For Better or For Verse

And What Have You Done?

2010-05-26T02:04:00.000-04:00

Confessions

by Lowell Jaeger

I once shoplifted
a tin of Vienna sausages.
Crouched in the aisle
as if to study the syllables
of preservatives, tore off the lid,
pulled out a wiener and sucked it down.

I've cheated on exams.
Made love to foldouts.
Walked my paper route in a snowstorm after dark,
so I could steal down a particular alley
where through her gauze curtains, a lady
lounged with her nightgown undone.

I've thrown sticks at stray dogs.
Ignored the cat scratching to come inside.
Even in the rain.
Sat for idle hours in front of the TV, and not two feet away
the philodendrons for lack of a glass of water
gasped and expired.

So many excuses I've concocted to get by.
Called in sick when I was not. Grabbed credit
for happy accidents I had no hand in.
Pointed fingers
to pin the innocent with crimes
unmistakably mine.

I have failed
to learn from grievous error.
Repeated gossip.
Invented gossip. Held hands
in a circle of friends to rejoice
over the misfortune of strangers.
Pushed over tombstones.
Danced the devil's jig.

Once, when I was barely old enough
to walk home on my own, I hid
behind an abandoned garage.
Counted sixteen windows.
Needed only four handfuls of stones
to break every one.

"Confessions" by Lowell Jaeger, from We. © Main Street Rag Publishing Company, 2010.

National Poetry Month Should Not Be Ignored, Nor the Names of Flowers

2009-04-21T01:07:00.001-04:00

Field Guide

by Billy Collins

No one I ask knows the name of the flower
we pulled the car to the side of the road to pick
and that I point to dangling purple from my lapel.

I am passing through the needle of spring
in North Carolina, as ignorant of the flowers of the south
as the woman at the barbecue stand who laughs
and the man who gives me a look as he pumps the gas

and everyone else I ask on the way to the airport
to return to where this purple madness is not seen
blazing against the sober pines and rioting along the
roadside.

On the plane, the stewardess is afraid she cannot answer
my question, now insistent with the fear that I will leave
the province of this flower without its sound in my ear.

Then, as if he were giving me the time of day, a passenger
looks up from his magazine and says wisteria.

"Field Guide" by Billy Collins from Questions about Angels. © William Morrow and Company, 1991. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

Merwin's May

2009-04-21T01:04:00.000-04:00

To This May

by W. S. Merwin

They know so much more now about
the heart we are told but the world
still seems to come one at a time
one day one year one season and here
it is spring once more with its birds
nesting in the holes in the walls
its morning finding the first time
its light pretending not to move
always beginning as it goes

"To This May" by W.S. Merwin, from Present Company. © Copper Canyon Press, 2007. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

An old and trusted favorite!

2009-04-21T01:03:00.001-04:00

Life Story

by Tennessee Williams

After you've been to bed together for the first time,
without the advantage or disadvantage of any prior acquaintance,
the other party very often says to you,
Tell me about yourself, I want to know all about you,
what's your story? And you think maybe they really and truly do

sincerely want to know your life story, and so you light up
a cigarette and begin to tell it to them, the two of you
lying together in completely relaxed positions
like a pair of rag dolls a bored child dropped on a bed.

You tell them your story, or as much of your story
as time or a fair degree of prudence allows, and they say,
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,
each time a little more faintly, until the oh
is just an audible breath, and then of course

there's some interruption. Slow room service comes up
with a bowl of melting ice cubes, or one of you rises to pee
and gaze at himself with mild astonishment in the bathroom mirror.
And then, the first thing you know, before you've had time
to pick up where you left off with your enthralling life story,
they're telling you their life story, exactly as they'd intended to all
along,

and you're saying, Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,
each time a little more faintly, the vowel at last becoming
no more than an audible sigh,
as the elevator, halfway down the corridor and a turn to the left,
draws one last, long, deep breath of exhaustion
and stops breathing forever. Then?

Well, one of you falls asleep
and the other one does likewise with a lighted cigarette in his mouth,
and that's how people burn to death in hotel rooms.

"Life Story" by Tennessee Williams, from The Collected Poems of Tennessee Williams. © New Directions, 2002. Reprinted with permission (buy now)

I woke up this morning dreaming of New York...

2009-03-12T11:53:00.002-04:00

and this poem was sitting in my inbox.

New York Notes

by Harvey Shapiro

1. Caught on a side street in heavy traffic, I said to the cabbie, I should have
walked. He replied, I should have been a doctor.

2. When can I get on the 11:33 I ask the guy in the information booth at the Atlantic Avenue Station.

When they open the doors, he says. I am home among my people.

"New York Notes" by Harvey Shapiro, from How Charlie Shavers Died and Other Poems. © Wesleyan University Press, 2001.

Another cup, please!

2008-08-18T13:15:00.001-04:00

In Praise of Joe
by Marge Piercy

I love you hot
I love you iced and in a pinch
I will even consume you tepid.

Dark brown as wet bark of an apple tree,
dark as the waters flowing out of a spooky swamp
rich with tannin and smelling of thick life—

but you have your own scent that even
rising as steam kicks my brain into gear.

I drink you rancid out of vending machines,
I drink you at coffee bars for $6 a hit,
I drink you dribbling down my chin from a thermos
in cars, in stadiums, on the moonwashed beach.

Mornings you go off in my mouth like an electric
siren, radiating to my fingertips and toes.
You rattle my spine and buzz in my brain.

Whether latte, cappuccino, black or Greek
you keep me cooking, you keep me on line.
Without you, I would never get out of bed

but spend my life pressing the snooze
button. I would creep through wan days
in the form of a large shiny slug.

You waken in me the gift of speech
when I am dumb as a rock buried in damp earth.
It is you who make me human every dawn.
All my books are written with your ink.

Read this Moment.

2008-07-23T14:33:00.000-04:00

Moment Vanishing
by Elizabeth Spires

Now, in the quietude of evening, the dove comes.
It does not flash its feathers, does not
make a sound, but feeds on what the finches
leave behind. How little it needs.
A few hard seeds. A drop of water.

It is late summer. It is always
late summer here. The air is hot and dry.
Brown leaves lie like hands in the yard.
There is no place to turn. No place to stop.
We are hurried along, pushed farther into our lives.

Moments are vanishing all over the earth
as bombs explode, the victim is hooded,
great populations scatter on endless dust roads.
It is too much. We avert our eyes.
We wait like children for the coming of the dove.

And if I were allowed a question,
one question, of the evening dove
who asks for nothing, whose pleasure
is a few small seeds, whose heart I covet,
I would ask, O what will I become?

Baby's First Primer

2008-07-09T17:31:00.001-04:00

A Primer of the Daily Round
by Howard Nemerov

A peels an apple, while B kneels to God,
C telephones to D, who has a hand
On E's knee, F coughs, G turns up the sod
For H's grave, I do not understand
But J is bringing one clay pigeon down
While K brings down a nightstick on L's head,
And M takes mustard, N drives into town,
O goes to bed with P, and Q drops dead,
R lies to S, but happens to be heard
By T, who tells U not to fire V
For having to give W the word
That X is now deceiving Y with Z,
Who happens just now to remember A
Peeling an apple somewhere far away.

Whale of a Poem

2008-06-07T12:23:00.000-04:00

Things to Do in the Belly of the Whale
by Dan Albergotti

Measure the walls. Count the ribs. Notch the long days.
Look up for blue sky through the spout. Make small fires
with the broken hulls of fishing boats. Practice smoke signals.
Call old friends, and listen for echoes of distant voices.
Organize your calendar. Dream of the beach. Look each way
for the dim glow of light. Work on your reports. Review
each of your life's ten million choices. Endure moments
of self-loathing. Find the evidence of those before you.
Destroy it. Try to be very quiet, and listen for the sound
of gears and moving water. Listen for the sound of your heart.
Be thankful that you are here, swallowed with all hope,
where you can rest and wait. Be nostalgic. Think of all
the things you did and could have done. Remember
treading water in the center of the still night sea, your toes
pointing again and again down, down into the black depths.

I want all poems to be like this.

