A Boat-Load of Poems from My Files

The north wind whips
BY VÍCTOR TERÁN
TRANSLATED BY DAVID SHOOK
Read the translator's notes
The north wind whips through,
in the streets papers and leaves
are chased with resentment.
Houses moan,
dogs curl into balls.
There is something in
the afternoon’s finger,
a catfish spine,
a rusty nail.
Someone unthinkingly
smoked cigarettes in heaven,
left it overcast, listless.
Here, at ground level, no one could
take their shadow for a walk,
sheltered in their houses, people
are surprised to discover their misery.
Someone didn’t show,
their host was insulted.
Today the world
agreed to open her thighs,
suddenly the village comprehends
that it is sometimes necessary to close their doors.
Who can tell me
why I meditate on this afternoon?
Why is it birthed in me
to knife the heart
of whoever uncovered the mouth
of the now whipping wind,
to jam corncobs in the nose
of the ghost that pants outside?
The trees roar with laughter,
they split their sides,
they celebrate
that you haven’t arrived at your appointment.
Now bring me
the birds
that you find in the trees,
so I can tell them
if the devil’s eyelashes are curled.
Long Finger Poem
BY JIN EUN-YOUNG
TRANSLATED BY PETER CAMPION
Read the translator's notes
I'm working on my poems and working with
my fingers not my head. Because my fingers
are the farthest stretching things from me.
Look at the tree. Like its longest branch
I touch the evening's quiet breathing. Sounds
of rain. The crackling heat from other trees.
The tree points everywhere. The branches can't
reach to their roots though. Growing longer they
grow weaker also. Can't make use of water.
Rain falls. But I'm working with these farthest stretching
things from me. Along my fingertips bare shoots
of days then years unfurl in the cold air.
A Dog Has Died
BY PABLO NERUDA
TRANSLATED BY ALFRED YANKAUER
My dog has died.
I buried him in the garden
next to a rusted old machine.
Some day I'll join him right there,
but now he's gone with his shaggy coat,
his bad manners and his cold nose,
and I, the materialist, who never believed
in any promised heaven in the sky
for any human being,
I believe in a heaven I'll never enter.
Yes, I believe in a heaven for all dogdom
where my dog waits for my arrival
waving his fan-like tail in friendship.
Ai, I'll not speak of sadness here on earth,
of having lost a companion
who was never servile.
His friendship for me, like that of a porcupine
withholding its authority,
was the friendship of a star, aloof,
with no more intimacy than was called for,
with no exaggerations:
he never climbed all over my clothes
filling me full of his hair or his mange,
he never rubbed up against my knee
like other dogs obsessed with sex.
No, my dog used to gaze at me,
paying me the attention I need,
the attention required
to make a vain person like me understand
that, being a dog, he was wasting time,
but, with those eyes so much purer than mine,
he'd keep on gazing at me
with a look that reserved for me alone
all his sweet and shaggy life,
always near me, never troubling me,
and asking nothing.
Ai, how many times have I envied his tail
as we walked together on the shores of the sea
in the lonely winter of Isla Negra
where the wintering birds filled the sky
and my hairy dog was jumping about
full of the voltage of the sea's movement:
my wandering dog, sniffing away
with his golden tail held high,
face to face with the ocean's spray.
Joyful, joyful, joyful,
as only dogs know how to be happy
with only the autonomy
of their shameless spirit.
There are no good-byes for my dog who has died,
and we don't now and never did lie to each other.
So now he's gone and I buried him,
and that's all there is to it.
Adolescence
BY ADRIENNE SU
The trouble was not about finding acceptance.
Acceptance was available in the depths of the mind
And among like people. The trouble was the look into the canyon
Which had come a long time earlier
And spent many years being forgotten.
The fine garments and rows of strong shoes,
The pantry stocked with good grains and butter—
Everything could be earned by producing right answers.
Answers were important, the canyon said,
But the answers were not the solution.
A glimpse into the future had shown the prairie
On which houses stood sturdily.
The earth was moist and generous, the sunlight benevolent.
The homesteaders dreamed up palaces and descendants,
And the animals slept soundly as stones.
It was a hard-earned heaven, the self-making
Of travelers, and often, out on the plains,
Mirages rose of waterfalls, moose, and rows of fresh-plowed soil,
But nobody stopped to drink the false water.
Real water being plentiful, they were not thirsty.
A few made their fortunes from native beauty,
Others from native strength, but most from knowledge,
As uncertainties in science could be written off to faith.
Faith was religious and ordinary life physical,
And spiritual was a song that had not yet arrived.
On the First Day She Made Birds
BY DIANA GARCÍA
He asked me
if I had a choice
what kind of bird
would I choose to be.
I know what he thought I’d say
since he tried to
end
my sentences half the time
anyway. Something exotic
he thought. He thought
maybe macaw.
That would fit
all loudmouthed
and primary colored
he would think.
(He thinks too much
I always thought.)
But really
at heart
I’m more
don’t laugh now
an L B J
little brown job
except
except
I’m not the
flit
from
branch
to
branch
type
such a waste
of energy all that
wing flap
and scritch scritch scratch.
Really now
can you see me
seed pod clamped
between my beak
like some landowner,
Havana cigar
clenched
between his teeth?
No
I think
not
I think
green heron.
You ask why?
Personality
mainly.
That hunched look
wings tucked to neck
waiting
waiting
in the sun
on a wide slab of rock
alongside a slow river
like some old man
up from a bad night’s dream
where he’s seen his coffin
and you say to him
Have a nice day
and he says
Make me.
Oh
you want looks
I’ll give you
looks:
long olive green feathers
a trace of
iridescence
I could stand
going out
iridescent
chestnut sides and head
a black crown
yes
a crown
something regal
to flash when you get
too close
dark bill
bright
yellow legs
and that creamy streak
down my throat and pecs
good
not great
but good
pecs
just enough for a quick
hop to the next.
The best part
no sexual dimorphism
male
female
both alike
endless possibilities
.
Photo of a Girl on a Beach
BY CARMEN GIMÉNEZ SMITH
Once when I was harmless
and didn’t know any better,
a mirror to the front of me
and an ocean behind,
I lay wedged in the middle of daylight,
paper-doll thin, dreaming,
then I vanished. I gave the day a fingerprint,
then forgot.
I sat naked on a towel
on a hot June Monday.
The sun etched the inside of my eyelids,
while a boy dozed at my side.
The smell of all oceans was around us—
steamy salt, shell, and sweat,
but I reached for the distant one.
A tide rose while I slept,
and soon I was alone. Try being
a figure in memory. It’s hollow there.
For truth’s sake, I’ll say she was on a beach
and her eyes were closed.
She was bare in the sand, long,
and the hour took her bit by bit.
My Grandmother Washes Her Feet in the Sink of
the Bathroom at Sears
BY MOHJA KAHF
My grandmother puts her feet in the sink
of the bathroom at Sears
to wash them in the ritual washing for prayer,
wudu,
because she has to pray in the store or miss
the mandatory prayer time for Muslims
She does it with great poise, balancing
herself with one plump matronly arm
against the automated hot-air hand dryer,
after having removed her support knee-highs
and laid them aside, folded in thirds,
and given me her purse and her packages to hold
so she can accomplish this august ritual
and get back to the ritual of shopping for housewares
Respectable Sears matrons shake their heads and frown
as they notice what my grandmother is doing,
an affront to American porcelain,
a contamination of American Standards
by something foreign and unhygienic
requiring civic action and possible use of disinfectant spray
They fluster about and flutter their hands and I can see
a clash of civilizations brewing in the Sears bathroom
My grandmother, though she speaks no English,
catches their meaning and her look in the mirror says,
I have washed my feet over Iznik tile in Istanbul
with water from the world's ancient irrigation systems
I have washed my feet in the bathhouses of Damascus
over painted bowls imported from China
among the best families of Aleppo
And if you Americans knew anything
about civilization and cleanliness,
you'd make wider washbins, anyway
My grandmother knows one culture—the right one,
as do these matrons of the Middle West. For them,
my grandmother might as well have been squatting
in the mud over a rusty tin in vaguely tropical squalor,
Mexican or Middle Eastern, it doesn't matter which,
when she lifts her well-groomed foot and puts it over the edge.
"You can't do that," one of the women protests,
turning to me, "Tell her she can't do that."
"We wash our feet five times a day,"
my grandmother declares hotly in Arabic.
"My feet are cleaner than their sink.
Worried about their sink, are they? I
should worry about my feet!"
My grandmother nudges me, "Go on, tell them."
Standing between the door and the mirror, I can see
at multiple angles, my grandmother and the other shoppers,
all of them decent and goodhearted women, diligent
in cleanliness, grooming, and decorum
Even now my grandmother, not to be rushed,
is delicately drying her pumps with tissues from her purse
For my grandmother always wears well-turned pumps
that match her purse, I think in case someone
from one of the best families of Aleppo
should run into her—here, in front of the Kenmore display
I smile at the midwestern women
as if my grandmother has just said something lovely about them
and shrug at my grandmother as if they
had just apologized through me
No one is fooled, but I
hold the door open for everyone
and we all emerge on the sales floor
and lose ourselves in the great common ground
of housewares on markdown.
Paired Things
BY KAY RYAN
Who, who had only seen wings,
could extrapolate the
skinny sticks of things
birds use for land,
the backward way they bend,
the silly way they stand?
And who, only studying
birdtracks in the sand,
could think those little forks
had decamped on the wind?
So many paired things seem odd.
Who ever would have dreamed
the broad winged raven of despair
would quit the air and go
bandylegged upon the ground,
a common crow?
