May 2013
4 posts
1 tag
Dear Lacuna, Dear Lard
I’m here, one fat cherry
blossom blooming like a clod,
one sad groat glazing, a needle puling thread,
so what, so sue me. These days what else to do but leer
at any boy with just the right hairline. Hey! I say,
That’s one tasty piece of nature. Tart Darkling,
if I could I’d gin, I’d bargain, I’d take a little troll
this moolit night,...
1 tag
Grief
Somewhere in the Sargasso Sea
the water disappears into itself,
hauling an ocean in.
Vortex, how you repeat
a single gesture,
come round to find only
yourself, a cup full of questions,
perhaps some curl of wisdom,
a bit of flung salt.
You hold an absence
at your center,
as if it were a life.
Richard Brostoff
1 tag
Music Is Only In The Piano When It’s Played
We are not one with this world. We are not the complexity our body is, nor the summer air idling in the big maple without purpose. We are a shape the wind makes in these leaves as it passes through. We are not the wood any more than the fire, but the heat which is a marriage between the two. We are certainly not the lake nor the fish in it, but the something that is pleased by them. We are the...
1 tag
Multiple Sclerosis
For ten years I would not say the name.
I said: episode. Said: setback, incident,
exacerbation—anything but be specific
in the way this is specific, not a theory
or description, but a diagnosis.
I said: muscle, weakness, numbness, fatigue.
I said vertigo, neuritis, lesion, spasm.
Remission. Progression. Recurrence. Deficit.
But the name, the ugly sound of it, I refused.
There are two...
April 2013
3 posts
1 tag
Credo
You say wind is only wind
and carries nothing nervous
in its teeth. I do not believe it.
I have seen leaves desist from moving
although the branches move,
and I believe a cyclone has secrets
the weather is ignorant of. I believe
in the violence of not knowing.
I’ve seen a river lose its course
and join itself again, watched it court
a stream and coax the stream
into its current,...
1 tag
Demeter's Prayer to Hades
This alone is what I wish for you: knowledge. To understand each desire and its edge, to know we are responsible for the lives we change. No faith comes without cost, no one believes without dying. Now for the first time i see clearly the trail you planted, what ground opened to waste, though you dreamed a wealth of flowers. There are no curses, only mirrors held up to the souls of gods...
1 tag
from Retreat
From inside the meadow, the fidget of
darkness that was, all along, birds
lifts abruptly, assembles: first a shield
thrown, too soon, too recklessly aloft,
then any door by a storm opened, in a
wind swinging, that someone—whom
nobody sees, whom nobody thinks,
therefore, to thank—passes, and—
not tenderly, just—responsibly, pulls
shut. The body first. Then the soul.
Carl Phillips
March 2013
2 posts
1 tag
ndlelanhle:
Trees To be a giant and keep quiet about it, To stay in one’s own place; To stand for the constant presence of process And always to seem the same; To be steady as a rock and always trembling, Having the hard appearance of death With the soft, fluent nature of growth, One’s Being deceptively armored, One’s Becoming deceptively vulnerable; To be so tough, and take the light so well,...
1 tag
Our Lady of the Snows
In white,
the unpainted statue of the young girl
on the side altar
made the quality of mercy seem scrupulous and calm.
When my mother was in a hospital drying out,
or drinking at a pace that would put her there soon,
I would slip in the side door,
light an aromatic candle,
and bargain for us both.
Or else I’d stare into the day-moon of that face
and, if I concentrated, fly.
Come down!...
February 2013
2 posts
1 tag
Sound of a Body Falling off a Bridge
I can tell you there is no word for this
in any language. I’ve asked
and everyone seems to confirm
its translatability.
Feet shuffling off a stone pillar-
simple, but not easy. A young tree
fracturing under the sudden weight-
exactly how one imagines it.
And somewhere between shuffle and fracture-
the silence of Scott Koch’s body
falling off the Normanwood Bridge,
which...
1 tag
Autumn. A Mixed Music.
Belive me, I would sooner
speak true—
And not of the leaves as the once-green
Accomplices that, failing,
I shall most miss now,
October,
and how they sang to me
like water, singing
what was often enough
loss, eventually,
into choruses of Something
is lost, Something is still
gainable: You who call yourself
hunter, never lay
your bow down.
When was it all dreaming became
the...
January 2013
3 posts
1 tag
Christmas Carols
Children do not always mean
hope. To some they mean despair.
This woman with her hair cut off
so she could not hang herself
threw herself from a rooftop, thirty
times raped & pregnant by the enemy
who did this to her. This one had her pelvis
broken by hammers so the child
could be extracted. Then she was thrown away,
useless, a ripped sack. This one
punctured herself with kitchen...
