turn
Just at first, waking from the sleep of each other.
I do not know how we can bear
The river struck by the gold plummet of the moon,
Or many trees shaken together in the darkness.
We shall wish not to be alone
And that love were not dispersed and set free—
Though you defeat me,
And I be heavy upon you.
But like earth heaped over the heart
Is love grown perfect.
Like a shell over the beat of life
Is love perfect to the last.
So let it be the same
Whether we turn to the dark or to the kiss of another;
Let us know this for leavetaking,
That I may not be heavy upon you,
That you may blind me no more.
By Louise Bogan
I do not know where either of us can turn
Just at first, waking from the sleep of each other.
I do not know how we can bear
The river struck by the gold plummet of the moon,
Or many trees shaken together in the darkness.
We shall wish not to be alone
And that love were not dispersed and set free—
Though you defeat me,
And I be heavy upon you.
But like earth heaped over the heart
Is love grown perfect.
Like a shell over the beat of life
Is love perfect to the last.
So let it be the same
Whether we turn to the dark or to the kiss of another;
Let us know this for leavetaking,
That I may not be heavy upon you,
That you may blind me no more.
21Julie_in_the_Library
Mosaic
By Linda Pastan
1. THE SACRIFICE
On this tile
the knife
like a sickle-moon hangs
in the painted air
as if it had learned a dance
of its own,
the way the boy has
among the vivid
breakable flowers,
the way Abraham has
among the boulders,
his two feet heavy
as stones.
2. NEAR SINAI
God's hand here
is the size of a tiny cloud,
and the wordless tablets
he holds out
curve like the temple doors.
Moses, reaching up
must see on their empty surface
laws chiseled in his mind
by the persistent wind
of the desert, by wind
in the bulrushes.
3. THE FLIGHT INTO EGYPT
We know by the halos
that circle these heads
like rings around planets
that the small donkey
has carried his burden
away from the thunder
of the Old Testament
into the lightning
of the New.
4. AT THE ARMENIAN TILE SHOP
Under the bright glazes
Esau watches Jacob,
Cain watches Abel.
With the same heavy eyes
the tilemaker's Arab assistant
watches me,
all of us wondering
why for every pair
there is just one
blessing.
By Linda Pastan
1. THE SACRIFICE
On this tile
the knife
like a sickle-moon hangs
in the painted air
as if it had learned a dance
of its own,
the way the boy has
among the vivid
breakable flowers,
the way Abraham has
among the boulders,
his two feet heavy
as stones.
2. NEAR SINAI
God's hand here
is the size of a tiny cloud,
and the wordless tablets
he holds out
curve like the temple doors.
Moses, reaching up
must see on their empty surface
laws chiseled in his mind
by the persistent wind
of the desert, by wind
in the bulrushes.
3. THE FLIGHT INTO EGYPT
We know by the halos
that circle these heads
like rings around planets
that the small donkey
has carried his burden
away from the thunder
of the Old Testament
into the lightning
of the New.
4. AT THE ARMENIAN TILE SHOP
Under the bright glazes
Esau watches Jacob,
Cain watches Abel.
With the same heavy eyes
the tilemaker's Arab assistant
watches me,
all of us wondering
why for every pair
there is just one
blessing.
22Julie_in_the_Library
On the Steps of the Jefferson Memorial
By Linda Pastan
We invent our gods
the way the Greeks did,
in our own image—but magnified.
Athena, the very mother of wisdom,
squabbled with Poseidon
like any human sibling
until their furious tempers
made the sea writhe.
Zeus wore a crown
of lightning bolts one minute,
a cloak of feathers the next,
as driven by earthly lust
he prepared to swoop
down on Leda.
Despite their power,
frailty ran through them
like the darker veins
in the marble of these temples
we call monuments.
Looking at Jefferson now,
I think of the language
he left for us to live by.
I think of the slave
in the kitchen downstairs.
By Linda Pastan
We invent our gods
the way the Greeks did,
in our own image—but magnified.
Athena, the very mother of wisdom,
squabbled with Poseidon
like any human sibling
until their furious tempers
made the sea writhe.
Zeus wore a crown
of lightning bolts one minute,
a cloak of feathers the next,
as driven by earthly lust
he prepared to swoop
down on Leda.
Despite their power,
frailty ran through them
like the darker veins
in the marble of these temples
we call monuments.
Looking at Jefferson now,
I think of the language
he left for us to live by.
I think of the slave
in the kitchen downstairs.
23Julie_in_the_Library
Sorry for the Linda Pastan spam; I'm reading some of her poetry and liking quite a lot of it.
24rv1988
>23 Julie_in_the_Library: Don't apologize! I am enjoying the poems you post, too.
26msf59
To The People Who Have Resisted the Urge to Push an Asian Person Into the Path of a Moving Train
(We are the lines we won’t cross)
Who hasn’t given up their seat to a man who says
he can’t stand to sit with his back to the door.
Who hasn’t waited, preoccupied with the thoughts of escaping
this or that war, or sweatshop, or relationship,
(To be Asian American is to be told what you deserve)
by now learning that almost all stories in life end in some type of heartbreak—
exhausted, turning your back:
and in so doing, making you vulnerable
to the combustion that is human interaction.
(Every human being alive and dead is a cautionary tale)
Before this there never was a before this,
but if you don’t know:
many years I’ve taught myself to walk between my child,
any railing they could be tossed over,
put myself between them and, say, train tracks,
knowing others see us as moving targets in a steamed jungle
the way my parents did for me.
(Already so many ghosts)
To be an Asian body in America is to belong nowhere.
And what people cannot hold, they push.
What if
instead of being the opposite of a trust exercise
we were made sails
our purpose: to turn our backs
to a wind we can’t see.
-Bao Phi From Poem-A-Day
(We are the lines we won’t cross)
Who hasn’t given up their seat to a man who says
he can’t stand to sit with his back to the door.
Who hasn’t waited, preoccupied with the thoughts of escaping
this or that war, or sweatshop, or relationship,
(To be Asian American is to be told what you deserve)
by now learning that almost all stories in life end in some type of heartbreak—
exhausted, turning your back:
and in so doing, making you vulnerable
to the combustion that is human interaction.
(Every human being alive and dead is a cautionary tale)
Before this there never was a before this,
but if you don’t know:
many years I’ve taught myself to walk between my child,
any railing they could be tossed over,
put myself between them and, say, train tracks,
knowing others see us as moving targets in a steamed jungle
the way my parents did for me.
(Already so many ghosts)
To be an Asian body in America is to belong nowhere.
And what people cannot hold, they push.
What if
instead of being the opposite of a trust exercise
we were made sails
our purpose: to turn our backs
to a wind we can’t see.
-Bao Phi From Poem-A-Day
27KeithChaffee
THE WORKFORCE
Do you have adequate oxen for the job?
No, my oxen are inadequate.
Well, how many oxen would it take to do an adequate job?
I would need ten more oxen to do the job adequately.
I'll see if I can get them for you.
I'd be obliged if you could do that for me.
Certainly. And do you have sufficient fishcakes for the men?
We have fifty fishcakes, which is less than sufficient.
Would fifty more fishcakes be sufficient?
Fifty more fishcakes would be precisely sufficient.
I'll have them delivered on the morrow.
Do you need maps of the mountains and the underworld?
We have maps of the mountains but we lack maps of the underworld.
Of course you lack maps of the underworld,
there are no maps of the underworld.
And, besides, you don't want to go there, it's stuffy.
I had no intention of going there, or anywhere for that matter.
It's just that you asked me if I needed maps ...
Yes yes, it's my fault, I got carried away.
What do you need then, you tell me?
We need seeds, we need plows, we need scythes, chickens,
pigs, cows, buckets and women.
Women?
We have no women.
You're a sorry lot then.
We are a sorry lot, sir.
Well, I can't get you women.
I assumed as much, sir.
What are you going to do without women, then?
We will suffer, sir. And then we'll die out one by one.
Can any of you sing?
Yes, sir, we have many fine singers among us.
Order them to begin singing immediately.
Either women will find you this way or you will die
comforted. Meanwhile busy yourselves
with the meaningful tasks you have set for yourselves.
Sir, we will not rest until the babes arrive.
--James Tate
(This one always leaves me feeling that I must have slept through a World Mythologies lecture that would have completely explained it.)
Do you have adequate oxen for the job?
No, my oxen are inadequate.
Well, how many oxen would it take to do an adequate job?
I would need ten more oxen to do the job adequately.
I'll see if I can get them for you.
I'd be obliged if you could do that for me.
Certainly. And do you have sufficient fishcakes for the men?
We have fifty fishcakes, which is less than sufficient.
Would fifty more fishcakes be sufficient?
Fifty more fishcakes would be precisely sufficient.
I'll have them delivered on the morrow.
Do you need maps of the mountains and the underworld?
We have maps of the mountains but we lack maps of the underworld.
Of course you lack maps of the underworld,
there are no maps of the underworld.
And, besides, you don't want to go there, it's stuffy.
I had no intention of going there, or anywhere for that matter.
It's just that you asked me if I needed maps ...
Yes yes, it's my fault, I got carried away.
What do you need then, you tell me?
We need seeds, we need plows, we need scythes, chickens,
pigs, cows, buckets and women.
Women?
We have no women.
You're a sorry lot then.
We are a sorry lot, sir.
Well, I can't get you women.
I assumed as much, sir.
What are you going to do without women, then?
We will suffer, sir. And then we'll die out one by one.
Can any of you sing?
Yes, sir, we have many fine singers among us.
Order them to begin singing immediately.
Either women will find you this way or you will die
comforted. Meanwhile busy yourselves
with the meaningful tasks you have set for yourselves.
Sir, we will not rest until the babes arrive.
--James Tate
(This one always leaves me feeling that I must have slept through a World Mythologies lecture that would have completely explained it.)
28Julie_in_the_Library
>25 markon: The end is what got me with Mosaic, too.
29Julie_in_the_Library
After Minor Surgery
by Linda Pastan
(ignore those first few lines, as they're the end of the poem from the previous page of the poetry journal).
Apologies to those with screen readers. I do plan to come back and transcribe when I have a little more time.
31Julie_in_the_Library
The Answering Machine
By Linda Pastan
I call and hear your voice
on the answering machine
weeks after your death,
a fledgling ghost still longing
for human messages.
Shall I leave one, telling
how the fabric of our lives
has been ripped before
but that this sudden tear will not
be mended soon or easily?
In your emptying house, others
roll up rugs, pack books,
drink coffee at your antique table,
and listen to messages left
on a machine haunted
by the timbre of your voice,
more palpable than photographs
or fingerprints. On this first day
of this first fall without you,
ashamed and resisting
but compelled, I dial again
the number I know by heart,
thankful in a diminished world
for the accidental mercy of machines,
then listen and hang up.