What I Do
BY ROXANE BETH JOHNSON
Eat cereal. Read the back of the box over and over. Put on my red velvet
jumper with white heart shaped buttons. Walk to the bus, pick up
discarded cigarette butts and pretend to smoke.
Get on the bus. Girls yell, Wire head, ugly black skin. Take a window
seat, under the radio speaker. Look for cats hunting in the fields.
Go to class. Stay in at recess. Steal chewing gum, plastic green monkeys
and cookies from desks. Eat in bathroom stalls. Pure white light pours in.
Try to get a bloody nose by punching myself in the same bathroom after
lunch.
The teacher passes around pictures of herself pregnant. You were fat! I
yell. Everyone laughs. I lap it like licking honey from a spoon. I was
pregnant, what’s your excuse? Everyone laughs. I swallow stones.
Grow tired in the afternoons, droop like a sunflower in the lengthening
light.
Get on the bus. Girls yell, Brillo-head! Zebra! Sit in an aisle seat. Your
father’s a nigger! I say, No, he’s a fireman. Laughter all around. Pinch
myself shut like squeezing soap from a sponge.
Walk home. Sometimes find an unsmoked cigarette in the gravel along
the curb—long, white, new. Put it to my lips, pull it away and hold it aloft,
movie-star-like, all the way home.
Toasting Marshmallows
BY KRISTINE O'CONNELL GEORGE
I am a careful marshmallow toaster,
a patient marshmallow roaster,
turning my stick oh-so-slowly,
taking my time, checking often.
This is art--a time of serious reflection
as my pillowed confection
slowly reaches golden perfection.
My brother
grabs ‘em with grubby hands
shoves ‘em on the stick
burns ‘em to a crisp
cools ‘em off
flicks soot
eats quick.
I’m still turning my stick.
He’s already eaten six.
How to Love Bats
BY JUDITH BEVERIDGE
Begin in a cave.
Listen to the floor boil with rodents, insects.
Weep for the pups that have fallen. Later,
you’ll fly the narrow passages of those bones,
but for now —
open your mouth, out will fly names
like Pipistrelle, Desmodus, Tadarida. Then,
listen for a frequency
lower than the seep of water, higher
than an ice planet hibernating
beyond a glacier of Time.
Visit op shops. Hide in their closets.
Breathe in the scales and dust
of clothes left hanging. To the underwear
and to the crumbled black silks — well,
give them your imagination
and plenty of line, also a night of gentle wind.
By now your fingers should have
touched petals open. You should have been dreaming
each night of anthers and of giving
to their furred beauty
your nectar-loving tongue. But also,
your tongue should have been practising the cold
of a slippery, frog-filled pond.
Go down on your elbows and knees.
You’ll need a spieliologist’s desire for rebirth
and a miner’s paranoia of gases —
but try to find within yourself
the scent of a bat-loving flower.
Read books on pogroms. Never trust an owl.
Its face is the biography of propaganda.
Never trust a hawk. See its solutions
in the fur and bones of regurgitated pellets.
And have you considered the smoke
yet from a moving train? You can start
half an hour before sunset,
but make sure the journey is long, uninterrupted
and that you never discover
the faces of those Trans-Siberian exiles.
Spend time in the folds of curtains.
Seek out boarding-school cloakrooms.
Practise the gymnastics of web umbrellas.
Are you
floating yet, thought-light,
without a keel on your breastbone?
Then, meditate on your bones as piccolos,
on mastering the thermals
beyond the tremolo; reverberations
beyond the lexical.
Become adept
at describing the spectacles of the echo —
but don’t watch dark clouds
passing across the moon. This may lead you
to fetishes and cults that worship false gods
by lapping up bowls of blood from a tomb.
Practise echo-locating aerodromes,
stamens. Send out rippling octaves
into the fossils of dank caves —
then edit these soundtracks
with a metronome of dripping rocks, heartbeats
and with a continuous, high-scaled wondering
about the evolution of your own mind.
But look, I must tell you — these instructions
are no manual. Months of practice
may still only win you appreciation
of the acoustical moth,
hatred of the hawk and owl. You may need
to observe further the floating black host
through the hills.
The Universe: Original Motion Picture
Soundtrack
BY TRACY K. SMITH
The first track still almost swings. High hat and snare, even
A few bars of sax the stratosphere will singe-out soon enough.
Synthesized strings. Then something like cellophane
Breaking in as if snagged to a shoe. Crinkle and drag. White noise,
Black noise. What must be voices bob up, then drop, like metal shavings
In molasses. So much for us. So much for the flags we bored
Into planets dry as chalk, for the tin cans we filled with fire
And rode like cowboys into all we tried to tame. Listen:
The dark we've only ever imagined now audible, thrumming,
Marbled with static like gristly meat. A chorus of engines churns.
Silence taunts: a dare. Everything that disappears
Disappears as if returning somewhere.
Thinking American
BY HAYAN CHARARA
—For Dioniso D. Martínez
Take Detroit, where boys
are manufactured into men, where
you learn to think in American.
You speak to no one unless someone
speaks to you. Everyone is suspect:
baldheaded carriers from the post office;
old Polish ladies who swear
to Jesus, Joseph, and Mary;
your brother, especially your brother,
waiting in a long line for work.
There’s always a flip side.
No matter what happens,
tomorrow is a day away,
or a gin bottle if you can’t sleep,
and if you stopped drinking,
a pack of cigarettes. After that,
you’re on your own, you pack up
and leave. You still call
the city beside the strait home.
Make no mistake, it’s miserable.
After all, you bought a one-way
Greyhound ticket, cursed each
and every pothole on the road out.
But that’s where you stood
before a mirror in the dark,
where you were too tired
to complain. You never go back.
Things could be worse. Maybe.
Detroit is a shithole, it’s where
you were pulled from the womb
into the streets. Listen,
when I say Detroit, I mean any place.
By thinking American, I mean made.
Are We There Yet?
BY DOBBY GIBSON
You only have to make her one grilled cheese
in the suffocating heat of summer
while still wearing your wet swim trunks
to know what it’s like to be in love.
And you only have to sit once
for a haircut in the air conditioning
with the lovely stylist to forget all about it,
and to forget that anything in the universe
ever existed prior to the small, pink sweater
now brushing softly against your neck.
In this world, every birth is premature.
How else to explain all of this silence,
all of this screaming,
all of those Christmas card letters
about how well the kids are doing in school?
We’re all struggling to say the same old things
in new and different ways.
And so we must praise the new and different ways.
I don’t like Christmas.
I miss you that much.
For I, too, have heard the screaming,
and I, too, have tried to let it pass,
and still I’ve been up half the night
as if I were half this old,
and like you, I hate this kind of poetry
just as much as my life depends upon it.
They’re giving away tiny phones for free these days,
but they’ve only made
a decent conversation more precious.
One medicine stops the swelling,
another medicine stops the first medicine.
Just like you, I entered this world
made and kicking, and without you,
it’s precisely how I intend to go.
Diapers
BY JUAN DELGADO
INS officers raided a building, taking twelve illegal aliens into custody. The owner was cited for employing
workers without proper identification.
1. RAID
Ernesto’s boot heels are wild hooves
Being roped in, left bound in the air.
Carmen, slow-footed, nauseous with child,
Fights them off by swinging her purse.
“Pinche cabrones saben hablar español
Cuando nos van a arrestar,” she says
As her voice is drowned out by a row
Of washing machines on their rinse cycle.
Like a cat spooked out of a trash bin,
Sal runs into the street.
Chorus: ¡Chingado!
2. A GIRL AND HER FATHER
We were driving through town, Mama,
Right by where people pick up the bus
When this man jumps out right in front of us.
Dad hit the brakes. His eyes got this big, Mama.
He was running from the law, that’s for sure.
Just be glad no one got hurt, mija.
Try not to think about it anymore, mija.
We won’t go that way again, that’s for sure.
3. THE FACTORY
Two of the old-timers talked about unions:
“A trabajar, porque hablar de las uniones
Sólo trae la migra de nuevo.”
4. A YOUNG MOTHER
Can you imagine how many diapers
We went through with the twins?
The disposable ones were way too expensive,
So we switched to cloth. They were great. No,
We didn’t wash them. Thank God, we had a service.
We just put the dirty ones in plastic bags,
And they picked them up and dropped off clean ones
Right on our porch every two weeks.
It made things so much easier. And you know,
We didn’t have to worry about those summer rashes
Because their little bottoms could breathe better.
If you can afford the service, just do it.
Or at least do it for the first six months.
It’s even good for the environment.
5. JEFE
No son gallinas
Esperando un huevo.
¡A trabajar!
Chorus: ¡Chingado!
First Grade
BY RON KOERTGE
Until then, every forest
had wolves in it, we thought
it would be fun to wear snowshoes
all the time, and we could talk to water.
So who is this woman with the gray
breath calling out names and pointing
to the little desks we will occupy
for the rest of our lives?
Rattlesnakes Hammered on the Wall
BY RAY GONZALEZ
Seven of them pinned in blood by
long, shiny tails, three of them still
alive and writhing against the wood,
their heaviness whipping the wall
as they try to break free,
rattles beating in unison,
hisses slowly dying in silence,
the other four hanging stiff
like ropes to another life,
patterns of torn skin dripping
with power and loss, the wonder
of who might have done this
turning in shock as all seven
suddenly come alive when
I get closer, pink mouths
trembling with white fangs,
lunging at me then falling back,
entangled in one another to form
twisted letters that spell a bloody
word I can’t understand
Normalization
BY CZESLAW MILOSZ
This happened long ago, before the onset
of universal genetic correctness.
Boys and girls would stand naked before mirrors
studying the defects of their structure.
Nose too long, ears like burdocks,
sunken chin just like a mongoloid.