2008-05-27T21:33:00.000-04:00

What We Want
by Linda Pastan

What we want
is never simple.
We move among the things
we thought we wanted:
a face, a room, an open book
and these things bear our names—
now they want us.
But what we want appears
in dreams, wearing disguises.
We fall past,
holding out our arms
and in the morning
our arms ache.
We don't remember the dream,
but the dream remembers us.
It is there all day
as an animal is there
under the table,
as the stars are there

April

2008-04-10T12:06:00.000-04:00

Before A Departure in Spring
by WS Merwin

Once more it is April with the first light sifting
through the young leaves heavy with dew making the colors
remember who they are the new pink of the cinnamon tree
the gilded lichens of the bamboo the shadowed bronze
of the kamani and the blue day opening
as the sunlight descends through it all like the return
of a spirit touching without touch and unable
to believe it is here and here again and awake
reaching out in silence into the cool breath
of the garden just risen from darkness and days of rain
it is only a moment the birds fly through it calling
to each other and are gone with their few notes and the flash
of their flight that had vanished before we ever knew it
we watch without touching any of it and we
can tell ourselves only that this is April this is the morning
this never happened before and we both remember it

Lets talk about this.

2008-04-06T12:16:00.001-04:00

To Psychoanalysis
by Kenneth Koch

I took the Lexington Avenue subway
To arrive at you in your glory days
Of the Nineteen Fifties when we believed
That you could solve any problem
And I had nothing but disdain
For "self-analysis" "group analysis" "Jungian analysis"
"Adlerian analysis" the Karen Horney kind
All—other than you, pure Freudian type—
Despicable and never to be mine!
I would lie down according to your
Dictates but not go to sleep.
I would free-associate. I would say whatever
Came into my head. Great
Troops of animals floated through
And certain characters like Picasso and Einstein
Whatever came into my head or my heart
Through reading or thinking or talking
Came forward once again in you. I took voyages
Down deep unconscious rivers, fell through fields,
Cleft rocks, went on through hurricanes and volcanoes.
Ruined cities were as nothing to me
In my fantastic advancing. I recovered epochs,
Gold of former ages that melted in my hands
And became toothpaste or hazy vanished citadels. I dreamed
Exclusively for you. I was told not to make important decisions.
This was perfect. I never wanted to.
On the Har-Tru surface of my emotions
Your ideas sank in so I could play again.
But something was happening. You gave me an ideal
Of conversation—entirely about me
But including almost everything else in the world.
But this wasn't poetry it was something else.
After two years of spending time in you
Years in which I gave my best thoughts to you
And always felt you infiltrating and invigorating my feelings
Two years at five days a week, I had to give you up.
It wasn't my idea. "I think you are nearly through,"Dr. Loewenstein said.
"You seem much better." But, Light!
Comedy! Tragedy! Energy! Science! Balance! Breath!
I didn't want to leave you. I cried. I sat up.I stood up. I lay back down. I sat. I said
But I still get sore throats and have hay fever
"And some day you are going to die. We can't cure everything."
Psychoanalysis! I stood up like someone covered with light
As with paint, and said Thank you. Thank you.
It was only one moment in a life, my leaving you.
But once I walked out, I could never think of anything seriously
For fifteen years without also thinking of you. Now what have we
become?You look the same, but now you are a past You.
That's fifties clothing you're wearing. You have some fifties ideas
Left—about sex, for example. What shall we do? Go walking?
We're liable to have a slightly frumpy look,
But probably no one will notice—
another something I didn't know then.

In the midnight hour

2008-03-07T12:55:00.002-05:00

Vex Me
by Barbara Hamby

Vex me, O Night, your stars stuttering like a stuck jukebox,
put a spell on me, my bones atremble at your tabernacle

of rhythm and blues. Call out your archers, chain me
to a wall, let the stone fortress of my body fall

like a rabid fox before an army of dogs. Rebuke me,
rip out my larynx like a lazy snake and feed it to the voiceless throng.

For I am midnight's girl, scouring unlit streets
like Persephone stalking her swarthy lord. Anoint me

with oil, make me greasy as a fast-food fry.
Deliver me like a pizza to the snapping crack-house hours between

one and four. Build me an ark, fill it with prairie moths,
split-winged fritillaries, blue-bottle flies. Stitch

me a gown of taffeta and quinine, starlight and nightsoil,
and when the clock tocks two, I'll be the belle of the malaria ball.

Wake Without A Question.

2008-02-27T00:21:00.000-05:00

Rain Light
by W. S. Merwin

All day the stars watch from long ago
my mother said I am going now
when you are alone you will be all right
whether or not you know you will know
look at the old house in the dawn rain
all the flowers are forms of water
the sun reminds them through a white cloud
touches the patchwork spread on the hill
the washed colors of the afterlife
that lived there long before you were born
see how they wake without a question
even though the whole world is burning

W.S. Merwin is afraid of nothing.

2008-02-27T00:17:00.003-05:00

A Single Autumn
by W. S. Merwin

The year my parents died
one that summer one that fall
three months and three days apart
I moved into the house
where they had lived their last years
it had never been theirs
and was still theirs in that way
for a while

echoes in every room
without a sound
all the things that we
had never been able to say
I could not remember

doll collection
in a china cabinet
plates stacked on shelves
lace on drop-leaf tables
a dried branch of bittersweet
before a hall mirror
were all planning to wait

the glass doors of the house
remained closed
the days had turned cold
and out in the tall hickories
the blaze of autumn had begun
on its own

I could do anything

A distinctly American poem.

2008-02-13T13:27:00.002-05:00

Dream Home
by William Reichard

It's south of here because, mostly,everything is;
what is north is smaller,thicker, more compact to keep out the cold.

Down there, where it's warmer,
it spreads out luxuriously across a flattened mountain top.
There's a lake below, more mountains

beyond. The scenery is guaranteed.
Down there, our lives would be something to marvel at: breakfast

on the terrace every day, a swim in the afternoon, dinner by candlelight
every night. Down there, life would be

just like it is in the movies, the old movies,
at least: elegant yet simple, in an age

that must remain unquestioned.
Up here, it's much more complicated.

Or, it's just not so clear. Or classy.
Dinner is served in front of the television,

and most of the year, you can't
eat outside. Enter every day for your

chance to win! cries the television promotion.
And we do, oh Lord. Yes we do.

The Best Question Ever.

2008-02-11T12:13:00.000-05:00

Someone I cared for
by Cid Corman

Someone I cared for
put it to me: Who
do you think you are?

I went down the list
of all the many
possibilities

carefully did it
twice but couldn't find
a plausible one.

That was when I knew
for the first time who
in fact I wasn't.

Let's Escape, You and I

2008-01-16T19:14:00.000-05:00

The Very Rich Hours of the Houses of France
By David Kirby

Our plane falls from the sky
into France, where everyone seems
so much happier than we are,
but no, it's not the people
who are happy, it's the buildings,
the high-beamed Norman farmhouses,
the cottages with roofs of trim thatch,
the chateaux set in verdant vineyards.
The people are like you and me:
their clothes don't fit very well,
their children are ungrateful,
and they're always blowing their noses.
But the buildings are warm and well-lit,
and even the ones that aren't,
the ones that have bad lighting
and poor insulation and green things
growing on the tile, even these
seem to be trying like crazy to comfort us,
to say something to us in French,
in House, in words we can understand.

Called it.

2007-12-23T12:27:00.000-05:00

Call It Quits
by Freya Manfred

If you're not a movie mogul, rock star, or President
if you're not a CEO sitting on a billion in the bank,
no on will answer your e-mails, phone calls or letters.
You'll be helpless, hopeless, too old, too young,
in too much pain, the wrong color, some unacceptable
sex, a non-believer in some religion people kill for.
You could be struggling to see through everyone's
skin to their slick, writhing guts, including your own.
Or, you could call it quits, and slip into the unknown,
inexhaustible, frothing teeth of the sea that turns us
all to brine, sweet salt of the universe.

(The Writer's Almanac)

This poem holds a special place in my heart.

2007-12-05T21:49:00.000-05:00

Failure

by Philip Schultz

To pay for my father's funeral
I borrowed money from people
he already owed money to.
One called him a nobody.
No, I said, he was a failure.
You can't remember a nobody's name, that's why
they're called nobodies.
Failures are unforgettable.
The rabbi who read a stock eulogy
about a man who didn't belong to
or believe in anything
was both a failure and a nobody.
He failed to imagine the son
and wife of the dead man
being shamed by each word.
To understand that not believing in or belonging to
anything demanded a kind of faith and buoyancy.
An uncle, counting on his fingers
my father's business failures
a parking lot that raised geese,
a motel that raffled honeymoons,
a bowling alley with roving mariachis
failed to love and honor his brother,
who showed him how to whistle
under covers, steal apples
with his right or left hand.
Indeed, my father was comical.
His watches pinched, he tripped on his pant cuffs and snored
loudly in movies, where
his weariness overcame him
finally. He didn't believe in:
savings insurance newspapers
vegetables good or evil human
frailty history or God.
Our family avoided us,
fearing boils. I left town
but failed to get away.

Love Life!