By Linda Pastan
I call and hear your voice
on the answering machine
weeks after your death,
a fledgling ghost still longing
for human messages.
Shall I leave one, telling
how the fabric of our lives
has been ripped before
but that this sudden tear will not
be mended soon or easily?
In your emptying house, others
roll up rugs, pack books,
drink coffee at your antique table,
and listen to messages left
on a machine haunted
by the timbre of your voice,
more palpable than photographs
or fingerprints. On this first day
of this first fall without you,
ashamed and resisting
but compelled, I dial again
the number I know by heart,
thankful in a diminished world
for the accidental mercy of machines,
then listen and hang up.
32rv1988
>31 Julie_in_the_Library: This is great, I loved "....thankful in a diminished world/for the accidental mercy of machines"
33msf59
An Inn for the Coven
Witch hazel going wild along the
walkway. And all the spots to sit
and read our spell books. And all
the ways to keep them out. Two
black cats and a beaver who eats
carrots all day. Every room an
upper room even on the ground
floor. And bee boxes in the way
way back. And the sweet man who
comes to keep them. All our loves
are witches too. Or warlocks. All
our children and all our children.
Welcome. Water running in the
brook. Clean enough to drink from
our hands. And seven sources. And
a deep well. All for us and all for
those we bring over. Four swings in
the branches. A library in every
hollow. And birds. So many birds
we stop trying to name them. We’ll
just let them be with their own
names. Maybe, they’ll tell us.
Porches. Tomatoes in the summer
and pumpkins in the fall. And curry
leaves and curry blossoms. Jasmine
in the rooms at night. All loves
protected. All of us playing
cribbage on the lawn.
Gabrielle Calvocoressi
This is from the nature collection You are Here: Poetry in the Natural World, edited by Ada Limon. There are a few gems scattered among these many poems but overall it was just okay.
Witch hazel going wild along the
walkway. And all the spots to sit
and read our spell books. And all
the ways to keep them out. Two
black cats and a beaver who eats
carrots all day. Every room an
upper room even on the ground
floor. And bee boxes in the way
way back. And the sweet man who
comes to keep them. All our loves
are witches too. Or warlocks. All
our children and all our children.
Welcome. Water running in the
brook. Clean enough to drink from
our hands. And seven sources. And
a deep well. All for us and all for
those we bring over. Four swings in
the branches. A library in every
hollow. And birds. So many birds
we stop trying to name them. We’ll
just let them be with their own
names. Maybe, they’ll tell us.
Porches. Tomatoes in the summer
and pumpkins in the fall. And curry
leaves and curry blossoms. Jasmine
in the rooms at night. All loves
protected. All of us playing
cribbage on the lawn.
Gabrielle Calvocoressi
This is from the nature collection You are Here: Poetry in the Natural World, edited by Ada Limon. There are a few gems scattered among these many poems but overall it was just okay.
34msf59
>31 Julie_in_the_Library: Thanks for sharing the fine Pastan poems. I loved Almost an Elegy.
35msf59
Between midnight and eternity
The rain has shelved its watering can
A sweet dew rises from the earth
Everything is calm now
The bed beneath the mosquito netting awaits
Your eyelids grow heavy
You cannot wait to slip into the void
But the poem suddenly clings to you
As though your desires mean nothing
It clings to you, overpowering you
The poem slides under your skin
Hides itself in your bloodstream
You must conceive it, there and now
You must carry it in your womb
You must give it life
So your night can finally begin
Midnight splits the darkness in two
The day changes its course
But the poem clings to you
-Kettly Mars From Poem-A-Day
The rain has shelved its watering can
A sweet dew rises from the earth
Everything is calm now
The bed beneath the mosquito netting awaits
Your eyelids grow heavy
You cannot wait to slip into the void
But the poem suddenly clings to you
As though your desires mean nothing
It clings to you, overpowering you
The poem slides under your skin
Hides itself in your bloodstream
You must conceive it, there and now
You must carry it in your womb
You must give it life
So your night can finally begin
Midnight splits the darkness in two
The day changes its course
But the poem clings to you
-Kettly Mars From Poem-A-Day
36msf59
My Father’s Nest
Today four little robins
left the nest and flew away.
I turn time to a month ago
and see their nest growing
over my home’s lamp
stick by stick
beat by beat
song by song.
I turn to yesterday
and see their sunlit wings
lifting from the nest
leaving shadows with open beaks.
Today I missed them
as I did my father
when he left us and never returned.
Death didn’t give him a chance to get older.
I’ve passed his age.
He didn’t even finish the story he told me
about the orphan child
who walked on Earth
looking up at the sky
because he heard the dead live there.
He saw their faces in the clouds
and when he cried
the clouds rained with him.
I turn time back
so my father brings me toys
to share with the neighborhood girls
pausing that moment
while time takes the shape of a robin
who doesn’t seem to hear my calling behind.
-Dunya Mikhail
Today four little robins
left the nest and flew away.
I turn time to a month ago
and see their nest growing
over my home’s lamp
stick by stick
beat by beat
song by song.
I turn to yesterday
and see their sunlit wings
lifting from the nest
leaving shadows with open beaks.
Today I missed them
as I did my father
when he left us and never returned.
Death didn’t give him a chance to get older.
I’ve passed his age.
He didn’t even finish the story he told me
about the orphan child
who walked on Earth
looking up at the sky
because he heard the dead live there.
He saw their faces in the clouds
and when he cried
the clouds rained with him.
I turn time back
so my father brings me toys
to share with the neighborhood girls
pausing that moment
while time takes the shape of a robin
who doesn’t seem to hear my calling behind.
-Dunya Mikhail
37msf59
American Arithmetic
Native Americans make up less than
one percent of the population of America.
0.8 percent of 100 percent.
O, mine efficient country.
I do not remember the days before America—
I do not remember the days when we were all here.
Police kill Native Americans more
than any other race. Race is a funny word.
Race implies someone will win,
implies I have as good a chance of winning as—
We all know who wins a race that isn’t a race.
Native Americans make up 1.9 percent of all
police killings, higher than any race,
and we exist as .8 percent of all Americans.
Sometimes race means run.
I’m not good at math—can you blame me?
I’ve had an American education.
We are Americans, and we are less than 1 percent
of Americans. We do a better job of dying
by police than we do existing.
When we are dying, who should we call?
The police? Or our senator?
At the National Museum of the American Indian,
68 percent of the collection is from the U.S.
I am doing my best to not become a museum
of myself. I am doing my best to breathe in and out.
I am begging: Let me be lonely but not invisible.
In an American city of one hundred people,
I am Native American—less than one, less than
whole—I am less than myself. Only a fraction
of a body, let’s say I am only a hand—
and when I slip it beneath the shirt of my lover,
I disappear completely.
-Natalie Diaz
Native Americans make up less than
one percent of the population of America.
0.8 percent of 100 percent.
O, mine efficient country.
I do not remember the days before America—
I do not remember the days when we were all here.
Police kill Native Americans more
than any other race. Race is a funny word.
Race implies someone will win,
implies I have as good a chance of winning as—
We all know who wins a race that isn’t a race.
Native Americans make up 1.9 percent of all
police killings, higher than any race,
and we exist as .8 percent of all Americans.
Sometimes race means run.
I’m not good at math—can you blame me?
I’ve had an American education.
We are Americans, and we are less than 1 percent
of Americans. We do a better job of dying
by police than we do existing.
When we are dying, who should we call?
The police? Or our senator?
At the National Museum of the American Indian,
68 percent of the collection is from the U.S.
I am doing my best to not become a museum
of myself. I am doing my best to breathe in and out.
I am begging: Let me be lonely but not invisible.
In an American city of one hundred people,
I am Native American—less than one, less than
whole—I am less than myself. Only a fraction
of a body, let’s say I am only a hand—
and when I slip it beneath the shirt of my lover,
I disappear completely.
-Natalie Diaz
39FlorenceArt
D'UN VANNEUR DE BLÉ AUX VENTS
English translation here
À vous troupe légère,
Qui d’aile passagère
Par le monde volez,
Et d’un sifflant murmure
L’ombrageuse verdure
Doucement ébranlez,
J’offre ces violettes,
Ces lis et ces fleurettes,
Et ces roses ici,
Ces vermeillettes roses,
Tout fraîchement écloses,
Et ces œillets aussi.
De votre douce haleine
Éventez cette plaine,
Éventez ce séjour,
Cependant que j’ahanne
À mon blé, que je vanne
À la chaleur du jour.
Joachim du Bellay
English translation here
À vous troupe légère,
Qui d’aile passagère
Par le monde volez,
Et d’un sifflant murmure
L’ombrageuse verdure
Doucement ébranlez,
J’offre ces violettes,
Ces lis et ces fleurettes,
Et ces roses ici,
Ces vermeillettes roses,
Tout fraîchement écloses,
Et ces œillets aussi.
De votre douce haleine
Éventez cette plaine,
Éventez ce séjour,
Cependant que j’ahanne
À mon blé, que je vanne
À la chaleur du jour.
Joachim du Bellay
40rv1988
>36 msf59: Lovely, thank you for sharing.
41rv1988
>37 msf59: Natalie Diaz is fantastic. I read her book, Postcolonial Love Poem last year, and it was excellent.
42msf59
Love for a Song
Love is barter—bits of affection traded for pieces of adoration.
It is desire doled out on the whippoorwill’s summer wanting. It
is our craving for the meadowlark’s ringing song—our longing
for spring’s greening from our sun-starved spirits down to our
bare-toed roots. We seek the winding path and wander until
we find the sweet spots—blackwater cypress swamp, tallgrass
prairie sweep—the place where moonlight glancing off of tide-
slicked stones makes us weep.
We want the wild soul and a shadow-dwelling wood thrush
heaps it on us in self-harmonizing sonata—We revel in wild-
flower bloom—marvel in the migratory sojourns of birds
dodging falling stars. Sink yourself deep in the dizzying dance
of pollen-drunk bees. Find hope in the re-leaved canopies of
the tallest trees. Wind and water—storm and surf—they can
move us to other ends. Therein is the turn on. It’s the honey
sweet seduction. Nature asks only that we notice—a sunrise
here—a sunset there. The surge, that overwhelming inex-
plicable thing in a swallow’s joyous flight or the dawning of
new light that melds heart and head into sensual soul in that
moment of truly seeing—that is love.
-J. Drew Lanham
From the collection This is the Honey.
Love is barter—bits of affection traded for pieces of adoration.