Breasts too small, too large, lopsided shoulders,
penis too short, hips too broad or else too narrow.
And just an inch or two taller!
Such was the house they inhabited for life.
Hiding, feigning, concealing defects.
But somehow they still had to find a partner.
Following incomprehensible tastes—airy creatures
paired with potbellies, skin and bones enamored of salt pork.
They had a saying then: “Even monsters
have their mates.” So perhaps they learned to tolerate their partners’
flaws, trusting that theirs would be forgiven in turn.
Now every genetic error meets with such
disgust that crowds might spit on them and stone them.
As happened in the city of K., where the town council
voted to exile a girl
So thickset and squat
that no stylish dress could ever suit her,
But let’s not yearn for the days of prenormalization.
Just think of the torments, the anxieties, the sweat,
the wiles needed to entice, in spite of all.
A Lot
BY SCOTT CAIRNS
A little loam and topsoil is a lot. —Heather McHugh
A vacant lot, maybe, but even such lit vacancy
as interstate motels announce can look, well, pretty
damned inviting after a long day’s drive, especially
if the day has been oppressed by manic truckers, detours,
endless road construction. And this poorly measured, semirectangle, projected and plotted with the familiar
little flags upon a spread of neglected terra firma
also offers brief apprehension, which—let’s face it,
whether pleasing or encumbered by anxiety—dwells
luxuriously in potential. Me? Well, I like
a little space between shopping malls, and while this one may
never come to be much of a garden, once we rip
the old tires from the brambles and bag the trash, we might
just glimpse the lot we meant, the lot we hoped to find.
In a Dark Time
BY THEODORE ROETHKE
In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood—
A lord of nature weeping to a tree.
I live between the heron and the wren,
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.
What’s madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance? The day’s on fire!
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall.
That place among the rocks—is it a cave,
Or winding path? The edge is what I have.
A steady storm of correspondences!
A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,
And in broad day the midnight come again!
A man goes far to find out what he is—
Death of the self in a long, tearless night,
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.
Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.
Digging
BY SEAMUS HEANEY
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.
Under my window, a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down
Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.
The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked,
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.
By God, the old man could handle a spade.
Just like his old man.
My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner’s bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.
The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I’ll dig with it.
What's Wrong
BY LANDIS EVERSON
"What you are struggling with," said
the psychologist, "is
a continuous song, something like
a telephone's tone. Nebulous, noncommittal,
unrelenting, pretending
to give you messages it can't deliver.
Because the body is unattached. It is,"
he said, "like a valentine sent
out cold, beautiful, brittle as tomorrow's
deja-vu, but distortedly misaddressed.
These pills will help you
find yourself
somewhere where the lace ends up loose
and the paste is still humming
all about you.
Silence
BY BILLY COLLINS
There is the sudden silence of the crowd
above a player not moving on the field,
and the silence of the orchid.
The silence of the falling vase
before it strikes the floor,
the silence of the belt when it is not striking the child.
The stillness of the cup and the water in it,
the silence of the moon
and the quiet of the day far from the roar of the sun.
The silence when I hold you to my chest,
the silence of the window above us,
and the silence when you rise and turn away.
And there is the silence of this morning
which I have broken with my pen,
a silence that had piled up all night
like snow falling in the darkness of the house—
the silence before I wrote a word
and the poorer silence now
November for Beginners
BY RITA DOVE
Snow would be the easy
way out—that softening
sky like a sigh of relief
at finally being allowed
to yield. No dice.
We stack twigs for burning
in glistening patches
but the rain won’t give.
So we wait, breeding
mood, making music
of decline. We sit down
in the smell of the past
and rise in a light
that is already leaving.
We ache in secret,
memorizing
a gloomy line
or two of German.
When spring comes
we promise to act
the fool. Pour,
rain! Sail, wind,
with your cargo of zithers!
my dream about time
BY LUCILLE CLIFTON
a woman unlike myself is running
down the long hall of a lifeless house
with too many windows which open on
a world she has no language for,
running and running until she reaches
at last the one and only door
which she pulls open to find each wall
is faced with clocks and as she watches
all of the clocks strike
NO
SCI-FI
By Tracy K. Smith
There will be no edges, but curves.
Clean lines pointing only forward.
History, with its hard spine & dog-eared
Corners, will be replaced with nuance,
Just like the dinosaurs gave way
To mounds and mounds of ice.
Women will still be women, but
The distinction will be empty. Sex,
Having outlived every threat, will gratify
Only the mind, which is where it will exist.
For kicks, we'll dance for ourselves
Before mirrors studded with golden bulbs.
The oldest among us will recognize that glow—
But the word sun will have been re-assigned
To the Standard Uranium-Neutralizing device
Found in households and nursing homes.
And yes, we'll live to be much older, thanks
To popular consensus. Weightless, unhinged,
Eons from even our own moon, we'll drift
In the haze of space, which will be, once
And for all, scrutable and safe.
The Dirt-Eaters
BY ELIZABETH ALEXANDER
“Southern Tradition of Eating Dirt Shows Signs of Waning” —
headline, New York Times, 2/14/84
tra
dition
wanes
I read
from North
ern South:
D.C.
Never ate
dirt
but I lay
on Greatgrandma’s
grave
when I
was small.
“Most cultures
have passed
through
a phase
of eartheating
most pre
valent today
among
rural
Southern
black
women.”
Geo
phagy:
the practice
of eating
earthy matter
esp. clay
or chalk.
(Shoeboxed dirt
shipped North
to kin)
The gos
sips said
that my greatgrand
ma got real
pale when she
was preg
nant:
“Musta ate
chalk,
Musta ate
starch, cuz
why else
did her
babies
look
so white?”
The Ex
pert: “In ano
ther gener
ation I
sus
pect it will dis
appear al
together.”
Miss Fannie Glass
of Creuger, Miss.:
“I wish
I had
some dirt
right now.”
Her smile
famili
ar as the
smell
of
dirt.
To Those Who Have Lost Everything
BY FRANCISCO X. ALARCÓN
crossed
in despair
many deserts
full of hope
carrying
their empty
fists of sorrow
everywhere
mouthing
a bitter night
of shovels
and nails
“you’re nothing
you’re shit
your home’s
nowhere”—
mountains
will speak
for you
rain
will flesh
your bones
green again
among ashes
after a long fire
started in
a fantasy island
some time ago
turning
Natives
into aliens
The Summer of Black Widows The spiders appeared suddenly
after that summer rainstorm.
Some people still insist that the spiders fell with the rain
while others believe the spiders grew from the damp soil like weeds
with eight thin roots.
The elders knew the spiders
carried stories in their stomachs.
We tucked our pants into our boots when we walked through fields
of fallow stories.
An Indian girl opened the closet door and a story fell into her hair.
We lived in the shadow of a story trapped in the ceiling lamp.
The husk of a story museumed on the windowsill.
Before sleep, we shook our blankets and stories fell to the floor.
A story floated in a glass of water left on the kitchen table.
We opened doors slowly and listened for stories.
The stories rose on hind legs and offered their red bellies to the most
beautiful Indians.
Stories in our cereal boxes.
Stories in our firewood.
Stories in the pockets of our coats.
We captured stories and offered them to the ants, who carried the
stories back to their queen.
A dozen stories per acre.
We poisoned the stories and gathered their remains with broom and pan.
The spiders disappeared suddenly
after that summer lightening storm.
Some people still insist the spiders were burned to ash
while others believe the spiders climbed the lightening bolts and
became a new constellation.
The elders knew the spiders
had left behind bundles of stories.
Up in the corners of our old houses
we still find those small, white bundles
and nothing, neither fire
nor water, neither rock nor wind,
can bring them down.
- Sherman Alexie
Hate Poem
Julie Sheehan
I hate you truly. Truly I do.
Everything about me hates everything about you.
The flick of my wrist hates you.
The way I hold my pencil hates you.
The sound made by my tiniest bones were they trapped
in the jaws of a moray eel hates you.
Each corpuscle singing in its capillary hates you.
Look out! Fore! I hate you.
The blue-green jewel of sock lint I’m digging
from under by third toenail, left foot, hates you.
The history of this keychain hates you.
My sigh in the background as you explain relational databases
hates you.
The goldfish of my genius hates you.
My aorta hates you. Also my ancestors.
A closed window is both a closed window and an obvious
symbol of how I hate you.
My voice curt as a hairshirt: hate.
My hesitation when you invite me for a drive: hate.
My pleasant “good morning”: hate.
You know how when I’m sleepy I nuzzle my head
under your arm? Hate.
The whites of my target-eyes articulate hate. My wit
practices it.
My breasts relaxing in their holster from morning
to night hate you.
Layers of hate, a parfait.
Hours after our latest row, brandishing the sharp glee of hate,
I dissect you cell by cell, so that I might hate each one
individually and at leisure.
My lungs, duplicitous twins, expand with the utter validity
of my hate, which can never have enough of you,
Breathlessly, like two idealists in a broken submarine.
Introduction to Poetry
Billy Collins
I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide
or press an ear against its hive.
I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,
or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.
I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.
But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.
They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.
Did I Miss Anything?
Tom Wayman
Nothing. When we realized you weren’t here
we sat with our hands folded on our desks
in silence, for the full two hours
Everything. I gave an exam worth
40 percent of the grade for this term
and assigned some reading due today
on which I’m about to hand out a quiz
worth 50 percent
Nothing. None of the content of this course
has value or meaning
Take as many days off as you like:
any activities we undertake as a class
I assure you will not matter either to you or me
and are without purpose
Everything. A few minutes after we began last time
a shaft of light suddenly descended and an angel
or other heavenly being appeared
and revealed to us what each woman or man must do
to attain divine wisdom in this life and
the hereafter
This is the last time the class will meet
before we disperse to bring the good news to all people
on earth.