2007-10-20T16:00:00.000-04:00

Hum
by Mary Oliver

What is this dark hum among the roses?
The bees have gone simple, sipping,
that's all. What did you expect? Sophistication?
They're small creatures and they are filling
their bodies with sweetness, how could they not moan in happiness?
The little worker bee lives, I have read, about three weeks.
Is that long? Long enough, I suppose, to understand
that life is a blessing. I have found them-haven't you?
Stopped in the very cups of the flowers, their wings
a little tattered-so much flying about, to the hive,
then out into the world, then back, and perhaps dancing,
should the task be to be a scout-sweet, dancing bee.
I think there isn't anything in this world I don't admire.
If there is, I don't know what it is. I haven't met it yet.
Nor expect to. The bee is small,
and since I wear glasses, so I can see the traffic and read books,
I have to
take them off and bend close to study and
understand what is happening. It's not hard, it's in fact
as instructive as anything I have ever studied. Plus, too,
it's love almost too fierce to endure, the beenuzzling like that into the blouse
of the rose. And the fragrance, and the honey, and of course
the sun, the purely pure sun, shining, all the while, over
all of us.

Homesick?

2007-09-19T13:46:00.000-04:00

"Letter to N.Y."
For Louise Crane
by Elizabeth Bishop

In your next letter I wish you'd say
where you are going and what you are doing;
how are the plays, and after the plays
what other pleasures you're pursuing:
taking cabs in the middle of the night,
driving as if to save your soul
where the road goes round and round the park
and the meter glares like a moral owl,
and the trees look so queer and green
standing alone in big black caves
and suddenly you're in a different place
where everything seems to happen in waves,
and most of the jokes you just can't catch,
like dirty words rubbed off a slate,
and the songs are loud but somehow dim
and it gets so terribly late,
and coming out of the brownstone house
to the gray sidewalk, the watered street,
one side of the buildings rises with the sun
like a glistening field of wheat.

Wheat, not oats, dear. I'm afraid
if it's wheat it's none of your sowing,
nevertheless I'd like to know
what you are doing and where you are going.

1 of 4 Found

2007-09-13T03:33:00.000-04:00

Found Poems
By Robert Phillips

iv. (from a letter by Vincent Van Gogh)

I think that I still have it
in my heart someday
to paint a bookshop
with the front yellow and pink, in the evening,
and the black passerby like a light
in the midst of darkness.

Short Story Shortened to a Poem

2007-08-16T12:39:00.000-04:00

A Country Story
by Kenneth Fields

"When I was a little girl back in East Texas,"My mother's mother, Beulah,
used to tell,"There was an outbreak of the German measles,
Mama was pregnant, so I went away
To a neighbor lady's, three or four miles from home
When the first signs showed. I was just eight, and sick,
And lonesome for Mama. One day she came for me.
My little sister had broken out, and Mama
Figuring she would die, and the baby, too,
Wanted us all together for those last weeks.
She wanted me home with her.
As it turned out
My sister had been reading by the fire
And broke out from the heat, and it was me
That carried the measles home.
After Mama died
I used to think of seeing her out the window
Talking to the neighbor lady on that day,
Crying and wiping her eyes with her apron hem."

To Think, To Be, To Live

2007-08-15T16:18:00.000-04:00

Ghost of a Chance
by Adrienne Rich

You see a man
trying to think.

You want to say
to everything:
Keep off! Give him room!
But you only watch,
terrified
the old consolations
will get him at last
like a fish
half-dead from flopping
and almost crawling
across the shingle,
almost breathing
the raw, agonizing
air
til a wave
pulls it back blind into the triumphant
sea.

For My New York Friends Today

2007-08-09T02:16:00.000-04:00

Stifled Impulse
By Bernadette Geyer

All the weight of this summer air-
heavy with humidity and honeysuckle-
flows over us, and,
three hundred miles from the Atlantic Ocean,
we drown in the brine of our sweat and tears,
ladled out like a soup for the gods.

How do You think it ends?

2007-08-09T02:11:00.000-04:00

The Story Begins
by Susan Grafeld Long

The story begins with a word or a world:
roses, an old man carrying a bouquet
rushing down a cobblestone street in the rain
and a younger woman in red carrying a chandelier
down another street to a repair store,
or crystals in the rain, a worn tweed coat, hope,
a scherzo of rain and wind, a bouquet of glass,
rain bouncing off a red raincoat,
what was not said long ago at a dining room table,
a corner at which two people will meet.

Captured in one moment

2007-08-03T12:24:00.000-04:00

Tell Me
by Anne Pierson Wiese

There are many people who spend their nights
on the subway trains. Often one encounters
them on the morning commute,
settled in corners, coats over their heads,
ragged possessions heaped around themselves,
trying to remain in their own night.

This man was already up, bracing himself against
the motion of the train as he folded his blanket
the way my mother taught me,
and donned his antique blazer, his elderly,
sleep-soft eyes checking for the total effect.
Whoever you are-tell me what unforgiving series
of moments has added up to this one:
a man making himself presentable to the world in front of the world,
as if life has revealed to him the secret
that all our secrets from one another are imaginary.

Knock Out!

2007-07-27T09:26:00.000-04:00

"The Friday Night Fights"
by Ronald Wallace

Friday night we watched the fights.
Me, ten years old and stretched out on the couch;
my father, in his wheelchair, looking on
as Rocky Marciano, Sonny Liston, Floyd Patterson
fought and won the battles we could not.

Him, twenty-nine, and beat up with disease;
me, counting God among my enemies
for what he'd done to us. We never touched.
But in between the rounds we'd sing how we'd
Look sharp! Feel sharp! & Be sharp! With Gillette
And Howard Cosell, the Bela Lugosi of boxing.
Out in the kitchen, my mother never understood
our need for blood, how this was as close as we'd get
to love-bobbing and weaving, feinting and sparring.

Lesson in Kindness

2007-07-23T10:07:00.000-04:00

Kindness
by Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or friend.

(From The Writer's Almanac this morning.)

I Heart This Poem

2007-06-21T12:11:00.000-04:00

"I {Heart} My Wife"
by Darlyn Finch

I {Heart} My Wife"
the bumper sticker read
in the window of the pickup truck
ahead of me at the red light,
and I burst into tears
for no particular reason
I could explain
to the crossing guard on the corner
or even to the man driving the truck,
who looked quite ordinary,
and did not realize
those four happy word
scould rip a woman's heart out
under certain circumstances,
when she's one man's abscessed tooth,
and another's dirty little secret.

Then I stopped to wonder,
as I blew my nose
and wiped my eyes,
whether the man had bought the bumper sticker
at all, or if his wife had perhaps stuck it there,
in the window behind his head,
as a message to women like me,
whom she surely knows are sitting
at every red light in every town,
wishing they could one day be
someone's
very best thing.

Be Happy

2007-06-19T22:41:00.000-04:00

Publication Date
by Franz Wright

One of the few pleasures of writing
is the thought of one’s book in the hands of a kind-hearted
intelligent person somewhere. I can’t remember what the
others are right now.
I just noticed that it is my own private

National I Hate Myself and Want to Die Day
(which means the next day I will love my life
and want to live forever). The forecast calls
for a cold night in Boston all morning

and all afternoon. They say
tomorrow will be just like today,
only different. I’m in the cemetery now
at the edge of town, how did I get here?

A sparrow limps past on its little bone crutch saying
I am Frederico Garcia Lorca
risen from the dead–
literature will lose, sunlight will win, don’t worry.

Listen

2007-06-19T22:34:00.000-04:00

Passer-by, these are words...
by Yves Bonnefoy

Passer-by, these are words. But instead of reading
I want you to listen: to this frail
Voice like that of letters eaten by grass.

Lend an ear, hear first of all the happy bee
Foraging in our almost rubbed-out names.
It flits between two sprays of leaves,
Carrying the sound of branches that are real
To those that filigree the still unseen.

Then know an even fainter sound, and let it be
The endless murmuring of all our shades.
Their whisper rises from beneath the stones
To fuse into a single heat with that blind
Light you are as yet, who can still gaze.

May your listening be good! Silence
Is a threshold where a twig breaks in your hand,
Imperceptibly, as you attempt to disengage
A name upon a stone:

And so our absent names untangle your alarms.
And for you who move away, pensively,
Here becomes there without ceasing to be.