It is desire doled out on the whippoorwill’s summer wanting. It
is our craving for the meadowlark’s ringing song—our longing
for spring’s greening from our sun-starved spirits down to our
bare-toed roots. We seek the winding path and wander until
we find the sweet spots—blackwater cypress swamp, tallgrass
prairie sweep—the place where moonlight glancing off of tide-
slicked stones makes us weep.
We want the wild soul and a shadow-dwelling wood thrush
heaps it on us in self-harmonizing sonata—We revel in wild-
flower bloom—marvel in the migratory sojourns of birds
dodging falling stars. Sink yourself deep in the dizzying dance
of pollen-drunk bees. Find hope in the re-leaved canopies of
the tallest trees. Wind and water—storm and surf—they can
move us to other ends. Therein is the turn on. It’s the honey
sweet seduction. Nature asks only that we notice—a sunrise
here—a sunset there. The surge, that overwhelming inex-
plicable thing in a swallow’s joyous flight or the dawning of
new light that melds heart and head into sensual soul in that
moment of truly seeing—that is love.
-J. Drew Lanham
From the collection This is the Honey.
43rv1988
I Leave This at Your Ear
by W. S. Graham
For Nessie Dunsmuir
I leave this at your ear for when you wake,
A creature in its abstract cage asleep.
Your dreams blindfold you by the light they make.
The owl called from the naked-woman tree
As I came down by the Kyle farm to hear
Your house silent by the speaking sea.
I have come late but I have come before
Later with slaked steps from stone to stone
To hope to find you listening for the door.
I stand in the ticking room. My dear, I take
A moth kiss from your breath. The shore gulls cry.
I leave this at your ear for when you wake.
by W. S. Graham
For Nessie Dunsmuir
I leave this at your ear for when you wake,
A creature in its abstract cage asleep.
Your dreams blindfold you by the light they make.
The owl called from the naked-woman tree
As I came down by the Kyle farm to hear
Your house silent by the speaking sea.
I have come late but I have come before
Later with slaked steps from stone to stone
To hope to find you listening for the door.
I stand in the ticking room. My dear, I take
A moth kiss from your breath. The shore gulls cry.
I leave this at your ear for when you wake.
44msf59
>43 rv1988: I like this one. Thanks for sharing.
45msf59
From “The Windy City”
Winds of the Windy City, come out of the prairie,
all the way from Medicine Hat.
Come-out of the inland sea-blue water, come where they
nickname a city for you.
Corn wind in the fall, come off the black lands,
come off the whisper of the silk hangers,
the lap of the flat spear leaves.
Blue-water wind in summer, come off the blue miles
of lake, carry your inland sea-blue fingers,
carry us cool, carry your blue to our homes.
White spring winds, come off the bag-wool clouds,
come off the running melted snow, come white
as the arms of snow-born children.
Gray fighting winter winds, come along on the tearing
blizzard tails, the snouts of the hungry
hunting storms, come fighting gray in winter.
Winds of the Windy City,
Winds of corn and sea blue,
Spring wind white and fighting winter gray,
Come home here—they nickname a city for you.
The wind of the lake shore waits and wanders.
The heave of the shore wind hunches the sand piles.
The winkers of the morning stars count out cities
And forget the numbers.
-Carl Sandburg
From Poem-A-Day
Winds of the Windy City, come out of the prairie,
all the way from Medicine Hat.
Come-out of the inland sea-blue water, come where they
nickname a city for you.
Corn wind in the fall, come off the black lands,
come off the whisper of the silk hangers,
the lap of the flat spear leaves.
Blue-water wind in summer, come off the blue miles
of lake, carry your inland sea-blue fingers,
carry us cool, carry your blue to our homes.
White spring winds, come off the bag-wool clouds,
come off the running melted snow, come white
as the arms of snow-born children.
Gray fighting winter winds, come along on the tearing
blizzard tails, the snouts of the hungry
hunting storms, come fighting gray in winter.
Winds of the Windy City,
Winds of corn and sea blue,
Spring wind white and fighting winter gray,
Come home here—they nickname a city for you.
The wind of the lake shore waits and wanders.
The heave of the shore wind hunches the sand piles.
The winkers of the morning stars count out cities
And forget the numbers.
-Carl Sandburg
From Poem-A-Day
46rv1988
I read this article on the legacy of E. E. Cummings and it mentioned a few other poets that are now out of favour, including Louise Bogan. So here's some Louise Bogan:
Leave-Taking
by Louise Bogan
I do not know where either of us can turn
Just at first, waking from the sleep of each other.
I do not know how we can bear
The river struck by the gold plummet of the moon,
Or many trees shaken together in the darkness.
We shall wish not to be alone
And that love were not dispersed and set free—
Though you defeat me,
And I be heavy upon you.
But like earth heaped over the heart
Is love grown perfect.
Like a shell over the beat of life
Is love perfect to the last.
So let it be the same
Whether we turn to the dark or to the kiss of another;
Let us know this for leavetaking,
That I may not be heavy upon you,
That you may blind me no more.
Edit: Link to the article I mentioned https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/ee-cummings-enormous-room/
Leave-Taking
by Louise Bogan
I do not know where either of us can turn
Just at first, waking from the sleep of each other.
I do not know how we can bear
The river struck by the gold plummet of the moon,
Or many trees shaken together in the darkness.
We shall wish not to be alone
And that love were not dispersed and set free—
Though you defeat me,
And I be heavy upon you.
But like earth heaped over the heart
Is love grown perfect.
Like a shell over the beat of life
Is love perfect to the last.
So let it be the same
Whether we turn to the dark or to the kiss of another;
Let us know this for leavetaking,
That I may not be heavy upon you,
That you may blind me no more.
Edit: Link to the article I mentioned https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/ee-cummings-enormous-room/
47msf59
Southern History
Before the war, they were happy, he said.
quoting our textbook. (This was senior-year
history class.) The slaves were clothed, fed,
and better off under a master’s care.
I watched the words blur on the page. No one
raised a hand, disagreed. Not even me.
It was late; we still had Reconstruction
to cover before the test, and — luckily —
three hours of watching Gone with the Wind.
History, the teacher said, of the old South —
a true account of how things were back then.
On screen a slave stood big as life: big mouth,
bucked eyes, our textbook’s grinning proof — a lie
my teacher guarded. Silent, so did I.
By Natasha Trethewey From This is the Honey
Before the war, they were happy, he said.
quoting our textbook. (This was senior-year
history class.) The slaves were clothed, fed,
and better off under a master’s care.
I watched the words blur on the page. No one
raised a hand, disagreed. Not even me.
It was late; we still had Reconstruction
to cover before the test, and — luckily —
three hours of watching Gone with the Wind.
History, the teacher said, of the old South —
a true account of how things were back then.
On screen a slave stood big as life: big mouth,
bucked eyes, our textbook’s grinning proof — a lie
my teacher guarded. Silent, so did I.
By Natasha Trethewey From This is the Honey
48msf59
Acceptance
When the spent sun throws up its rays on cloud
And goes down burning into the gulf below,
No voice in nature is heard to cry aloud
At what has happened. Birds, at least, must know
It is the change to darkness in the sky.
Murmuring something quiet in its breast,
One bird begins to close a faded eye;
Or overtaken too far from its nest,
Hurrying low above the grove, some waif
Swoops just in time to his remembered tree.
At most he thinks or twitters softly, “Safe!
Now let the night be dark for all of me.
Let the night be too dark for me to see
Into the future. Let what will be be.”
-Robert Frost
When the spent sun throws up its rays on cloud
And goes down burning into the gulf below,
No voice in nature is heard to cry aloud
At what has happened. Birds, at least, must know
It is the change to darkness in the sky.
Murmuring something quiet in its breast,
One bird begins to close a faded eye;
Or overtaken too far from its nest,
Hurrying low above the grove, some waif
Swoops just in time to his remembered tree.
At most he thinks or twitters softly, “Safe!
Now let the night be dark for all of me.
Let the night be too dark for me to see
Into the future. Let what will be be.”
-Robert Frost
49msf59
Kin: First Responders
On August 2, 2010, siblings and cousins Takeitha Warner, 13; JaMarcus Warner, 14; JaTavious Warner, 17; Litrelle Stewart, 18; LaDarius Stewart, 17; and Latevin Stewart, 15, drowned in the Red River in Shreveport, Louisiana in attempt to save DeKendrix Warner, 15, who was rescued.
One of they own was down in the belly of the river, so The Six dove and flew, neither flippered nor winged, as if air could hold them, as if riverwater was sweet.
The children believed in miracles, believed they was miracles, believed life was not life without they people.
Somebody said they was searching for stars but looked down into them waves. The stars they perceived was brother, sister, cousin, each eye shining with rivermud studded with gemstone, each mouth open and gleaming with tooth, gold, child-holler.
So, they did what humans do when they fall in love: fall. Flung they bodies in full panic, full surrender, one after another after another after another after another, one behind the other, into riverwater—We blood in life, blood in death, ain’t we, Blood?—drowned as one sound.
Water was neither translucent nor transparent, which means not one could read their futures, which were dying as they dove, dying as their limbs did not heed the love-command of they individual hearts to stroke and live, stroke and live, but stroke they did, stroke they did.
Ingested riverwater
like shine—mud, sediment, sludge—
they blues turned mouth,
part holy, part tomb:
Kin, when you go, I go.
We bout to die soon.
-Tameka Cage Conley From Poem-A-Day
On August 2, 2010, siblings and cousins Takeitha Warner, 13; JaMarcus Warner, 14; JaTavious Warner, 17; Litrelle Stewart, 18; LaDarius Stewart, 17; and Latevin Stewart, 15, drowned in the Red River in Shreveport, Louisiana in attempt to save DeKendrix Warner, 15, who was rescued.
One of they own was down in the belly of the river, so The Six dove and flew, neither flippered nor winged, as if air could hold them, as if riverwater was sweet.
The children believed in miracles, believed they was miracles, believed life was not life without they people.
Somebody said they was searching for stars but looked down into them waves. The stars they perceived was brother, sister, cousin, each eye shining with rivermud studded with gemstone, each mouth open and gleaming with tooth, gold, child-holler.
So, they did what humans do when they fall in love: fall. Flung they bodies in full panic, full surrender, one after another after another after another after another, one behind the other, into riverwater—We blood in life, blood in death, ain’t we, Blood?—drowned as one sound.
Water was neither translucent nor transparent, which means not one could read their futures, which were dying as they dove, dying as their limbs did not heed the love-command of they individual hearts to stroke and live, stroke and live, but stroke they did, stroke they did.
Ingested riverwater
like shine—mud, sediment, sludge—
they blues turned mouth,
part holy, part tomb:
Kin, when you go, I go.
