February 2010
30 posts
5 tags
Love's Not the Way to Treat a Friend, Richard...
Love’s not the way to treat a friend.
I wouldn’t wish that on you. I don’t
want to see your eyes forgotten
on a rainy day, lost in the endless purse
of those who can remember nothing.
Love’s not the way to treat a friend.
I don’t want to see you end up that was
with your body being poured like wounded
marble into the architecture of those who make...
January 2010
33 posts
4 tags
90, Osip Mandlestam
With no faith in the miracle of resurrection
we wandered through the cemetery.
—You know, everywhere
the earth reminds me of those hills
… .
… .
where Russia breaks off
above the black desolate sea.
A wide meadow falls away
under the monastery.
I wanted to stay in the plains
of Vladimir, and not go south,
but to linger in the dark wooden
colony of holy fools
with that foggy nun
was...
4 tags
Hinged to Forgetfulness like a Door, Richard...
Hinged to forgetfulness like a door,
she slowly closed out of sight,
and she was the woman that I loved,
but too many times she slept like
a mechanical deer in my caresses,
and I ached in the metal silence of her dreams.
5 tags
The Couple in the Next Room, John Ashbery
She liked the blue drapes. They made a star
At the angle. A boy in leather moved in.
Later they found names form the turn of the century
Coming home one evening. The whole of being
Unknown absorbed into the stalk. A free
Bride on the rails warning to notice other
Hers and the great graves that outwore them
Like faces on a building, the lighting rod
Of a name calibrated all their musing...
7 tags
The One You Wanted to Be Is the One You Are, Jean...
She saying, You don’t have to do anything
you don’t even have to be, you Only who are,
you nobody from nowhere,
without one sin or one good quality,
without one book, without one word,
without even a comb, you!
The one you wanted to be
in the one you are. Come play…
And he saying,
Look at me!
I don’t know how…
Their breath like a tree’s breath. Their...
announcement
Ok, since we have a whole lot of new followers thanks to the directory (welcome, all! and thank you tumblr staff) I figure I should announce some things.
In the sidebar you’ll find links to Billy Collin’s Poetry 180 project, the inspiration for this whole thing. You’ll also find links to tag pages (one for authors and one for subjects). At the top of each of those pages will be...
7 tags
The Falling, Jane Hirshfield
You turn towards meteor showers in August,
wishing yourself like that:
bright and burning wholly out.
When feeling finally comes it is
that falling, matter breaking away
from air, the sound
of crickets moving through the grass like fire—
and the strangely twisted metal
in the field that a child finds:
residue, crown.
Then there’s the story of the Chinese sage,
in anger and...
6 tags
Textures, William Stafford
1.
The dwell of a sound for a while
will sometimes diminish all else
and a whole forest lie down at night
for hearing the moon, where the first
tick and its tock are still waiting
for what time it is.
2.
Morning color opens its eyes
where it slept in the mountains.
Oh, it’s afraid! This might be
the day when white comes all the way
back from the sky where it went
when color...
4 tags
Getting Ready, Jack Gilbert
What if the heart does not pale as the body wanes,
but is like the sun that blazes hotter each day
on these immense, perishing fields? What then?
(Desire is not the problem. This far south,
we are careful not to mistake seizures for love.)
He sits there bewildered in a clamp of light.
In the stillness, the sun grinds him clean.
5 tags
Elegy, Lewis Warsh
The leaves have a sense of
where they fall when they
return to earth
but as they dangle in the wind
like corpses swaying
from a branch
they replace the pure
space of their being
with an act of attention
which passes like
a lullaby through
the eye of the storm.
5 tags
Poem, Nikki Giovanni
(For BMC No. 2)
There are fields where once we walked
Among the clover and crab grass and those
Funny little things that look like cotton candy
There were liquids expanding and contracting
In which we swam with amoebas and other Afro-Americans
The sun was no further than my hand from your hair
Those were barefoot boy with cheeks of tan days
And I was John Henry hammering to get in
I was...
5 tags
Sliver, Sheila Cowing
In the dark, she shivers in his arms,
hurt, wild—like that great bird
that crashed through the living room window
last Christmas—droppings, slivers
the whole way into the kitchen.