Nothing. When you are not present
how could something significant occur?
Everything. Contained in this classroom
is a microcosm of human experience
assembled for you to query and examine and ponder
This is not the only place such an opportunity has been
gathered
but it was one place
And you weren’t here
From Did I Miss Anything? Selected Poems 1973-1993, 1993
Harbour Publishing
The Swan at Edgewater Park
Ruth L. Schwartz
Isn't one of your prissy richpeoples' swans
Wouldn't be at home on some pristine pond
Chooses the whole stinking shoreline, candy wrappers, condoms
in its tidal fringe
Prefers to curve its muscular, slightly grubby neck
into the body of a Great Lake,
Swilling whatever it is swans swill,
Chardonnay of algae with bouquet of crud,
While Clevelanders walk by saying Look
at that big duck!
Beauty isn't the point here; of course
the swan is beautiful,
But not like Lorie at 16, when
Everything was possible—no
More like Lorie at 27
Smoking away her days off in her dirty kitchen,
Her kid with asthma watching TV,
The boyfriend who doesn't know yet she's gonna
Leave him, washing his car out back—and
He's a runty little guy, and drinks too much, and
It's not his kid anyway, but he loves her, he
Really does, he loves them both—
That's the kind of swan this is.
from Crab Orchard Review, Volume 6, Number 2, Spring/Summer 2001
Crab Orchard Review
The Tyger by William Blake Tyger! Tyger! burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry? In what distant deeps or skies Burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand, dare sieze the fire? And what shoulder, & what art, Could twist the sinews of thy heart? And when thy heart began to beat, What dread hand? & what dread feet? What the hammer? what the chain? In what furnace was thy brain? What the anvil? what dread grasp Dare its deadly terrors clasp? When the stars threw down their spears, And water'd heaven with their tears, Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the Lamb make thee? Tyger! Tyger! burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Dare frame thy fearful symmetry? The Tyger
by William Blake
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry? In what distant deeps or skies Burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand, dare sieze the fire? And what shoulder, & what art, Could twist the sinews of thy heart? And when thy heart began to beat, What dread hand? & what dread feet? What the hammer? what the chain? In what furnace was thy brain? What the anvil? what dread grasp Dare its deadly terrors clasp? When the stars threw down their spears, And water'd heaven with their tears, Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the Lamb make thee? Tyger! Tyger! burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
William Stafford Traveling Through the Dark Traveling through the dark I found a deer
dead on the edge of the Wilson River road.
It is usually best to roll them into the canyon:
that road is narrow; to swerve might make more dead.
By glow of the tail-light I stumbled back of the car
and stood by the heap, a doe, a recent killing;
she had stiffened already, almost cold.
I dragged her off; she was large in the belly.
My fingers touching her side brought me the reason—
her side was warm; her fawn lay there waiting,
alive, still, never to be born.
Beside the mountain road I hesitated.
I stood in the glare of the warm exhaust turning red;
around our group I could hear the wilderness listen.
I thought hard for us all —my only swerving—
then pushed her over the edge into the river.
When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer 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 was 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 wandered off by myself, In the mystical moist night air, and from time to time, Looked up in perfect silence at the stars. The Blackbirds are Rough Today
by Charles Bukowski
lonely as a dry and used orchard
spread over the earth
for use and surrender.
shot down like an ex-pug selling
dailies on the corner.
taken by tears like
an aging chorus girl
who has gotten her last check.
a hanky is in order your lord your
worship.
the blackbirds are rough today
like
ingrown toenails
in an overnight
jail--wine wine whine,
the blackbirds run around and
fly around
harping about
Spanish melodies and bones.
and everywhere is
nowhere--the dream is as bad as
flapjacks and flat tires:
why do we go on
with our minds and
pockets full of
dust
like a bad boy just out of
school--you tell
me,
you who were a hero in some
revolution
you who teach children
you who drink with calmness
you who own large homes
and walk in gardens
you who have killed a man and own a
beautiful wife
you tell me
why I am on fire like old dry
garbage.
we might surely have some interesting
correspondence.
it will keep the mailman busy.
and the butterflies and ants and
bridges and
cemeteries
the rocket-makers and dogs and
garage mechanics
we’ll still go on a
while
until we run out of stamps
and/or
ideas.
don't be ashamed of
anything; I guess God meant it all
like
locks on
doors. The Moose
by Elizabeth Bishop
From narrow provinces
of fish and bread and tea,
home of the long tides
where the bay leaves the sea
twice a day and takes
the herrings long rides,
where if the river
enters or retreats
in a wall of brown foam
depends on if it meets
the bay coming in,
the bay not at home;
where, silted red,
sometimes the sun sets
facing a red sea,
and others, veins the flats'
lavender, rich mud
in burning rivulets;
on red, gravelly roads,
down rows of sugar maples,
past clapboard farmhouses
and neat, clapboard churches,
bleached, ridged as clamshells,
past twin silver birches,
through late afternoon
a bus journeys west,
the windshield flashing pink,
pink glancing off of metal,
brushing the dented flank
of blue, beat-up enamel;
down hollows, up rises,
and waits, patient, while
a lone traveller gives
kisses and embraces
to seven relatives
and a collie supervises.
Goodbye to the elms,
to the farm, to the dog.
The bus starts. The light
grows richer; the fog,
shifting, salty, thin,
comes closing in.
Its cold, round crystals
form and slide and settle
in the white hens' feathers,
in gray glazed cabbages,
on the cabbage roses
and lupins like apostles;
the sweet peas cling
to their wet white string
on the whitewashed fences;
bumblebees creep
inside the foxgloves,
and evening commences.
One stop at Bass River.
Then the Economies
Lower, Middle, Upper;
Five Islands, Five Houses,
where a woman shakes a
tablecloth
out after supper.
half groan, half acceptance,
that means "Life's like that.
We know it (also death)."
A pale flickering. Gone.
The Tantramar marshes
and the smell of salt hay.
An iron bridge trembles
and a loose plank rattles
but doesn't give way.
Talking the way they talked
in the old featherbed,
peacefully, on and on,
dim lamplight in the hall,
down in the kitchen, the dog
tucked in her shawl.
On the left, a red light
swims through the dark:
a ship's port lantern.
Two rubber boots show,
illuminated, solemn.
A dog gives one bark.
Now, it's all right now
even to fall asleep
just as on all those nights.
--Suddenly the bus driver
stops with a jolt,
turns off his lights.
A woman climbs in
with two market bags,
brisk, freckled, elderly.
"A grand night. Yes, sir,
all the way to Boston."
She regards us amicably.
A moose has come out of
the impenetrable wood
and stands there, looms, rather,
in the middle of the road.
It approaches; it sniffs at
the bus's hot hood.
Moonlight as we enter
the New Brunswick woods,
hairy, scratchy, splintery;
moonlight and mist
caught in them like lamb's wool
on bushes in a pasture.
Towering, antlerless,
high as a church,
homely as a house
(or, safe as houses).
A man's voice assures us
"Perfectly harmless. . . ."
The passengers lie back.
Snores. Some long sighs.
A dreamy divagation
begins in the night,
a gentle, auditory,
slow hallucination. . . .
Some of the passengers
exclaim in whispers,
childishly, softly,
"Sure are big creatures."
"It's awful plain."
"Look! It's a she!"
In the creakings and noises,
an old conversation
--not concerning us,
but recognizable, somewhere,
back in the bus:
Grandparents' voices
Taking her time,
she looks the bus over,
grand, otherworldly.
Why, why do we feel
(we all feel) this sweet
sensation of joy?
uninterruptedly
talking, in Eternity:
names being mentioned,
things cleared up finally;
what he said, what she said,
who got pensioned;
"Curious creatures,"
says our quiet driver,
rolling his r's.
"Look at that, would you."
Then he shifts gears.
For a moment longer,
deaths, deaths and sicknesses;
the year he remarried;
the year (something) happened.
She died in childbirth.
That was the son lost
when the schooner foundered.
by craning backward,
the moose can be seen
on the moonlit macadam;
then there's a dim
smell of moose, an acrid
He took to drink. Yes.
She went to the bad.
When Amos began to pray
even in the store and
finally the family had
to put him away.
"Yes . . ." that peculiar
affirmative. "Yes . . ."