We bout to die soon.
-Tameka Cage Conley From Poem-A-Day
51KeithChaffee
We're here!
BONDAGE LOVE
Houdini’s audiences loved him.
They were poor people, illiterates:
hod carriers, icemen, washerwomen,
undernourished kids.
They understood what it meant
to have your hands manacled,
your feet tied,
to be put in a straitjacket
then in a box
and sunk.
They knew what it was like to have no way out.
It was the way the world made love to them.
So he showed them, without a word,
that one could have no way out,
not a single, possible way out,
and get out.
-- John J. Brugaletta
BONDAGE LOVE
Houdini’s audiences loved him.
They were poor people, illiterates:
hod carriers, icemen, washerwomen,
undernourished kids.
They understood what it meant
to have your hands manacled,
your feet tied,
to be put in a straitjacket
then in a box
and sunk.
They knew what it was like to have no way out.
It was the way the world made love to them.
So he showed them, without a word,
that one could have no way out,
not a single, possible way out,
and get out.
-- John J. Brugaletta
52BLBera
Alternate Take
for Levon Helm
Ive been beating my head all day long on the same six lines,
Snapped off and whittled to nothing like the nub of a pencil
Chewed up and smoothed over, yellow paint flecking my teeth.
And this whole time a hot wind's been swatting at my door,
Spat from his mouth and landing smack against my ear.
All day pounding the devil out of six lines and coming up dry,
While he drives donuts through my mind's back woods with that
Dirt-road voice of his, kicking up gravel like a runaway Buick.
He asks Should I come in with that back beat, and whatever those
Six lines were bothered by skitters off like water in hot grease.
Come in, Levon, with your lips stretched tight and that pig-eyed grin,
Bass mallet socking it to the drum. Lay it down like you know
You know how, shoulders hiked nice and high, chin tipped back,
So the song has to climb its way out like a man from a mine.
Tracy K. Smith
for Levon Helm
Ive been beating my head all day long on the same six lines,
Snapped off and whittled to nothing like the nub of a pencil
Chewed up and smoothed over, yellow paint flecking my teeth.
And this whole time a hot wind's been swatting at my door,
Spat from his mouth and landing smack against my ear.
All day pounding the devil out of six lines and coming up dry,
While he drives donuts through my mind's back woods with that
Dirt-road voice of his, kicking up gravel like a runaway Buick.
He asks Should I come in with that back beat, and whatever those
Six lines were bothered by skitters off like water in hot grease.
Come in, Levon, with your lips stretched tight and that pig-eyed grin,
Bass mallet socking it to the drum. Lay it down like you know
You know how, shoulders hiked nice and high, chin tipped back,
So the song has to climb its way out like a man from a mine.
Tracy K. Smith
53BLBera
Animals
The president called undocumented immigrants
animals, and in the nature documentary
I watched this morning with my kids,
after our Saturday pancakes, the white
fairy tern doesn't build a nest but lays
her single speckled egg in the crook of a branch
or a tree knot. It looks precarious there
because it is. And while she's away,
because even mothers must eat, another bird
swoops in and pecks it, sips some of what now
won't become. The tern returns and knows
something isn't right--the egg crumpled,
the red slick and saplike running down the tree--
but her instinct is so strong, she sits. Just sits
on the broken egg. I have been this bird.
We have been animals all our lives,
with our spines and warm blood, our milky tits
and fine layers of fur. Our live births, too,
if we're lucky. But what animal wrenches
a screaming baby from his mother?
Do we know anymore what it is to be human?
I've stopped knowing what it is to be human.
Maggie Smith
The president called undocumented immigrants
animals, and in the nature documentary
I watched this morning with my kids,
after our Saturday pancakes, the white
fairy tern doesn't build a nest but lays
her single speckled egg in the crook of a branch
or a tree knot. It looks precarious there
because it is. And while she's away,
because even mothers must eat, another bird
swoops in and pecks it, sips some of what now
won't become. The tern returns and knows
something isn't right--the egg crumpled,
the red slick and saplike running down the tree--
but her instinct is so strong, she sits. Just sits
on the broken egg. I have been this bird.
We have been animals all our lives,
with our spines and warm blood, our milky tits
and fine layers of fur. Our live births, too,
if we're lucky. But what animal wrenches
a screaming baby from his mother?
Do we know anymore what it is to be human?
I've stopped knowing what it is to be human.
Maggie Smith
54rv1988
Dilara mentioned Claude McKay on her thread, so here's one by him.
If We Must Die
By Claude McKay
If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursèd lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!
Sourced here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/claude-mckay#tab-poems
If We Must Die
By Claude McKay
If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursèd lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!
Sourced here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/claude-mckay#tab-poems
55KeithChaffee
egg horror poem
small
white
afraid of heights
whispering
in the cold, dark carton
to the rest of the dozen.
They are ten now.
Any meal is dangerous,
but they fear breakfast most.
They jostle in their compartments
trying for tiny, dark-veined cracks –
not enough to hurt much,
just anything to make them unattractive
to the big hands that reach in
from time to random time.
They tell horror stories
that their mothers,
the chickens,
clucked to them –
meringues,
omelettes,
egg salad sandwiches,
that destroyer of dozens,
the home-made angel food cake.
The door opens.
Light filters into the carton,
“Let it be the milk,”
they pray.
But the carton opens,
a hand reaches in –
once,
twice.
Before they can even jiggle,
they are alone again,
in the cold,
in the dark,
new spaces hollow
where the two were.
Through the heavy door
they hear the sound of the mixer,
deadly blades whirring.
They huddle,
the eight,
in the cold,
in the dark,
and wait.
-- Laurel Winter
small
white
afraid of heights
whispering
in the cold, dark carton
to the rest of the dozen.
They are ten now.
Any meal is dangerous,
but they fear breakfast most.
They jostle in their compartments
trying for tiny, dark-veined cracks –
not enough to hurt much,
just anything to make them unattractive
to the big hands that reach in
from time to random time.
They tell horror stories
that their mothers,
the chickens,
clucked to them –
meringues,
omelettes,
egg salad sandwiches,
that destroyer of dozens,
the home-made angel food cake.
The door opens.
Light filters into the carton,
“Let it be the milk,”
they pray.
But the carton opens,
a hand reaches in –
once,
twice.
Before they can even jiggle,
they are alone again,
in the cold,
in the dark,
new spaces hollow
where the two were.
Through the heavy door
they hear the sound of the mixer,
deadly blades whirring.
They huddle,
the eight,
in the cold,
in the dark,
and wait.
-- Laurel Winter
56KeithChaffee
Advice to a Six-Year-Old
Do not worry what people think.
Keep checking beneath the bed.
Either you will spot a monster
or you will not.
If you don't spot a monster,
go to sleep.
If you do spot a monster,
either it will be friendly, or it will not.
If it is friendly, stay up late.
Swap monster-jokes and human-jokes.
When your parents are asleep,
go down to the kitchen
and offer it green things to eat:
broccoli, lettuce, frozen peas,
the soap, the begonias.
If it is not friendly, scream.
Either you will scare it away
or your parents will come in time,
or, regrettably, the monster will eat you,
but that would have happened anyhow
once you were asleep.
-- Mary Soon Lee
Do not worry what people think.
Keep checking beneath the bed.
Either you will spot a monster
or you will not.
If you don't spot a monster,
go to sleep.
If you do spot a monster,
either it will be friendly, or it will not.
If it is friendly, stay up late.
Swap monster-jokes and human-jokes.
When your parents are asleep,
go down to the kitchen
and offer it green things to eat:
broccoli, lettuce, frozen peas,
the soap, the begonias.
If it is not friendly, scream.
Either you will scare it away
or your parents will come in time,
or, regrettably, the monster will eat you,
but that would have happened anyhow
once you were asleep.
-- Mary Soon Lee
57Dilara86
>54 rv1988: To add a bit of context, this poem is about race riots and lynching.
59rv1988
>57 Dilara86: Yes. Some years back the Beinecke Library at Yale had a wonderful exhibit on Harlem Renaissance poets, which I had the chance to visit. They hold the Claude McKay papers and there were some very good exhibits on the context and history of his work.
60BLBera
>58 msf59: It's from Goldenrod, a really good collection.
61lisapeet
Waking,
by Jane Griffiths
the book you were reading called Night still
fly-leaved to your fingers, the bedside
light casting shadows like bison running at full
stretch for centuries now, you know of course
you have been dreaming of the cave's wide
mouth and a small boat negotiating
the underground stream to its receding source:
you have the word bark on your tongue,
the root of it twisted and solid in the shifty room
as the thick of the current, the needlepoint
eye of the creature in the eye of the hunt, or the storm.
from the book Little Silver / Bloodaxe Books
by Jane Griffiths
the book you were reading called Night still
fly-leaved to your fingers, the bedside
light casting shadows like bison running at full
stretch for centuries now, you know of course
you have been dreaming of the cave's wide
mouth and a small boat negotiating
the underground stream to its receding source:
you have the word bark on your tongue,
the root of it twisted and solid in the shifty room
as the thick of the current, the needlepoint
eye of the creature in the eye of the hunt, or the storm.
from the book Little Silver / Bloodaxe Books
62rv1988
The TS Eliot Prize for Poetry announced their shortlist https://tseliot.com/prize/the-t-s-eliot-prize-2024/shortlist-2/. The only poet on the list I'm really familiar with is Carl Phillips, so here is one by him:
Gladiators
by Carl Phillips
Each had been terrible
enough to himself
already, to that truest
self, inside, as only he
could know it, so it
seemed it should
matter less what ways
in particular they’d been
terrible to each other,
or even that they’d been
terrible at all. Likewise,
whether death mattered
or not wasn’t the point,
had never been, they
understood this, now:
bird crossing sky; sky
getting crossed; the sky
after that … They believed,
about suffering,
that its special power
is to define, even as it
displaces it, everything
it touches. They held on
to each other.
Gladiators
by Carl Phillips
Each had been terrible
enough to himself
already, to that truest
self, inside, as only he
could know it, so it
seemed it should
matter less what ways
in particular they’d been
terrible to each other,
or even that they’d been
terrible at all. Likewise,
whether death mattered
or not wasn’t the point,
had never been, they
understood this, now:
bird crossing sky; sky
getting crossed; the sky
after that … They believed,
about suffering,
that its special power
is to define, even as it
displaces it, everything
it touches. They held on
to each other.
63msf59
>61 lisapeet: Good one. I have not read Griffiths.
64msf59
Juke
What kind of juke do you prefer?
For me, it’s the kind with three
songs and thirty-seven blank
title strips. Three songs, and two
are “Luckenbach, Texas.”
