Datasets:

---

suayptalha

/

Poetry-Foundation-Poems

like 5

Terra Pericolosa

To map the consequences of regardless, of underestimate, Of feverish faith, of the mechanical modernism of your false terrain. As if Port Sulphur remained nominal, its slick globules merely figurative Between territories of wait and wetlands of trust. To etch the shallow-water horizon— a techno-utopian tribute To shrimp estuaries, bird rookeries, oyster bays, To tube worms & sea turtles. To watercolor these pelican grasses, Oxidized, unapologetic executive marshes, roseated spoonbills. For you who longed to smear concentric circles, To have trusted you with longitude and latitude, To blur this sargassum border between mourning, Fighting, and willful denying of objects and subjects. As if Generations of fishermen, scaling orders of magnitude, Navigated oily streaks of miles in a legend of inches, Skeletal, ghostly swarms of now-opaque, milky jellyfish. As if to bury the blowout, rescind the rig. To fortify, to intone. If naming were not violence, to witness an active verb: Top kill, junk shot, top hat, dance dance revolution. These wayward scripts a frontier province palimpsest. Offshore yet another beacon, another account. Explosive violet iridescent.

Celina Su

Nature,Animals,Seas, Rivers, & Streams,Arts & Sciences,Language & Linguistics,Social Commentaries,Money & Economics

It’s Not Like Nikola Tesla Knew All of Those People Were Going to Die

Everyone wants to write about god but no one wants to imagine their god as the finger trembling inside a grenade pin’s ring or the red vine of blood coughed into a child’s palm while they cradle the head of a dying parent. Few things are more dangerous than a man who is capable of dividing himself into several men, each of them with a unique river of desire on their tongues. It is also magic to pray for a daughter and find yourself with an endless march of boys who all have the smile of a motherfucker who wronged you and never apologized. No one wants to imagine their god as the knuckles cracking on a father watching their son picking a good switch from the tree and certainly no one wants to imagine their god as the tree. Enough with the foolishness of hope and how it bruises the walls of a home where two people sit, stubbornly in love with the idea of staying. If one must pray, I imagine it is most worthwhile to pray towards endings. The only difference between sunsets and funerals is whether or not a town mistakes the howls of a crying woman for madness.

Hanif Abdurraqib

Religion,Faith & Doubt,God & the Divine,Arts & Sciences,Sciences

Andererway

when it pushes shadow from the trees and presses it from their needles outside the Dye House and the bus is dark inside when it picks apart the lawn and you are here will you soften me? for the sun will you deflect it? I am blinking in the atrium the library I don’t know if you have a room for me or where on me you can lie down but I want my anger easily exhausted the way fact takes the rug from an argument we both go on the floor I do feel your shade your wavy boughs you dream you are leaving me I would become an ordinary person if you did but you are awake and I am ordinary anyway and it pushes through me

Sophia Dahlin

Love,Break-ups & Vexed Love,Realistic & Complicated,Relationships,Men & Women

A Duck's Tune

Ya kut unta pishno ma*Ya kut unta pishno maYa kut unta pishno maYa kut unta pishno ma So I moved to this place, Iowa City, Ioway Where green-headed mallards walk the streets day and night, and defecate on sidewalks. Greasy meat bags in wetsuits, disguise themselves as pets and are free as birds. Maybe Indians should have thought of that? Ya kut unta pishno maYa kut unta pishno maYa kut unta pishno maYa kut unta pishno ma Maybe you would have left us alone, if we put on rubber bills, and rubber feet, Quacked instead of complained, Swam instead of danced waddled away when you did what you did… Ya kut unta pishno maYa kut unta pishno maYa kut unta pishno maYa kut unta pishno ma So I moved to the Place The “Jewel of the Midwest” Where ghosts of ourselves Dance the sulphur trails. Fumes emerge continuous from the mouths of Three-faced Deities who preach, “We absolve joy through suffering.” Ya kut unta pishno maYa kut unta pishno maYa kut unta pishno maYa kut unta pishno ma So I moved to this place where in 1992, up washed Columbus again like a pointy-chinned Son of Cannibals. His spin doctors rewrite his successes “After 500 years and 25 million dead, One out of 100 American Indians commit suicide One out of 10 American Indians are alcoholics 49 years is the average lifespan of American Indians.” Each minute burns the useful and useless alike Sing Hallelujah Praise the Lord Ya kut unta pishno maYa kut unta pishno maYa kut unta pishno maYa kut unta pishno ma And when you foreigners build your off-world colonies and relocate in outer space This is what we will do We will dance, We will dance, We will dance to a duck’s tune. Ya kut unta pishno maYa kut unta pishno maYa kut unta pishno maYa kut unta pishno ma

LeAnne Howe

Arts & Sciences,Music,Social Commentaries,History & Politics,War & Conflict

State Fair Fireworks, Labor Day

Look up: blazing chrysanthemums in rose shriek into bloom above the Tilt-a-Whirls, hang for a blink, then die in smoky swirls. They scream revolt at what the body knows: all revels end. We clap and sigh. Then, no— another rose! another peony! break, flame, roar, as though by roaring they might make the rides whirl in perpetuum. As though we need not finally, wearily turn, to plow back through the crush of bodies, the lank air, to buses that inch us, sweating, across town. As though we were not dropped in silence there to trudge the last blocks home, the streetlamps low, the crickets counting summer's seconds down.

Maryann Corbett

The Mud Room

His muddy rubber boots stood in the farmhouse mud room while he sat in the kitchen, unshaven, dealing solitaire. His wife (we called her Auntie) rolled out dough in the kitchen for a pie, put up preserves and tidied, clearing her throat. They listened to the TV at six, he with his fingers fumbling the hearing aids, she watching the kitchen clock. Old age went on like that, a vegetable patch, a horse some neighbor kept in the barn, the miles of grass and fences. After he died his boots stood muddy in the mud room as if he'd gone in socks, softly out to the meadow.

David Mason

Butterflies

Some days her main job seems to be to welcome back the Red Admiral as it lights on a leaf of the yellow forsythia. It is her duty to stop & lean over to take in how it folds & opens its wings. Then, too, there is the common Tiger Swallowtail, which seems to her entirely uncommon in how it moves about the boundaries of this clearing we made so many years ago. If she leaves the compost bucket unwashed to rescue a single tattered wing from under the winter jasmine or the blue flowers of the periwinkle & then spends a whole afternoon at our round oak table surrounded by field guides & tea until she is sure—yes—that it belongs to a Lorquin's Admiral, or that singular mark is one of the great cat's eyes of a Milbert's Tortoiseshell, then she is simply practicing her true vocation learning the story behind the blue beads of the Mourning Cloak, the silver commas of the Satyr Anglewing, the complex shades of the Spring Azure, moving through this life letting her sweet, light attention land on one luminous thing after another.

Samuel Green

He Sees Through Stone

He sees through stone he has the secret eyes this old black one who under prison skies sits pressed by the sun against the western wall his pipe between purple gums the years fall like overripe plums bursting red flesh on the dark earth his time is not my time but I have known him in a time gone he led me trembling cold into the dark forest taught me the secret rites to make it with a woman to be true to my brothers to make my spear drink the blood of my enemies now black cats circle him flash white teeth snarl at the air mashing green grass beneath shining muscles ears peeling his words he smiles he knows the hunt the enemy he has the secret eyes he sees through stone

Etheridge Knight

Living,Time & Brevity,Social Commentaries,Crime & Punishment

The Violent Space (or when your sister sleeps around for money)

Exchange in greed the ungraceful signs. Thrust The thick notes between green apple breasts. Then the shadow of the devil descends, The violent space cries and angel eyes, Large and dark, retreat in innocence and in ice. (Run sister run–the Bugga man comes!) The violent space cries silently, Like you cried wide years ago In another space, speckled by the sun And the leaves of a green plum tree, And you were stung By a red wasp and we flew home. (Run sister run–the Bugga man comes!) Well, hell, lil sis, wasps still sting. You are all of seventeen and as alone now In your pain as you were with the sting On your brow. Well, shit, lil sis, here we are: You are I and this poem. And what should I do? should I squat In the dust and make strange markings on the ground? Shall I chant a spell to drive the demon away? (Run sister run–the Bugga man comes!) In the beginning you were the Virgin Mary, And you are the Virgin Mary now. But somewhere between Nazareth and Bethlehem You lost your name in the nameless void.“O Mary don’t you weep don’t you moan” O Mary shake your butt to the violent juke, Absorb the demon puke and watch the white eyes pop, (Run sister run–the Bugga man comes!) And what do I do. I boil my tears in a twisted spoon And dance like an angel on the point of a needle. I sit counting syllables like Midas gold. I am not bold. I cannot yet take hold of the demon And lift his weight from you black belly, So I grab the air and sing my song. (But the air cannot stand my singing long.)

Etheridge Knight

Living,Disappointment & Failure,Relationships,Family & Ancestors,Social Commentaries,Gender & Sexuality,Money & Economics

An Ordinary Misfortune ["She is girl. She is gravel."]

She is girl. She is gravel. She is grabbed. She is grabbed like handfuls of gravel. Gravel grated by water. Her village is full of gravel fields. It is 1950. She is girl. She is grabbed. She is not my grandmother, though my grandmother is girl. My grandmother’s father closes the gates. Against American soldiers, though they jump over stone walls. To a girl who is not my grandmother. The girl is gravel grabbed. Her language is gravel because it means nothing. Hands full of girl. Fields full of gravel. Korea is gravel and graves. Girl is girl and she will never be a grandmother. She will be girl, girl is gravel and history will skip her like stone over water. Oh girl, oh glory. Girl.

Emily Jungmin Yoon

Relationships,Family & Ancestors,Social Commentaries,Gender & Sexuality,History & Politics,War & Conflict

An Ordinary Misfortune ["There was a man"]

There was a man. A Japanese soldier. One that did not believe in old superstitions. One that did not believe in sex before battle as charm against harm. He was an odd man. One that did not carry an amulet with pubic hair of a comfort woman. Or any piece of her. His comrades said, Be a man. The equation is, an odd man out is not man. There is no reason for logic in war. There is no reason. There was a man. His comrades said, Come raid, come pillage. Pushed him into the station. Their eyes on the holes in the wall. Watched as he came. Became. What is the equation here. There is a no equation. There was a man. One who said weeping, I am not a man, I am not a man.

Emily Jungmin Yoon

Social Commentaries,Gender & Sexuality,War & Conflict

Between Autumn Equinox and Winter Solstice, Today

I read a Korean poem with the line “Today you are the youngest you will ever be.” Today I am the oldest I have been. Today we drink buckwheat tea. Today I have heat in my apartment. Today I think about the word chada in Korean. It means cold. It means to be filled with. It means to kick. To wear. Today we’re worn. Today you wear the cold. Your chilled skin. My heart knocks on my skin. Someone said winter has broken his windows. The heat inside and the cold outside sent lightning across glass. Today my heart wears you like curtains. Today it fills with you. The window in my room is full of leaves ready to fall. Chada, you say. It’s tea. We drink. It is cold outside.

Emily Jungmin Yoon

Love,Romantic Love,Nature,Fall,Arts & Sciences,Language & Linguistics

Kang Duk-kyung

my school teacher asked me if I wanted to go to Japan do something good for the Emperor we were led to a harbor a cargo ship a train to a factory in Doyamaki where Food was so scarce we pulled grass, roots anything we could eat girls died of hunger some went crazy I ran away was found by a Japanese soldier Kobayashi took me to a hut Every evening soldiers countless soldiers on the wild mountainside Kobayashi An unusually quiet day I found Japan had lost the war I sailed to Korea jumped from the crates hit my stomach with fists I failed I named him Young-ju left him at an orphanage met him every Sunday one Sunday I saw another boy in his clothes Young-ju had died of pneumonia already buried I thought of Kobayashi bringing me rice in his drunken stupor I thought of the piece of steel I took at the factory I found some of the steel so attractive I still believe he is alive somewhere I want to believe that all was just a terrible fate But then, But then

Emily Jungmin Yoon

Living,Sorrow & Grieving,Social Commentaries,History & Politics,War & Conflict

Suicide's Note

The calm, Cool face of the river Asked me for a kiss.

Langston Hughes

Living,Death,Life Choices

Let America Be America Again

Let America be America again. Let it be the dream it used to be. Let it be the pioneer on the plain Seeking a home where he himself is free. (America never was America to me.) Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed— Let it be that great strong land of love Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme That any man be crushed by one above. (It never was America to me.) O, let my land be a land where Liberty Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath, But opportunity is real, and life is free, Equality is in the air we breathe. (There's never been equality for me, Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.") Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark? And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

Langston Hughes

Living,Disappointment & Failure,Social Commentaries,History & Politics,Mythology & Folklore,Heroes & Patriotism,Independence Day

Mr. Roosevelt Regrets (Detroit Riot, 1943)

Upon reading PM newspaper’s account of Mr. Roosevelt’s statement on the recent race clashes: “I share your feeling that the recent outbreaks of violence in widely spread parts of the country endanger our national unity and comfort our enemies. I am sure that every true American regrets this.” What’d you get, black boy, When they knocked you down in the gutter, And they kicked your teeth out, And they broke your skull with clubs And they bashed your stomach in? What’d you get when the police shot you in the back, And they chained you to the beds While they wiped the blood off? What’d you get when you cried out to the Top Man? When you called on the man next to God, so you thought, And asked him to speak out to save you? What’d the Top Man say, black boy? “Mr. Roosevelt regrets. . . . . . .”