A sharp, indrawn breath,
smell of gasoline. Fellow in the Grass
by Emily Dickinson
A narrow Fellow in the Grass
Occasionally rides -You may have met Him -- did you not
His notice sudden is -The Grass divides as with a Comb -A spotted shaft is seen -And then it closes at your feet
And opens further on -He likes a Boggy Acre
A Floor too cool for Corn -Yet when a boy, and Barefoot -I more than once at Noon
Have passed, I thought, a Whip lash
Unbraiding in the Sun
When stooping to secure it
It wrinkled, and was gone -Several of Nature's People
I know, and they know me -I feel for them a transport
Of cordiality -But never met this Fellow
Attended, or alone
Without a tighter breathing
And Zero at the Bone - The Dalliance of Eagles by Walt Whitman Skirting the river road, (my forenoon walk, my rest,) Skyward in the air a sudden muffled sound, the dalliance of the eagles, The rushing amorous contact high in space together, The clinching interlocking claws, a living, fierce, gyrating wheel, Four beating wings, two beaks, a swirling mass tight grappling, In tumbling turning clustering loops, straight downward falling, Till o’er the river pois’d, the twain yet one, a moment’s lull, A motionless still balance in the air, then parting, talons loosing, Upward again on slow-­‐firm pinions slanting, their separate diverse flight, She hers, he his, pursuing. An Apology by F.J. Bergmann Forgive me for backing over and smashing your red wheelbarrow. It was raining and the rear wiper does not work on my new plum-­‐colored SUV.. I am also sorry about the white chickens. The Red Wheelbarrow
By William Carlos Williams
William Carlos Williams so much depends upon a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
Young Sycamore
I must tell you
this young tree
whose round and firm trunk
between the wet
pavement and the gutter
(where water
is trickling) rises
bodily
into the air with
one undulant
thrust half its heightand then
dividing and waning
sending out
young branches on
all sideshung with cocoons
it thins
till nothing is left of it
but two
eccentric knotted
twigs
bending forward
hornlike at the top
William Carlos Williams Spring and All
By William Carlos Williams
By the road to the contagious hospital
under the surge of the blue
mottled clouds driven from the
northeast-a cold wind. Beyond, the
waste of broad, muddy fields
brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen
patches of standing water
the scattering of tall trees
All along the road the reddish
purplish, forked, upstanding, twiggy
stuff of bushes and small trees
with dead, brown leaves under them
leafless vinesLifeless in appearance, sluggish
dazed spring approachesThey enter the new world naked,
cold, uncertain of all
save that they enter. All about them
the cold, familiar windNow the grass, tomorrow
the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf
One by one objects are definedIt quickens: clarity, outline of leaf
But now the stark dignity of
entrance-Still, the profound change
has come upon them: rooted, they
grip down and begin to awaken
Birches When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy's been swinging them.
But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay.
Ice-storms do that. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-coloured
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground,
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm,
I should prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows-Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father's trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer. He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so not carrying the tree away
Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.
So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It's when I'm weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig's having lashed across it open.
I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate wilfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.
Design
by Robert Frost
I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth-Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right,
Like the ingredients of a witches' broth-A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.
What had that flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness to appall?-If design govern in a thing so small.
To a Cat
Mirrors are not more silent
nor the creeping dawn more secretive;
in the moonlight, you are that panther
we catch sight of from afar.
By the inexplicable workings of a divine law,
we look for you in vain;
More remote, even, than the Ganges or the setting sun,
yours is the solitude, yours the secret.
Your haunch allows the lingering
caress of my hand. You have accepted,
since that long forgotten past,
the love of the distrustful hand.
You belong to another time. You are lord
of a place bounded like a dream.
Jorge Luis Borges
Grief Calls Us to the Things of This World
by Sherman Alexie
The morning air is all awash with angels . . .
- Richard Wilbur
The eyes open to a blue telephone
In the bathroom of this five-star hotel.
I wonder whom I should call? A plumber,
Proctologist, urologist, or priest?
Who is most among us and most deserves
The first call? I choose my father because
He's astounded by bathroom telephones.
I dial home. My mother answers. "Hey, Ma,
I say, "Can I talk to Poppa?" She gasps,
And then I remember that my father
Has been dead for nearly a year. "Shit, Mom,"
I say. "I forgot he’s dead. I’m sorry—
How did I forget?" "It’s okay," she says.
"I made him a cup of instant coffee
This morning and left it on the table—
Like I have for, what, twenty-seven years—
And I didn't realize my mistake
Until this afternoon." My mother laughs
At the angels who wait for us to pause
During the most ordinary of days
And sing our praise to forgetfulness
Before they slap our souls with their cold wings.
Those angels burden and unbalance us.
Those fucking angels ride us piggyback.
Those angels, forever falling, snare us
And haul us, prey and praying, into dust.
Love Poem With Toast
Miller Williams
Some of what we do, we do
to make things happen,
the alarm to wake us up, the coffee to perc,
the car to start.
The rest of what we do, we do
trying to keep something from doing
something,
the skin from aging, the hoe from rusting,
the truth from getting out.
With yes and no like the poles of a battery
powering our passage through the days,
we move, as we call it, forward,
wanting to be wanted,
wanting not to lose the rain forest,
wanting the water to boil,
wanting not to have cancer,
wanting to be home by dark,
wanting not to run out of gas,
as each of us wants the other
watching at the end,
as both want not to leave the other alone,
as wanting to love beyond this meat and
bone,
we gaze across breakfast and pretend.
"A Map of the World"
by Ted Kooser
One of the ancient maps of the world
is heart-shaped, carefully drawn
and once washed with bright colors,
though the colors have faded
as you might expect feelings to fade
from a fragile old heart, the brown map
of a life. But feeling is indelible,
and longing infinite, a starburst compass
pointing in all the directions
two lovers might go, a fresh breeze
swelling their sails, the future uncharted,
still far from the edge
where the sea pours into the stars.
Modern Love
BY JOHN KEATS
And what is love? It is a doll dress’d up
For idleness to cosset, nurse, and dandle;
A thing of soft misnomers, so divine
That silly youth doth think to make itself
Divine by loving, and so goes on
Yawning and doting a whole summer long,
Till Miss’s comb is made a pearl tiara,
And common Wellingtons turn Romeo boots;
Then Cleopatra lives at number seven,
And Antony resides in Brunswick Square.
Fools! if some passions high have warm’d the world,
If Queens and Soldiers have play’d deep for hearts,
It is no reason why such agonies
Should be more common than the growth of weeds.
Fools! make me whole again that weighty pearl
The Queen of Egypt melted, and I’ll say
That ye may love in spite of beaver hats.
SONNET 138 When my love swears that she is made of truth
I do believe her, though I know she lies,
That she might think me some untutor'd youth,
Unlearned in the world's false subtleties.
Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,
Although she knows my days are past the best,
Simply I credit her false speaking tongue:
On both sides thus is simple truth suppress'd.
But wherefore says she not she is unjust?
And wherefore say not I that I am old?
O, love's best habit is in seeming trust,
And age in love loves not to have years told:
Therefore I lie with her and she with me,
And in our faults by lies we flatter'd be.
Your Laughter
Take bread away from me, if you
wish,
take air away, but
do not take from me your
laughter.
Do not take away the rose,
the lance flower that you pluck,
the water that suddenly
bursts forth in joy,
the sudden wave
of silver born in you.
My struggle is harsh and I come
back
with eyes tired
at times from having seen
the unchanging earth,
but when your laughter enters
it rises to the sky seeking me
and it opens for me all
the doors of life.
My love, in the darkest
hour your laughter
opens, and if suddenly
you see my blood staining
the stones of the street,
laugh, because your laughter
will be for my hands
like a fresh sword.
Next to the sea in the autumn,
your laughter must raise
its foamy cascade,
and in the spring, love,
I want your laughter like
the flower I was waiting for,
the blue flower, the rose
of my echoing country.
Laugh at the night,
at the day, at the moon,
laugh at the twisted
streets of the island,
laugh at this clumsy
boy who loves you,
but when I open
my eyes and close them,
when my steps go,
when my steps return,
deny me bread, air,
light, spring,
but never your laughter
for I would die.
Pablo Neruda
supposing i dreamed this)
only imagine,when day has thrilled
you are a house around which
i am a windyour walls will not reckon how
strangely my life is curved
since the best he can do
is to peer through windows,unobserved
-listen,for(out of all
things)dream is noone's fool;
if this wind who i am prowls
carefully around this house of you
love being such,or such,
the normal corners of your heart
will never guess how much
my wonderful jealousy is dark
if light should flower:
or laughing sparkle from
the shut house(around and around
which a poor wind will roam
ee cummings
SONNET 138 When my love swears that she is
made of truth
I do believe her, though I know
she lies,
That she might think me some
untutor'd youth,
Unlearned in the world's false
subtleties.
Thus vainly thinking that she
thinks me young,
Although she knows my days are
past the best,
Simply I credit her false speaking
tongue:
On both sides thus is simple truth
suppress'd.
But wherefore says she not she is
unjust?
And wherefore say not I that I am
old?
O, love's best habit is in seeming
trust,
And age in love loves not to have
years told:
Therefore I lie with her and she
with me,
And in our faults by lies we
flatter'd be.
supposing i dreamed this)
only imagine,when day has thrilled
you are a house around which
i am a windyour walls will not reckon how
strangely my life is curved
since the best he can do
is to peer through windows,unobserved
-listen,for(out of all
things)dream is noone's fool;
if this wind who i am prowls
carefully around this house of you
love being such,or such,
the normal corners of your heart
will never guess how much
my wonderful jealousy is dark
if light should flower:
or laughing sparkle from
the shut house(around and around
which a poor wind will roam
- e.e. cummings
[love is more thicker than forget]
BY E. E. CUMMINGS
love is more thicker than forget
more thinner than recall
more seldom than a wave is wet
more frequent than to fail
it is more mad and moonly
and less it shall unbe
than all the sea which only
is deeper than the sea
love is less always than to win
less never than alive
less bigger than the least begin
less littler than forgive
it is most sane and sunly
and more it cannot die
than all the sky which only
is higher than the sky
SONNET 73 That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou seest the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire
Consumed with that which it was nourish'd by.
This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
A Simile for Her Smile
by Richard Wilbur
Your smiling, or the hope, the thought of it,
Makes in my mind such pause and abrupt ease
As when the highway bridgegates fall,
Balking the hasty traffic, which must sit
On each side massed and staring, while
Deliberately the drawbridge starts to rise:
Then horns are hushed, the oilsmoke rarefies,
Above the idling motors one can tell
The packet's smooth approach, the slip,
Slip of the silken river past the sides,
The ringing of clear bells, the dip
And slow cascading of the paddle wheel.
[anyone lived in a pretty how town]
BY E. E. CUMMINGS
anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn’t he danced his did.