Necessity at it's Best

2007-05-29T17:41:00.000-04:00

Advice to Myself
by Louise Erdrich

Leave the dishes.
Let the celery rot in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator
and an earthen scum harden on the kitchen floor.
Leave the black crumbs in the bottom of the toaster.
Throw the cracked bowl out and don't patch the cup.
Don't patch anything. Don't mend. Buy safety pins.
Don't even sew on a button.
Let the wind have its way, then the earth
that invades as dust and then the dead
foaming up in gray rolls underneath the couch.
Talk to them. Tell them they are welcome.
Don't keep all the pieces of the puzzles
or the doll's tiny shoes in pairs, don't worry
who uses whose toothbrush or if anything
matches, at all.
Except one word to another. Or a thought.
Pursue the authentic-decide first
what is authentic,
then go after it with all your heart.
Your heart, that place
you don't even think of cleaning out.
That closet stuffed with savage mementos.
Don't sort the paper clips from screws from saved baby teeth
or worry if we're all eating cereal for dinner
again. Don't answer the telephone, ever,
or weep over anything at all that breaks.
Pink molds will grow within those sealed cartons
in the refrigerator. Accept new forms of life
and talk to the dead
who drift in though the screened windows, who collect
patiently on the tops of food jars and books.
Recycle the mail, don't read it, don't read anything
except what destroys
the insulation between yourself and your experience
or what pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters
this ruse you call necessity.

Happy Birthday

2007-05-07T11:35:00.000-04:00

Birthday Girl: 1950
by Linda McCarriston

for my mother

The day the package came
from Sears, you were ironing
and smoking, in the one slab of light
that elbowed in
between our three-decker
and the next one.
World Series Time, and the radio
bobbing on the square
end of the board told over
what you already knew:
The Sox are the same old bunch of bums! you said, slamming
the iron into some navy gabardine;
the smells of workclothes
Tideand oil rose up together
in steam around you,
like the roar of the crowd at Fenway
and the shouts, downstairs,
of Imalda, getting belted around her kitchen at noon.

Some people can make anything out of anything else.
If you still can, remember that day
like this: you douse your cigarette and squat down close;
I open the box addressed only to me
and find inside the pair of sandals
you call harlequin, with straps
as many colored as a life.
I am happy. You buckle them on me.
Every room is dark but where we are.
Every other room is empty.

(Found on Writer's Almanac)

Still there, still here

2007-05-05T18:39:00.000-04:00

Phantom Limbs
by Anne Michaels

So much of the city
is our bodies. Places in us
old light still slants through to.
Places that no longer exist but are full of
feeling,
like phantom limbs.

Even the city carries ruins in its heart.
Longs to be touched in places
only it remembers.

(Found in NY Times)

Ah, New York (sigh)...

2007-05-05T18:36:00.000-04:00

Neighborhood Poem
By Elaine Espinal

When I wake up, I see the moon,
I see it bloom.
I see the sun shine, in my eyes,
I hear the dogs barking, like the cars parking.
I smell the French toast, all the way from the
west coast.
I taste my breakfast, licking my lips,
I can taste it from a million miles away.
I touch everything that's in my neighborhood,
because this is home.

(Found in the NY Times)

And Only Me

2007-04-24T21:33:00.000-04:00

Only You
Rumi

only you
i choose
among the entire world

is it fair
of you
letting me be unhappy

my heart
is a pen
in your hand

it is all
up to you
to write me happy or sad

i see only
what you reveal
and live as you say

all my feelings
have the color
you desire to paint

from the beginning
to the end
no one but you

please make
my future
better than the past

when you hide
i change
to a Godless person

and when you
appear
i find my faith

don't expect
to find any more in me
than what you give

don't search for
hidden pockets because
i've shown you

that all i have
is all you gave.

A Poetry Break: Mike Daisey and the Night of the Walking Audience Zombies

2007-04-23T00:06:00.000-04:00

As readers of my blog know, I generally try to stick to posting poems.

However, one of my favorite performers was "protested" last week and I found out via his email list. Below is the letter he sent out and the link to his youtube link. I highly recommend you watch this bizarre event. Mike Daisey handled this with grace, humor, and integrity, and openness. He is a champion. --Kayla

Thursday night's performance of INVINCIBLE SUMMER was disrupted when eighty seven members of a Christian group walked out of the show en masse, and chose to physically attack my work by pouring water on and destroying the original of the show outline.

You can read about the incident, the aftermath and its consequences, as well as view YouTube footage of the whole thing going down, here:http://www.mikedaisey.com/2007/04/night-to-remember.sht

Apologies to all for mailing again so soon, but it's a sobering reminder that speech is never free unless it is defended ardently, and that even simple civility isn't simple when intolerant extremism is involved.

All the best,md

Wrong Numbers Right People

2007-04-22T23:57:00.000-04:00

Alaska
by Naomi Shihab Nye

The phone rang in the middle of the Fairbanks night and was
always a wrong number for the Klondike Lounge. Not here, I'd
say sleepily. Different place. We're a bunch of people rolled
up in quilts. Then I'd lie awake wondering, But how is it over
there at the Klondike? The stocky building nestled between
parking lots a few blocks from our apartment like some Yukon
explorer's good dream of smoky windows and chow. Surely
the comforting click of pool balls, the scent of old grease,
flannel, and steam. Back home in Texas we got wrong
numbers for the local cable TV company. People were
convinced I was a secretary who didn't want to talk to them.
They'd call four times in a row.
Sir, I eventually told a determined gentleman, We've been monitoring
your viewing and are sorry to report you watch entirely too much
television. You are currently ineligible for cable services. Try reading a book or
something. He didn't call back.
For the Klondike Lounge I finally mumbled, Come on over, the beer is on us.

Nature Wins Again

2007-04-18T22:24:00.001-04:00

The Fish
by Elizabeth Bishop

I caught a tremendous fish
and held him beside the boat
half out of water, with my hook
fast in a corner of his mouth.
He didn't fight.
He hadn't fought at all.
He hung a grunting weight,
battered and venerable
and homely. Here and there
his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper,
and its pattern of darker brown
was like wallpaper:
shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age.
He was speckled and barnacles,
fine rosettes of lime,
and infested
with tiny white sea-lice,
and underneath two or three
rags of green weed hung down.
While his gills were breathing in
the terrible oxygen--the frightening gills,
fresh and crisp with blood,
that can cut so badly--
I thought of the coarse white flesh
packed in like feathers,
the big bones and the little bones,
the dramatic reds and blacks
of his shiny entrails,
and the pink swim-bladder
like a big peony.
I looked into his eyes
which were far larger than mine
but shallower, and yellowed,
the irises backed and packed
with tarnished tinfoil
seen through the lenses
of old scratched isinglass.
They shifted a little, but not
to return my stare.
--It was more like the tipping
of an object toward the light.
I admired his sullen face,
the mechanism of his jaw,
and then I saw
that from his lower lip--
if you could call it a lipgrim, wet, and weaponlike,
hung five old pieces of fish-line,
or four and a wire leader
with the swivel still attached,
with all their five big hooks
grown firmly in his mouth.
A green line, frayed at the end
where he broke it, two heavier lines,
and a fine black thread
still crimped from the strain and snap
when it broke and he got away.
Like medals with their ribbons
frayed and wavering,
a five-haired beard of wisdom
trailing from his aching jaw.
I stared and stared
and victory filled up
the little rented boat,
from the pool of bilge
where oil had spread a rainbow
around the rusted engine
to the bailer rusted orange,
the sun-cracked thwarts,
the oarlocks on their strings,
the gunnels--until everything
was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!
And I let the fish go.

Don't be Late, My Love

2007-04-17T10:31:00.000-04:00

Waiting
by Raymond Carver

Left off the highway and
down the hill. At the
bottom, hang another left.
Keep bearing left. The road
will make a Y. Left again.
There's a creek on the left.
Keep going. Just before
the road ends, there'll be
another road. Take it
and no other. Otherwise,
your life will be ruined
forever. There's a log house
with a shake roof, on the left.
It's not that house. It's
the next house, just over a rise.
The house where trees are laden
with fruit. Where phlox, forsythia,
and marigold grow. It's
the house where the woman
stands in the doorway
wearing sun in her hair. The one
who's been waiting
all this time.
The woman who loves you.
The one who can say,"What's kept you?"

Regret Nothing.