1 tag
from My faith-based initiative
I don’t know how to be human, Lord, to be animal,
don’t know what poem to write my friend, how to shape
the light of the letters on the screen, if dying
soon, now, all of us now, this instant is the best thing
we could do for each other, the planet, the stars
coming so far to touch us, sending their atoms so far
to touch us, or fight, just kill whatever, whomever
is in reach, don’t know if...
1 tag
Frida Kahlo to Marty McConnell
leaving is not enough; you must
stay gone. train your heart
like a dog. change the locks
even on the house he’s never
visited. you lucky, lucky girl.
you have an apartment
just your size. a bathtub
full of tea. a heart the size
of Arizona, but not nearly
so arid. don’t wish away
your cracked past, your
crooked toes, your problems
are papier mache puppets
you made or bought because the...
December 2012
2 posts
1 tag
Honey Hush
I.
It will be as if: fur. As if trust
could be fur. Imagine,
bees coat the sugar body
that is yours…
see how your body hums?
Say you love them. Now. You must
say you love them. And I would, and
—I would, until it was true
almost, and then true:
I could love the bees,
and neither mind nor be surprised
by their weight, slow as drones
and as deliberate, upon me.
II.
Every...
1 tag
from Quarto
4
I’ll tell you about the mermaid
Sheds swimmable tail Gets legs for dancing
Sings like the sea with a choked throat
Knives straight up her spine
Lancing every step
There is a price
There is a price
For every gift
And all advice
Adrienne Rich
November 2012
2 posts
1 tag
Cyclops
You, going along the path,
mosquito-doped, with no moon, the flashlight
a single orange eye
unable to see what is beyond
the capsule of your dim
sight, what shape
contracts to a heart
with terror, bumps
among the leaves, what makes
a bristling noise like a fur throat
Is it true you do not wish to hurt them?
Is it true you have no fear?
Take off your shoes then,
let your eyes go...
1 tag
The Forgotten Dialect Of The Heart
How astonishing it is that language can almost mean,
and frightening that it does not quite. Love, we say,
God, we say, Rome and Michiko, we write, and the words
get it all wrong. We say bread and it means according
to which nation. French has no word for home,
and we have no word for strict pleasure. A people
in northern India is dying out because their ancient
tongue has no words for...
October 2012
1 post
1 tag
Artless
is my heart. A stranger
berry there never was,
tartless.
Gone sour in the sun,
in the sunroom or moonroof,
roofless.
No poetry. Plain. No
fresh, special recipe
to bless.
All I’ve ever made
with these hands
and life, less
substance, more rind.
Mostly rim and trim,
meatless
but making much smoke
in the old smokehouse,
no less.
Fatted from the day,
overripe and even
toxic at eve....
September 2012
2 posts
1 tag
My ever after
The word paraiso is on my table, Portuguese
for paradise. I will:
put it in a red bowl with raspberries
and yogurt, eat it with cinnamon, eat it
from the vagina of my wife;
put it in the shotgun and shoot it
into the fog of the mountain, the breath
of the sky.
Now I look at my shoes, which never struck off
on their own, never found a place to stand;
at the illiterate bookcase; at my...
1 tag
Ghostology
The whistler’s
inhale,
the white space
between is
and not
or after a question,
a pause. Nothing
isn’t song:
a leaf hatching
from its green shell,
frost whorling
across a windshield,
an open door
opening
Rebecca Lindenberg
August 2012
2 posts
1 tag
ROTC
A bugle wakes the sky as boys hold hands over their hearts
and aim their eyes at a flag giving wind the only stars
it will ever touch.
When they twirl their wooden rifles, I see twelve planes
trying to take off made of human flesh and crewcuts.
My new envelopes taste of peppermint.
I will write and ask their mothers to send the blankeys
their sons went to bed with and held soft to their...
1 tag
Homing
You could hold it in your hand –
this all encompassing desire
housed in a few ounces of feather and bone,
the distance between release –
nights of mountainous cold and hunger –
and a known darkness
where something close to love might stand
shaking the pan of the grain
and calling softly.
Esther Morgan
July 2012
2 posts
1 tag
What Kind of Times Are These
There’s a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill
and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows
near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted
who disappeared into those shadows.
I’ve walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don’t be fooled
this isn’t a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here,
our country...
1 tag
Not Yet
Morning of buttered toast;
of coffee, sweetened, with milk.
Out of the window,
snow-spruces step from their cobwebs.
Flurry of chickadees, feeding then gone.
A single cardinal stipples an empty branch –
one maple leaf lifted back.
I turn my blessings like photographs into the light;
over my shoulder the god of Not-Yet looks on:
Not-yet-dead, not-yet-lost, not-yet-taken....
June 2012
3 posts
1 tag
What Lot’s Wife Would Have Said (If She Wasn’t A...