Pauli Murray

Social Commentaries,Crime & Punishment,History & Politics,Race & Ethnicity

To the Oppressors

Now you are strong And we are but grapes aching with ripeness. Crush us! Squeeze from us all the brave life Contained in these full skins. But ours is a subtle strength Potent with centuries of yearning, Of being kegged and shut away In dark forgotten places. We shall endure To steal your senses In that lonely twilight Of your winter’s grief.

Pauli Murray

Relationships,Friends & Enemies,Social Commentaries,History & Politics,Race & Ethnicity,War & Conflict

Harlem Riot, 1943

Not by hammering the furious word, Nor bread stamped in the streets, Nor milk emptied in gutter, Shall we gain the gates of the city. But I am a prophet without eyes to see; I do not know how we shall gain the gates of the city.August, 1943

Pauli Murray

Social Commentaries,Cities & Urban Life,History & Politics,Race & Ethnicity,War & Conflict

Words

We are spendthrifts with words, We squander them, Toss them like pennies in the air– Arrogant words, Angry words, Cruel words, Comradely words, Shy words tiptoeing from mouth to ear. But the slowly wrought words of love and the thunderous words of heartbreak– Those we hoard.

Pauli Murray

Arts & Sciences,Language & Linguistics

Three Days with the Long Moon

That field nag, old-penny swayback. Low hawk, to ducks in train to a quad of geese, in case. Last night, the long moon lay it seemed a tissue of snow, but then dawn told that wasn't so. Late morning, now, the fire, the hearth, eggs sitting for the mute plate and fork, this pen making a thing of them. Two more nights— waterfowl safe and noisy in the dusk, the low rails running flank to the river at midnight—find what they'll make of that river, this moon.

Adrian Koesters

The Ruts

Most have been plowed up or paved over but you can still find them, tracks cut deep into the earth by prairie schooners crossing that great green ocean, pitching waves of pasture out where there's nothing else to do but live. Concealing their detritus— a piece of sun-bleached buffalo skull, a button from a cavalry soldier's coat—the ruts wind their way beneath leafy suburban streets, lie buried under a Phillips 66 and the corner of a Pizza Hut where a couple sits slumped in their booth. Yet here and there, like a fish head breaking the surface of the water, they emerge in a school teacher's back yard or a farmer's field, evidence of wagons packed with hardtack and hard money, thousands of draft animals tended by traders with blistered feet, their journey both bleak and romantic. That's the kind of proof I like, a scar I can put my hand to, history that will dust my fingers with a little bit of suffering, a little bit of bone.

Kim Lozano

Talking About the Day

Each night after reading three books to my two children— we each picked one—to unwind them into dreamland, I'd turn off the light and sit between their beds in the wide junk-shop rocker I'd reupholstered blue, still feeling the close-reading warmth of their bodies beside me, and ask them to talk about the day—we did this,we did that, sometimes leading somewhere, sometimes not, but always ending up at the happy ending of now.Now, in still darkness, listening to their breath slow and ease into sleep's regular rhythm. Grown now, you might've guessed. The past tense solid, unyielding, against the acidic drip of recent years. But how it calmed us then, rewinding the gentle loop, and in the trusting darkness, pressing play.

Jim Daniels

Discipline Park

St. Joseph’s Hospital, Tacoma WA, 1969-74. A headache makes your mouth plunge, then it pulls away. The smell of diesel or the smell of rain. Now you are a thick suburb. Under the pressure of a credit card. Your body is a box of mirrors, a mercury mine. You have blossomed and spread, white mystery of spring. All your blood and treasure is spent. O rose, you are sick. The morning rain does not nourish you. Your mouth is caught in a rigid O. Where only deficit is at home. You stand beneath a white hospital, almost drunk. You cannot say why your sense is drenched: exhaustion or debt. What’s the difference again? A braid of eyes. Curtains the color of a dove’s wing. Ceramic lips framed against seismic shatter. “Soft zone.” Meanwhile your uncle is dying in San Francisco and you do not know it. You are standing in front of another hospital whose patients are strangers. You unwind a rope of carbon so that you can post pictures of it on the internet. How much damage does your life do and how can you refuse? O rose, you are sick. Only injury sustains you.

Toby Altman

Living,Health & Illness,The Body,Nature,Trees & Flowers,Social Commentaries,Money & Economics

For Charlie

as the early morning light reflected off leaves against my window I called you to say I was moving back and I cried so deeply the way I cried for weeks after I moved losing my breath hovering between waking and sleep on the day I left I stood on your balcony facing the Pacific Ocean watching the sea stretch past a gauze of power lines into a green horizon this summer I began to awaken with my body covered in a cold sweat a whippoorwill calling from beyond the ramshackle fence kept me calm through the darkness and earlier this spring my dear friend Charlie had mysteriously died and like so many secrets we shared he loved to tan turning a tone the color of a young Toni Tennille he loved to dance he loved to pray every night I lie and recite the Act of Contrition to settle my head I am sorry for my sins with all my heart in choosing to do wrong and failing to do good I have sinned against you whom I should love above all things and almost every night I’ve dreamt of Charlie reading by candlelight he is old his skin sags like the arms of a tulip tree how easy it is to listen to his voice I cradle my chin into his neck our beards brush together now as you answer the phone I hear the discordant steam of cargo ships murmur in the distance there is no reason to lie to you I have been dying since we met

Ruben Quesada

A Feeling Right Before the Feeling

At sunrise the deer eat pieces of the quiet, they eat spaces between the quiet & the sounds—; & the numbers on the calendar lie flat in their boxes, they leak through tiny holes in the minutes, evenly so, so evenly, an active sense, before the sense was made… There, now, opposite to set down, the agreed-upon, the shape of the obvious drawn by an earlier enchantment before the new anxiety set in: the workers are safe; the terror stilled for an hour; a lover’s outline, dreamed or imagined, before you read the one-page book again, what was that book, it had no copyright— & what was before? a life, the dazzler, the dark, the singing dust, it turned when you turned, it orpheus-knew what you forgot when you took the bowl of burning time across the room— & if the previous is closer to you now, should you look, doesn’t matter if you do, you carry the some of it with it, out into it— for LG

Brenda Hillman

Phantom

She says she had a baby but I don’t believe her Let me tell you the feeling of relief when I started to believe her baby wasn’t real “What’s she getting out of it?” I surrender without a fight Ok, you can have your baby Sometimes all you can do is reify your worst fears What if I can’t have healthy relationships Ever With anything Even your cat Undressing in the open window Like being in public Is it not knowing or not caring? I’m offended reading memoir advertised as essay I give a mini-lecture on insecure attachment from the living room As if to ask Is that what you wanted? Who you think I am Improving my senses You see I was siding with the baby

Ali Power

Living,Parenthood,The Mind

mom and dad in a photo

a tiny blue metal race car grandma gave to me when I was 32. There’s an obelisk now in Skeleton Canyon. Maybe you’re too close to the speaker. Tell the Arthur Lee of Love confrontation story. The tender does not approve of our vulgarity. Double vocal for airports, weekends and holidays. Numb grids that represent human inaction. An incidental arrival? Why that landing? The speaker of the poem seems baffled to be in his/her time continuum. Blind Willie McTell, Blind Willie Johnson, playing together on the street corner. Turn down the harp and make it feel more distant. The next few minutes could hardly be identified as words. A few fireman later, the benefit of a lifelong love was clear. A locus Of abnormal sensation. Harder to keep an indiscriminate man from slaughter. Off state extemporaneous crushed weight. Consulting the at-bats for ideas of speed. I will be home when my shirt is too dirty to wear.

Edmund Berrigan

Relationships,Family & Ancestors,Arts & Sciences,Language & Linguistics,Poetry & Poets

Creation Myth

Born again on a Monday under a broken zodiac. My father the woodman, a surgeon among snags, could read the living trail of blades rebounding in the field, the mopped-matte passage through the dew. He woke a brush pile with fire throwing shadows on the child, I was thrown over. Father, it was a pleasure to meet you on this luminous route between two lives. In this impromptu pool reaped from rain where mosquitos multiply. Though survival, I’m told, is impersonal and without teleological purpose. Malaria is just trying to maximize its own fitness as are the corporations who, for palm oil set the peatlands ablaze and drained the water table. Dense haze from the sea choked the light from day suffused our mountain in a numinous red corona. And as for the getting over there will be no ascension, no circumambulation, there is only going through. We must go through it.

Lisa Wells

Relationships,Family & Ancestors,Nature,Landscapes & Pastorals,Social Commentaries,Money & Economics

Love Calls Us

The soul descends once more in bitter love… —Richard Wilbur The eyes open to the cries of police. Skirting sleep, the soul industrial as laundry— realities like bad checks, burning like new sex. Dinner is the better half of someone’s lunch. Someone’s playing a guessing game: Psychosis or Handsfree. Local fame. Praying to a calf, or debt ceiling, keeps us grounded. You can take the kid out the food court, but child support won’t upgrade from buy to buy— outbid, I am my financial aide. Astounded, we wake and take. Let every boy Tolstoy with disease have a chance. Liabilities, let’s dance. We’re clean— or rather, not unclean— doxycycline our balance sheet. Our spirits, neat.

Randall Mann

Living,Health & Illness,Love,Social Commentaries,History & Politics,Money & Economics

The Invention of the Saxophone

It was Adolphe Sax, remember, not Saxo Grammaticus, who gets the ovation. And by the time he had brought all the components together–the serpentine shape, the single reed, the fit of the fingers, the upward tilt of the golden bell– it was already 1842, and one gets the feeling that it was also very late at night. There is something nocturnal about the sound, something literally horny, as some may have noticed on that historic date when the first odd notes wobbled out of his studio into the small, darkened town, summoning the insomniacs (who were up waiting for the invention of jazz) to their windows, but leaving the sleepers undisturbed, evening deepening and warming the waters of their dreams. For this is not the valved instrument of waking, more the smoky voice of longing and loss, the porpoise cry of the subconscious. No one would ever think of blowing reveille on a tenor without irony. The men would only lie in their metal bunks, fingers twined behind their heads, afloat on pools of memory and desire. And when the time has come to rouse the dead, you will not see Gabriel clipping an alto around his numinous neck. An angel playing the world’s last song on a glistening saxophone might be enough to lift them back into the light of earth, but really no further. Once resurrected, they would only lie down in the long cemetery grass or lean alone against a lugubrious yew and let the music do the ascending– curling snakes charmed from their baskets– while they wait for the shrill trumpet solo, that will blow them all to kingdom come.

Billy Collins

Religion,The Spiritual,Arts & Sciences,Music

[The earth shakes]

The earth shakes just enough to remind us.

Steve Sanfield

Nature,Stars, Planets, Heavens

Kitsilano (1963-69)