2007-04-17T00:43:00.000-04:00

Why Regret?
By Galway Kinnell

Didn't you like the way the ants help
the peony globes open by eating the glue off?
Weren't you cheered to see the ironworkers
sitting on an I-beam dangling from a cable,
in a row, like starlings, eating lunch, maybe
baloney on white with fluorescent mustard?
Wasn't it a revelation to waggle
from the estuary all the way up the river,
the kill, the pirle, the run, the rent, the beck,
the sike barely trickling, to the shock of a spring?
Didn't you almost shiver, hearing book lice
clicking their sexual dissonance inside an old
Webster's New International, perhaps having just
eaten out of it izle, xyster, and thalassacon?
What did you imagine lies in wait anyway
at the end of a world whose sub-substance
is glaim, gleet, birdlime, slime, mucus, muck?
Forget about becoming emaciated. Think of the wren
and how little flesh is needed to make a song.
Didn't it seem somehow familiar when the nymph
split open and the mayfly struggled free
and flew and perched and then its own back
broke open and the imago, the true adult,
somersaulted out and took flight, seeking
the swarm, mouth-parts vestigial,
alimentary canal come to a stop,
a day or hour left to find the desired one?
Or when Casanova took up the platter
of linguine in squid's ink and slid the stuff
out the window, telling his startled companion,
"The perfected lover does not eat."
As a child, didn't you find it calming to imagine
pinworms as some kind of tiny batons
giving cadence to the squeezes and releases
around the downward march of debris?
Didn't you glimpse in the monarchs
what seemed your own inner blazonry
flapping and gliding, in desire, in the middle air?
Weren't you reassured to think these flimsy
hinged beings, and then their offspring,
and then their offspring's offspring, could
navigate, working in shifts, all the way to Mexico,
to the exact plot, perhaps the very tree,
by tracing the flair of the bodies of ancestors
who fell in this same migration a year ago?
Doesn't it outdo the pleasures of the brilliant concert
to wake in the night and find ourselves
holding hands in our sleep?

Baby Naming Game

2007-04-17T00:31:00.000-04:00

The List of Good Names
by Robert Fanning

Tonight, in the family style
pizzeria, we speak of having a child
some day. On a napkin smudged red
where the leaky felt tip lingered,
I watch meteors, sperm and tadpoles
cross the paper sky, as you
draw up a list of good names.

Looking at the list, I'm a substitute
teacher practicing attendance
before the class arrives:
Isabella, Gabriel, Rose. Who will be
the bookworm, the athlete, the clown?

Around us, the families finish
dinner, pack into minivans and leave.
The pimpled waiter picks up
broken crayons, wipes sauce
from a plastic high chair,
unplugs the video game.

Soon the room's as silent
the ticking of the clock, my rubber
lips click. Whispering the list's
first name, I hear the voice

I used when I spoke your name
the first time that voice I've used
when I try the name of an unknown
plant, or when I'm scared, or when
I pray, or when I know a stranger
now listens in the next booth,
the one I thought was vacant.

Now You See Me, Now You Don't

2007-03-29T10:20:00.000-04:00

The Art of Disappearing
by Naomi Shihab Nye

When they say Don't I know you?
say no.

When they invite you to the party
remember what parties are like before answering.
Someone telling you in a loud voice
they once wrote a poem.
Greasy sausage balls on a paper plate.
Then reply.

If they say We should get together
say why?
It's not that you don't love them anymore.
You're trying to remember something
too important to forget.
Trees. The monastery bell at twilight.
Tell them you have a new project.
It will never be finished.

When someone recognizes you in a grocery store
nod briefly and become a cabbage.
When someone you haven't seen in ten years
appears at the door,
don't start singing him all your new songs.
You will never catch up.

Walk around feeling like a leaf.
Know you could tumble any second.
Then decide what to do with your time.

Growing Pains

2007-03-21T12:45:00.000-04:00

A Little Tooth
By Thomas Lux

Your baby grows a tooth, then two,
and four, and five, then she wants some meat
directly from the bone. It's all

over; she'll learn some words, she'll fall
in love with cretins, dolts, a sweet
talker on his way to jail. And you,

your wife, get old, flyblown, and rue
nothing. You did, you loved, your feet
are sore. It's dust. Your daughter's tall.

Imagine Spring Images

2007-03-21T12:39:00.000-04:00

First Day of Spring
by Ann Hudson

It's a wild March morning in Chicago, the wind
dragging its nets through the streets.
Trawling for its usual and plentiful treasures:

crushed styrofoam cups, torn newspapers,
lost gloves, a blizzard of fast food napkins.
I take my eight-year-old Toyota

through the car wash. Idling in neutral,
I ease past the powerful, shaggy brushes,
the nozzles spraying limp foam onto the hood,

and remember the sick excitement I felt
when my father took my sisters and me through,
all the windows of our '67 baby blue Valiant

tightly cranked, the antenna pushed into its sleeve,
our doors locked against who-knows-what,
the three of us with our identical haircuts

buckled into the back seat, our identical shoes
drumming the vinyl. I was sure
those huge blue brushes would crash

right through the windshield and pin us to our seats.
At eight, a child sure of impending danger this
was about all the thrill I could handle.

I pull out of the car wash into the tangle
of traffic, past the bars that open at nine in the morning
and stay open, past the disheveled and pacing junkies,

past the crumbling theater draped in shadow and disrepair,
and make slow headway against the wind
that gathers the stray grocery bags all over the city,

whipping them against the masts
of budding hawthorns, silver maples,
bald cypress, green ash, green ash.

Wild Thing, I think I love You...

2007-03-20T13:47:00.000-04:00

Wilderness
By Lorine Niedecker

You are the man
You are my other country
and I find it hard going

You are the prickly pear
You are the suddent violent storm

the torrent to raise the river
to float the wounded doe

Patience is a virtue if you are patient enough to wait for it.

2007-03-05T18:10:00.000-05:00

While We Wait for Spring
by Todd Davis

While We Wait for Spring
The last three days snow has fallen.
No thaw this year, no day even above
twenty since the end of December.
Climbing the hill, my two boys slip, fall, stand again.
They complain, but there's nothing
to be done except to make it to the top
where above the trees we will look down upon the river.
Near the peak a barred owl
releases from the limb of a burr oak, sweeps
over our heads and out above the tree line.
Our eyes follow its flight to the river ice,
current moving beneath its blue surface.
Like the owl, our breath rises, drifts
toward something warmer, something better.

Big City Blues

2007-02-06T11:42:00.000-05:00

Goodbye, New York
(song from the wrong side of the Hudson)

By Deborah Garrison

You were the big fat city we called hometown
You were the lyrics I sang but never wrote down

You were the lively graves by the highway in Queens
the bodega where I bought black beans

stacks of the Times we never read
nights we never went to bed

the radio jazz, the doughnut cart
the dogs off their leashes in Tompkins Square Park

You were the tiny brass mailbox key
the joy of "us" and the sorrow of "me"

You were the balcony bar in Grand Central Station
the blunt commuters and their destination

the post-wedding blintzes at 4 A.M.
and the pregnant waitress we never saw again

You were the pickles, you were the jar
You were the prizefight we watched in a bar

the sloppy kiss in the basement at Nell's
the occasional truth that the fortune cookie tells

Sinatra still swinging at Radio City
You were ugly and gorgeous but never pretty

always the question, never the answer
the difficult poet, the aging dancer

the call I made from a corner phone
to a friend in need, who wasn't at home

the fireworks we watched from a tenement roof
the brash allegations and the lack of any proof

my skyline, my byline, my buzzer and door
now you're the dream we lived before

Life's First Draft

2007-01-17T10:47:00.000-05:00

What's in my Journal
By William Stafford

Odd things, like a button drawer. Mean
Things, fishhooks, barbs in your hand.
But marbles too. A genius for being agreeable.
Junkyard crucifixes, voluptuous
discards. Space for knickknacks, and for
Alaska. Evidence to hang me, or to beatify.
Clues that lead nowhere, that never connected
anyway. Deliberate obfuscation, the kind
that takes genius. Chasms in character.
Loud omissions. Mornings that yawn above
a new grave. Pages you know exist
but you can't find them. Someone's terribly
inevitable life story, maybe mine.

Bright Lights, Best People

2006-12-05T23:26:00.000-05:00

Broadway
By Mark Doty

Under Grand Central's tattered vault
--maybe half a dozen electric stars still lit--
one saxophone blew, and a sheer black scrim

billowed over some minor constellation
under repair. Then, on Broadway, red wings
in a storefront tableau, lustrous, the live macaws

preening, beaks opening and closing
like those animated knives that unfold all night
in jewelers' windows. For sale,

glass eyes turned outward toward the rain,
the birds lined up like the endless flowers
and cheap gems, the makeshift tables

of secondhand magazines
and shoes the hawkers eye
while they shelter in the doorways of banks.

So many pockets and paper cups
and hands reeled over the weight
of that glittered pavement, and at 103rd

a woman reached to me across the wet roof
of a stranger's car and said, I'm Carlotta,
I'm hungry. She was only asking for change,

so I don't know why I took her hand.
The rooftops were glowing above us,
enormous, crystalline, a second city

lit from within. That night
a man on the downtown local stood up
and said, My name is Ezekiel,

I am a poet, and my poem this evening is called
fall. He stood up straight
to recite, a child reminded of his posture

by the gravity of his text, his hands
hidden in the pockets of his coat.
Love is protected, he said,

the way leaves are packed in snow,
the rubies of fall. God is protecting
the jewel of love for us.