Do you remember when we met
in Gomorrah? When you were still beardless,
and I would oil my hair in the lamp light before seeing
you, when we were young, and blushed with youth
like bruised fruit. Did we care then
what our neighbors did
in the dark?
When our first daughter was born
on the River Jordan, when our second
cracked her pink head from my body
like a promise, did we worry
what...
1 tag
The Mathematician
She’s taken to sleeping late.
Only recently have I come to stare
on her as phenomenon.
Solid, almost vaporous in sheer morning light.
I’m obsessed, after thirty years,
how her mind keeps things,
how her body stores, how the runnels and rills
operate, how they order.
Unclothed.
Simon was pulled from her. A birth like theft.
A numb seam opposite her spine,
a bright ridge that reddens...
1 tag
Blizzard
Walking into wind, I lean into my mother’s muskrat coat;
around the cuffs her wristbones have worn away the fur.
If we stood still we’d disappear. There’s no up or down,
no houses with their windows lit. The only noise is wind
and what’s inside us. When we get home my father
will be there or not. No one ever looks for us.
I could lie down and stay right here where...
May 2012
1 post
1 tag
Sudden Journey
Maybe I’m seven in the open field—
the straw-grass so high
only the top of my head makes a curve
of brown in the yellow. Rain then.
First a little. A few drops on my
wrist, the right wrist. More rain.
My shoulders, my chin. Until I’m looking up
to let my eyes take the bliss.
I open my face. Let the teeth show. I
pull my shirt down past the collar-bones.
I’m still a boy under my breast...
April 2012
4 posts
1 tag
Lampedusa II
High ships come in bearing black strangers
who call over the harbor, Where are we?
Arrivals, it will get worse.
The island is running out of water.
Prison awaits. From some distance,
you saw the steel lintel of Europe’s doorway
standing open. There is no door—
a yellow hello hung with your forefather’s shoes,
a cross nailed from the ribs of your sunk ships,
paper prayer scraps, one...
1 tag
Lot's Wife
They say I looked back out of curiosity.
But I could have had other reasons.
I looked back mourning my silver bowl.
Carelessly, while tying my sandal strap.
So I wouldn’t have to keep staring at the righteous nape
of my husband Lot’s neck.
From the sudden conviction that if I dropped dead
he wouldn’t so much as hesitate.
From the disobedience of the meek.
Checking for...
1 tag
Traveler
Your first time out of the country
of your own skin, I didn’t bring a map.
You always hated that I’d been lucky
enough to pick my way through streets
I couldn’t pronounce to find cathedrals,
graveyards. If you were a city, you said,
I’d only like to know your suburbs.
If you were a city, I said, I’d like to know
your poor neighborhoods, your inner parts.
Read your graffiti. Drink...
1 tag
They are hostile nations
i
In view of the fading animals
the proliferation of sewers and fears
the sea clogging, the air
nearing extinction
we should be kind, we should
take warning, we should forgive each other
Instead we are opposite, we
touch as though attacking,
the gifts we bring
even in good faith maybe
warp in our hands to
implements, to manoeuvres
ii
Put down the target of me
you guard inside...
March 2012
5 posts
1 tag
On the Edge
After your mother dies, you will learn to live
on the edge of life, to brace yourself
like she did, one hand on the dashboard,
the other gripping your purse while you drive
through the stop sign, shoulders tense,
eyes clamped shut, waiting for the collision
that doesn’t come. You will learn
to stay up all night knowing she’s gone,
watching the morning open
like an origami swan,...
1 tag
Tonight No Poetry Will Serve
Saw you walking barefoot
taking a long look
at the new moon’s eyelid
later spread
sleep-fallen, naked in your dark hair
asleep but not oblivious
of the unslept unsleeping
elsewhere
Tonight I think
no poetry
will serve
Syntax of rendition:
verb pilots the plane
adverb modifies action
verb force-feeds noun
submerges the subject
noun is choking
verb disgraced goes on...
1 tag
from Landscape with Hungry Girls
Thinking hunger is strength, how hurt they are, girls
picking at food on their plates. I like a girl who eats.
Careful, what you say you want. The moon is distant,
yet cousin to her face: our genders worse than alien.
Bleeding is something everyone does. You don’t call.
Girls snack on skyscrapers, girls gut their teddy bears,
and girls saw their own faces off. What is it to lack...
1 tag
For Jane: With All the Love I Had, Which Was Not...
I pick up the skirt,
I pick up the sparkling beads
in black,
this thing that moved once
around flesh,
and I call God a liar,
I say anything that moved
like that
or knew
my name
could never die
in the common verity of dying,
and I pick
up her lovely
dress,
all her loveliness gone,
and I speak to all the gods,
Jewish gods, Christ-gods,
chips of blinking things,
idols, pills,...