For Judy Williams Fraser 1963-69 I lived on the corner of Yew & York on the 2nd floor above a corner store with my sister Leni & boyfriend soon to be husband Neap Hoover her friend Jo-Ann Huffman & her boyfriend Mike Sawyer then Elsa Young (just left Robert who was with Maxine) who met her lover Jack Wise next door then my sister Mary and my boyfriend soon to be (later to unbe) husband Cliff Andstein below us bill bissett & martina & oolya then painter-jogger Gordon Payne & Merrilyn (who becomes my friend later) then bill again then Gordon again next to us Bing Thom, Jay Bancroft & often Marian Penner, Rick Clarke across the landing John and Susan Newlove & children fathered by gerry gilbert later the Ridgeways and next to them directly opposite us: Gerry Geisler (New Design Gallery) and Helen Sturdy & children our kitchen faced theirs apple pies in my oven & stew or toast in theirs we cd smell everything like the time we fell asleep as pork hocks simmered in my big red pot charred and burned almost caught on fire would have if Gerry hadnt woken us up and that building a total tinderbox always worried bill wd start one my bedroom / study faced the Molson’s sign and Burrard Street Bridge and I could watch the west end and highrises and planetarium grow and white sheets on a clothesline across the street dry as I’d sit at my bay window and write and mark on a smooth board cut to fit exactly the sill I’d glance up and see people like you & Jamie & Carol & Joan & Marcia & the Trumans and the Gadds and the Lathams and Lanny Beckman walking up and down Yew Street open the window & shout drop by on your way back dropping by everybody did it days filled with coffee, tea, poetry, cigarette smoke crises, trips, talkedy talk talk painting hard edged strong coloured also intricate silver point mandalas and collages a gallon of Calogna Red one summery Saturday night became a party of 100 or even more dancing in my bedroom to one music on a tape recorder dancing in the other to another drumming in the kitchen talking in the room with the blue-tile fireplace so many bodies I couldnt hear the music from inside the hallway just saw the taller heads moving together to different beats in almost darkness that crazy night at the Wahs’ place if that wasnt a party of this kind everybody landing on that bed everybody kissing everybody we had to go outside to pee because the lineup for the can so long somehow to do with that small space that it was so tight that everybody had to rub every body simply to go anywhere It was gorgeous after the Vancouver Poetry Conference (1963) Roy Kiyooka started dropping by when he left his studio there’d always be a light on somewhere in our building and he could visit any of us separately or clustered one time he told me he had a painting he wanted to give me but it was big and heavy he borrowed a truck and someone helped him up the dusty always dirty long stairs with Hoarfrost which we hung on a wall in a room just big enough to hold my round oak table (used to be Bowerings’ they bought a whole household of furniture for $80 and when they moved they gave it to Joan and then when she moved she stored it with me) a wall that later Elsa and I tore apart with a screwdriver and hammer shouting angry hexes at Robert all the way after and during that conference-- Olson, Creeley, Duncan, Levertov, Avison, Whalen, Ginsberg-- Roy and I became friends and there were readings in my room every second Sunday red cast iron pot full of bean soup, corn chowder, spicey meatball vegetable stew simmering and then cheese scones in the oven people would come and read their new work one week and the next week there’d be a Tish meeting with Daphne Marlatt, Dan MacLeod, Pete Auxier, David Cull & David Dawson rent $60 a month didnt change and some years it was cold the wind so cold on side facing the North Shore that Hydro was $60 per month and that wall frozen behind my pillows the police were something else they felt they had a right to question anybody so Cliff would be up at the laundromat on 4th or at Jackson’s to get some hamburger and be walking back with an economics book in one hand and meat wrapped in brown paper in the other and they’d stop him and ask him what he was doing and my friend Ray Wargo would get stopped almost every second time he’d drop in to visit where are you going and why and how long will you be someone was always getting busted someone was always tripping out someone was always visiting from or going to Europe or Japan here is a journal entry on June 9: evening of the first ever national leaders debate on TV “I am looking forward to seeing Trudeau--hope he gets pushed into/onto answering more directly than he has in the past. I, like many others including every gay man I know, do have a crush on him: he has much more style than any Canadian politician so far. I mean style in the true sense of the word, it is him, not affected… Cliff, of course, doesn’t trust him at all and thinks he’s a sell- out. I don’t go that far, yet. But I do think that compromising is the only way a politician can work this country and I do not like all the PR, razzmatazz, fundraising, and allegiances that go into just getting elected: our system seems to be based on gullibility…” coming home at night up Yew Street whether from downtown or the beach or Paul the butcher’s or Elsie the baker’s I loved looking up at my North-facing windows goldy gold mesh curtains light filtering through so warm and so inviting

G. Maria Hindmarch

Relationships,Friends & Enemies,Arts & Sciences,Poetry & Poets,Social Commentaries,Cities & Urban Life

I Make Promises Before I Dream

No unclaimed, cremated mothers this year Nor collateral white skin No mothers folding clothes to a corporate park preamble No sons singing under the bright lights of a lumber yard Quantum reaganomics and the tap steps of turning on a friend New York trophy parts among the limbs of decent people Being an enraged artist is like entering a room and not knowing what to get high off of My formative symbols/My upbringing flying to an agent’s ears I might as well be an activist Called my girlfriend and described All the bottles segregationists had thrown at me that day Described recent blues sites and soothing prosecutions I feared for my poetry You have to make art every once in a while While in the company of sell-outs Accountant books in deified bulk Or while waiting for a girl under a modern chandelier Or in your last lobby as a wanderer The prison foot-races the museum My instrument ends I mean, what is a calendar to the slave? Also, what is a crystal prism? “He bought this bullet, bought its flight, then bought two more”

Tongo Eisen-Martin

Arts & Sciences,Poetry & Poets,Social Commentaries,Money & Economics,Race & Ethnicity

Fault Whispers

“A skeleton’s mouth makes few concessions to prettiness.” —Jacques Joubert Because your mouth is violet and you cannot speak Because maybe I like Thursdays the way I used to hate baths, and baths are boundaries whose sharpness will be blurred with more information Because movement itself is a form of currency Frozen in articulations Because don’t indulge yourself in the idea of restraint The blackened patches could have been pubic hair on dead bodies, or simply the wildness of neglect without horizons or spaces Because it’s a comfort to know waste is the fuel of contradictions a knife rusted before its first use Because in the barest of rooms, nothing is comprehensible Neither fanatic nor mystic Because the first weeks of September came and went and the weather held Not woven by innocent hands Because this stasis is preparation Because you’re deceased, maimed or in Philadelphia


Mark Tardi

Living,Death,The Mind

The Short Answer

I am forced to sleepwalk much of the time. We hold on to these old ways, are troubled sometimes and then the geyser goes away, time gutted. In and of itself there is no great roar, force pitted against force that makes up in time what it loses in speed. The waterfalls, the canyon, a royal I-told-you-so comes back to greet us at the beginning. How was your trip? Oh I didn’t last you see, folded over like the margin of a dream of the thing-in-itself. Well, and what have we come to? A paper-thin past, just so, and ‘tis pity. We regurgitate old anthems and what has come to pass, and why dwell on these. Why make things more difficult than they already are? Because if it’s boring in a different way, that’ll be interesting too. That’s what I say. That rascal, he jumped over the fence. I’m wiping my pince-nez now. Did you ever hear from the one who said he’d be back once it was over, who eluded me even in my sleep? That was a particularly promising time, we thought. Now the sun’s out and it’s raining again. Just like a day from the compendium. I’ll vouch for you, and we can go on scrolling as though nothing had risen, the horizon forest looks back at us. The preacher shook his head, the evangelist balanced two spools at the end of his little makeshift rope. We’d gone too far. We’d have to come back in a day or so.

John Ashbery

Living,The Mind,Time & Brevity

Pushing Up Onto Its Elbows, the Fable Lifts Itself Into Fact.

after Tafisha Edwards To disappear Black girls at a low volume of sustained public panic is to insinuate the inconstancy of Black girls. The disposability of Black girls who are prone to disappearance. A body bag somewhere waits with little hoopla about its lot. Absence becomes the lot of Black girls. _________ will eventually accept as fact that absence becomes a lot of Black girls. In what becomes the normal day-to-day, Black girls are harder to find, _________ would think first, not that there are few attempts to find them. The question isn’t whether Black girls often go missing. If no one else, Black girls miss each other. _________ would be remiss to not recognize how everything is made less in the absence of Black girls, if _________ could miss what _________ have never been required to recognize, such as: Unlike missing Black girls, taking Black girls is a Western custom. It seems likely that such a statement will soon appear inaccurate: the white space in new textbook editions will have nothing to say about it, if the white spaces behind those textbooks have anything to say about it. That Black girls are quintessential American palimpsests is not a question but an anxiety. _________ would rather forget that Black girls were made receptacles for what the authors of Liberty and Independence would not speak. That Liberty and Independence were imaginable only in the absent-presence of taken Black girls, enslaved Black girls, Black girls on whom a foundational economic system so depended that white men would kill each other and take taken Black girls. The constancy of Black girls is someone’s anxiety. The soil is thick with hidden Black girls, the myth that only quiet Black girls are worthwhile Black girls. The soil turns as _________ turn away from loud Black girls and their cacophonic insistence on Black girls. _________ have not insisted enough upon the fact of Black girls, are often loudly shocked to find Black girls disappeared. Loud, unsustainable shock has a way of disappearing Black girls. Outrage, too, has a way of being disappeared.

Justin Phillip Reed

Living,Sorrow & Grieving,Relationships,Family & Ancestors,Social Commentaries,Crime & Punishment,History & Politics,Race & Ethnicity

On Being a Grid One Might Go Off Of

The first step is to stop just beyond the weight of organs. The sense of gravity sitting in tissue is like the space between carcass and curb, before the reek worms into rock pores: a sleeplessness there, that continual niche-trash. You too once knew what it was to feel impressive. As the bed dissolves into the walls, the walls disrobe themselves of their edges and your resolve is now acute in the locking jaw of darkness. Beg to be let. You, like bravery, leave behind the breath-inflated lump, its depths, and its refusal to lace the cells of scars over even the metaphorical guttings. To manage the act exceeds the box- and-whisker of lately’s along-going. You’ve grown so accustomed to mereness that what you call a life no longer houses the sublime. It seems easy to leave. It seems this easy to leave. After a second you’ll want to consider the centimeters of resistance stitching air between here and all of elsewhere. But, still, inhabit the bodiless second. To possess it is a bearable joy.

Justin Phillip Reed

Living,Death,Life Choices,The Body,The Mind

Carolina Prayer

Let the blood if your belly must have it, but let it not be of me and mine. Let my momma sleep. Let her pray. Let them eat. Let the reverend’s devil pass over me. Let the odds at least acknowledge us. Let the breasts be intact, the insulin faithfully not far, and let the deep red pinpoint puddle its urgency on a pricked fingertip. Let the nurse find the vein the first time. Let the kerosene flow and let my grandma praise her bedside lord for letting her miss another winter. Let me be just a little bit bitter so I remember: Your columns and borders aint but the fractured, the broke clean, the brownest gouges in the blades of our great-great-great-shoulders. Let me leave and come back when my chest opens for you wider than your ditches did to engorge my placeless body. The mosquito-thick breath in your throat coats my skin and it almost feels as if you love me. Let the AC drown out the TV. Let the lotion bottle keep a secret corner til Friday. Let Ike, Wan, D-Block, all my brother’s brothers ride through the weekend. Let the cop car swerve its nose into night and not see none of them. Let us smell rain. Let the breeze through an oak hymn the promise that keeps us waking. Let the cicada unwind while hushpuppy steam slips out the knot of a tourist’s hand, and let him hear in it legends of how hot grease kept the hounds and the lash at bay.

Justin Phillip Reed

Relationships,Family & Ancestors,Friends & Enemies,Religion,The Spiritual,Social Commentaries,History & Politics,Race & Ethnicity

Tagus, Farewell

Tagus, farewell, that westward, with thy streams, Turns up the grains of gold already tried, With spur and sail for I go seek the Thames, Gainward the sun that show'th her wealthy pride, And to the town which Brutus sought by dreams, Like bended moon doth lend her lusty side. My King, my Country, alone for whom I live, Of mighty love the wings for this me give.

Sir Thomas Wyatt

As If the Trees By Their Very Roots Had Hold of Us

Strange to remember a visit, really not so Long ago, which now seems, finally, past. Always, it’s a Kind of obvious thing I guess, amazed by that Cycle: that first you anticipate a thing & it seems Far off, the distance has a weight you can feel Hanging on you, & then it’s there – that Point – whatever – which, now, while It’s happening seems to be constantly slipping away, “Like the sand through your fingers in an old movie,” until You can only look back on it, & yet you’re still there, staring At your thoughts in the window of the fire you find yourself before. We’ve gone over this a thousand times: & here again, combing that Same section of beach or inseam for that – I’m no Longer sure when or exactly where – “& yet” the peering, Unrewarding as it is, in terms of tangible results, Seems so necessary. Hope, which is, after all, no more than a splint of thought Projected outwards, “looking to catch” somewhere – What can I say here? – that the ease or Difficulty of such memories doesn’t preclude “That harsher necessity” of going on always in A new place, under different circumstances: & yet we don’t seem to have changed, it’s As if these years that have gone by are All a matter of record, “but if the real Facts were known” we were still reeling from What seems to have just happened, but which, “By the accountant’s keeping” occurred years. Ago. Years ago. It hardly seems possible, So little, really, has happened. We shore ourselves hour by hour In anticipation that soon there will be Nothing to do. “Pack a sandwich & let’s eat later.” And of course, The anticipation is quite appropriate, accounting, For the most part, for whatever activity We do manage. Eternally buzzing over the time, Unable to live in it… “Maybe if we go upaways we can get a better View.” But, of course, in that sense, views don’t Improve. “In the present moment” (if we could only see It, which is to say, to begin with, stop looking with Such anticipation) what is enfolding before us puts to Rest any necessity for “progression”. So, more of these tracings, as if by some magic Of the phonetic properties of these squiggles… Or Does that only mystify the “power” of “presence" which Is, as well, a sort of postponement.