He’d cradled it wearing gardening gloves,
it only shuddered. Now, nothing he says
quiets her, stops her asking:
am i pretty? am i smart? am i all
you dreamed of? as though she doesn’t...
4 tags
The Inheritance, Ed Ochester
So, back to the lost paradise
after the neglect of fourteen years.
On the porch, at fourteen, I told my father
our condition resides within ourselves.
I had a red and white motorboat
to sail across the green-glazed patio
in autumn toward the wall of maples,
each golden on the edge of death.
Cousin Gunther sat on the patio,
telling us secrets and drinking
at noon; he knew the names of...
10 tags
The Summer of Ninety-Three, Michael L. Johnson
Today the air conditioner broke down.
It’s summer solstice and the hottest day
sa far this year. And old girlfriend (same voice
but weaker) called to say she was divorced,
now living alone in the very house
I grew up in—and how weird she had felt
sleeping there the first night, lying on top
of the covers, thinking back. I thought back
to nights in the heat wave of fifty-five,...
4 tags
Donner Party, Richard Brautigan
Forsaken, fucking in the cold,
eating each other, lost, runny noses,
complaining all the time like so
many people that we know.
2 tags
The Butterfly, Nikki Giovanni
those things
which you so laughingly call
hands are in fact two
brown butterflies fluttering
across the pleasure
they give
my body
4 tags
Faulty Ductwork, Ed Ochester
I have had faulty ducktwork for years.
When I vacation, neighbors wire
DUCTWORK FAILING
WATER EVERYWHERE.
There have been three attempts at arson.
Invisible rowdies
throw stones at my mother.
The bats have vacated my house.
I have a burning sensation
when I urinate, and I am no longer
allowed to vote.
My oldest boy shoots up nurses,
and deer have deserted the meadow.
The specialists...
6 tags
Pluto to Persephone, Daniel Williams
I know what it is you
want from me
but you see
I cannot give it
I am hell
and hell
is a nice place to visit
but when you want to leave
you want to leave
when you speak to me
you converse with darkness
hold my hand
old bones rattle
when you kiss me
imagine kissing the skull of a saint
mouldering in a cave
large balloon of spirit
flown imagine taste of white bone
reposed in...
4 tags
Sliabh, Loch, Agus Fear Ce Taraing Anail Iad, Dan...
translation: Mountains, Lakes, the Men Who Breathe Them
Two old men bend toward each other
In a pub in Glasgow. One
Hunkers down in his coat—the collar pushes folds
In his neck—it is cold, and night comes early.
The other (who can speak only Gaelic)
Breathes heavily, looks inward,
And knows it has been this way
Since the mines.
He tells stories about his life—
Bringing...
7 tags
Since Daniel, Stella Reed
for Peter, E.J., Ryan, Sarah, Hal, Brandon, and Chris
Since Daniel jumped
From the towering cliffs
Above the light shimmered lake
And caught the wing to his death
And fish puckered their mouths
Against his quivering body,
Since Daniel…
Peter cries
Harder than I’ve ever seen him,
And I am clumsy matter
Revolving around small guilty acts
Such as flossing my teeth
And mopping...
8 tags
How Men Fear Women, Richard Lehnert
Because I couldn’t stop her flying,
I joined her where she leaked wet music,
entered her from behind and below,
watched her shoulders bunch and tent and spread,
held her working wings,
slip of bone and meat to beat down air,
saw her spine leap
from the hair of where I joined her
to bury myself in the part of hair
at the vulva of her skull,
and she warned me: Don’t look down....
announcement
Hey everyone. I’m working on updating the tags pages. Currently the version of the author page I’m able to edit is lost in the internet so that’ll take a bit longer but it’ll hopefully be recovered soon.
I’ve enabled questions. If you have a question you don’t want to ask via email or a comment or you need to be even MORE anonymous than those modes allow you...