The third is beautiful and arcane,
but the patrons hate it,
and the record skips.
I prefer the three-song juke
and the three-toothed human
smile. I found the juke of my dreams
in a bar called “Chums,” no clue
the origin or meaning
of the quotation marks. It was a prime
number of a bar, and now it’s dead.
One night, drinking half-and-
halfs, half beer, half tomato juice,
with schnapps chasers, a cheap
source of hallucination.
A soon-to-be-defrocked Catholic
priest, Vic Jr., my mother, and me,
our faces streaked blue with pool
chalk, juke red as a beating heart,
and just a strip of hollyhocks
and a tree line between us
and the northern lights.
I was young. I looked like a Rubens
painting of a woman half-eaten
by moths. What lucky
debauchery, the ride back
on a washboard dirt road,
taking everything for granted,
flipping off the aurora borealis
like it was some three-toothed human
in flashy clothes dancing
to get my attention.
I wasn’t a mean drunk then,
just honest.
Next morning, mom walked in
on the naked priest
in the shack’s garage,
washing himself with a rag
and cold water from the well
in a metal dishpan. I’d later do dishes
in that pan and wash my hair
in that pan. We popped popcorn
on the one-burner wood-burning
stove and ate it out of that pan.
I’m talking about a time and a place.
All I can say of it is that it was real.
The song choices were limited,
so the grooves were dug deep.
-Diane Seuss From her collection Modern Poetry: Poems
What kind of juke do you prefer?
For me, it’s the kind with three
songs and thirty-seven blank
title strips. Three songs, and two
are “Luckenbach, Texas.”
The third is beautiful and arcane,
but the patrons hate it,
and the record skips.
I prefer the three-song juke
and the three-toothed human
smile. I found the juke of my dreams
in a bar called “Chums,” no clue
the origin or meaning
of the quotation marks. It was a prime
number of a bar, and now it’s dead.
One night, drinking half-and-
halfs, half beer, half tomato juice,
with schnapps chasers, a cheap
source of hallucination.
A soon-to-be-defrocked Catholic
priest, Vic Jr., my mother, and me,
our faces streaked blue with pool
chalk, juke red as a beating heart,
and just a strip of hollyhocks
and a tree line between us
and the northern lights.
I was young. I looked like a Rubens
painting of a woman half-eaten
by moths. What lucky
debauchery, the ride back
on a washboard dirt road,
taking everything for granted,
flipping off the aurora borealis
like it was some three-toothed human
in flashy clothes dancing
to get my attention.
I wasn’t a mean drunk then,
just honest.
Next morning, mom walked in
on the naked priest
in the shack’s garage,
washing himself with a rag
and cold water from the well
in a metal dishpan. I’d later do dishes
in that pan and wash my hair
in that pan. We popped popcorn
on the one-burner wood-burning
stove and ate it out of that pan.
I’m talking about a time and a place.
All I can say of it is that it was real.
The song choices were limited,
so the grooves were dug deep.
-Diane Seuss From her collection Modern Poetry: Poems
65lisapeet
>64 msf59: That's terrific. I need to read more of Seuss's work.
66msf59
anti poetica
who cares how long i’ve spent with my poems—those shit psalms those rats of my soul—head first thru the window me at their ankles demanding substance, revelation, sudden gravity—shamed of my leafless, drug shanked brain—this grey popper worn hell—that dark dull circle i try to conquer beauty & the state from within. i’m not revolutionary i’m regular. nothing radical in being the enemy of america, the country of enemies. we find our laughter between the horror. stop asking me to explain having a body & a mind & a heart—their harmonies, their plots to murder each other. i’ve lived long in a low solstice—wife of a pipe & the blue lit plain—leo trash—saved by occasional dick & the knowledge of my mother, friends i confess my pocked seasons only after their caul. arachnid moods—self-cornered—text back weak—i haven’t been much lately—the dark season lasted years, swallowing seasons, collecting itself in my shallows like a motor-sheered fish. where did the poems go? what is their trouble? what kind of water is i?
-Danez Smith From Bluff: Poems
who cares how long i’ve spent with my poems—those shit psalms those rats of my soul—head first thru the window me at their ankles demanding substance, revelation, sudden gravity—shamed of my leafless, drug shanked brain—this grey popper worn hell—that dark dull circle i try to conquer beauty & the state from within. i’m not revolutionary i’m regular. nothing radical in being the enemy of america, the country of enemies. we find our laughter between the horror. stop asking me to explain having a body & a mind & a heart—their harmonies, their plots to murder each other. i’ve lived long in a low solstice—wife of a pipe & the blue lit plain—leo trash—saved by occasional dick & the knowledge of my mother, friends i confess my pocked seasons only after their caul. arachnid moods—self-cornered—text back weak—i haven’t been much lately—the dark season lasted years, swallowing seasons, collecting itself in my shallows like a motor-sheered fish. where did the poems go? what is their trouble? what kind of water is i?
-Danez Smith From Bluff: Poems
67FlorenceArt
>66 msf59: I like it!
68msf59
>65 lisapeet: >67 FlorenceArt: Thank you both.
69msf59
The only poem I can write
is the one in which she devours an egg sandwich on the overcast train ride to Montauk. Both of us desperate to quit the city, even just for one day, so foolishly we underdressed for the sea. How far a few bucks take us: to the top of a lighthouse, a tote bag full of ceramic souvenirs, a single lobster roll. She poses for photos along the bluffs. I dip my feet into the cold ocean. We talk about our parents, their failures, our own. As she naps on the sand, wrapped in a gauzy scarf, I shiver and watch the clouds move fast across the horizon to reveal sunset’s approach. It is just a sunset. It’s beautiful, and means nothing more than the end of a long day. At dinner, we bicker about the bacon in our pasta. The argument is more about exhaustion than it is about pork. We spend what feels like hours in silence drinking water from a patient bartender. We don’t speak again till we board the last train back to the city when she offers me gummy candy from the depths of her bag. She is alive, and our bodies recline on the train’s seats and thrash with laughter from a joke only we know.
-Helene Achanzar. From Poem-A-Day
is the one in which she devours an egg sandwich on the overcast train ride to Montauk. Both of us desperate to quit the city, even just for one day, so foolishly we underdressed for the sea. How far a few bucks take us: to the top of a lighthouse, a tote bag full of ceramic souvenirs, a single lobster roll. She poses for photos along the bluffs. I dip my feet into the cold ocean. We talk about our parents, their failures, our own. As she naps on the sand, wrapped in a gauzy scarf, I shiver and watch the clouds move fast across the horizon to reveal sunset’s approach. It is just a sunset. It’s beautiful, and means nothing more than the end of a long day. At dinner, we bicker about the bacon in our pasta. The argument is more about exhaustion than it is about pork. We spend what feels like hours in silence drinking water from a patient bartender. We don’t speak again till we board the last train back to the city when she offers me gummy candy from the depths of her bag. She is alive, and our bodies recline on the train’s seats and thrash with laughter from a joke only we know.
-Helene Achanzar. From Poem-A-Day
70msf59
job prescription
will poetry change the world? no one asks
this about football, the thrill of watching or
playing. we get that nurses & doctors are
healers. no question that rabbis, priests, &
imams guide individuals & groups through
spiritual thickets. we don’t tell cooks to put
down their wooden spoons & go make a real
difference instead of a real soufflé. teachers
are honored for the learning they impart. so
let poets keep on exciting passion in them-
selves & others. don’t discourage us from our
efforts to diagnose the human heart or create
trail markers for those coming behind us on
this journey. trust me when i say that poetry
heals, guides, feeds, & enlivens. poetry may
not change the world, but might change you.
-Evie Shockley From Poem-A-Day
will poetry change the world? no one asks
this about football, the thrill of watching or
playing. we get that nurses & doctors are
healers. no question that rabbis, priests, &
imams guide individuals & groups through
spiritual thickets. we don’t tell cooks to put
down their wooden spoons & go make a real
difference instead of a real soufflé. teachers
are honored for the learning they impart. so
let poets keep on exciting passion in them-
selves & others. don’t discourage us from our
efforts to diagnose the human heart or create
trail markers for those coming behind us on
this journey. trust me when i say that poetry
heals, guides, feeds, & enlivens. poetry may
not change the world, but might change you.
-Evie Shockley From Poem-A-Day
71mabith
>70 msf59: I really like that one.
72mabith
"Time does not bring relief..."
by Edna St. Vincent Millay
Time does not bring relief; you all have lied
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!
I miss him in the weeping of the rain;
I want him at the shrinking of the tide;
The old snows melt from every mountain-side,
And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane;
But last year’s bitter loving must remain
Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide.
There are a hundred places where I fear
To go, — so with his memory they brim.
And entering with relief some quiet place
Where never fell his foot or shone his face
I say, “There is no memory of him here!”
And so stand stricken, so remembering him.
by Edna St. Vincent Millay
Time does not bring relief; you all have lied
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!
I miss him in the weeping of the rain;
I want him at the shrinking of the tide;
The old snows melt from every mountain-side,
And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane;
But last year’s bitter loving must remain
Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide.
There are a hundred places where I fear
To go, — so with his memory they brim.
And entering with relief some quiet place
Where never fell his foot or shone his face
I say, “There is no memory of him here!”
And so stand stricken, so remembering him.
73msf59
I am the daughter my mother raised to confront them
with grievance’s command.
I am the daughter she trains
to translate lightning.
I am the half-deaf child she assigned
to tone-deaf judges.
I am the girl
riding shot-gun to iron.
I am birthing feet first
with no mid-wife to catch.
I sprint, high-jump,
and fist-fight in her defense.
I am a dialect
born inside her quietude.
I susurrate incantations
transcribing her rivered idioms.
She is rivered remembering,
and I am her subpoenas.
-Margo Tamez From Poem-A-Day
with grievance’s command.
I am the daughter she trains
to translate lightning.
I am the half-deaf child she assigned
to tone-deaf judges.
I am the girl
riding shot-gun to iron.
I am birthing feet first
with no mid-wife to catch.
I sprint, high-jump,
and fist-fight in her defense.
I am a dialect
born inside her quietude.
I susurrate incantations
transcribing her rivered idioms.
She is rivered remembering,
and I am her subpoenas.