1 tag
Tunnel
For Frank
Come now, if ever. When it is raining this gentle and the first thought is of semen, and the second thought is of lilies when by their own pale weight they bend, sing to the ground something, and the third thought is of what joy or sadness can be available to what is finally a lily and...
February 2012
4 posts
1 tag
Bedtime Story
The moon lies on the river
like a drop of oil.
The children come to the banks to be healed
of their wounds and bruises.
The fathers who gave them their wounds and bruises
come to be healed of their rage.
The mothers grow lovely; their faces soften,
the birds in their throats awake.
They all stand hand in hand
and the trees around them,
forever on the verge
of becoming one of them,
stop...
1 tag
Echoing Light
When I was beginning to read I imagined
that bridges had something to do with birds
and with what seemed to be cages but I knew
that they were not cages it must have been autumn
with the dusty light flashing from the streetcar wires
and those orange places on fire in the pictures
and now indeed it is autumn the clear
days not far from the sea with a small wind nosing
over dry grass that...
1 tag
Another Poem About The Heart
When the floor drops out, as it has now,
you cannot hear the squirrel on the wire
outside your window, the wheels spinning
on the road below. You want only pity
and are presented with the unbelievable
effrontery of a world that moves on.
But wait: this is not the person you are.
You’re the kind of person who
sits in dark theaters crying at the collarbones
that curve across the...
1 tag
To Sleep
not as a woman who brews tea and kneels
on rice but one who swims with narcolepsy,
who cinches all the alleys into darkness
and fells trees, who forces a bit into the mouth
of aurora borealis until the moon parades
its wounds in color, until her limbs go numb
scene by scene, by sleight of hand, by flip
turning in a lukewarm pool between what walls
we build, between what shocks we tuck...
January 2012
3 posts
1 tag
from Colophon
More than the beetles turned russet,
sunset, dragging their shield, more than
the crickets who think it’s evening all afternoon,
it’s the bees I love this time of year.
Sated, maybe drunk, who’ve lapped at the hips
of too many flowers for one summer but
still must go on hunting, one secret
closing, another ensuing, picking
lock after lock, rapping the glass,
getting stuck in a...
1 tag
In Kansas
The moon coming back,
your breath returning,
love replenishing itself.
Allison Funk
I Datura
It’s warm enough
to sit out on the porch
till late:
the windows
all along this street
burning out
one by one
till only the moon
and the saw-toothed pumpkins
set out in the yards
are visible
as if the town
had finally...
1 tag
In Autumn
The extinct animals are still looking for home
Their eyes full of cotton
Now they will
Never arrive
The stars are like that
Moving on without memory
Without having been near turning elsewhere climbing
Nothing the wall
The hours their shadows
The lights are going on in the leaves nothing to do with evening
Those are cities
Where I had hoped to live.
Mark Irwin
December 2011
5 posts
1 tag
October (section I)
Is it winter again, is it cold again,
didn’t Frank just slip on the ice,
didn’t he heal, weren’t the spring seeds planted
didn’t the night end,
didn’t the melting ice
flood the narrow gutters
wasn’t my body
rescued, wasn’t it safe
didn’t the scar form, invisible
above the injury
terror and cold,
didn’t they just end, wasn’t...
1 tag
Fetch
Go, bring back the worthless stick.
“Of memory,” I almost added.
But she wouldn’t understand, naturally.
There is the word and the thing
adhering. So far so good.
Metaphor, drawer of drafting tools—
spill it on the study floor, animal says,
that we might at least see
how an expensive ruler tastes.
Yesterday I pissed and barked and ate
because that’s what waking means.
Thus has...
1 tag
Masters of the Cante Jondo
1.
They were beside me,
they sat in black taffeta, in veils, leather chaps,
felt hats, lace. “Closer,” they call, “closer.”
“And my body I give to you,” “my body
I would betray for you.” The sun akimbo
to the plated horizon sinks, a goblet moon
above sea slowly rises
If we could talk:...
1 tag
Mother's Day
I passed through the small hills
of my mother’s hips one cold morning
and never looked back, until now, cutting
her hard toenails the yellow of blanched corn,
sitting her with her on the bed’s edge,
combing out the tuft of hair at the crown
of her head where it ratted up as she slept,
her thumbs locked into her fists, a gesture
as old as she is, her bald knees fallen together
beneath a...
1 tag
Heraclitus on Rivers
Nobody steps into the same river twice.
The same river is never the same
Because that is the nature of water.
Similarly your changing metabolism
Means that you are no longer you.
The cells die, and the precise
Configuration of the heavenly bodies
When she told you she loved you
Will not come again in this lifetime.
You will tell me that you have executed
A monument more lasting than...