He didn't ask for anything, but I gave him
all the change left in my pocket,
and the man beside me, impulsive, moved,

gave Ezekiel his watch.
It wasn't an expensive watch,
I don't even know if it worked,

but the poet started, then walked away
as if so much good fortune
must be hurried away from,

before anyone realizes it's a mistake.
Carlotta, her stocking cap glazed
like feathers in the rain,

under the radiant towers, the floodlit ramparts,
must have wondered at my impulse to touch her,
which was like touching myself,

the way your own hand feels when you hold it
because you want to feel contained.
She said, You get home safe now, you hear?

In the same way Ezekiel turned back
to the benevolent stranger.
I will write a poem for you tomorrow,

he said. The poem I will write will go like this:
Our ancestors are replenishing
the jewel of love for us.

Hired!

2006-12-05T10:26:00.000-05:00

Things You Didn't Put On Your Resumé
by Joyce Sutphen

How often you got up in the middle of the night
when one of your children had a bad dream,

and sometimes you woke because you thought
you heard a cry but they were all sleeping,

so you stood in the moonlight just listening
to their breathing, and you didn't mention

that you were an expert at putting toothpaste
on tiny toothbrushes and bending down to wiggle

the toothbrush ten times on each tooth while
you sang the words to songs from Annie, and

who would suspect that you know the fingerings
to the songs in the first four books of the Suzuki

Violin Method and that you can do the voices
of Pooh and Piglet especially well, though

your absolute favorite thing to read out loud is
Bedtime for Frances and that you picked

up your way of reading it from Glynnis Johns,
and it is, now that you think of it, rather impressive

that you read all of Narnia and all of the Ring Trilogy
(and others too many to mention here) to them

before they went to bed and on way out to
Yellowstone, which is another thing you don't put

on the resumé: how you took them to the ocean
and the mountains and brought them safely home.

A sweaty poem, a real poem.

2006-11-27T21:51:00.000-05:00

Boat
to J.S.

By Sherine Gilmour

Years ago. Were we in Queens?
Yes, in the bedroom with the dresser
the super rescued for us.
The hanging plant was dying
in the open window.
Its knotty turf,
its basin of desiccated roots
clunked the glass. The breeze
carried the gray smell of strangers’ laundry
drying on a line
zigzagged between fire escapes,
the campfire smell of burnt beans,
the squeaks of pork fat frying in neighbor’s pans.
It was on that dark wood bed
found on the roadside that, after coming,
entirely balanced on you,
not touching the bed at all,
I closed my legs,
holding you in me while you softened,
my breastbone tapping your breastbone,
breathing against your breathing,
hands gripped to yours,
arms squeezed to our sides,
and I told you, “We’re a boat!”
while the canoe of our bodies
swayed back and forth.
And you whispered, “boat”
into my neck and hair.

The Most Fantastic Girl at the Party

2006-11-25T19:19:00.000-05:00

Wearing Paloma Picasso
By Elizabeth Smither

We leaned — two strangers — over
a balcony at a party where a tree
below, thick with blossom and bees
gave what you thought was a desirous scent.

What is the name of that tree, you asked
and I who could not smell it
or my own French perfume, newly splashed
about my throat and on my hair

said I didn’t know. Did those
white packed blossoms smell at all?
Were bees good judges? It’s me
I wanted to say to the fool. It’s me.

The Hero

2006-11-25T19:14:00.000-05:00

The Txt (From her poem, Daughter)
By Michele Amas

The txt
Mum come upstairz
my throats 2 sore
2 call out 2 u.

In firemother red
I take the stairs
two at a time.

Appreciation through Hindsight

2006-11-25T19:07:00.000-05:00

Haiku
By Kikaku, translated by Kenneth Rexroth

I may live on until
I long for this time
In which I am so unhappy,
And remember it fondly.

In honor of Casino Royale, and of all things British

2006-11-20T13:03:00.000-05:00

Helicopter Shots (for Malene)
By Louise Vale

Of course visuals are important.
But remember, you are writing for the British film industry,
and there will be no budget.
Keep crowd scenes to a minimum.
Avoid overseas locations, make it local, and
no explosions, crashing cars or other specials,
unless you're writing the next Bond
and you won't be for a while!
Anyway, they've all been done.
But above all, and remember this, no helicopter shots.

I love helicopter shots.
Slooping over early-morning Washington
in a drink-tilt, the Potomac glinting,
then a swing-curve across Arlington,
focusing hard down on the spin-wheel
that is the Pentagon; slow-weaving
through the pin-lit towers of Manhattan
at night; running over the dusty rooftops
of Kabul or, best of all, skimming the sea
low enough to make your own waves,
and get the audience sighing.

Very good effects can be achieved
with a crane camera, rented for the day
from a pop video or advertising campaign.
Use your imagination. Set key scenes on a cliff-top or, in London,
tie a rope between
two lamp-posts and swing the camera over.

I don't want to be British.

I want to shoot the whole film from a helicopter,
with steamy-windowed, frankly dangerous
love scenes between the pilot and co-pilot,
on a food aid mission over Lake Tanganyika,
and flashbacks to their combat in the Falklands War.
It will be sponsored by Westland and Sikorsky,
and climax in the bombing of the Sir Galahad
with extra, particularly convincing explosions
depth charges, live artillery and straker fire.
(Let's make it early evening, sunset backdrop.)

You will see the shooting-down of at least
ten attack helicopters; watch them fall
in exquisite, slow motion sycamore-spin
d sink into the heaving South Atlantic;
and it will all be filmed impeccably,
and at great expense, from above.

A thank you.

2006-11-19T20:58:00.001-05:00

Te Deum
By Charles Reznikoff

Not because of victories
I sing,
having none,
but for the common sunshine,
the breeze,
the largess of the spring.

Not for victory
but for the day's work done
as well as I was able;
not for a seat upon the dais
but at the common table.

Vacation all I ever wanted, vacation have to get away...

2006-11-19T20:53:00.000-05:00

Vacation
By Rita Dove

I love the hour before takeoff,
that stretch of no time, no home
but the gray vinyl seats linked like
unfolding paper dolls. Soon we shall
be summoned to the gate, soon enough
there’ll be the clumsy procedure of row numbers
and perforated stubs—but for now
I can look at these ragtag nuclear families
with their cooing and bickering
or the heeled bachelorette trying
to ignore a baby’s wail and the baby’s
exhausted mother waiting to be called up early
while the athlete, one monstrous hand
asleep on his duffel bag, listens,
perched like a seal trained for the plunge.
Even the lone executive
who has wandered this far into summer
with his lasered itinerary, briefcase
knocking his knees—even he
has worked for the pleasure of bearing
no more than a scrap of himself
into this hall. He’ll dine out, she’ll sleep late,
they’ll let the sun burn them happy all morning
—a little hope, a little whimsy
before the loudspeaker blurts
and we leap up to become
Flight 828, now boarding at Gate 17.

Cheers!

2006-11-15T21:00:00.000-05:00

In a redneck bar down the street
By Sandra Cisneros

my crazy
friend Pat
boasts she can chug
one bottle of Pabst
down one swig
without even touching
teeth grip
swing and it's up in
she glugging like a watercooler
everyone watching
boy that crazy
act every time gets them
bartender runs over
says lady don't
do that again

I miss my dogs.

2006-11-12T22:39:00.000-05:00

Animals
By Miller Williams

I think the death of domestic animals
mark the sea changes in our lives.
Think how things were, when things were different.
There was an animal then, a dog or a cat,
not the one you have now, another one.
Think when things were different before that.
There was another one then. You had almost forgotten.

Little Earthquake

2006-11-05T23:01:00.000-05:00

Break
By Dorianne Laux

We put the puzzle together piece
by piece, loving how one curved
notch fits so sweetly with another.
A yellow smudge becomes
the brush of a broom, and two blue arms
fill in the last of the sky.
We patch together porch swings and autumn
trees, matching gold to gold. We hold
the eyes of deer in our palms, a pair
of brown shoes.
We do this as the child
circles her room, impatient
with her blossoming, tired
of the neat house, the made bed,
the good food. We let her brood
as we shuffle through the pieces,
setting each one into place with a satisfied
tap, our backs turned for a few hours
to a world that is crumbling, a sky
that is falling, the pieces
we are required to return to.