Charles Bernstein

Living,The Mind,Time & Brevity

$6.82

My economy is circular: I earn money from an institution that owns most of the businesses where I tend to spend most of my money. My economy is quasi-medieval, trade-centered, and guild-like. My economy is not canonical. My economy is a misfortune that recently befell me. My economy admits foundational narratives. My economy is language. My economy is the executioner’s reversal of fortune. My economy has no essential features. My economy admits parallax critiques of ideology. My economy owes something to over 4,136 dead soldiers. My economy does not intimate and would rather not split hairs about what belongs to whom. My economy can’t stay out of things, but can’t make it into the thick of things either. My economy has questionable purchasing power. My economy has no surrogate. My economy has no interpretative skills but is rife with interpretative communi- ties. My economy is of trees chopped down in Brooklyn, and the gradual encir- cling of brick. My economy is the new red. My economy thrives on shades of gray. My economy is an unremarkable tuna sandwich that is missing the slices of tomato that I had asked for. My economy is a liter bottle of Poland Spring water coming not from Poland but from Maine and bought at a university cafeteria in Uptown Manhattan where there are quite a number of water foundations that deliver water with a funky metallic aftertaste. My economy is a poem called “First Purchase of the Month” consisting of two stanzas with six eight-word lines each within a larger poem that could be endless but won’t be: Could’ve been an outfit for the Whitney Biennial Couldn’t afford one, nor did I need it. Who cares how you look at the zoo; it’s about the animals, stupid. Which reminds me, could’ve been the trail mix I snacked on & which I managed not to purchase myself. It was tuna on whole wheat, lettuce, jalapeños; a one liter bottle of water (Poland Spring.) Asked for tomato too, which the lady forgot. You Puerto Rican, she asked? Don’t think so, said another one in Spanish. Let me answer. No, what made you think so? The peppers? My economy needs contractions and abbreviations. My economy is not fixed. My economy is broken, mispronounced. My economy has cold feet, even if there are plenty of socks at home. My economy would like to be wholesome and sound. My economy is a gift certificate that is not enough for what I’d like to have, so I end up spending money at a store that I dislike in the first place and will never visit again. My economy is a business lunch where I end up paying the bill instead of the person who’d like me to work with her. My economy consists of performing tasks for which I receive no quantifi- able pay. My economy grows when it’s enough to buy someone else a drink, or a meal. My economy does not allow me to say no. My economy pretends to be booming, but instead, is shaky and imploding. It doesn’t matter, because my economy is predicated on virtue, and it posits that it’s purer than yours. My economy has no exchange value. I’d like to think of my economy as one of resistance and tactical difference. My economy is not a disposable good. There are no surpluses in my economy. I already owe what I just wrote. My economy is derivative, parasitical, and residual. My economy is a hand-me-down. My economy is not environmentally friendly, although it’s not ravaging non-renewable resources either. My economy doesn’t force me to put my money where my mouth is. Were I to pay for what I say, it would be a different story. Thirteen cents a word is not fair trade. My economy mistakes what it means to trade in futures. In theory my economy is not the result of deliberate choice, it is makeshift and a tag-along. My economy has double standards. My economy has attention deficit disorder. My economy is the symptom of an incurable disease. My economy is not even mine. Word count: 682

Mónica de la Torre

Social Commentaries,History & Politics,Money & Economics

Sanctuary

The tide pool crumples like a woman into the smallest version of herself, bleeding onto whatever touches her. The ocean, I mean, not a woman, filled with plastic lace, and closer to the vanishing point, something brown breaks the surface—human, maybe, a hand or foot or an island of trash—but no, it’s just a garden of kelp. A wild life. This is a prayer like the sea urchin is a prayer, like the sea star is a prayer, like the otter and cucumber— as if I know what prayer means. I call this the difficulty of the non-believer, or, put another way, waking, every morning, without a god. How to understand, then, what deserves rescue and what deserves to suffer. Who. Or should I say, what must be sheltered and what abandoned. Who. I might ask you to imagine a young girl, no older than ten but also no younger, on a field trip to a rescue. Can you see her? She is lead to the gates that separate the wounded sea lions from their home and the class. How the girl wishes this measure of salvation for herself: to claim her own barking voice, to revel in her own scent and sleek brown body, her fingers woven into the cyclone fence.

Donika Kelly

Nature,Animals,Seas, Rivers, & Streams,Religion,Faith & Doubt,Social Commentaries,Gender & Sexuality,History & Politics,Race & Ethnicity

Bitch Is a Word I Hear A Lot

I hate the word, and I guess that’s why it is said? People love to hurt one another. It is what makes us human. I do love dogs. They don’t seem to be evil unless humans make them that way. Dogs can maul and they can sniff out bombs. They’ll get as close to you as they can while you’re sleeping. They’ll share heat and scent in the crook of your knees. Is there really a thing such as innocence? I have desired from birth to live. Daily, I wrestle the tight arms of guilt. At the shelter, the adoption coach told us that our new dog was highly food motivated. I have been called a bitch. Our dog trembles when he’s afraid and the only thing we can do is wait for the fear to leave. There’s no comforting him. In a dream they held me down, scrawled BITCH across my chest in old embers. They covered my head as a weapon was raised. I had a dog who once kept me from walking into the arroyo. She blocked my path and wouldn’t move. I’ll never know what, or who, she saved me from.

Kim Parko

Relationships,Pets,Social Commentaries,Gender & Sexuality

Vow

It will be windy for a while until it isn’t. The waves will shoal. A red-legged cormorant will trace her double along glassy water, forgetting they are hungry. The sea will play this motif over and over, but there will be no preparing for it otherwise. Water will quiver in driftwood. Sound preceding absence, a white dog trailing a smaller one: ghost and noon shadow, two motes disappearing into surf. And when the low tide comes lapping and clear, the curled fronds of seaweed will furl and splay, their algal sisters brushing strands against sands where littleneck clams feed underwater. Light rain will fall and one cannot help but lean into the uncertainty of the sea. Bow: a knot of two loops, two loose ends, our bodies on either side of this shore where we will dip our hands to feel what can’t be seen. Horseshoe crabs whose blue blood rich in copper will reach for cover, hinged between clouds and sea. It will never be enough, the bull kelp like a whip coiling in tender hands, hands who know to take or be taken, but take nothing with them: I will marry you. I will marry you. So we can owe what we own to every beautiful thing.

Diana Khoi Nguyen

Living,Marriage & Companionship,Love,Romantic Love,Nature,Seas, Rivers, & Streams

Chase Scene

at night you stumble, dreaming cross-eyed of a chase scene three yellow wasps on your chest the city you turned around in a chase that quickly lands into a fight the nagging anxiety of a stain somewhere a tickle at the back of the throat a song’s bridge playing over and over in the head maybe the stain is at the bottom of your lung maybe this white crusting along the edge of the bed I lay an icepack on your head one of the old ones that look like a lazy waterdrop unable to pop, I’m waiting for a more complete courage, a peeled orange, a halogen lamp believe it or not, we’re recreating someone from the 19th century’s sin, by proceeding mounted on the edge of our bed like a permanent display, matching burdens to caramels the thin plant over the dresser is belonging here you picture yourself with pedals removed and ask why you were not born gracious I do a different dance in the same mirror in the ultra-rendering of these buildings I could snap my fingers and every window would close an accordion we accompany

Gabriel Ojeda-Sague

Living,The Mind

pronoun circle-jerk and the dog charlie

i had scarcely got acquainted when they took me by the paw & made me even-minded nor did i mind i had exactly enough window i had exactly enough to get started wine makes a person weak that is not to say that wine is not delightful, only that it makes a person weak a person can be made weak with whiskey and this was the mexicans’ military tactic with the chiricahua apache and the dutch with the lenape down in manahatta there was a dog named charlie cally called it an ‘it’ when we had our pronoun circle-jerk i told the group they could call me ‘it’ you know like the sky and the grass and a bird where you can’t tell what it is it, its, itself but then i sort of chickened out and said if ‘it’ ‘made them feel weird’ as a pronoun for a human they could call me ‘they’ or any gender-neutral pronoun i said xe or zae or e or shim-sham or two head-cocks and a click i joked looking at charlie’s belly as charlie rolled on its back

Julian Talamantez Brolaski

Activities,Eating & Drinking,Relationships,Pets,Arts & Sciences,Language & Linguistics,Social Commentaries,Gender & Sexuality

Seventeen Funerals

Seventeen suns rising in seventeen bedroom windows. Thirty-four eyes blooming open with the light of one more morning. Seventeen reflections in the bathroom mirror. Seventeen backpacks or briefcases stuffed with textbooks or lesson plans. Seventeen good mornings at kitchen breakfasts and seventeen goodbyes at front doors. Seventeen drives through palm-lined streets and miles of crammed highways to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School at 5901 Pine Island Road. The first bell ringing-in one last school day on February fourteenth, 2018. Seventeen echoes of footsteps down hallways for five class periods: algebra, poetry, biology, art, history. Seventeen hands writing on whiteboards or taking notes at their desks until the first gunshot at 2:21pm. One AR-15 rifle in the hands of a nineteen year old mind turning hate for himself into hate for others, into one-hundred fifty bullets fired in six minutes through building number twelve. Seventeen dead carried down hallways they walked, past cases of trophies they won, flyers for clubs they belonged to, lockers they won’t open again. Seventeen Valentine’s Day dates broken and cards unopened. Seventeen bodies to identify, dozens of photo albums to page through and remember their lives. Seventeen caskets and burial garments to choose for them. Seventeen funerals to attend in twelve days. Seventeen graves dug and headstones placed—all marked with the same date of death. Seventeen names: Alyssa. Helena. Scott. Martin—seventeen absentees forever—Nicholas. Aaron. Jamie. Luke—seventeen closets to clear out—Christopher. Cara. Gina. Joaquin—seventeen empty beds—Alaina. Meadow. Alex. Carmen. Peter—seventeen reasons to rebel with the hope these will be the last seventeen to be taken by one of three-hundred-ninety-three-million guns in America.

Richard Blanco

Living,Death,Sorrow & Grieving,Youth,Social Commentaries,Crime & Punishment

Six Quatrains

AUTUMN gold of amber red of ember brown of umber all September MCCOY CREEK Over the bright shallows now no flights of swallows. Leaves of the sheltering willow dangle thin and yellow. OCTOBER At four in the morning the west wind moved in the leaves of the beech tree with a long rush and patter of water, first wave of the dark tide coming in. SOLSTICE On the longest night of all the year in the forests up the hill, the little owl spoke soft and clear to bid the night be longer still. THE WINDS OF MAY are soft and restless in their leafy garments that rustle and sway making every moment movement. HAIL The dogwood cowered under the thunder and the lilacs burned like light itself against the storm-black sky until the hail whitened the grass with petals.

Ursula K. Le Guin

Living,Time & Brevity,Nature,Fall,Landscapes & Pastorals,Spring,Winter

Hyperparasites

Bibiana:At night I dreamt that I belonged to a basement-flock of girls just as terrified and feverish as me. We could communicate with each other byknocking on the walls.

Aase Berg

Social Commentaries,Crime & Punishment,Gender & Sexuality

Stalkers

Bibiana:Wanting to get close to one’s abuser is no sickness. Wanting to create a cocoon of normalcy when one is subjected to a crime is no syndrome.

Aase Berg

Living,The Mind,Social Commentaries,Crime & Punishment,Gender & Sexuality

Life Form

Will haul this gelatinous body, will lash forward this non-form, will push this organism of gas through the gray regions. A sour wind tears through the thin white hair. A wind of vinegar and henbane tears in the rustling, discarded bird-shells that were abandoned empty and fragile when the throbbing bird-boils moved on toward so-called life. Now I see the cunning needle-trees sling these clumps of heavy pouch-flesh back and forth between them: small feather-birds “fly” above my heads. I haul myself, I haul myself, I haul my dragging structure along the river furrow’s muddy, sloppily overlapping slopes. I am so bitter, so wet, so the mouth smears the inside with the sweetness of the chewed-up blood-chisel. Out of this blood I am going to suck my nourishment for some time. I haul, I urge my dissolved substance, slowly forward across the metal of calm stones, the hovering thread-glue’s suction toward a point in the distant middle of the perspective. Where the river’s banks will meet and like the thinnest needle of silver of liquid will drill its dark tunnel-water straight into the heart of the dying image, this moistly broken-up surface of paper to which we cling. I haul I haul I touch myself, touch the skin-rind with chafed-up viscous fingers. Little mermaid from ocean foam molded–I haul my long veils, layers of elastic cartilage, of slippery, shimmering membranes, chlorophyll. The gills shudder and glow deep down in this chasm of tissue–constantly rustling, squeaking, gasping for air. This whirling, howling, desperate lack of oxygen; the scream–if it had had enough oxygen to scream and a mouth with which to scream–the scream to swallow the entire lung full of clear wind. Lizards play, glitter green, blue, and red between the skin membranes of the body dress. Where does this mass end? I search inward through strata to find the core of my plasma wet from juices, to find the core of body-flesh despite the outer, surrounding flesh, the naked body’s stable surface, a kind of human here inside the bluing, plant-becoming. Something to hold on to behind the spread of the sickness of mud, fermentation. But there is nothing to grasp beneath this mantle of slippery webbed skin, burst through by a pounding net of veins. I now lick my tongue against the outer claws of the fingers to tear life into the ions, to make sores bitter in the tongue’s blue ventricles. A kind of pain therefore radiates against the inner glands, a faint spasm of cheers before this, the nervous system’s last chance to communicate with the dying I. The mists smart, shimmer, the lumps of blue cobalt from the mustard gas corrode through the otherwise red shroud-clouds that drag their bellies against the river’s surface. In one of the skin-folds between the pockets of the genital dress, lizards gather in heaps of glimmering scales. But time runs on time and starvation and the weakness carries me in across the gray regions. And the soul’s dark night will slowly be lowered through me. That is why I now slowly fold myself like a muscle against the wet clay to press the flesh against the sleep-gland’s mouths. I will sleep now in my bird body in the down, and a bitter star will radiate eternally above the glowing face’s watercourse.

Aase Berg

Living,The Body,Nature,Animals,Mythology & Folklore,Horror

The Cache

Behind the house in a field there's a metal box I buried full of childhood treasure, a map of my secret place, a few lead pennies from 1943. The rest I've forgotten, forgotten even the exact spot I covered with moss and loam. Now I'm back and twenty years have made so little difference I suspect they never happened, this face in the mirror aged with pencil and putty. I suspect even the box has moved as a mole would move to a new place long ago.