-Margo Tamez From Poem-A-Day
74msf59
Anti Poetica
there is no poem greater than feeding someone
there is no poem wiser than kindness
there is no poem more important than being good to children
there is no poem outside love's violent potential for cruelty
there is no poem that ends grief but nurses it toward light
there is no poem that isn't jealous of song or murals or wings
there is no poem free from money's ruin
no poem in the capital nor the court
most policy rewords a devil's script
there is no poem in the law
there is no poem in the west
there is no poem in the north
poems only live south of something
meaning beneath & darkened & hot
there is no poem in the winter nor in whiteness
nor are there poems in the landlord's name
no poem to admonish the state
no poem with a key to the locks
no poem to free you
-Danez Smith From Bluff: Poems
there is no poem greater than feeding someone
there is no poem wiser than kindness
there is no poem more important than being good to children
there is no poem outside love's violent potential for cruelty
there is no poem that ends grief but nurses it toward light
there is no poem that isn't jealous of song or murals or wings
there is no poem free from money's ruin
no poem in the capital nor the court
most policy rewords a devil's script
there is no poem in the law
there is no poem in the west
there is no poem in the north
poems only live south of something
meaning beneath & darkened & hot
there is no poem in the winter nor in whiteness
nor are there poems in the landlord's name
no poem to admonish the state
no poem with a key to the locks
no poem to free you
-Danez Smith From Bluff: Poems
75FlorenceArt
This will be old news to most of you I'm sure, but I just discovered The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot, and I loved it.
(Link is to the poem on the Poetry Foundation's website, since it's too long to copy here entirely.)
(Link is to the poem on the Poetry Foundation's website, since it's too long to copy here entirely.)
76rv1988
>75 FlorenceArt: How lovely to discover it. I sometimes wish there are things I could read for the first again.
77rv1988
Swallows
by A.E. Stallings
Every year the swallows come
And put their homestead in repair,
And raise another brood, and skim
And boomerang through summer air,
And reap mosquitoes from the hum
Of holidays. A handsome pair,
One on the nest, one on the wire,
Cheat-cheat‐cheat, the two conspire
To murder half the insect race,
And feed them squirming to their chicks.
They work and fret at such a pace,
And natter in between, with clicks
And churrs, they lift the raftered place
(Seaside taverna) with their tricks
Of cursive loops and Morse-code call,
Both analog and digital.
They seem to us so coupled, married,
So flustered with their needful young,
So busy housekeeping, so harried,
It’s hard to picture them among
The origins of myth—a buried
Secret, rape, a cut-out tongue,
Two sisters wronged, where there’s no right,
Till transformation fledges flight.
But Ovid swapped them in the tale,
So that the sister who was forced
Becomes instead the nightingale,
Who sings as though her heart would burst.
It’s Ovid’s stories that prevail.
And so the swallow is divorced
Twice from her voice, her tuneless chatter,
And no one asks her what’s the matter.
These swallows, though, don’t have the knack
For sorrow—or we’d not have guessed—
Though smartly dressed in tailored black,
Spend no time mourning, do not rest.
One scissors forth, one zigzags back,
They take turns settled on the nest
Or waiting on a perch nearby
To zero in on wasp or fly.
They have no time for tragic song,
As dusk distills, they dart and flicker,
The days are long, but not as long
As yesterday. The night comes quicker,
And soon the season will be wrong.
Knackered, cross, they bitch and bicker,
Like you and me. They never learn.
And every summer, they return.
by A.E. Stallings
Every year the swallows come
And put their homestead in repair,
And raise another brood, and skim
And boomerang through summer air,
And reap mosquitoes from the hum
Of holidays. A handsome pair,
One on the nest, one on the wire,
Cheat-cheat‐cheat, the two conspire
To murder half the insect race,
And feed them squirming to their chicks.
They work and fret at such a pace,
And natter in between, with clicks
And churrs, they lift the raftered place
(Seaside taverna) with their tricks
Of cursive loops and Morse-code call,
Both analog and digital.
They seem to us so coupled, married,
So flustered with their needful young,
So busy housekeeping, so harried,
It’s hard to picture them among
The origins of myth—a buried
Secret, rape, a cut-out tongue,
Two sisters wronged, where there’s no right,
Till transformation fledges flight.
But Ovid swapped them in the tale,
So that the sister who was forced
Becomes instead the nightingale,
Who sings as though her heart would burst.
It’s Ovid’s stories that prevail.
And so the swallow is divorced
Twice from her voice, her tuneless chatter,
And no one asks her what’s the matter.
These swallows, though, don’t have the knack
For sorrow—or we’d not have guessed—
Though smartly dressed in tailored black,
Spend no time mourning, do not rest.
One scissors forth, one zigzags back,
They take turns settled on the nest
Or waiting on a perch nearby
To zero in on wasp or fly.
They have no time for tragic song,
As dusk distills, they dart and flicker,
The days are long, but not as long
As yesterday. The night comes quicker,
And soon the season will be wrong.
Knackered, cross, they bitch and bicker,
Like you and me. They never learn.
And every summer, they return.
78msf59
>77 rv1988: I like this one. Thanks for sharing.
79msf59
Watching Over
This land I watch over
is a place with old stories
and plant medicine.
It is earth a mountain lion walks,
looking into the light of my life
in this little cabin made of stone laid on stone
love labored over love,
and happiness here a hundred years ago
when the fireplace was first made of this quartz,
a baby tooth pushed into the mortar.
It was the year my father was born
when people came from afar to see the new infant,
some walked long distances
from Paul’s Valley.
All were silent in his presence.
It’s the way we lived and live with the newly born.
The bison that lives here now went down the next valley
to hide in great trees.
For a time, that bison has watched over all of us.
Something often does.
Some call it god.
Some call it our ancestors, but the ones I see
in this small cabin are the lion,
the bear in spring
when ghostly wolves, not hungry,
pass by the herd of deer in silence this morning
and even the fox looks in my door
for no other reason
than to watch how I live, to be sure
it is the right way.
-Linda Hogan From The Radiant Lives of Animals
This land I watch over
is a place with old stories
and plant medicine.
It is earth a mountain lion walks,
looking into the light of my life
in this little cabin made of stone laid on stone
love labored over love,
and happiness here a hundred years ago
when the fireplace was first made of this quartz,
a baby tooth pushed into the mortar.
It was the year my father was born
when people came from afar to see the new infant,
some walked long distances
from Paul’s Valley.
All were silent in his presence.
It’s the way we lived and live with the newly born.
The bison that lives here now went down the next valley
to hide in great trees.
For a time, that bison has watched over all of us.
Something often does.
Some call it god.
Some call it our ancestors, but the ones I see
in this small cabin are the lion,
the bear in spring
when ghostly wolves, not hungry,
pass by the herd of deer in silence this morning
and even the fox looks in my door
for no other reason
than to watch how I live, to be sure
it is the right way.
-Linda Hogan From The Radiant Lives of Animals
80kidzdoc
>77 rv1988: I like this one.
81kidzdoc
>79 msf59: This one is great, too.
82msf59
>80 kidzdoc: >81 kidzdoc: Thanks, Darryl. I wish we had more participation over here.
83msf59
My Apologies
To the hostages of our policies, my apologies—
the petty stenographers of the crooked rulers
in the once fancy now crumbling cities
of our fading Empire lied then.
They lied then and they lie now.
Everything they say and write is a lie,
about law and freedom, about equality
and justice, in the rubble of the bombs
we make and sell, in the silent cries
of limbless orphans, in the night
lit by white phosphorous and the
relentless sound of buzzing drones.
They tell us we used to have things of
value, even things we ourselves made,
and that it was a place like no other.
All I know is that Sinbad once sailed
to Gaza and so to Gaza he’ll sail once again.
by Ammiel Alcalay From Poem-A-Day
To the hostages of our policies, my apologies—
the petty stenographers of the crooked rulers
in the once fancy now crumbling cities
of our fading Empire lied then.
They lied then and they lie now.
Everything they say and write is a lie,
about law and freedom, about equality
and justice, in the rubble of the bombs
we make and sell, in the silent cries
of limbless orphans, in the night
lit by white phosphorous and the
relentless sound of buzzing drones.
They tell us we used to have things of
value, even things we ourselves made,
and that it was a place like no other.
All I know is that Sinbad once sailed
to Gaza and so to Gaza he’ll sail once again.
by Ammiel Alcalay From Poem-A-Day
84kidzdoc
>82 msf59: Would it be helpful if Jim (drneutron) posted a link to this thread, in the Useful Threads section? A good number of us in Club Read participate in other groups, particularly Reading Globally.
>83 msf59: Great poem. Thanks for posting it, Mark.
>83 msf59: Great poem. Thanks for posting it, Mark.
85dchaikin
>84 kidzdoc: it couldn’t hurt
>83 msf59: thanks Mark. I should have dropped some Emily Dickinson here while i was reading her. I’m reading Piers Plowman now, but i can really share is Medieval English maxims. Something like:
For rightfulliche Reson shulde rewle yow alle,
And Kynde Witte be wardeyne yowre welthe to kepe
>83 msf59: thanks Mark. I should have dropped some Emily Dickinson here while i was reading her. I’m reading Piers Plowman now, but i can really share is Medieval English maxims. Something like:
For rightfulliche Reson shulde rewle yow alle,
And Kynde Witte be wardeyne yowre welthe to kepe
86msf59
Nikki-Rosa
childhood remembrances are always a drag
if you’re Black
you always remember things like living in Woodlawn
with no inside toilet
and if you become famous or something
they never talk about how happy you were to have
your mother
all to yourself and
how good the water felt when you got your bath
from one of those
big tubs that folk in chicago barbecue in
and somehow when you talk about home
it never gets across how much you
understood their feelings
as the whole family attended meetings about Hollydale
and even though you remember
your biographers never understand
your father’s pain as he sells his stock
and another dream goes
And though you’re poor it isn’t poverty that
concerns you
and though they fought a lot
it isn’t your father’s drinking that makes any difference
but only that everybody is together and you
and your sister have happy birthdays and very good
Christmases
and I really hope no white person ever has cause
to write about me
because they never understand
Black love is Black wealth and they’ll
probably talk about my hard childhood
and never understand that
all the while I was quite happy
Nikki Giovanni (1943-2024)
^In honor of her recent passing. I NEED to read more of her work.
childhood remembrances are always a drag
if you’re Black
you always remember things like living in Woodlawn
with no inside toilet
and if you become famous or something
they never talk about how happy you were to have
your mother
all to yourself and
how good the water felt when you got your bath
from one of those
big tubs that folk in chicago barbecue in
and somehow when you talk about home
it never gets across how much you
understood their feelings
as the whole family attended meetings about Hollydale
and even though you remember
your biographers never understand
your father’s pain as he sells his stock
and another dream goes
And though you’re poor it isn’t poverty that
concerns you
and though they fought a lot
it isn’t your father’s drinking that makes any difference
but only that everybody is together and you
and your sister have happy birthdays and very good
Christmases
and I really hope no white person ever has cause
to write about me
because they never understand
Black love is Black wealth and they’ll
probably talk about my hard childhood
and never understand that
all the while I was quite happy
Nikki Giovanni (1943-2024)
^In honor of her recent passing. I NEED to read more of her work.