Women and men(both little and small)
cared for anyone not at all
they sowed their isn’t they reaped their same
sun moon stars rain
children guessed(but only a few
and down they forgot as up they grew
autumn winter spring summer)
that noone loved him more by more
when by now and tree by leaf
she laughed his joy she cried his grief
bird by snow and stir by still
anyone’s any was all to her
someones married their everyones
laughed their cryings and did their dance
(sleep wake hope and then)they
said their nevers they slept their dream
stars rain sun moon
(and only the snow can begin to explain
how children are apt to forget to remember
with up so floating many bells down)
one day anyone died i guess
(and noone stooped to kiss his face)
busy folk buried them side by side
little by little and was by was
all by all and deep by deep
and more by more they dream their sleep
noone and anyone earth by april
wish by spirit and if by yes.
Women and men(both dong and ding)
summer autumn winter spring
reaped their sowing and went their came
sun moon stars rain
The Laws of Motion
BY NIKKI GIOVANNI
(for Harlem Magic)
The laws of science teach us a pound of gold weighs as
much as a pound of flour though if dropped from any
undetermined height in their natural state one would
reach bottom and one would fly away
Laws of motion tell us an inert object is more difficult to
propel than an object heading in the wrong direction is to
turn around. Motion being energy—inertia—apathy.
Apathy equals hostility. Hostility—violence. Violence
being energy is its own virtue. Laws of motion teach us
Black people are no less confused because of our
Blackness than we are diffused because of our
powerlessness. Man we are told is the only animal who
smiles with his lips. The eyes however are the mirror of
the soul
The problem with love is not what we feel but what we
wish we felt when we began to feel we should feel
something. Just as publicity is not production: seduction
is not seductive
If I could make a wish I’d wish for all the knowledge of all
the world. Black may be beautiful Professor Micheau
says but knowledge is power. Any desirable object is
bought and sold—any neglected object declines in value.
It is against man’s nature to be in either category
If white defines Black and good defines evil then men
define women or women scientifically speaking describe
men. If sweet is the opposite of sour and heat the
absence of cold then love is the contradiction of pain and
beauty is in they eye of the beheld
Sometimes I want to touch you and be touched in
return. But you think I’m grabbing and I think you’re
shirking and Mama always said to look out for men like
you
So I go to the streets with my lips painted red and my
eyes carefully shielded to seduce the world my reluctant
lover
And you go to your men slapping fives feeling good
posing as a man because you know as long as you sit
very very still the laws of motion will be in effect
P O E M Apologies to All the People in Lebanon BY JUNE JORDAN Dedicated to the 60,000 Palestinian men, women, and children who lived in Lebanon from 1948-­‐1983. I didn’t know and nobody told me and what could I do or say, anyway? They said you shot the London Ambassador and when that wasn’t true they said so what They said you shelled their northern villages and when U.N. forces reported that was not true because your side of the cease-­‐fire was holding since more than a year before they said so what They said they wanted simply to carve a 25 mile buffer zone and then they ravaged your water supplies your electricity your hospitals your schools your highways and byways all the way north to Beirut because they said this was their quest for peace They blew up your homes and demolished the grocery stores and blocked the Red Cross and took away doctors to jail and they cluster-­‐bombed girls and boys whose bodies swelled purple and black into twice the original size and tore the buttocks from a four month old baby and then they said this was brilliant military accomplishment and this was done they said in the name of self-­‐defense they said that is the noblest concept of mankind isn’t that obvious? They said something about never again and then they made close to one million human beings homeless in less than three weeks and they killed or maimed 40,000 of your men and your women and your children But I didn’t know and nobody told me and what could I do or say, anyway? They said they were victims. They said you were Arabs. They called your apartments and gardens guerrilla strongholds. They called the screaming devastation that they created the rubble. Then they told you to leave, didn’t they? Didn’t you read the leaflets that they dropped from their hotshot fighter jets? They told you to go. One hundred and thirty-­‐five thousand Palestinians in Beirut and why didn’t you take the hint? Go! There was the Mediterranean: You could walk into the water and stay there. What was the problem? I didn’t know and nobody told me and what could I do or say, anyway? Yes, I did know it was the money I earned as a poet that paid for the bombs and the planes and the tanks that they used to massacre your family But I am not an evil person The people of my country aren't so bad You can expect but so much from those of us who have to pay taxes and watch American TV You see my point; I’m sorry. I really am sorry. As My Life is a Dream BY CHUNGMI KIM I painted a phoenix in bright colors cut it in nine pieces and cooked it in a pot at the mountaintop. I stirred it as if cranking reels of a movie. Unraveled were a series of faces in mosaic. Kurosawa appeared. He asked me what my story was about. Tongue-­‐tied, I could not answer. He handed me a token with a silvery eagle engraved, ready to fly. How real I thought everything was in my dream! In my waking hour, I see the remnant of the war between my head and heart. Now in cease-­‐fire, my chest is filled with the fresh breeze of serenity. I begin to breathe gently as my story is unraveled like in a movie. No longer haunted, my love of God soars as I see my guardian angel smile in the clear blue sky, transforming to one gigantic phoenix. My wandering in the wilderness of the mind has taught me a little wisdom. I believe my dreams are real as my life is a dream. Beirut Tank BY TOM SLEIGH Staring up into the tank's belly lit by a bare bulb hanging down off the exhaust, a mechanic's hands are up inside the dark metallic innards doing something that looks personal, private. This tank is nothing like the ones the Americans deploy. Those have uranium piercing shells that could melt right through this tank's armor and set off the ammo box: nothing can withstand the American tanks. The barrel's called a cannon. The machine guns they call deterrents. The tank is old, small, about the size of a horse and cart. The armor plate shines green under the streetlight. The sprockets, almost rusted out. Somebody forgot to grease the nipples. The timing belt is nicked and worn. The spare parts from France don't fit. This wire crossed with this wire makes a catastrophic fire. Be careful how you route it. .20 caliber ammo goes in the hatch behind the armor plate. The mechanic on his back in the dirt, cursing in Arabic, sounds like he's cursing in a good-­‐natured way: who was the fucking moron who did the maintenance on this thing? This tank, this tank, he should push it off a cliff into the sea so that it could bob for half an hour before sinking under the Pigeon Rocks where all the lovers gather in the shadows near that little bar, lit by a generator, that serves arak and warm beer to soldiers hanging out on the Corniche: mainly conscripts from down south, whose orange groves rot because nobody can pick the oranges: try to pick an orange and a cluster bomb lodged in leaves comes tumbling into your basket. What weight oil did this cocksucker use, anyway? And this engine, it's gonna blow. Beat up tanks and sandbags, that's all this army is, old sparkplugs that get fouled so that you have to file the gaps over and over. He stares up in that live, minute, completely concentrated way of scrutinizing something or someone you thought you understood: the tank's underbody completely covers his body so they look like they're embracing when he reaches up inside it, his needle nose pliers crimping, twisting, pulling down hard. There, you see that, it's all corroded. The cannon jutting out looks both threatening and vulnerable as if the tank's firepower were dependent on that wire. He runs two fingers up and down it, then feels where rust, mixed into an oily paste, shines like bloody flux that he gently dips his finger in, sniffs and tastes. Clanging back his tapping on the armor plate, as he listens to her talking on his back in the dirt, screwing in the spare parts, the tank says what tanks always say, Fix me, oil me, grease me, make it fit, confirming what he knows about the French. Belief BY JOSEPHINE MILES Mother said to call her if the H-­‐bomb exploded And I said I would, and it about did When Louis my brother robbed a service station And lay cursing on the oily cement in handcuffs. But by that time it was too late to tell Mother, She was too sick to worry the life out of her Over why why. Causation is sequence And everything is one thing after another. Besides, my other brother, Eddie, had got to be President, And you can't ask too much of one family. The chances were as good for a good future As bad for a bad one. Therefore it was surprising that, as we kept the newspapers from Mother, She died feeling responsible for a disaster unverified, Murmuring, in her sleep as it seemed, the ancient slogan Noblesse oblige. Between the Wars BY ROBERT HASS When I ran, it rained. Late in the afternoon— midsummer, upstate New York, mornings I wrote, read Polish history, and there was a woman whom I thought about; outside the moody, humid American sublime—late in the afternoon, toward sundown, just as the sky was darkening, the light came up and redwings settled in the cattails. They were death's idea of twilight, the whole notes of a requiem the massed clouds croaked above the somber fields. Lady of eyelashes, do you hear me? Whiteness, otter's body, coolness of the morning, rubbed amber and the skin's salt, do you hear me? This is Poland speaking, “era of the dawn of freedom,” nineteen twenty-­‐two. When I ran, it rained. The blackbirds settled their clannish squabbles in the reeds, and light came up. First darkening, then light. And then pure fire. Where does it come from? out of the impure shining that rises from the soaked odor of the grass, the levitating, Congregational, meadow-­‐light-­‐at-­‐twilight light that darkens the heavy-­‐headed blossoms of wild carrot, out of that, out of nothing it boils up, pools on the horizon, fissures up, igniting the undersides of clouds: pink flame, red flame, vermilion, purple, deeper purple, dark. You could wring the sourness of the sumac from the air, the fescue sweetness from the grass, the slightly maniacal cicadas tuning up to tear the fabric of the silence into tatters, so that night, if it wants to, comes as a beggar to the door at which, if you do not offer milk and barley to the maimed figure of the god, your well will foul, your crops will wither in the fields. In the eastern marches children know the story that the aspen quivers because it failed to hide the Virgin and the Child when Herod's hunters were abroad. Think: night is the god dressed as the beggar drinking the sweet milk. Gray beard, thin shanks, the look in the eyes idiot, unbearable, the wizened mouth agape, like an infant's that has cried and sucked and cried and paused to catch its breath. The pink nubbin of the nipple glistens. I'll suckle at that breast, the one in the song of the muttering illumination of the fields before the sun goes down, before the black