Dan Gerber

Living,Youth,Relationships,Home Life

Housewife as Poet

I have scrawled audible lifelines along the edges of the lint trap, dropping the ball of towel fuzz in the blue bin lined with a thirteen-gallon bag. My sons' wardrobes lounge on their bedroom floors, then sidle down to the basement, where I look forward to the warmth of their waistbands when I pluck them from the dryer. Sometimes I wonder why my husband worries about debt and I wish he wouldn't. Sometimes I wonder how high the alfalfa will grow. Sometimes I wonder if the dog will throw up in the night. Like my mother, I'm learning not to tamper with anger. It appears as reliably as the washing machine thumps and threatens to lurch across the floor away from the electrical outlet. Nothing's worth getting worked up about, except for death. And when I think of the people I have lost, I wish them back into their button-down shirts, their raspberry tights.

Sally Van Doren

Living,Midlife,Relationships,Home Life

Leaves

Years do odd things to identity. What does it mean to say I am that child in the photograph at Kishamish in 1935? Might as well say I am the shadow of a leaf of the acacia tree felled seventy years ago moving on the page the child reads. Might as well say I am the words she read or the words I wrote in other years, flicker of shade and sunlight as the wind moves through the leaves.

Ursula K. Le Guin

Living,Time & Brevity,Nature,Trees & Flowers

To the Rain

Mother rain, manifold, measureless, falling on fallow, on field and forest, on house-roof, low hovel, high tower, downwelling waters all-washing, wider than cities, softer than sisterhood, vaster than countrysides, calming, recalling: return to us, teaching our troubled souls in your ceaseless descent to fall, to be fellow, to feel to the root, to sink in, to heal, to sweeten the sea.

Ursula K. Le Guin

Nature,Weather

New Year's Eve 1989

Up on the roof, waiting for the fireworks to begin in warm winter rain, a moment ago I stepped from the elevator into the black air of an almost New Year and need a minute to catch my breath at the spread of city open to my eye. I can't go to the edge; I never could. The old fear of height still troubles me, the sensation that nothing can be under me if I am surrounded by mist and rain and all of the dark night air we breathe. Even a glimpse at the treetops in the park, with its slick crisscrossing roads that plunge into the jumbled panorama of East Side Manhattan, hysterical tonight with its own incandescence, gives me the willies. I feel as if I were standing on the deck of a showboat of a cloud as it drifts down some dark river, waiting for it to bang into some other building's fifteenth floor. How can these old people hunch the railing, hoisting their plastic glasses of champagne from under dripping umbrellas, as if they drank the rain as they laugh their analyses of the weather? Maybe now, like me, they have nothing to lose. I moved in three weeks ago; this is my first trip to the roof. I don't want to die tonight, the first fatality of 1990! There's too much of me I left in pieces last year, oh, the whole last decade: But I'm up here to distract myself, temporarily, from what I don't want or can't have in the way of love. . . . That must be the Triborough Bridge, tied in its strings of blue lights, and I can see in Central Park the skating rink, like a scoured mirror below, where some madman waves a red lantern; he must be drunk. I have only sipped a speck of Drambuie, which I didn't carry in my Coca-Cola glass up to these festivities. This is the first New Year's I've spent alone in twenty, twenty-two years. I never could go to the edge; but I did. Out there in the dark: my marriage, the woman I loved badly, as she did me, or none too well; the places we lived; the apartment I once half-owned; the thousands of books I had to leave behind (though I am to be granted library privileges) and the black and white cat I really miss. My wife's with her friends tonight somewhere in Brooklyn; friends of mine out there, too, though I don't know where. It's just like me to move in the middle of a telephone company strike. Thus, no calls from anyone—and I don't even have a telephone yet, so who could call? Damp but trying to smile, I eye the revelers. Two young men and their enormous girlfriends have joined us, really large women who carry balloons, all ready to froth in merry champagne. We check our watches to the screams from swarms of apartment windows to the west as the sky lights up with the first furious bombardment of colored shells. I can see that red lantern swinging toward the rockets—aha! So it wasn't a drunk, but the fireworks engineer preparing to blow the year's last sky to smithereens for our delight! I like to follow the tiny spurts of flame from the launching pad in their heavenward trajectory as much as I like the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air, which give proof to the night that I am still here, hands jammed in the pockets of my sodden raincoat, face dripping with rain, hat soaked, wondering if the skinny guy in the army jacket behind me (who looks just like I did in the sixties) is mumbling his way into a combat flashback and ready to hurl me over the edge of the roof and into kingdom come. I guess not yet. We've survived the first blasts of spinning green, corkscrews of spangled flame, buds of fireballs spewed in arching gold sprays, the whistling fire-fish that curl and howl as they flare, falling to ash. Screaming its head off, the New York New Year enters. I feel sad that beautiful things must die, even shadows made of smoke and flame, whatever I thought I had made out of my life— music, poems, books, kisses, a little useless fame. The army guy behind me grumbles at the haze of rocket smoke that coils around the trees, then tumbles up into the air toward Harlem. That bump and thud and bump sound everywhere, more clouds smacking each other head-on. The flashes of the explosions are close enough to touch if you wanted to burn your fingers on the sky, and the glare rocks our shadows back against the brick, as if chaos snapped our pictures in the dark. I smile for my portrait, curious at the New Year, smelling the acrid smoke of the one we've just destroyed. Then I squeeze into the tiny elevator car with the others, anonymous, reconciled to be so, back to my little apartment and the waiting glass of amber drink I'll raise, only half in jest, to my new life.

Bill Zavatsky

Living,Separation & Divorce,Love,Heartache & Loss,Social Commentaries,Cities & Urban Life,New Year

"You Don't Know What Love Is"

For Rebecca Feldman and Brian Roessler That's what the first line says of the song I've been playing all summer at the keyboard—trying to get my hands around its dark, melancholy chords, its story line of a melody that twists up like snakes from melodic minor scales that I've also been trying to learn, though I'm no great shakes as a practicer of scales. Come to think of it, neither am I much when it comes to love—no great shakes, I mean. Not that I haven't had my chances. Twenty years married, I made a lousy husband, half asleep, selfish, more like a big baby than a grown man, the poet laureate of the self-induced coma when it came to doing anything for anybody but me. "Now and then he took his thumb out of his mouth to write an ode to or a haiku about the thumb he sucked all day." That's what I imagined my ex-wife said to our therapist near the end. She did say: "It's all about Bill." She was right. And suddenly it frightens me, remembering how, at our wedding, our poet friends read poems of (mostly) utter depression to salute us. I wondered if their griefs in love had double-crossed our union, if strange snakes in the grass of our blissful Eden had hissed at us, and now I worry, on your wedding day, if I'm not doing the same damned thing . . . . I haven't come to spring up and put my curse on your bliss. Here's what I want to say: You're young. You don’t know what love is. And as the next line of the song goes, you won't —"Until you know the meaning of the blues." Darlings, the blues will come (though not often, I hope) to raise their fiery swords against your paradise. A little of that you unwittingly got today, when it rained and you couldn't be married outside under the beautiful tree in Nan and Alan's yard. But paradise doesn't have to be structured so that we can never reenter it. After you've kicked each other out of it once or twice (I'm speaking metaphorically, of course), teach yourself how to say a few kind words to each other. Don't stand there angry, stony. Each of you let the other know what you are feeling and thinking and then it may be possible to return to each other smiling, hand in hand. For arm in arm, you are your best Eden. Remember the advice the old poet sang to you on the afternoon of August 4, 2001, the day you got married. May you enjoy a good laugh thinking of him and his silver thumb now that you've turned the key into your new life in the beautiful Massachusetts rain and—hey, now—sun!

Bill Zavatsky

Living,Marriage & Companionship,Love,Break-ups & Vexed Love,Romantic Love,Weddings

Where X Marks the Spot

Not long after you had told me, gently, that you still grieved for your last love, though that had ended almost a year before, and that you could have no intimate relationship with me, maybe not with anyone for a time, I stopped my fork in the air with whatever hung on the end of it that I was eating. My throat wouldn't swallow. I felt weak and sick, as if it were myself that I devoured, piece by piece, as you talked away the hopes that I had put in your lovely face. It was the old story coming true for me once more, though you were hardly mine. . . . When we finished I walked you back to your car; I don't remember having much to say. Why would I? Buildings drifted by, and cars, and faces. Then we arrived at the place where, afterwards, I would never see you again, at a parking lot near Times Square. There I marked the sidewalk with X's visible only to me: "At this place I was lost again," they'd say to me when I walked there in the future. "Dig here and find what's left of me, or what I left behind, where X marks the spot." I felt like the death's-head and crossed bones that surmount the treasure chest. I only felt a little like gold coins and jewels. I have signed the City with these sphinxes —in parks, in streets, in bedrooms, in my own apartments. And there we stood, you and I, hemmed in by the stitches of X's that could not hold you to me. But X's mean kisses, I realized, as well as what is lost: all the kisses I couldn't give you chalked like symbols on the sidewalk. After all, you yourself had been marked by loss, even in your laughter that afternoon at the show I had taken you to. Bright-eyed and smiling in the seat beside me, you stole my glances with your dark, dark eyes and your long hair. I thought that I had not been this happy in a long time with a woman and was ready to become even more happy, ready to do anything that you wanted in order to please you, to see that smile come up, not knowing what you were soon to say to me as we dined. And when you spoke, I felt life fall away from me. Again I felt that I would never be happy. I felt the words that I had wanted to say to you leaving me, rushing out of my chest like dead air, until I had no more words to say. I seemed to cut and swallow my food as if it were me myself that stuck in pieces on the end of the fork I had raised to my mouth. Had I been chewing on my own flesh? Self-Pity the Devourer took me by the hand that held the fork, and once again I feasted on all that was dark and hopeless in myself, in lieu of all that was beautiful, desirable, and unattainable in you. And then I stood beside you in the lot where you had parked your car, with the X's buzzing in the air, sticking themselves to you and me and the blacktop and the cars. When you reached out to embrace me, I moved to embrace you in return—and then came the part that I don't want to remember, the part I hate: I caught a glimpse of your face as we put our arms around each other, and your face said everything to me about how you had wasted the afternoon, how eager you were to speed away in your car, a mixture of disgust and relief that the thing would soon be over, that I would be crossed out forever from your life—and everything that I hated about myself, my stupid chin, my ugly nose, my hopeless balded head, my stuck-out ears, my wreck of a heart, crashed over me, spinning me into the vortex of a palpable self-hate that I have only ever let myself feel a little bit at a time, though it is always there

Bill Zavatsky

Living,The Body,The Mind,Love,Break-ups & Vexed Love,Heartache & Loss

mandan (they send)

like the lost car that a river knows like the heat of an ointment in pinpoints of breathing like the unknown western in mountains of tar like a knot in each word for comfort like a horse on a face with four hooves like the knives that a heart squirms into like the feel that the last day pushes, that a fire paints red like the shower that a plain divides in snakes like a frozen torso pining for food like the ammunition that a pair of wings makes dry like a shirt that plants seeds under worn out skin like the clouds of mistakes, pouring through sleep like the walls that crack open like a wake in a spin like the exits of oceans that a salmon knows like the dust that is written with number like a trust full of beacons of light like the negative shade of a fungus like the promise that a lie gives out like the pulse of a trap like the rainbow that cuts off a hand like a psychic intent full of negative calls like salt for the season that covers the fields with jail like the round word that a star pisser pulls like the plains that a crossed out calendar day will mourn like the fate of the wrong side of talking like hills under snow that a letter revolves like the husky reflections of leeches that writhe like a sword in Toledo like the animals growing a vent in a cage like the sequence of nights dropping straw for a cipher like the trade in the fair full of cycles and ends like the cattle that heat all the drains with green grass like the nipples of outdoor intentions like a wing on the door that a glass makes arise like the underground fluid of digitized words like the ice in a cavern like a ride through the green light of dying like the yellowish herd of relational cards like the face that a wallet becomes like the wrong line of radios making a rule like the crust on the last day of hunger like the rodeo riding the real for a cut like the cells in the spread of the fall like an ape for the circle of color like reflections that turn on a wheel like the freezer of sweethearts like a change for the current that makes a return like the pause on the shore full of rattles like the oxygen tent making holes in a lung the face of friendly fire is knotted for a smile deleted for a smile that saves the executioner the face intended jail, by rocking through the holes that fear the clear blue family of dots the face resembles next to nothing in the network full of incremental touches that a string intends to limit by the light the face of arctic evolutions, a hunt that people came to read instead of mapping all the flights of sleep without a sound the face of terrible returns will fade outside the pouring crowd of animal relation in the mineral of wealth the face of providence is making shores for surfers in the foam of magnifying eyes that are the opposite of winter calm the face is never there in each intention that the worst reliance knows to ask for heat the face is after every opening that makes a number count for all of what is good like a robot that falls and makes good for a switch like the breasts of a mop that soaks blood like a magnifying glass for the sun like the picture of radar in space like a misery flood on the phone like electrical laughter that the pointed shake like enemies held in a double embrace like extinctions returning like a handshake of style for the heat like the flower that bottles a fly for a mouth like the still dunes of dust on a beautiful girl like the crack in an oven like a moon that gets brighter with age