87dchaikin
thanks Mark. That is beautiful. I'm not familiar with Giovanni. I'm sorry about her passing.
88msf59
>87 dchaikin: I just requested her collected works, so I hope to be sharing more of her work.
90kidzdoc
Today's issue of The New York Times features a great appraisal of Nikki Giovanni, including a notable conversation she had with James Baldwin in London in 1971:
When Nikki Giovanni Was Young, Brilliant and Unafraid
Fortunately that famous conversation can be viewed on YouTube; this is part one:
https://youtu.be/AFGkNEt30Fo?si=4OxyZCFYbtV75_Wq
When Nikki Giovanni Was Young, Brilliant and Unafraid
Fortunately that famous conversation can be viewed on YouTube; this is part one:
https://youtu.be/AFGkNEt30Fo?si=4OxyZCFYbtV75_Wq
91msf59
>90 kidzdoc: Thanks for sharing this, Darryl. I will circle back and check it out. I will soon dig into her Collected Works.
92kidzdoc
>91 msf59: You're welcome, Mark. I'll also plan to start reading The Collected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni: 1968-1998 next year. I can highly recommend her collection Bicycles: Love Poems, which was written shortly after the massacre at Virginia Tech, where she taught, in 2007.
If Only
If I had never been in your arms
Never danced that dance
Never inhaled your slightly sweaty odor
Maybe I could sleep at night
If I had never held your hand
Never been so close
To the most kissable lips in the universe
Never wanted ever so much
To rest my tongue in your dimple
Maybe I could sleep at night
If I wasn't so curious
About whether or not you snore
And when you sleep do you cuddle your pillow
What you say when you wake up
And if I tickle you
Will you heartedly laugh
If this enchantment
This bewilderment
This longing
Could cease
If this question I ache to ask could be answered
If only I could stop dreaming of you
Maybe I could sleep at night
If Only
If I had never been in your arms
Never danced that dance
Never inhaled your slightly sweaty odor
Maybe I could sleep at night
If I had never held your hand
Never been so close
To the most kissable lips in the universe
Never wanted ever so much
To rest my tongue in your dimple
Maybe I could sleep at night
If I wasn't so curious
About whether or not you snore
And when you sleep do you cuddle your pillow
What you say when you wake up
And if I tickle you
Will you heartedly laugh
If this enchantment
This bewilderment
This longing
Could cease
If this question I ache to ask could be answered
If only I could stop dreaming of you
Maybe I could sleep at night
93kidzdoc
Mercy,
after Nikki Giovanni
She asks me to kill the spider.
Instead, I get the most
peaceful weapons I can find.
I take a cup and a napkin.
I catch the spider, put it outside
and allow it to walk away.
If I am ever caught in the wrong place
at the wrong time, just being alive
and not bothering anyone,
I hope I am greeted
with the same kind
of mercy.
— Rudy Francisco
after Nikki Giovanni
She asks me to kill the spider.
Instead, I get the most
peaceful weapons I can find.
I take a cup and a napkin.
I catch the spider, put it outside
and allow it to walk away.
If I am ever caught in the wrong place
at the wrong time, just being alive
and not bothering anyone,
I hope I am greeted
with the same kind
of mercy.
— Rudy Francisco
95msf59
>92 kidzdoc: Thanks, Darryl. I will add Bicycles: Love Poems to the list. I enjoyed both poems you shared. Her Collected Works is a big one but I am finding it to be very good in the early going.
96rv1988
>93 kidzdoc: fantastic.
97mabith
Nikki Giovanni - I Wrote a Good Omelet
I wrote a good omelet . . . and ate a hot poem . . . after loving you
Buttoned my car . . . and drove my coat home . . . in the rain . . .
after loving you
I goed on red . . . and stopped on green . . . floating somewhere
in between . . .
being here and being there . . .
after loving you
I rolled my bed . . . turned down my hair . . . slightly confused
but . . . I don't care . . .
Laid out my teeth . . . and gargled my gown . . . then I stood
. . . and laid me down . . .
To sleep . . .
after loving you
--
Adding one of my favorites to the mix. She will be so desperately missed.
I wrote a good omelet . . . and ate a hot poem . . . after loving you
Buttoned my car . . . and drove my coat home . . . in the rain . . .
after loving you
I goed on red . . . and stopped on green . . . floating somewhere
in between . . .
being here and being there . . .
after loving you
I rolled my bed . . . turned down my hair . . . slightly confused
but . . . I don't care . . .
Laid out my teeth . . . and gargled my gown . . . then I stood
. . . and laid me down . . .
To sleep . . .
after loving you
--
Adding one of my favorites to the mix. She will be so desperately missed.
99kidzdoc
>97 mabith: That's one of my favorites of hers as well.
100dianeham
Charles Simic
Mystery Theater
Bald man smoking in bed,
Naked lightbulb over his head,
The shadow of his cigar
Next to him on the wall,
Its long ash about to fall
Into a pitch-dark fishbowl.
From issue no. 212 (Spring 2015) Paris Review
Mystery Theater
Bald man smoking in bed,
Naked lightbulb over his head,
The shadow of his cigar
Next to him on the wall,
Its long ash about to fall
Into a pitch-dark fishbowl.
From issue no. 212 (Spring 2015) Paris Review
102kidzdoc
ON THOSE DAYS
On those days,
when you miss someone the most,
as though your memories,
are sharp enough,
to slice through skin and bone,
remember how they loved you.
Remember how they loved you,
and do that,
for yourself.
In their name,
in their honour.
Love yourself,
as they loved you.
They would like that.
On those days when you miss someone the most,
love yourself harder.
—Donna Ashworth (from https://donnaashworth.com/?s=On+those+days )
On those days,
when you miss someone the most,
as though your memories,
are sharp enough,
to slice through skin and bone,
remember how they loved you.
Remember how they loved you,
and do that,
for yourself.
In their name,
in their honour.
Love yourself,
as they loved you.
They would like that.
On those days when you miss someone the most,
love yourself harder.
—Donna Ashworth (from https://donnaashworth.com/?s=On+those+days )
104dchaikin
>102 kidzdoc: thank you
105msf59
>102 kidzdoc: I like the simple beauty of that one, Darryl. Thanks for sharing.
106rv1988
>102 kidzdoc: Lovely!
107rv1988
Good Bones
By Maggie Smith
Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.
By Maggie Smith
Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.
108dchaikin
>107 rv1988: really powerful poem
109kidzdoc
>107 rv1988: Wow. Powerful, indeed.
110mabith
A lovely friend sent me a package of books which included Poems from the Edge of Extinction: An Anthology of Poetry in Endangered Languages, edited by Chris McCabe. Each poem includes the original language and a translation to English and after that there's a bit about the language itself, the poet, sometimes a bit about the translator, and a little about the poem itself.
Thought it might be of interest to folks here! I haven't started it yet, but plan to do so soon.
Thought it might be of interest to folks here! I haven't started it yet, but plan to do so soon.
111msf59
>107 rv1988: One of my absolute favorites. Thanks for sharing.
112msf59
My Father Carries Me Across a Field
My father carries me across a field.
It’s night and there are trenches filled with snow.
Thick mud. We’re careful to remain concealed
From something frightening I don’t yet know.
And then I walk and there is space between
The four of us. We go where we have to go.
Did I dream it all, this ghostly scene,
The hundred-acre wood where the owl blinked
And the ass spoke? Where I am cosy and clean
In bed, but we are floating, our arms linked
Over the landscape? My father moves ahead
Of me, like some strange, almost extinct
Species, and I follow him in dread
Across the field towards my own extinction.
Spirits everywhere are drifting over blasted
Terrain. The winter cold makes no distinction
Between them and us. My father looks round
And smiles then turns away. We have no function
In this place but keep moving, without sound,
Lost figures who leave only a blank page
Behind them, and the dark and frozen ground
They pass across as they might cross a stage.
-George Szirtes
I believe this poem reflects the current global refugee crisis. This British poet recently won the King's Gold Metal for Poetry. I was not familiar with him.
My father carries me across a field.
It’s night and there are trenches filled with snow.
Thick mud. We’re careful to remain concealed
From something frightening I don’t yet know.
And then I walk and there is space between
The four of us. We go where we have to go.
Did I dream it all, this ghostly scene,
The hundred-acre wood where the owl blinked
And the ass spoke? Where I am cosy and clean
In bed, but we are floating, our arms linked
Over the landscape? My father moves ahead
Of me, like some strange, almost extinct
Species, and I follow him in dread
Across the field towards my own extinction.
Spirits everywhere are drifting over blasted
Terrain. The winter cold makes no distinction
Between them and us. My father looks round
And smiles then turns away. We have no function
In this place but keep moving, without sound,
Lost figures who leave only a blank page
Behind them, and the dark and frozen ground
They pass across as they might cross a stage.
-George Szirtes
I believe this poem reflects the current global refugee crisis. This British poet recently won the King's Gold Metal for Poetry. I was not familiar with him.
113kidzdoc
>112 msf59: That is a powerful poem. Thanks for posting it, Mark.
114dchaikin
Thanks Mark. Terrific. And great to get a little sense of Szirtes’s poetry. I’m not familiar with that prize.
115rv1988
>110 mabith: Oh, this sounds great - please do share if you come across something interesting, and are able to do so.
116msf59
Frost at Midnight
The Frost performs its secret ministry,
Unhelped by any wind. The owlet's cry
Came loud—and hark, again! loud as before.
The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,
Have left me to that solitude, which suits
Abstruser musings: save that at my side
My cradled infant slumbers peacefully.
'Tis calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbs
And vexes meditation with its strange
And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood,
This populous village! Sea, and hill, and wood,
With all the numberless goings-on of life,
Inaudible as dreams! the thin blue flame
Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not;
Only that film, which fluttered on the grate,
Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing.
Methinks, its motion in this hush of nature
Gives it dim sympathies with me who live,
Making it a companionable form,
Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling Spirit
By its own moods interprets, every where
Echo or mirror seeking of itself,
And makes a toy of Thought.
But O! how oft,
How oft, at school, with most believing mind,
Presageful, have I gazed upon the bars,
To watch that fluttering stranger ! and as oft
With unclosed lids, already had I dreamt
Of my sweet birth-place, and the old church-tower,
Whose bells, the poor man's only music, rang
From morn to evening, all the hot Fair-day,
So sweetly, that they stirred and haunted me
With a wild pleasure, falling on mine ear
Most like articulate sounds of things to come!