train crosses the frontier from Prussia into Poland in the age of the dawn of freedom. Fifty freight cars from America, full of medicine and the latest miracle, canned food. The war is over. There are unburied bones in the fields at sun-­‐up, skylarks singing, starved children begging chocolate on the tracks. Battle Hymn of the Republic BY JULIA WARD HOWE Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord: He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored; He hath loosed the fatal lightning of his terrible swift sword: His truth is marching on. I have seen Him in the watch-­‐fires of a hundred circling camps; They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps; I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps. His Day is marching on. I have read a fiery gospel, writ in burnished rows of steel: “As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal; Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel, Since God is marching on.” He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat; He is sifting out the hearts of men before his judgment-­‐seat: Oh! be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet! Our God is marching on. In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea, With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me: As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free, While God is marching on. Camouflage BY HENRY CARLILE On the door it says what to do to survive But we were not born to survive Only to live —W. S. Merwin So many piles of leaves are walking about these days disguised as humans it must give pause. Originally we meant only to fool ducks, dupe deer into posing like St. Sebastian, but now it looks like we are hiding from other heaps that mean harm, that mean to steal us from our families and lovers or steel us against the unhappy prospect of quaking like so many aspens in the arms of winter. Or is it simply that we mean to advertise a sincere wish to become one with nature and quietly disappear toting our taped and silenced M-­‐16’s and Mini-­‐14’s and other automatic acronyms of extreme prejudice? There is big business in camouflage these days. We can be anything we want to be at last! A summer wood, an autumn wood, a big beige desert. We can even be dead grass, we can be snow. And let me not fail to mention our latest fashion, Night. Night is very popular these days. What we do not want to be is colorful, color is suspect, a thing of the past, except for a week or maybe two weeks in spring, during the spring offensives, when even the desert forgets itself and laughs floridly. Then it is safe to be a field of poppies. But we must never forget the latest heat-­‐seeking technologies that have kept pace with our trade. Telescopes so powerful they are capable of detecting, at incredible distances in the coldest environments, the smallest trembling heart of a mouse, o soldiers of fortune and misfortune, they mean to find us out, to discover in our iciest resolve a spot of warmth. Camouflaging the Chimera BY YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA We tied branches to our helmets. We painted our faces & rifles with mud from a riverbank, blades of grass hung from the pockets of our tiger suits. We wove ourselves into the terrain, content to be a hummingbird’s target. We hugged bamboo & leaned against a breeze off the river, slow-­‐dragging with ghosts from Saigon to Bangkok, with women left in doorways reaching in from America. We aimed at dark-­‐hearted songbirds. In our way station of shadows rock apes tried to blow our cover, throwing stones at the sunset. Chameleons crawled our spines, changing from day to night: green to gold, gold to black. But we waited till the moon touched metal, till something almost broke inside us. VC struggled with the hillside, like black silk wrestling iron through grass. We weren’t there. The river ran through our bones. Small animals took refuge against our bodies; we held our breath, ready to spring the L-­‐shaped ambush, as a world revolved under each man’s eyelid. Captivity BY LOUISE ERDRICH He (my captor) gave me a bisquit, which I put in my pocket, and not daring to eat it, buried it under a log, fearing he had put something in it to make me love him. —From the narrative of the captivity of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, who was taken prisoner by the Wampanoag when Lancaster, Massachusetts, was destroyed, in the year 1676 The stream was swift, and so cold I thought I would be sliced in two. But he dragged me from the flood by the ends of my hair. I had grown to recognize his face. I could distinguish it from the others. There were times I feared I understood his language, which was not human, and I knelt to pray for strength. We were pursued by God’s agents or pitch devils, I did not know. Only that we must march. Their guns were loaded with swan shot. I could not suckle and my child’s wail put them in danger. He had a woman with teeth black and glittering. She fed the child milk of acorns. The forest closed, the light deepened. I told myself that I would starve before I took food from his hands but I did not starve. One night he killed a deer with a young one in her and gave me to eat of the fawn. It was so tender, the bones like the stems of flowers, that I followed where he took me. The night was thick. He cut the cord that bound me to the tree. After that the birds mocked. Shadows gaped and roared and the trees flung down their sharpened lashes. He did not notice God’s wrath. God blasted fire from half-­‐buried stumps. I hid my face in my dress, fearing He would burn us all but this, too, passed. Rescued, I see no truth in things. My husband drives a thick wedge through the earth, still it shuts to him year after year. My child is fed of the first wheat. I lay myself to sleep on a Holland-­‐laced pillowbeer. I lay to sleep. And in the dark I see myself as I was outside their circle. They knelt on deerskins, some with sticks, and he led his company in the noise until I could no longer bear the thought of how I was. I stripped a branch and struck the earth, in time, begging it to open to admit me as he was and feed me honey from the rock. A Burnt Ship BY JOHN DONNE Out of a fired ship, which by no way But drowning could be rescued from the flame, Some men leap'd forth, and ever as they came Near the foes' ships, did by their shot decay; So all were lost, which in the ship were found, They in the sea being burnt, they in the burnt ship drown'd. Casualty BY SEAMUS HEANEY I He would drink by himself And raise a weathered thumb Towards the high shelf, Calling another rum And blackcurrant, without Having to raise his voice, Or order a quick stout By a lifting of the eyes And a discreet dumb-­‐show Of pulling off the top; At closing time would go In waders and peaked cap Into the showery dark, A dole-­‐kept breadwinner But a natural for work. I loved his whole manner, Sure-­‐footed but too sly, His deadpan sidling tact, His fisherman’s quick eye And turned observant back. Incomprehensible To him, my other life. Sometimes, on the high stool, Too busy with his knife At a tobacco plug And not meeting my eye, In the pause after a slug He mentioned poetry. We would be on our own And, always politic And shy of condescension, I would manage by some trick To switch the talk to eels Or lore of the horse and cart Or the Provisionals. But my tentative art His turned back watches too: He was blown to bits Out drinking in a curfew Others obeyed, three nights After they shot dead The thirteen men in Derry. PARAS THIRTEEN, the walls said, BOGSIDE NIL. That Wednesday Everyone held His breath and trembled. II It was a day of cold Raw silence, wind-­‐blown Surplice and soutane: Rained-­‐on, flower-­‐laden Coffin after coffin Seemed to float from the door Of the packed cathedral Like blossoms on slow water. The common funeral Unrolled its swaddling band, Lapping, tightening Till we were braced and bound Like brothers in a ring. But he would not be held At home by his own crowd Whatever threats were phoned, Whatever black flags waved. I see him as he turned In that bombed offending place, Remorse fused with terror In his still knowable face, His cornered outfaced stare Blinding in the flash. He had gone miles away For he drank like a fish Nightly, naturally Swimming towards the lure Of warm lit-­‐up places, The blurred mesh and murmur Drifting among glasses In the gregarious smoke. How culpable was he That last night when he broke Our tribe’s complicity? ‘Now, you’re supposed to be An educated man,’ I hear him say. ‘Puzzle me The right answer to that one.’ III I missed his funeral, Those quiet walkers And sideways talkers Shoaling out of his lane To the respectable Purring of the hearse... They move in equal pace With the habitual Slow consolation Of a dawdling engine, The line lifted, hand Over fist, cold sunshine On the water, the land Banked under fog: that morning I was taken in his boat, The screw purling, turning Indolent fathoms white, I tasted freedom with him. To get out early, haul Steadily off the bottom, Dispraise the catch, and smile As you find a rhythm Working you, slow mile by mile, Into your proper haunt Somewhere, well out, beyond... Dawn-­‐sniffing revenant, Plodder through midnight rain, Question me again. Come Up from the Fields Father BY WALT WHITMAN Come up from the fields father, here’s a letter from our Pete, And come to the front door mother, here’s a letter from thy dear son. Lo, ’tis autumn, Lo, where the trees, deeper green, yellower and redder, Cool and sweeten Ohio’s villages with leaves fluttering in the moderate wind, Where apples ripe in the orchards hang and grapes on the trellis’d vines, (Smell you the smell of the grapes on the vines? Smell you the buckwheat where the bees were lately buzzing?) Above all, lo, the sky so calm, so transparent after the rain, and with wondrous clouds, Below too, all calm, all vital and beautiful, and the farm prospers well. Down in the fields all prospers well, But now from the fields come father, come at the daughter’s call, And come to the entry mother, to the front door come right away. Fast as she can she hurries, something ominous, her steps trembling, She does not tarry to smooth her hair nor adjust her cap. Open the envelope quickly, O this is not our son’s writing, yet his name is sign’d, O a strange hand writes for our dear son, O stricken mother’s soul! All swims before her eyes, flashes with black, she catches the main words only, Sentences broken, gunshot wound in the breast, cavalry skirmish, taken to hospital, At present low, but will soon be better. Ah now the single figure to me, Amid all teeming and wealthy Ohio with all its cities and farms, Sickly white in the face and dull in the head, very faint, By the jamb of a door leans. Grieve not so, dear mother, (the just-­‐grown daughter speaks through her sobs, The little sisters huddle around speechless and dismay’d,) See, dearest mother, the letter says Pete will soon be better. Alas poor boy, he will never be better, (nor may-­‐be needs to be better, that brave and simple soul,) While they stand at home at the door he is dead already, The only son is dead. But the mother needs to be better, She with thin form presently drest in black, By day her meals untouch’d, then at night fitfully sleeping, often waking, In the midnight waking, weeping, longing with one deep longing, O that she might withdraw unnoticed, silent from life escape and withdraw, To follow, to seek, to be with her dear dead son Daffodils BY ALICIA OSTRIKER —for David Lehman Ten thousand saw I at a glance Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. —William Wordsworth Going to hell so many times tears it Which explains poetry. —Jack Spicer The day the war against Iraq begins I’m photographing the yellow daffodils