Roberto Harrison

Nature,Landscapes & Pastorals,Arts & Sciences,Sciences,Social Commentaries,History & Politics

Personal Effects

Like guns and cars, cameras are fantasy-machines whose use is addictive. —Susan Sontag I place a photograph of my uncle on my computer desktop, which means I learn to ignore it. He stands by a tank, helmet tilting to his right, bootlaces tightened as if stitching together a wound. Alive the hand brings up a cigarette we won't see him taste. Last night I smoked one on the steps outside my barn apartment. A promise I broke myself. He promised himself he wouldn't and did. I smell my fingers and I am smelling his. Hands of smoke and gunpowder. Hands that promised they wouldn't, but did. This album is a stop-loss. By a dim lantern or in the latrine he flips through it. He looks at himself looking nearly as he does— closest to himself then as he could be, just learning how to lean into his new body. He suspends there by standing order, a spreading fire in his chest, his groin. He is on stage for us to see him, see him? He stands in the noontime sun. A young soldier (pictured above) the son of an imam, brother to six, is among the latest casualties in the military campaign of Susangerd. your whole body in a photo your whole body sitting on a crate pressing your eyesocket to the viewfinder of a bazooka crouched as you balance the metal tube on your shoulder in one you guide a belt of ammo into the untiring weapon proud your elbow out as if mid-waltz your frame strong and lightly supporting the gun a kind of smile ruining the picture You’re posing. You’re scared. A body falls and you learn to step over a loosened head. You begin to appreciate the heft of your boot soles, how they propel you, how they can kick in a face– the collapse of a canopy bed in an aerial bombardment, mosquito netting doused in napalm–cheekbones fragile as moth wings beneath the heel. You tighten your laces until they hold together a capable man. Whatever rains, the weight of your feet swings you forward, goose-stepping pendulums a body less and less yours– a body, God knows, is not what makes you anyway. So the hands that said they never would begin finding grenade pins around their fingers, begin flipping through this album with soot under their nails you were not ready But they issued the shovel and the rifle and you dug But to watch you sitting there between the sandbags But to watch the sand spilling out the bullet holes But what did they expect But what did they really think a sheet of metal could prevent But I sat rolling little ears of pasta off my thumb like helmets But it was not a table of fallen men But my hand registered fatigue But the men in fatigues were tired of sleeping in shifts But you snuck into town and dialed home until you wrote your fingers were tired But the code for Shiraz was down But all of Shiraz was down But the sheet lightning above the Ferris wheel of rusted bolts But I am sure they are alright you wrote Well to reassure yourself But the wind like an old mouth shaking the unnamed evergreen outside my window But what I mean is I'd like very much to talk a bitHello Operation Ramadan was an offensive in the Iran-Iraq War. It was launched by Iran in July 1982 near Basra and featured the use of human wave attacks in one of the largest land battles since World War II. Aftermath: The operation was the first of many disastrous offensives which cost thousands of lives on both sides. This one in general boosted the casualty limit up to 80,000 killed, 200,000 wounded, and 45,000 captured. In retrospect, the Iranians lacked effective command and control, air support, and logistics to sustain an attack in the first place. Saddam Hussein offered several ceasefire attempts in the following year, none of which were accepted by the Revolutionary regime. [6] [dead link] Congratulations and condolences They would sayThat's the house of a martyr pointing with their noseThat's the mother of a martyr They are building a museum for the martyrs. Some metal shelf a white archival box with his personal effects. I am attempting my own myth-making.He didn’t want to have anything

Solmaz Sharif

Living,Death,Sorrow & Grieving,Love,Heartache & Loss,Relationships,Family & Ancestors,Social Commentaries,History & Politics,War & Conflict

Imperatives for Carrying On in the Aftermath

Do not hang your head or clench your fists when even your friend, after hearing the story, says, My mother would never put up with that. Fight the urge to rattle off statistics: that, more often, a woman who chooses to leave is then murdered. The hundredth time your father says, But she hated violence, why would she marry a guy like that?—

Natasha Trethewey

Living,Death,Sorrow & Grieving,Relationships,Family & Ancestors,Social Commentaries,Crime & Punishment

Duty

When he tells the story now he's at the center of it, everyone else in the house falling into the backdrop— my mother, grandmother, an uncle, all dead now—props in our story: father and daughter caught in memory's half-light. I'm too young to recall it, so his story becomes the story: 1969, Hurricane Camille bearing down, the old house shuddering as if it will collapse. Rain pours into every room and he has to keep moving, keep me out of harm's way— a father's first duty: to protect. And so, in the story, he does: I am small in his arms, perhaps even sleeping. Water is rising around us and there is no higher place he can take me than this, memory forged in the storm's eye: a girl clinging to her father. What can I do but this? Let him tell it again and again as if it's always been only us, and that, when it mattered, he was the one who saved me.

Natasha Trethewey

Living,Parenthood,Relationships,Family & Ancestors,Nature,Weather

Meditation at Decatur Square

1 In which I try to decipher the story it tells, this syntax of monuments flanking the old courthouse: here, a rough outline like the torso of a woman great with child— a steatite boulder from which the Indians girdled the core to make of it a bowl, and left in the stone a wound; here, the bronze figure of Thomas Jefferson, quill in hand, inscribing a language of freedom, a creation story— his hand poised at the word happiness. There is not yet an ending, no period—the single mark, intended or misprinted, that changes the meaning of everything. Here too, for the Confederacy, an obelisk, oblivious in its name—a word that also meant the symbol to denote, in ancient manuscripts, the spurious, corrupt, or doubtful; at its base, forged in concrete, a narrative of valor, virtue, states' rights. Here, it is only the history of a word, obelisk, that points us toward what's not there; all of it palimpsest, each mute object repeating a single refrain: Remember this.

Natasha Trethewey

Social Commentaries,History & Politics,Race & Ethnicity,Mythology & Folklore,Heroes & Patriotism

Agent Blue

To kill correctly takes calculation. Down to a science. Arsenic cacodylic acid. Know water and rice on a cellular level. Make sure no surviving seed can be collected and planted. Because even a small seed assures survival. Because mortars, grenades and bombs cannot destroy a grain. Because our heart is made of seeds. Know what it takes to kill the seeds. Know what it takes to deprive the plant of water, to dehydrate it. To be surrounded by love but unable to absorb it.

Teresa Mei Chuc

Nature,Trees & Flowers,Social Commentaries,War & Conflict

scent of orange blossoms: haiku/senryu

this morning weaving Chi in the garden invisible ball in my hand * Halong Bay battle distant memory smoke from Gulf of Tonkin * did the atom ever know its destiny how our hands create? A student asked me, “Why do your people believe in dragons?” * river birch – undressing in the wind * the solid bones of elk antlers or branches of a limber pine – memory bobcat with mange unwatered plants also dying * mountain lion her land, before ours invasive plants * scent of orange blossoms – memories of my late grandma who planted this tree yarrow seedlings pop up a week later – each moment a small beginning * stopped in my tracks by a primrose blooming – I, too, will overcome this * dinner a bowl of rice and soy sauce food to survive on * my heart the Santa Ana winds today branches fall to the ground

Teresa Mei Chuc

Relationships,Family & Ancestors,Nature,Animals,Seas, Rivers, & Streams,Social Commentaries,History & Politics

Spring and All: Chapter XIII [Thus, weary of life]

Thus, weary of life, in view of the great consummation which awaits us — tomorrow, we rush among our friends congratulating ourselves upon the joy soon to be. Thoughtless of evil we crush out the marrow of those about us with our heavy cars as we go happily from place to place. It seems that there is not time enough in which to speak the full of our exaltation. Only a day is left, one miserable day, before the world comes into its own. Let us hurry ! Why bother for this man or that ? In the offices of the great newspapers a mad joy reigns as they prepare the final extras. Rushing about, men bump each other into the whirring presses. How funny it seems. All thought of misery has left us. Why should we care ? Children laughingly fling themselves under the wheels of the street cars, airplanes crash gaily to the earth. Someone has written a poem. Oh life, bizarre fowl, what color are your wings ? Green, blue, red, yellow, purple, white, brown, orange, black, grey ? In the imagination, flying above the wreck of ten thousand million souls, I see you departing sadly for the land of plants and insects, already far out to sea. (Thank you, I know well what I am plagiarising) Your great wings flap as you disappear in the distance over the pre-Columbian acres of floating weed. The new cathedral overlooking the park, looked down from its towers today, with great eyes, and saw by the decorative lake a group of people staring curiously at the corpse of a suicide : Peaceful, dead young man, the money they have put into the stones has been spent to teach men of life’s austerity. You died and teach us the same lesson. You seem a cathedral, celebrant of the spring which shivers for me among the long black trees.

William Carlos Williams

Living,Death,Time & Brevity,Social Commentaries,Cities & Urban Life

Spring and All: III [The farmer in deep thought]

The farmer in deep thought is pacing through the rain among his blank fields, with hands in pockets, in his head the harvest already planted. A cold wind ruffles the water among the browned weeds. On all sides the world rolls coldly away : black orchards darkened by the March clouds — leaving room for thought. Down past the brushwood bristling by the rainsluiced wagonroad looms the artist figure of the farmer — composing — antagonist.

William Carlos Williams

Activities,Jobs & Working,Nature,Landscapes & Pastorals,Spring,Arts & Sciences

Spring and All: XI [In passing with my mind]

In passing with my mind on nothing in the world but the right of way I enjoy on the road by virtue of the law — I saw an elderly man who smiled and looked away to the north past a house — a woman in blue who was laughing and leaning forward to look up into the man’s half averted face and a boy of eight who was looking at the middle of the man’s belly at a watchchain — The supreme importance of this nameless spectacle sped me by them without a word — Why bother where I went ? for I went spinning on the four wheels of my car along the wet road until I saw a girl with one leg over the rail of a balcony

William Carlos Williams

Living,The Mind,Activities,Travels & Journeys

Spring and All: XIV [Of death]

Of death the barber the barber talked to me cutting my life with sleep to trim my hair — It’s just a moment he said, we die every night — And of the newest ways to grow hair on bald death – I told him of the quartz lamp and of old men with third sets of teeth to the cue of an old man who said at the door — Sunshine today! for which death shaves him twice a week

William Carlos Williams

Living,Death,Time & Brevity

Spring and All: XIX [This is the time of year]

This is the time of year when boys fifteen and seventeen wear two horned lilac blossoms in their caps — or over one ear What is it that does this ? It is a certain sort — drivers for grocers or taxidrivers white and colored — fellows that let their hair grow long in a curve over one eye — Horned purple Dirty satyrs, it is vulgarity raised to the last power They have stolen them broken the bushes apart with a curse for the owner — Lilacs — They stand in the doorways on the business streets with a sneer on their faces adorned with blossoms Out of their sweet heads dark kisses — rough faces

William Carlos Williams

Living,Youth,Nature,Spring,Trees & Flowers

Spring and All: XXV [Somebody dies every four minutes]

Somebody dies every four minutes in New York State — To hell with you and your poetry — You will rot and be blown through the next solar system with the rest of the gases — What the hell do you know about it ? AXIOMS Do not get killed Careful Crossing Campaign Cross Crossings Cautiously THE HORSES black & PRANCED white What’s the use of sweating over this sort of thing, Carl ; here it is all set up — Outings in New York City Ho for the open country Dont’t stay shut up in hot rooms Go to one of the Great Parks Pelham Bay for example It’s on Long Island sound with bathing, boating tennis, baseball, golf, etc. Acres and acres of green grass wonderful shade trees, rippling brooks Take the Pelham Bay Park Branch of the Lexington Ave. (East Side) Line and you are there in a few minutes Interborough Rapid Transit Co.