So gazed I, till the soothing things, I dreamt,
Lulled me to sleep, and sleep prolonged my dreams!
And so I brooded all the following morn,
Awed by the stern preceptor's face, mine eye
Fixed with mock study on my swimming book:
Save if the door half opened, and I snatched
A hasty glance, and still my heart leaped up,
For still I hoped to see the stranger's face,
Townsman, or aunt, or sister more beloved,
My play-mate when we both were clothed alike!
Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side,
Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm,
Fill up the intersperséd vacancies
And momentary pauses of the thought!
My babe so beautiful! it thrills my heart
With tender gladness, thus to look at thee,
And think that thou shalt learn far other lore,
And in far other scenes! For I was reared
In the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim,
And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars.
But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breeze
By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags
Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,
Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores
And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear
The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible
Of that eternal language, which thy God
Utters, who from eternity doth teach
Himself in all, and all things in himself.
Great universal Teacher! he shall mould
Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.
Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,
Whether the summer clothe the general earth
With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing
Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch
Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch
Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall
Heard only in the trances of the blast,
Or if the secret ministry of frost
Shall hang them up in silent icicles,
Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
^I seldom connect with "old school" poetry but this one really moved me and it was written in 1798. Talk about "old school".
The Frost performs its secret ministry,
Unhelped by any wind. The owlet's cry
Came loud—and hark, again! loud as before.
The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,
Have left me to that solitude, which suits
Abstruser musings: save that at my side
My cradled infant slumbers peacefully.
'Tis calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbs
And vexes meditation with its strange
And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood,
This populous village! Sea, and hill, and wood,
With all the numberless goings-on of life,
Inaudible as dreams! the thin blue flame
Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not;
Only that film, which fluttered on the grate,
Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing.
Methinks, its motion in this hush of nature
Gives it dim sympathies with me who live,
Making it a companionable form,
Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling Spirit
By its own moods interprets, every where
Echo or mirror seeking of itself,
And makes a toy of Thought.
But O! how oft,
How oft, at school, with most believing mind,
Presageful, have I gazed upon the bars,
To watch that fluttering stranger ! and as oft
With unclosed lids, already had I dreamt
Of my sweet birth-place, and the old church-tower,
Whose bells, the poor man's only music, rang
From morn to evening, all the hot Fair-day,
So sweetly, that they stirred and haunted me
With a wild pleasure, falling on mine ear
Most like articulate sounds of things to come!
So gazed I, till the soothing things, I dreamt,
Lulled me to sleep, and sleep prolonged my dreams!
And so I brooded all the following morn,
Awed by the stern preceptor's face, mine eye
Fixed with mock study on my swimming book:
Save if the door half opened, and I snatched
A hasty glance, and still my heart leaped up,
For still I hoped to see the stranger's face,
Townsman, or aunt, or sister more beloved,
My play-mate when we both were clothed alike!
Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side,
Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm,
Fill up the intersperséd vacancies
And momentary pauses of the thought!
My babe so beautiful! it thrills my heart
With tender gladness, thus to look at thee,
And think that thou shalt learn far other lore,
And in far other scenes! For I was reared
In the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim,
And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars.
But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breeze
By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags
Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,
Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores
And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear
The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible
Of that eternal language, which thy God
Utters, who from eternity doth teach
Himself in all, and all things in himself.
Great universal Teacher! he shall mould
Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.
Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,
Whether the summer clothe the general earth
With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing
Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch
Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch
Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall
Heard only in the trances of the blast,
Or if the secret ministry of frost
Shall hang them up in silent icicles,
Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
^I seldom connect with "old school" poetry but this one really moved me and it was written in 1798. Talk about "old school".
117msf59
2020 A Year to Forget
Earth put a roaring halt
to our empty rabid existence
ceasing marathon plastic productions
disintegrating worldwide stock markets
shuttering ubiquitous greed
Earth put a roaring halt
to our multimillion-dollar-games
sunk crude oil markets to asunder
stopped our titillating trophy hunts
our eating bloody meat in hoards
our cruel trampling of the land
put an end to our soiling of the skies
our tarnishing the homes where water-beasts are born
In one thunderous clap the Planet hurled
an instant standstill to our haywire
to our decapitation of mountain tops
our butchering of tree-communities
to our murdering sprees of elephant
and whale, tiger infants
and elders, mothers and girls
Throughout passing days of sirens
our existence is halted
a new plague set into motion
our mass die-off
launched.
-Nancy Mercado From Poem-A-Day
^A perfect holiday poem, right? 😜
Earth put a roaring halt
to our empty rabid existence
ceasing marathon plastic productions
disintegrating worldwide stock markets
shuttering ubiquitous greed
Earth put a roaring halt
to our multimillion-dollar-games
sunk crude oil markets to asunder
stopped our titillating trophy hunts
our eating bloody meat in hoards
our cruel trampling of the land
put an end to our soiling of the skies
our tarnishing the homes where water-beasts are born
In one thunderous clap the Planet hurled
an instant standstill to our haywire
to our decapitation of mountain tops
our butchering of tree-communities
to our murdering sprees of elephant
and whale, tiger infants
and elders, mothers and girls
Throughout passing days of sirens
our existence is halted
a new plague set into motion
our mass die-off
launched.
-Nancy Mercado From Poem-A-Day
^A perfect holiday poem, right? 😜
118msf59
Poetry is a Trestle
poetry is a trestle
spanning the distance between
what i feel
and what i say
like a locomotive
i rush full speed ahead
trusting your strength
to carry me over
sometimes we share a poem
because people are near
and they would notice me
noticing you
so i write X and you write O
and we both win
sometimes we share a poem
because i’m washing the dishes
and you’re looking at your news
or sometimes we make a poem
because it’s Sunday and you want
ice cream while i want cookies
but always we share a poem
because belief predates action
and i believe
the most beautiful poem
ever heard is your heart
racing
-Nikki Giovanni
^I learned that this poem is a "metapoem", a term I was not familiar with. "Metapoetry is poetry about poetry, poetry that looks into the inner workings of a genre as it participates in that genre. The poem thinks about the advantages and limitations of expressing emotions through verse."
poetry is a trestle
spanning the distance between
what i feel
and what i say
like a locomotive
i rush full speed ahead
trusting your strength
to carry me over
sometimes we share a poem
because people are near
and they would notice me
noticing you
so i write X and you write O
and we both win
sometimes we share a poem
because i’m washing the dishes
and you’re looking at your news
or sometimes we make a poem
because it’s Sunday and you want
ice cream while i want cookies
but always we share a poem
because belief predates action
and i believe
the most beautiful poem
ever heard is your heart
racing
-Nikki Giovanni
^I learned that this poem is a "metapoem", a term I was not familiar with. "Metapoetry is poetry about poetry, poetry that looks into the inner workings of a genre as it participates in that genre. The poem thinks about the advantages and limitations of expressing emotions through verse."
120mabith
Tea
Five times a day, I make tea. I do this
because I like the warmth in my hands, like the feeling
of self-directed kindness. I’m not used to it —
warmth and kindness, both — so I create my own
when I can. It’s easy. You just pour
water into a kettle and turn the knob and listen
for the scream. I do this
five times a day. Sometimes, when I’m pleased,
I let out a little sound. A poet noticed this
and it made me feel I might one day
properly be loved. Because no one is here
to love me, I make tea for myself
and leave the radio playing. I must
remind myself I am here, and do so
by noticing myself: my feet are cold
inside my socks, they touch the ground, my stomach
churns, my heart stutters, in my hands I hold
a warmth I make. I come from
a people who pray five times a day
and make tea. I admire the way they do
both. How they drop to the ground
wherever they are. Drop
pine nuts and mint sprigs in a glass.
I think to care for the self
is a kind of prayer. It is a gesture
of devotion toward what is not always beloved
or believed. I do not always believe
in myself, or love myself, I am sure
there are times I am bad or gone
or lying. In another’s mouth, tea often means gossip,
but sometimes means truth. Despite
the trope, in my experience my people do not lie
for pleasure, or when they should,
even when it might be a gesture
of kindness. But they are kind. If you were
to visit, a woman would bring you
a tray of tea. At any time of day.
My people love tea so much
it was once considered a sickness. Their colonizers
tried, as with any joy, to snuff it out. They feared a love
so strong one might sell or kill their other
loves for leaves and sugar. Teaism
sounds like a kind of faith
I’d buy into, a god I wouldn’t fear. I think now I truly believe
I wouldn’t kill anyone for love,
not even myself — most days
I can barely get out of bed. So I make tea.
I stand at the window while I wait.
My feet are cold and the radio plays its little sounds.
I do the small thing I know how to do
to care for myself. I am trying to notice joy,
which means survive. I do this all day, and then the next.
Leila Chatti
Five times a day, I make tea. I do this
because I like the warmth in my hands, like the feeling
of self-directed kindness. I’m not used to it —
warmth and kindness, both — so I create my own
when I can. It’s easy. You just pour
water into a kettle and turn the knob and listen
for the scream. I do this
five times a day. Sometimes, when I’m pleased,
I let out a little sound. A poet noticed this
and it made me feel I might one day
properly be loved. Because no one is here
to love me, I make tea for myself
and leave the radio playing. I must
remind myself I am here, and do so
by noticing myself: my feet are cold
inside my socks, they touch the ground, my stomach
churns, my heart stutters, in my hands I hold
a warmth I make. I come from
a people who pray five times a day
and make tea. I admire the way they do
both. How they drop to the ground
wherever they are. Drop
pine nuts and mint sprigs in a glass.
I think to care for the self
is a kind of prayer. It is a gesture
of devotion toward what is not always beloved
or believed. I do not always believe
in myself, or love myself, I am sure
there are times I am bad or gone
or lying. In another’s mouth, tea often means gossip,
but sometimes means truth. Despite
the trope, in my experience my people do not lie
for pleasure, or when they should,
even when it might be a gesture
of kindness. But they are kind. If you were
to visit, a woman would bring you
a tray of tea. At any time of day.
My people love tea so much
it was once considered a sickness. Their colonizers
tried, as with any joy, to snuff it out. They feared a love
so strong one might sell or kill their other
loves for leaves and sugar. Teaism
sounds like a kind of faith
I’d buy into, a god I wouldn’t fear. I think now I truly believe
I wouldn’t kill anyone for love,
not even myself — most days
I can barely get out of bed. So I make tea.
I stand at the window while I wait.
My feet are cold and the radio plays its little sounds.
I do the small thing I know how to do
to care for myself. I am trying to notice joy,
which means survive. I do this all day, and then the next.
Leila Chatti