Constellation Consolation

2006-11-04T23:21:00.000-05:00

Naming the Stars

By Joyce Sutphen

This present tragedy will eventually
turn into myth, and in the mist
of that later telling the bell tolling
now will be a symbol, or, at least,
a sign of something long since lost.

This will be another one of those
loose changes, the rearrangement of
hearts, just parts of old lives
patched together, gathered into
a dim constellation, small consolation.

Look, we will say, you can almost see
the outline there: her fingertips
touching his, the faint fusion
of two bodies breaking into light.

Codependence: The Poem

2006-11-04T00:12:00.000-05:00

Lift Your Right Arm
By Peter Cherches

Lift your right arm, she said.
I lifted my right arm.
Lift your left arm, she said.
I lifted my left arm.
Both of my arms were up.
Put down your right arm, she said.
I put it down.
Put down your left arm, she said.
I did.
Lift your right arm, she said.
I obeyed.
Put down your right arm.
I did.
Lift your left arm.
I lifted it.
Put down your left arm.
I did.
Silence.
I stood there, both arms down, waiting for her next
command. After a while I got impatient and said, what next.
Now it's your turn to give the orders, she said.
All right, I said. Tell me to lift my right arm.

Yep.

2006-11-04T00:05:00.000-05:00

Bad Day
By Kay Ryan

Not every day
is a good day
for the elfin tailor.
Some days
the stolen cloth
reveals what it was made for:
a handsome weskit
or the jerkin
of an elfin sailor.
Other days
the tailor
sees a jacket
in his mind
and sets about
to find the fabric.
But some days
neither the idea
nor the material
presents itself;
and these are the hard days
for the tailor elf.

Call your Mother.

2006-11-03T23:57:00.000-05:00

The Cord
By Leanne O’Sullivan

I used to lie on the floor for hours after
school with the phone cradled between
my shoulder and my ear, a plate of cold
rice to my left, my school books to my right.
Twirling the cord between my fingers
I spoke to friends who recognized the
language of our realm. Throats and lungs
swollen, we talked into the heart of the night,
toying with the idea of hair dye and suicide,
about the boys who didn’t love us,
who we loved too much, the pang
of the nights. Each sentence was
new territory, like a door someone was
rushing into, the glass shattering
with delirium, with knowledge and fear.
My Mother never complained about the phone bill,
what it cost for her daughter to disappear
behind a door, watching the cord
stretching its muscle away from her.
Perhaps she thought it was the only way
she could reach me, sending me away
to speak in the underworld.
As long as I was speaking
she could put my ear to the tenuous earth
and allow me to listen, to decipher.
And these were the elements of my Mother,
the earthed wire, the burning cable,
as if she flowed into the room with
me to somehow say, Stay where I can reach you,
the dim room, the dark earth. Speak of this
and when you feel removed from it
I will pull the cord and take you
back towards me.

A Month of Exceptional Expectations

2006-11-01T17:05:00.000-05:00

My November Guest
By Robert Frost

My Sorrow, when she's here with me,
Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be;
She loves the bare, the withered tree;
She walks the sodden pasture lane.

Her pleasure will not let me stay.
She talks and I am fain to list:
She's glad the birds are gone away,
She's glad her simple worsted grey
Is silver now with clinging mist.

The desolate, deserted trees,
The faded earth, the heavy sky,
The beauties she so truly sees,
She thinks I have no eye for these,
And vexes me for reason why.

Not yesterday I learned to know
The love of bare November days
Before the coming of the snow,
But it were vain to tell her so,
And they are better for her praise

For those harder days...

2006-10-24T17:54:00.001-04:00

To A Friend Whose Work Has Come To Nothing
By William Butler Yeats

Now all the truth is out,
Be secret and take defeat
From any brazen throat,
For how can you compete,
Being honour bred, with one
Who, were it proved he lies,
Were neither shamed in his own
Nor in his neighbours' eyes?
Bred to a harder thing
Than Triumph, turn away
And like a laughing string
Whereon mad fingers play
Amid a place of stone,
Be secret and exult,
Because of all things known
That is most difficult.

(Read Anne Sexton's For A Friend Whose Work Has Come to Triumph as a companion peice.)

One of A Kind

2006-10-21T23:53:00.000-04:00

Weird-Bird
By Shel Silverstein

Birds are flyin' south for winter.
Here's the Weird-Bird headin' north,
Wings a-flappin', beak a-chatterin',
Cold head bobbin' back 'n' forth.
He says, "It's not that I like ice
Or freezin' winds and snowy ground.
It's just sometimes it's kind of nice
To be the only bird in town."

Enough Said.

2006-10-21T23:49:00.000-04:00

This is Just to Say
By William Carlos Williams

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

Kitchen as War Zone

2006-10-19T00:01:00.000-04:00

In college, I loved this poem. Ten years later, I still love it, but now it's because I'm a bad cook and not an angry theatre major. By the way, I adore my husband. He cooks.

What's that Smell in the Kitchen?
By Marge Piercy

All over America women are burning dinners.

It's lambchops in Peoria, it's haddock
in Providence; it's steak in Chicago;
tofu delight in Big Sur; red
rice and beans in Dallas.

All over America women are burning
food they're supposed to bring with calico
smile on platters glittering like wax.
Anger sputters in her brainpan, confined
but spewing out missiles of hot fat.
Carbonized despair presses like a clinker
from a barbecue against the back of her eyes.

If she wants to grill anything, it's
her husband spitted over a slow fire.
If she wants to serve him anything
it's a dead rat with a bomb in its belly
ticking like the heart of an insomniac.
Her life is cooked and digested,
nothing but leftovers in Tupperware.

Look, she says, once I was roast duck
on your platter with parsley but now I am Spam.
Burning dinner is not incompetence but war.

Science, Then Silence

2006-10-18T00:33:00.000-04:00

When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer
by Walt Whitman

When I heard the learn'd astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide,
and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much
applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.

Brooklyn, The Love Story

2006-10-18T00:26:00.000-04:00

The Pennycandystore Beyond The El
By Lawrence Ferlinghetti

The pennycandystore beyond the El
is where i first fell in love
with unreality
Jellybeans glowed in the semi-gloom
of that september afternoon
A cat upon the counter moved among
the licorice sticks
and tootsie rolls
and Oh Boy Gum

Outside the leaves were falling as they died
A wind had blown away the sun
A girl ran in
Her hair was rainy
Her breasts were breathless in the little room

Outside the leaves were falling
and they cried
Too soon! too soon!

Every Savory Word Perfectly Placed...

2006-10-05T00:22:00.000-04:00

Japan
By Billy Collins

Today I pass the time reading
a favorite haiku,
saying the few words over and over.

It feels like eating
the same small, perfect grape
again and again.

I walk through the house reciting it
and leave its letters falling
through the air of every room.

I stand by the big silence of the piano and say it.
I say it in front of a painting of the sea.
I tap out its rhythm on an empty shelf.

I listen to myself saying it,
then I say it without listening,
then I hear it without saying it.

And when the dog looks up at me,
I kneel down on the floor
and whisper it into each of his long white ears.

It's the one about the one-ton temple bell
with the moth sleeping on its surface,
and every time I say it, I feel the excruciating
pressure of the moth
on the surface of the iron bell.

When I say it at the window,
the bell is the world
and I am the moth resting there.

When I say it at the mirror,
I am the heavy bell
and the moth is life with its papery wings.

And later, when I say it to you in the dark,
you are the bell,
and I am the tongue of the bell, ringing you,

and the moth has flown
from its line
and moves like a hinge in the air above our bed.

Gone...

2006-10-02T22:04:00.000-04:00

But Not Forgotten
By Dorothy Parker

I think, no matter where you stray,
That I shall go with you a way.
Though you may wander sweeter lands,
You will not soon forget my hands,
Nor yet the way I held my head,
Nor all the tremulous things I said.
You still will see me, small and white
And smiling, in the secret night,
And feel my arms about you when
The day comes fluttering back again.
I think, no matter where you be,
You'll hold me in your memory
And keep my image,
there without me,
By telling later loves about me.

Human Nature in the Natural World...

2006-10-01T23:01:00.000-04:00

Earth Tremors Felt in Missouri
By Mona Van Duyn

The quake last night was nothing personal,
you told me this morning. I think one always wonders,
unless, of course, something is visible: tremors
that take us, private and willy-nilly, are usual.

But the earth said last night that what I feel,
you feel; what secretly moves you, moves me.
One small, sensuous catastrophe
makes inklings letters, spelled in a worldly tremble.

The earth, with others on it, turns in its course
as we turn toward each other, less than ourselves,
gross, mindless, more than we were.