William Carlos Williams

Living,Death,Activities,Travels & Journeys,Arts & Sciences,Poetry & Poets,Social Commentaries,Cities & Urban Life

Pomegranate

You tell me I am wrong. Who are you, who is anybody to tell me I am wrong? I am not wrong. In Syracuse, rock left bare by the viciousness of Greek women, No doubt you have forgotten the pomegranate trees in flower, Oh so red, and such a lot of them. Whereas at Venice, Abhorrent, green, slippery city Whose Doges were old, and had ancient eyes, In the dense foliage of the inner garden Pomegranates like bright green stone, And barbed, barbed with a crown. Oh, crown of spiked green metal Actually growing! Now, in Tuscany, Pomegranates to warm your hands at; And crowns, kingly, generous, tilting crowns Over the left eyebrow. And, if you dare, the fissure! Do you mean to tell me you will see no fissure? Do you prefer to look on the plain side? For all that, the setting suns are open. The end cracks open with the beginning: Rosy, tender, glittering within the fissure. Do you mean to tell me there should be no fissure? No glittering, compact drops of dawn? Do you mean it is wrong, the gold-filmed skin, integument, shown ruptured? For my part, I prefer my heart to be broken. It is so lovely, dawn-kaleidoscopic within the crack. San Gervasio in Tuscany

D. H. Lawrence

Love,Heartache & Loss,Nature

Peach

Would you like to throw a stone at me? Here, take all that’s left of my peach. Blood-red, deep: Heaven knows how it came to pass. Somebody’s pound of flesh rendered up. Wrinkled with secrets And hard with the intention to keep them. Why, from silvery peach-bloom, From that shallow-silvery wine-glass on a short stem This rolling, dropping, heavy globule? I am thinking, of course, of the peach before I ate it. Why so velvety, why so voluptuous heavy? Why hanging with such inordinate weight? Why so indented? Why the groove? Why the lovely, bivalve roundnesses? Why the ripple down the sphere? Why the suggestion of incision? Why was not my peach round and finished like a billiard ball? It would have been if man had made it. Though I’ve eaten it now. But it wasn’t round and finished like a billiard ball; And because I say so, you would like to throw something at me. Here, you can have my peach stone. San Gervasio

D. H. Lawrence

Activities,Eating & Drinking,Nature

Medlars and Sorb-Apples

I love you, rotten, Delicious rottenness. I love to suck you out from your skins So brown and soft and coming suave, So morbid, as the Italians say. What a rare, powerful, reminiscent flavour Comes out of your falling through the stages of decay: Stream within stream. Something of the same flavour as Syracusan muscat wine Or vulgar Marsala. Though even the word Marsala will smack of preciosity Soon in the pussy-foot West. What is it? What is it, in the grape turning raisin, In the medlar, in the sorb-apple, Wineskins of brown morbidity, Autumnal excrementa; What is it that reminds us of white gods? Gods nude as blanched nut-kernels, Strangely, half-sinisterly flesh-fragrant As if with sweat, And drenched with mystery. Sorb-apples, medlars with dead crowns. I say, wonderful are the hellish experiences, Orphic, delicate Dionysos of the Underworld. A kiss, and a vivid spasm of farewell, a moment’s orgasm of rupture, Then along the damp road alone, till the next turning. And there, a new partner, a new parting, a new unfusing into twain, A new gasp of further isolation, A new intoxication of loneliness, among decaying, frost-cold leaves. Going down the strange lanes of hell, more and more intensely alone, The fibres of the heart parting one after the other And yet the soul continuing, naked-footed, ever more vividly embodied Like a flame blown whiter and whiter In a deeper and deeper darkness, Ever more exquisite, distilled in separation. So, in the strange retorts of medlars and sorb-apples The distilled essence of hell. The exquisite odour of leave-taking. Jamque vale! Orpheus, and the winding, leaf-clogged, silent lanes of hell. Each soul departing with its own isolation. Strangest of all strange companions, And best. Medlars, sorb-apples More than sweet Flux of autumn Sucked out of your empty bladders And sipped down, perhaps, with a sip of Marsala So that the rambling, sky-dropped grape can add its music to yours, Orphic farewell, and farewell, and farewell And the ego sum of Dionysos The sono io of perfect drunkenness Intoxication of final loneliness. San Gervasio

D. H. Lawrence

Love,Desire,Activities,Eating & Drinking,Mythology & Folklore,Greek & Roman Mythology

Purple Anemones

Who gave us flowers?Heaven? The white God? Nonsense! Up out of hell, From Hades; Infernal Dis! Jesus the god of flowers—? Not he.Or sun-bright Apollo, him so musical? Him neither. Who then?Say who. Say it—and it is Pluto, Dis The dark one Proserpine’s master. Who contradicts—? When she broke forth from below, Flowers came, hell-hounds on her heels. Dis, the dark, the jealous god, the husband, Flower-sumptuous-blooded. Go then, he said. And in Sicily, on the meadows of Enna, She thought she had left him; But opened around her purple anemones, Caverns, Little hells of color, caves of darkness, Hell, risen in pursuit of her; royal, sumptuous Pit-falls. All at her feet Hell opening; At her white ankles Hell rearing its husband-splendid, serpent heads, Hell-purple, to get at her—Why did he let her go? So he could track her down again, white victim. Ah mastery! Hell’s husband-blossoms Out on earth again. Look out, Persephone! You, Madame Ceres, mind yourself, the enemy is upon you. About your feet spontaneous aconite, Hell-glamorous, and purple husband-tyranny Enveloping your late-enfranchised plains. You thought your daughter had escaped? No more stockings to darn for the flower-roots, down in hell? But ah my dear! Aha, the stripe-cheeked whelps, whippet-slim crocuses,At ’em, boys, at ’em!Ho golden-spaniel, sweet alert narcissus,Smell ’em, smell ’em out! Those two enfranchised women. Somebody is coming!Oho there! Dark blue anemones! Hell is up! Hell on earth, and Dis within the depths! Run, Persephone, he is after you already. Why did he let her go? To track her down; All the sport of summer and spring, and flowers snapping at her ankles and catching her by the hair! Poor Persephone and her rights for women. Husband-snared hell-queen,It is spring. It is spring, And pomp of husband-strategy on earth. Ceres, kiss your girl, you think you’ve got her back.The bit of husband-tilth she is,Persephone! Poor mothers-in-law! They are always sold. It is spring. Taormina

D. H. Lawrence

Living,Marriage & Companionship,Nature,Trees & Flowers,Social Commentaries,Gender & Sexuality,Mythology & Folklore,Greek & Roman Mythology

Sicilian Cyclamens

When he pushed his bush of black hair off his brow: When she lifted her mop from her eyes, and screwed it in a knob behind —O act of fearful temerity! When they felt their foreheads bare, naked to heaven, their eyes revealed: When they left the light of heaven brandished like a knife at their defenceless eyes And the sea like a blade at their face, Mediterranean savages: When they came out, face-revealed, under heaven, from the shaggy undergrowth of their own hair For the first time, They saw tiny rose cyclamens between their toes, growing Where the slow toads sat brooding on the past. Slow toads, and cyclamen leaves Stickily glistening with eternal shadow Keeping to earth. Cyclamen leaves Toad-filmy, earth-iridescent Beautiful Frost-filigreed Spumed with mud Snail-nacreous Low down. The shaking aspect of the sea And man’s defenceless bare face And cyclamens putting their ears back. Long, pensive, slim-muzzled greyhound buds Dreamy, not yet present, Drawn out of earth At his toes. Dawn-rose Sub-delighted, stone engendered Cyclamens, young cyclamens Arching Waking, pricking their ears Like delicate very-young greyhound bitches Half-yawning at the open, inexperienced Vistas of day, Folding back their soundless petalled ears. Greyhound bitches Bending their rosy muzzles pensive down, And breathing soft, unwilling to wake to the new day Yet sub-delighted. Ah Mediterranean morning, when our world began! Far-off Mediterranean mornings, Pelasgic faces uncovered And unbudding cyclamens. The hare suddenly goes uphill Laying back her long ears with unwinking bliss. And up the pallid, sea-blenched Mediterranean stone-slopes Rose cyclamen, ecstatic fore-runner! Cyclamens, ruddy-muzzled cyclamens In little bunches like bunches of wild hares Muzzles together, ears-aprick Whispering witchcraft Like women at a well, the dawn-fountain. Greece, and the world’s morning While all the Parthenon marbles still fostered the roots of the cyclamen. Violets Pagan, rosy-muzzled violets Autumnal Dawn-pink, Dawn-pale Among squat toad-leaves sprinkling the unborn Erechtheion marbles. Taormina

D. H. Lawrence

Nature,Animals,Trees & Flowers

Snake

A snake came to my water-trough On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat, To drink there. In the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark carob tree I came down the steps with my pitcher And must wait, must stand and wait, for there he was at the trough before me. He reached down from a fissure in the earth-wall in the gloom And trailed his yellow-brown slackness soft-bellied down, over the edge of the stone trough And rested his throat upon the stone bottom, And where the water had dripped from the tap, in a small clearness, He sipped with his straight mouth, Softly drank through his straight gums, into his slack long body, Silently. Someone was before me at my water-trough, And I, like a second-comer, waiting. He lifted his head from his drinking, as cattle do, And looked at me vaguely, as drinking cattle do, And flickered his two-forked tongue from his lips, and mused a moment, And stooped and drank a little more, Being earth-brown, earth-golden from the burning bowels of the earth On the day of Sicilian July, with Etna smoking. The voice of my education said to me He must be killed, For in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent, the gold are venomous. And voices in me said, If you were a man You would take a stick and break him now, and finish him off. But must I confess how I liked him, How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet, to drink at my water-trough And depart peaceful, pacified, and thankless, Into the burning bowels of this earth? Was it cowardice, that I dared not kill him? Was it perversity, that I longed to talk to him? Was it humility, to feel so honoured? I felt so honoured. And yet those voices:If you were not afraid, you would kill him! And truly I was afraid, I was most afraid, But even so, honoured still more That he should seek my hospitality From out the dark door of the secret earth. He drank enough And lifted his head, dreamily, as one who has drunken, And flickered his tongue like a forked night on the air, so black, Seeming to lick his lips, And looked around like a god, unseeing, into the air, And slowly turned his head, And slowly, very slowly, as if thrice adream, Proceeded to draw his slow length curving round And climb again the broken bank of my wall-face. And as he put his head into that dreadful hole, And as he slowly drew up, snake-easing his shoulders, and entered farther, A sort of horror, a sort of protest against his withdrawing into that horrid black hole, Deliberately going into the blackness, and slowly drawing himself after, Overcame me now his back was turned. I looked round, I put down my pitcher, I picked up a clumsy log And threw it at the water-trough with a clatter. I think it did not hit him, But suddenly that part of him that was left behind convulsed in an undignified haste, Writhed like lightning, and was gone Into the black hole, the earth-lipped fissure in the wall-front, At which, in the intense still noon, I stared with fascination. And immediately I regretted it. I thought how paltry, how vulgar, what a mean act! I despised myself and the voices of my accursed human education. And I thought of the albatross, And I wished he would come back, my snake. For he seemed to me again like a king, Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld, Now due to be crowned again. And so, I missed my chance with one of the lords Of life. And I have something to expiate: A pettiness. Taormina

D. H. Lawrence

Living,Life Choices,Nature,Animals,Religion,The Spiritual

Wing Shows on Starway Zodiac Carousel

Cyclones of ecstatic dust and ashes whirl crusaders from hallucinatory citadels of shattered glass into evacuate craters A flock of dreams browse on Necropolis From the shores of oval oceans in the oxidized Orient Onyx-eyed Odalisques and ornithologists observe the flight of Eros obsolete And "Immortality" mildews in the museums of the moon

Mina Loy

Living,Death,Love,Desire

Joyce's Ulysses

The Normal Monster sings in the Green Sahara The voice and offal of the image of God make Celtic noises in these lyrical hells Hurricanes of reasoned musics reap the uncensored earth The loquent consciousness of living things pours in torrential languages The elderly colloquists the Spirit and the Flesh are out of tongue The Spirit is impaled upon the phallus Phoenix of Irish fires lighten the Occident with Ireland's wings flap pandemoniums of Olympian prose and satinize the imperial Rose of Gaelic perfumes — England the sadistic mother embraces Erin Master of meteoric idiom present The word made flesh and feeding upon itself with erudite fangs The sanguine introspection of the womb Don Juan of Judea upon a pilgrimage to the Libido The press purring its lullabies to sanity Christ capitalized scourging incontrite usurers of destiny in hole and corner temples And hang The soul's advertisements outside the ecclesiast's Zoo A gravid day spawns gutteral gargoyles upon the Tower of Babel Empyrean emporium where the rejector-recreator Joyce flashes the giant reflector on the sub rosa

Mina Loy

Religion,Christianity,Arts & Sciences,Language & Linguistics,Reading & Books

Café du Néant

Little tapers leaning lighted diagonally Stuck in coffin tables of the Café du Néant Leaning to the breath of baited bodies Like young poplars fringing the Loire Eyes that are full of love And eyes that are full of kohl Projecting light across the fulsome ambiente Trailing the rest of the animal behind them Telling of tales without words And lies of no consequence One way or another The young lovers hermetically buttoned up in black To black cravat To the blue powder edge dusting the yellow throat What color could have been your bodies When last you put them away Nostalgic youth Holding your mistress's pricked finger In the indifferent flame of the taper Synthetic symbol of LIFE In this factitious chamber of DEATH The woman As usual Is smiling as bravely As it is given to her to be brave While the brandy cherries In winking glasses Are decomposing Harmoniously With the flesh of spectators And at a given spot There is one Who Having the concentric lighting focussed precisely upon her Prophetically blossoms in perfect putrefaction Yet there are cabs outside the door.

Mina Loy

Living,Death,Life Choices,Love,Desire

Sketch of a Man on a Platform

Man of absolute physical equilibrium You stand so straight on your legs Every plank or clod you plant your feet on Becomes roots for those limbs Among the men you accrete to yourself You are more heavy And more light Force being most equitably disposed Is easiest to lift from the ground So at the same time Your movements Unassailable Savor of the airy-fairy of the ballet The essence of a Mademoiselle Genée Winks in the to-and-fro of your cuff-links Your projectile nose Has meddled in the more serious business Of the battle-field With the same incautious aloofness Of intense occupation That it snuffles the trail of the female And the comfortable Passing odors of love Your genius So much less in your brain Than in your body Reinforcing the hitherto negligible Qualities Of life Deals so exclusively with The vital That it is equally happy expressing itself Through the activity of pushing THINGS In the opposite direction To that which they are lethargically willing to go As in the amative language Of the eyes Fundamentally unreliable You leave others their initial strength Concentrating On stretching the theoretic elastic of your conceptions Till the extent is adequate To the hooking on Of any — or all Forms of creative idiosyncrasy While the occasional snap Of actual production Stings the face of the public.