7 tags
Alone in the House, Hans Jorg Stahlschmidt
Alone in the house
I walk through the sun-
filled rooms singing
but somebody follows me
with a heavy hand on my shoulder
To whom did I make this secret
promise to turn down
my life’s flame
The maiden marries the prince
but at the banquet
one seat remains empty
In the mountains
the wounded deer with the silver antlers
stands still under the trees
Nobody knows what was said
in...
3 tags
This is My Heart, Joy Harjo
This is my heart. It is a good heart.
Bones and a membrane of mist and fire
are the woven cover.
When we make love in the flower world
my heart is close enough to sing
to yours in a language that has no use
for clumsy human words.
My head, is a good head, but it is a hard head
and it wirrs inside with a swarm of worries.
What is the source of this singing, it asks
and if there is a...
7 tags
Married, Jack Gilbert
I came back from the funeral and crawled
around the apartment, crying hard,
searching for my wife’s hair.
For two months got them from the drain,
from the vacuum cleaner, under the refrigerator,
and off the clothes in the closet.
But after other Japanese women came,
there was no way to be sure which were
hers, and I stopped. A year later,
repotting Michiko’s avocado, I find
a...
3 tags
The Prisoner, Charles Simic
He is thinking of us.
These leaves, their lazy rustle
That made us sleepy after lunch
So we had to lie down.
He considers my hand on her breast,
Her closed eyelids eyelids, her moist lips
Against my forehead, and the shadows of trees
Hovering on the ceiling.
It’s been so long. He has trouble
Deciding what else is there.
And all along the suspicion
That we do not exist.
10 tags
In the Vicinity of Orion's Arm, Linda Nemec Foster
“like the star beaming outward past its death”
-Robert Wrigley
Every day we die
a little more.
My young son
doesn’t believe me;
with the telescope
he got for Christmas
he points to the stars,
unfailing lights of the past,
as examples of how difficult
it is to kill anything.
Infinity has not yet
begun to trouble him.
As if Pascal’s true
fear of the eternal...
4 tags
Children's Books, Ed Ochester
In the world more real,
the goosegirl is dropped to the ashes,
the crystal valley is bombed and its shards
rebombed by invisible planes,
the adorable kittens are drowned
along with their friend,
the crazy nice useless old lady.
In their dreams of life, children
arrive at the reasons
like the beanstalk seemingly fated
to meet the bloodthirsty giant.
Meanwhile, they keep their books...
4 tags
Shard, Christina Pugh
When the dream
was winnowed,
one phrase stayed: our bodies, black
beside the blinking cursor:
a phrase to equal two:
a phrase I had never
spoken to you,
that I’d send you now,
to your screen.
In all our language,
yours and mine,
there never was
the story of our bodies—
parted, or wanting,
or not knowing.
And I was afraid.
But I felt
the two words
lay you down,
I felt...
5 tags
Four Songs, Joy Harjo
1.
I fell through a hole in the sky from one end of the world
to the next. Burning off layers
like a comet
until I hit the surface of earth.
I awaken in a house on the edge of the Pacific
near a mango tree
with your sweet-smelling head
on my arm.
2.
The flower might appear vulnerable
as it bends with the tradewinds
drinks in the sun
the rain
but its roots extend to hell.
It keeps...
6 tags
The Orange Bears, Kenneth Patchen
The orange bears with soft friendly eyes
Who played with me when I was ten,
Christ, before I left home they’d had
Their paws smashed in the rolls, their backs
Seared by hot slag, their soft trusting
Bellies kicked in, their tongues ripped
Out, and I went down through the woods
To the smelly crick with Whitman
In the Haldeman-Julius edition,
And I just sat there worrying my thumbnail...
2 tags
1, Osip Mandlestam
The shy speechless sound
of a fruit falling from its tree,
and around it the silent music
of the forest, unbroken…
5 tags
False Spring: After Follian, Linda Nemec Foster
They almost believe it: this warm air caressing their faces.
The calendar with its languid rows of days whispers late
January, but the lovers have forgotten what season it is.
As if Time was willing to walk anywhere in his sad, black shoes
just for them. What they think they see is each other; what
they really see is a transfigured memory of a reclining nude.
The head erased by desire, the...