Pebbles, we swell
to planets, nearing the universal roll,
in our conceit even comprehending the sun,
whose bright ordeal leaves cool men woebegone.

Bayati, Table for Two...

2006-09-30T03:03:00.000-04:00

Bayati, Azerbaijani contemporary oral song. Azerbaijani is the Turkish dialect of the 11 million Turks in Iran. Each song has four parts (lines) of seven syllables.

Love Songs
By Reza Baraheni and Zahra-Soltan Shokoohtaezeh

White cups white
mist on the mountains.
I remember
your black moustache.

Your handkerchief should be blue,
a lover a good match.
With a handsome lover
you can stand pain.

What are you Waiting for?

2006-09-28T18:03:00.000-04:00

Wait
By Galway Kinnell

Wait, for now.
Distrust everything, if you have to.
But trust the hours. Haven't they
carried you everywhere, up to now?
Personal events will become interesting again.
Hair will become interesting.
Pain will become interesting.
Buds that open out of season will become lovely again.
Second-hand gloves will become lovely again,
their memories are what give them
the need for other hands. And the desolation
of lovers is the same: that enormous emptiness
carved out of such tiny beings as we are
asks to be filled; the need
for the new love _is_ faithfulness to the old.

Wait.
Don't go too early.
You're tired. But everyone's tired.
But no one is tired enough.
Only wait a while and listen.
Music of hair,
Music of pain,
music of looms weaving all our loves again.
Be there to hear it, it will be the only time,
most of all to hear,
the flute of your whole existence,
rehearsed by the sorrows, play itself into total exhaustion.

A poet and she knows it!

2006-09-26T23:41:00.000-04:00

I'm not publishing this poem just because Abby is my neice.
I'm publishing it because it's just darn great!

I LiKe (with a star dotting the i)

By: abby gluckman

I like to color.

I like to paint.

I wish I could draw

all night long!

I wish I could

I wish I would

be an artist all day long!

I might if I could

be a good one for my job!

I wish I could

I wish I might

be an artist all my life!

A Writer & His Muse

2006-09-25T18:10:00.000-04:00

Writing
By Charles Bukowski

often it is the only
thing
betwen you and
impossibility.
no drink,
no woman's love,
no wealth
can
match it.

On your mark...get set....go!

2006-09-24T22:12:00.000-04:00

Poems For People That Are Understandably
Too Busy to Read Poetry

By Stephen Dunn

Relax. This won't last long.
Or if it does, or if the lines
make you sleepy or bored,
give in to sleep, turn on
the T.V., deal the cards.
This poem is built to withstand
such things. Its feelings
cannot be hurt. They exist
somewhere in the poet,
and I am far away.
Pick it up anytime. Start it
in the middle if you wish.
It is as approachable as melodrama,
and can offer you violence
if it is violence you like. Look,
there's a man on a sidewalk;
the way his leg is quivering
he'll never be the same again.
This is your poem
and I know you're busy at the office
or the kids are into your last nerve.
Maybe it's sex you've always wanted.
Well, they lie together
like the party's unbuttoned coats,
slumped on the bed
waiting for drunken arms to move them.
I don't think you want me to go on;
everyone has his expectations, but this
is a poem for the entire family.
Right now, Budweiser
is dripping from a waterfall,
deodorants are hissing into armpits
of people you resemble,
and the two lovers are dressing now,
saying farewell.
I don't know what music this poem
can come up with, but clearly
it's needed. For it's apparent
they will never see each other again
and we need music for this
because there was never music when he or she
left you standing on the corner.
You see, I want this poem to be nicer
than life. I want you to look at it
when anxiety zigzags your stomach
and the last tranquilizer is gone
and you need someone to tell you
I'll be here when you want me
like the sound inside a shell.
The poem is saying that to you now.
But don't give anything for this poem.
It doesn't expect much. It will never say more
than listening can explain.
Just keep it in your attache case
or in your house. And if you're not asleep
by now, or bored beyond sense,
the poem wants you to laugh. Laugh at
yourself, laugh at this poem, at all poetry.
Come on:

Good. Now here's what poetry can do.

Imagine yourself a caterpillar.
There's an awful shrug and, suddenly,
You're beautiful for as long as you live.

In Flight Reading!

2006-09-24T22:09:00.000-04:00

Reading Moby-Dick at 30,000 Feet
By Tony Hoagland

At this height, Kansas
is just a concept,
a checkerboard design of wheat and corn

no larger than the foldout section
of my neighbor's travel magazine.
At this stage of the journey

I would estimate the distance
between myself and my own feelings
is roughly the same as the mileage

from Seattle to New York,
so I can lean back into the upholstered interval
between Muzak and lunch,

a little bored, a little old and strange.
I remember, as a dreamy
backyard kind of kid,

tilting up my head to watch
those planes engrave the sky
in lines so steady and so straight

they implied the enormous concentration
of good men,
but now my eyes flicker

from the in-flight movie
to the stewardess's pantyline,
then back into my book,

where men throw harpoons at something
much bigger and probably
better than themselves,

wanting to kill it,
wanting to see great clouds of blood erupt
to prove that they exist.

Imagine being born and growing up,
rushing through the world for sixty years
at unimaginable speeds.

Imagine a century like a room so large,
a corridor so long
you could travel for a lifetime

and never find the door,
until you had forgotten
that such a thing as doors exist.

Better to be on board the Pequod,
with a mad one-legged captain
living for revenge.

Better to feel the salt wind
spitting in your face,
to hold your sharpened weapon high,

to see the glisten
of the beast beneath the waves.
What a relief it would be

to hear someone in the crew
cry out like a gull,
Oh Captain, Captain!
Where are we going now?

Mr. Billy Collins, Not Interviewed by Me....

2006-09-24T21:39:00.000-04:00

Check out this great site and interview with one Mr. Billy Collins.
http://www.powells.com/authors/collins.html

Tone Deafs Unite!

2006-09-24T21:32:00.000-04:00

Oh, how I love this poem.

Tin Ear
By Peter Schmitt

We stood at attention as she moved
with a kind of Groucho shuffle
down our line, her trained music
teacher's ear passing by
our ten- and eleven-year-old mouths
open to some song now forgotten.
And as she held her momentary
pause in front of me, I peered
from the corner of my eye
to hers, and knew the truth
I had suspected.
In the following days,
as certain of our peers
disappeared at appointed hours
for the Chorus, something in me
was already closing shop.
Indeed, to this day
I still clam up
for the national anthem
in crowded stadiums, draw
disapproving alumni stares
as I smile the length of school songs,
and even hum and clap
through "Happy Birthday," creating
a diversionall lest I send
the collective pitch
careening headlong into dissonance.
It's only in the choice acoustics
of shower and sealed car
that I can finally give voice
to that heart deep within me
that is pure, tonally perfect, music.
But when the water stops running
and the radio's off, I can remember
that day in class,
when I knew for the first time
that mine would be a world of words
without melody, where refrain
means do not join,
where I'm ready to sing
in a key no one has ever heard.

The Best Cheerleader Ever

2006-09-20T23:54:00.000-04:00

This is one of my favorite poems. Sis-boom-bah!

(F-bomb spoiler alert: If you are easily offended by the F-Bomb, jump to the next poem.)

Fight Song
By Deborah Garrison

Sometimes you have to say it:
Fuck them all

Yes fuck them all -
the artsy posers,
the office blowhards
and brown-nosers;

Fuck the type who gets the job done
and the type who stands on principle;
the down-to-earth and understated;
the overhyped and underrated;

Project director?
Get a bullshit detector.

Client's mum?
Up your bum.

You can't be nice to everyone.

When your back is to the wall
When they don't return your call

When you're tired of saving face
When you're screwed in any case

Fuck culture scanners, contest winners,
subtle thinkers and the hacks that offend them;
people who give catered dinners
and (saddest of sinners) the sheep who attend them-

which is to say fuck yourself
and the person you were: polite and mature,
a trooper for good. The beauty is
they'll soon forget you

and if they don't
they probably should.

Delicious Poem: Great Taste & More Filling

2006-09-20T17:45:00.000-04:00

Are you what you eat?

Artichoke
By Henry Taylor

If poetry did not exist, would you
Have had the wit to invent it?
- Howard Nemerov

He had studied in private years ago
the way to eat these things, and was prepared
when she set the clipped green globe before him.
He only wondered (as he always did
when he plucked from the base the first thick leaf,
dipped it into the sauce and caught her eye
as he deftly set the velvet curve against
the inside edges of his lower teeth
and drew the tender pulp toward his tongue
while she made some predictable remark
about the sensuality of this act
then sheared away the spines and ate the heart)
what mind, what hunger, first saw this as food.