Mina Loy

Relationships,Men & Women,Social Commentaries,Cities & Urban Life,Gender & Sexuality

Love Songs

I Spawn of fantasies Sifting the appraisable Pig Cupid his rosy snout Rooting erotic garbage "Once upon a time" Pulls a weed white star-topped Among wild oats sown in mucous membrane I would an eye in a Bengal light Eternity in a sky-rocket Constellations in an ocean Whose rivers run no fresher Than a trickle of saliva These are suspect places I must live in my lantern Trimming subliminal flicker Virginal to the bellows Of experience Colored glass. II At your mercy Our Universe Is only A colorless onion You derobe Sheath by sheath Remaining A disheartening odour About your nervy hands III Night Heavy with shut-flower's nightmares --------------------------------------------- Noon Curled to the solitaire Core of the Sun IV Evolution fall foul of Sexual equality Prettily miscalculate Similitude Unnatural selection Breed such sons and daughters As shall jibber at each other Uninterpretable cryptonyms Under the moon Give them some way of braying brassily For caressive calling Or to homophonous hiccoughs Transpose the laugh Let them suppose that tears Are snowdrops or molasses Or anything Than human insufficiences Begging dorsal vertebrae Let meeting be the turning To the antipodean And Form a blur Anything Than to seduce them To the one As simple satisfaction For the other V Shuttle-cock and battle-door A little pink-love And feathers are strewn VI Let Joy go solace-winged To flutter whom she may concern VII Once in a mezzanino The starry ceiling Vaulted an unimaginable family Bird-like abortions With human throats And Wisdom's eyes Who wore lamp-shade red dresses And woolen hair One bore a baby In a padded porte-enfant Tied with a sarsenet ribbon To her goose's wings But for the abominable shadows I would have lived Among their fearful furniture To teach them to tell me their secrets Before I guessed -- Sweeping the brood clean out VIII Midnight empties the street --- --- --- To the left a boy --- One wing has been washed in rain The other will never be clean any more --- Pulling door-bells to remind Those that are snug To the right a haloed ascetic Threading houses Probes wounds for souls --- The poor can't wash in hot water --- And I don't know which turning to take --- IX We might have coupled In the bed-ridden monopoly of a moment Or broken flesh with one another At the profane communion table Where wine is spill't on promiscuous lips We might have given birth to a butterfly With the daily-news Printed in blood on its wings X In some Prenatal plagiarism Foetal buffoons Caught tricks --- --- --- --- --- From archetypal pantomime Stringing emotions Looped aloft --- --- --- --- For the blind eyes That Nature knows us with And most of Nature is green --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- XI Green things grow Salads For the cerebral Forager's revival And flowered flummery Upon bossed bellies Of mountains Rolling in the sun XII Shedding our petty pruderies From slit eyes We sidle up To Nature --- --- --- that irate pornographist XIII The wind stuffs the scum of the white street Into my lungs and my nostrils Exhilarated birds Prolonging flight into the night Never reaching --- --- --- --- ------ --- ---

Mina Loy

Love,Desire,Realistic & Complicated,Nature

Prayer

My body is opaque to the soul. Driven of the spirit, long have I sought to temper it unto the spirit’s longing, But my mind, too, is opaque to the soul. O Spirits of whom my soul is but a little finger, Direct it to the lid of its flesh-eye. I am weak with much giving. I am weak the desire to give more. (How strong a thing is the little finger!) So weak that I have confused the body with the soul, And the body with its little finger. (How frail is the little finger.) My voice could not carry to you did you dwell in stars, O spirits of whom my soul is but a little finger . .

Jean Toomer

Living,The Body,Religion,Faith & Doubt,The Spiritual

Portrait in Georgia

Hair–braided chestnut, coiled like a lyncher’s rope, Eye–fagots, Lips–old scars, or the first red blisters, Breath–the last sweet scent of cane, And her slim body, white as the ash of black flesh after flame.

Jean Toomer

Social Commentaries,Race & Ethnicity

Beehive

Within this black hive to-night There swarm a million bees; Bees passing in and out the moon, Bees escaping out the moon, Bees returning through the moon, Silver bees intently buzzing, Silver honey dripping from the swarm of bees Earth is a waxen cell of the world comb, And I, a drone, Lying on my back, Lipping honey, Getting drunk with that silver honey, Wish that I might fly out past the moon And curl forever in some far-off farmyard flower.

Jean Toomer

Nature,Animals,Religion,The Spiritual

Tell Me

Tell me, dear beauty of the dusk, When purple ribbons bind the hill, Do dreams your secret wish fulfill, Do prayers, like kernels from the husk Come from your lips? Tell me if when The mountains loom at night, giant shades Of softer shadow, swift like blades Of grass seeds come to flower. Then Tell me if the night winds bend Them towards me, if the Shenandoah As it ripples past your shore, Catches the soul of what you send.

Jean Toomer

Love,Romantic Love,Religion,The Spiritual

[into the strenuous briefness]

into the strenuous briefness Life: handorgans and April darkness,friends i charge laughing. Into the hair-thin tints of yellow dawn, into the women-coloured twilight i smilingly glide. I into the big vermilion departure swim,sayingly; (Do you think?)the i do,world is probably made of roses & hello: (of solongs and,ashes)

E. E. Cummings

Living,Death,Time & Brevity

[All in green went my love riding]

All in green went my love riding on a great horse of gold into the silver dawn. four lean hounds crouched low and smiling the merry deer ran before. Fleeter be they than dappled dreams the swift sweet deer the red rare deer. Four red roebuck at a white water the cruel bugle sang before. Horn at hip went my love riding riding the echo down into the silver dawn. four lean hounds crouched low and smiling the level meadows ran before. Softer be they than slippered sleep the lean lithe deer the fleet flown deer. Four fleet does at a gold valley the famished arrow sang before. Bow at belt went my love riding riding the mountain down into the silver dawn. four lean hounds crouched low and smiling the sheer peaks ran before. Paler be they than daunting death the sleek slim deer the tall tense deer. Four tall stags at a green mountain the lucky hunter sang before. All in green went my love riding on a great horse of gold into the silver dawn. four lean hounds crouched low and smiling my heart fell dead before.

E. E. Cummings

Living,Death,Love,Romantic Love,Activities,Sports & Outdoor Activities,Nature,Animals

[the bigness of cannon]

the bigness of cannon is skilful, but i have seen death’s clever enormous voice which hides in a fragility of poppies. . . . i say that sometimes on these long talkative animals are laid fists of huger silence. I have seen all the silence filled with vivid noiseless boys at Roupy i have seen between barrages, the night utter ripe unspeaking girls.

E. E. Cummings

Living,Death,Social Commentaries,War & Conflict

[O sweet spontaneous]

O sweet spontaneous earth how often have the doting fingers of prurient philosophers pinched and poked thee ,has the naughty thumb of science prodded thy beauty how often have religions taken thee upon their scraggy knees squeezing and buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive gods (but true to the incomparable couch of death thy rhythmic lover thou answerest them only with spring)

E. E. Cummings

Nature,Landscapes & Pastorals,Spring,Religion,The Spiritual,Arts & Sciences,Philosophy,Sciences

To Make Color

Every morning, my grandmother cleaned the Fischer stove in the back of the trailer, lifted ash in a shovel, careful not to spill the white-gray dust. Precious, she said, her breath smoking in the cold. Precious in winter's first lavender not-quite-light—and you could smell it, the faintest acrid hint of ash, a crispness calling you from bed. You could watch her cap it in a chicory coffee can to stack among others, back bent from a long-gone fever. For the garden in spring, she said.

Ryler Dustin

"When you, that at this moment are to me"

When you, that at this moment are to me Dearer than words on paper, shall depart, And be no more the warder of my heart, Whereof again myself shall hold the key; And be no more—what now you seem to be— The sun, from which all excellences start In a round nimbus, nor a broken dart Of moonlight, even, splintered on the sea; I shall remember only of this hour— And weep somewhat, as now you see me weep— The pathos of your love, that, like a flower, Fearful of death yet amorous of sleep, Droops for a moment and beholds, dismayed, The wind whereon its petals shall be laid.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Living,Sorrow & Grieving,Love,Heartache & Loss,Nature,Trees & Flowers

"Pity me not because the light of day"

Pity me not because the light of day At close of day no longer walks the sky; Pity me not for beauties passed away From field and thicket as the year goes by; Pity me not the waning of the moon, Nor that the ebbing tide goes out to sea, Nor that a man’s desire is hushed so soon, And you no longer look with love on me. This have I known always: Love is no more Than the wide blossom which the wind assails, Than the great tide that treads the shifting shore, Strewing fresh wreckage gathered in the gales: Pity me that the heart is slow to learn What the swift mind beholds at every turn.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Living,The Mind,Love,Heartache & Loss,Romantic Love

"Oh, oh, you will be sorry for that word!"

Oh, oh, you will be sorry for that word! Give back my book and take my kiss instead. Was it my enemy or my friend I heard, “What a big book for such a little head!” Come, I will show you now my newest hat, And you may watch me purse my mouth and prink! Oh, I shall love you still, and all of that. I never again shall tell you what I think. I shall be sweet and crafty, soft and sly; You will not catch me reading any more: I shall be called a wife to pattern by; And some day when you knock and push the door, Some sane day, not too bright and not too stormy, I shall be gone, and you may whistle for me.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Love,Break-ups & Vexed Love,Arts & Sciences,Reading & Books,Social Commentaries,Gender & Sexuality

"I shall go back again to the bleak shore"

I shall go back again to the bleak shore And build a little shanty on the sand, In such a way that the extremest band Of brittle seaweed will escape my door But by a yard or two; and nevermore Shall I return to take you by the hand; I shall be gone to what I understand, And happier than I ever was before. The love that stood a moment in your eyes, The words that lay a moment on your tongue, Are one with all that in a moment dies, A little under-said and over-sung. But I shall find the sullen rocks and skies Unchanged from what they were when I was young.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Living,Sorrow & Grieving,Love,Break-ups & Vexed Love,Romantic Love,Nature,Landscapes & Pastorals

"Loving you less than life, a little less"

Loving you less than life, a little less Than bitter-sweet upon a broken wall Or brush-wood smoke in autumn, I confess I cannot swear I love you not at all. For there is that about you in this light— A yellow darkness, sinister of rain— Which sturdily recalls my stubborn sight To dwell on you, and dwell on you again. And I am made aware of many a week I shall consume, remembering in what way Your brown hair grows about your brow and cheek And what divine absurdities you say: Till all the world, and I, and surely you, Will know I love you, whether or not I do.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Love,Heartache & Loss,Realistic & Complicated

"I, being born a woman and distressed"

I, being born a woman and distressed By all the needs and notions of my kind, Am urged by your propinquity to find Your person fair, and feel a certain zest To bear your body’s weight upon my breast: So subtly is the fume of life designed, To clarify the pulse and cloud the mind, And leave me once again undone, possessed. Think not for this, however, the poor treason Of my stout blood against my staggering brain, I shall remember you with love, or season My scorn with pity,—let me make it plain: I find this frenzy insufficient reason For conversation when we meet again.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Love,Desire,Realistic & Complicated,Social Commentaries,Gender & Sexuality

"Still will I harvest beauty where it grows"

Still will I harvest beauty where it grows: In coloured fungus and the spotted fog Surprised on foods forgotten; in ditch and bog Filmed brilliant with irregular rainbows Of rust and oil, where half a city throws Its empty tins; and in some spongy log Whence headlong leaps the oozy emerald frog. . . . And a black pupil in the green scum shows. Her the inhabiter of divers places Surmising at all doors, I push them all. Oh, you that fearful of a creaking hinge Turn back forevermore with craven faces, I tell you Beauty bears an ultra fringe Unguessed of you upon her gossamer shawl!

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Living,The Mind,Nature,Landscapes & Pastorals

"Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare."

Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare. Let all who prate of Beauty hold their peace, And lay them prone upon the earth and cease To ponder on themselves, the while they stare At nothing, intricately drawn nowhere In shapes of shifting lineage; let geese Gabble and hiss, but heroes seek release From dusty bondage into luminous air. O blinding hour, O holy, terrible day, When first the shaft into his vision shone Of light anatomized! Euclid alone Has looked on Beauty bare. Fortunate they Who, though once only and then but far away, Have heard her massive sandal set on stone.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Living,The Mind,Arts & Sciences

"The white bark writhed and sputtered like a fish"

The white bark writhed and sputtered like a fish Upon the coals, exuding odorous smoke She knelt and blew, in a surging desolate wish For comfort; and the sleeping ashes woke And scattered to the hearth, but no thin fire Broke suddenly, the wood was wet with rain. Then, softly stepping forth from her desire, (Being mindful of like passion hurled in vain Upon a similar task, in other days) She thrust her breath against the stubborn coal, Bringing to bear upon its hilt the whole Of her still body. . . there sprang a little blaze. . . A pack of hounds, the flame swept up the flue!— And the blue night stood flattened against the window, staring through.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Activities,Indoor Activities,Relationships,Home Life