With their outstretched arms and ruffled cups Blowing in the wind of Jesus Green Edging the lush grassy moving river Along with the swans and ducks Under a soft March Cambridge sky Embellishing the earth like a hand Starting to illustrate a children’s book Where people in light clothes come out To play, to frisk and run about With their lovers, friends, animals, and children As down every stony back road of history They’ve always done in the peaceful springs —Which in a sense is also hell because The daffodils do look as if they dance And make some of us in the park want to dance And breathe deeply and I know that Being able to eat and incorporate beauty like this I am privileged and by that token can Taste pain, roll it on my tongue, it’s good The cruel wars are good the stupidity is good, The primates hiding in their caves are very good, They do their best, which explains poetry. What explains poetry is that life is hard But better than the alternatives, The no and the nothing. Look at this light And color, a splash of brilliant yellow Punctuating an emerald text, white swans And mottled brown ducks floating quietly along Whole and alive, like an untorn language That lacks nothing, that excludes Nothing. Period. Don’t you think It is our business to defend it Even the day our masters start a war? To defend the day we see the daffodils? Digging in a Footlocker BY WALTER MCDONALD Crouched before dismantled guns, we found war souvenirs our uncle padlocked in the attic, a brittle latch easily pried off. Stiff uniforms on top, snapshots of soldiers young as our cousins, a velvet box of medals as if he fought all battles in World War II. Bayonets, machetes, a folded flag, two hand grenades with missing pins. We picked up teeth like pennies, loose, as if tossed in, a piece of something dark and waxy like a fig, curved like a question mark, a human ear. We touched dried pieces of cloth stuck to curved bones and held them to the light, turning them over and over, wondering how did uncles learn to kill, what would happen when we grew up. During the War BY PHILIP LEVINE When my brother came home from war he carried his left arm in a black sling but assured us most of it was still there. Spring was late, the trees forgot to leaf out. I stood in a long line waiting for bread. The woman behind me said it was shameless, someone as strong as I still home, still intact while her Michael was burning to death. Yes, she could feel the fire, could smell his pain all the way from Tarawa– or was it Midway?–and he so young, younger than I, who was only fourteen, taller, more handsome in his white uniform turning slowly gray the way unprimed wood grays slowly in the grate when the flames sputter and die. “I think I’m going mad,” she said when I turned to face her. She placed both hands on my shoulders, kissed each eyelid, hugged me to her breasts and whispered wetly in my bad ear words I’d never heard before. When I got home my brother ate the bread carefully one slice at a time until nothing was left but a blank plate. “Did you see her,” he asked, “the woman in hell, Michael’s wife?” That afternoon I walked the crowded streets looking for something I couldn’t name, something familiar, a face or a voice or less, but not these shards of ash that fell from heaven. Love Poem for an Enemy BY RICHARD KATROVAS I, as sinned against as sinning, take small pleasure from the winning of our decades-­‐long guerrilla war. For from my job I've wanted more than victory over one who'd tried to punish me before he died, and now, neither of us dead, we haunt these halls in constant dread of drifting past the other's life while long-­‐term memory is rife with slights that sting like paper cuts. We've occupied our separate ruts yet simmered in a single rage. We've grown absurd in middle age together, and should seek wisdom now together, by ending this row. I therefore decommission you as constant flagship of my rue. Below the threshold of my hate you now my good regard may rate. For I have let my anger pass. But, while you're down there, kiss my ass. Tomahawk BY MARK RUDMAN My deaf cousin had a hand in designing the Tomahawk Missile. The blueprints open on his desk for what was to become a show-­‐and-­‐tell-­‐style reunion. I hadn’t laid eyes on this exuberant man since chance threw us together at a party given by his best friend whose brother was your real father’s best friend, and whose blind nephew appeared, shook my hand, and, unprompted, said my name:—it was like a blessing. The deaf men nodded at the blind boy’s recognition. They held me captive, these two deaf friends, and took forever with frantic mimicry explaining how they knew each other, firmly guiding the silent dialogue toward the bizarre intersection of fates: theirs, mine, my father’s, my mother’s.... The deaf find ways of contacting each other. They have their on watering holes. Did he place this decisive warhead above all other constructions executed during a working life spent gratefully, perhaps too gratefully, in the government’s employ designing, mainly, destroyers...? Final proof he was not handicapped by his handicap? He married a deaf woman, but his two daughters are normal; I mean not deaf.... Both were present and married. One was pregnant. The other became more and more voluble as this Sunday marathon wore on. Conversation meant—: asking each other questions. My cousin scribbled answers alongside the next question on a pad that rustled like a pet hamster in his back pocket. It was work, talking to that generation’s deaf. It was hard not to raise your voice. I caught my mother trying to catch my eye across the smoked fish infested spread as she mouthed a lipsticky YOU MUST E NUN CI ATE Brain-­‐dead from the labor of “catching up” with veritable strangers with whom I was linked by blood, I wandered, coffee balanced in saucer, toward my cousin’s study, in vain hope of tête-­‐a-­‐tête. He followed, hauled down sheafs from shelves, while I studied the framed sketches of ship’s interiors. Had deafness helped him achieve these heights of invention? His face brightened. He strained with strangled voice to answer. Even I could understand “That’s the ticket,” before he scrawled with Bic on pad. “Deaf...can think better....” I was about to say “Not all,” that I was asking about him personally, when his daughter intervened and said, aloud and in sign, that this was “deafism.” He signed: “No no, not hearing forced me...” She signed and spoke, indulgent, resigned, admiring: “So deafness makes you superior?” I liked the way she stood up to him, and the way he took it. Trying not to sound like a boorish upstart in a Q & A disingenuously grilling Oppenheimer, Einstein or Bohr with how they felt about their elegant theorems culminating in so much death, I asked if he was ambivalent about designing warheads. Question from left field. Bewilderment squared. His honked “Wa” was like an inaudible “Come again?” Forehead painfully wrinkled. Deep-­‐set ridges. My stomach contracted: Oh God, what have I done? It wasn’t me asking discomfiting questions to hound this dear, sweet, ebullient man, who had done his best...; it was my...duty to ask, which appeared to perplex this...disembodied intelligence...schooled in focusing on the problem to be solved just as Husserl bracketed words, [postponed] this longing to belong to sentences that mimicked meaningful action, and to block out the politics and social contexts that could...derail...the (beautiful) concord between pure thought and necessity. He had the right to think: Anyone can design a ship, or a missile, that works like a bigger bullet shot from a bigger gun; but to invent one that can stop, turn around, change directions, now that’s—invention. She repeated the question in sign and came back with: “My father doesn’t understand your question.” I spoke more slowly. “You must feel proud at how the Tomahawk conducted itself during the Desert War.” The praise sent him rocking. So that’s what I took so long to say! He nodded exuberantly in accord. “Wait. Even though it was for a good cause doesn’t it bother you that the missile killed many people.” Question from left field. Flurry of signs between father and daughter. “My dad says war is horrible but once you’re in it’s important to win.” “That was true before, and true as it pertained to the two world wars, but Southeast Asian...was another story.” Groan of dismay. Why should a deaf engineer be forced to deal with relative ethics too...? War made the mental challenge of his work more challenging, as it did the group holed up at Los Alamos. The heart sinks when these higher mathematical formulations become subject to weather, and the stray jackrabbits and homo sapiens “who weren’t supposed to be anywhere near the test site...” This pacific man could not have thought about what the Tomahawk did to real live—now dead—people. He was too immersed in the question of how to get the missile to think, to take into account—the wind. The Destruction of Sennacherib BY LORD BYRON (GEORGE GORDON) The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold, And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold; And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea, When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee. Like the leaves of the forest when Summer is green, That host with their banners at sunset were seen: Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath blown, That host on the morrow lay withered and strown. For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast, And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed; And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill, And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still! And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide, But through it there rolled not the breath of his pride; And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf, And cold as the spray of the rock-­‐beating surf. And there lay the rider distorted and pale, With the dew on his brow, and the rust on his mail: And the tents were all silent, the banners alone, The lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown. And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail, And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal; And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword, Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord! The Man He Killed BY THOMAS HARDY "Had he and I but met By some old ancient inn, We should have sat us down to wet Right many a nipperkin! "But ranged as infantry, And staring face to face, I shot at him as he at me, And killed him in his place. "I shot him dead because — Because he was my foe, Just so: my foe of course he was; That's clear enough; although "He thought he'd 'list, perhaps, Off-­‐hand like — just as I — Was out of work — had sold his traps — No other reason why. "Yes; quaint and curious war is! You shoot a fellow down You'd treat if met where any bar is, Or help to half-­‐a-­‐crown." P O E M The End and the Beginning BY WISŁAWA SZYMBORSKA After every war someone has to clean up. Things won’t straighten themselves up, after all. Someone has to push the rubble to the side of the road, so the corpse-­‐filled wagons can pass. Someone has to get mired in scum and ashes, sofa springs, splintered glass, and bloody rags. Someone has to drag in a girder to prop up a wall. Someone has to glaze a window, rehang a door. Photogenic it’s not, and takes years. All the cameras have left for another war. We’ll need the bridges back, and new railway stations. Sleeves will go ragged from rolling them up. Someone, broom in hand, still recalls the way it was. Someone else listens and nods with unsevered head. But already there are those nearby starting to mill about who will find it dull. From out of the bushes sometimes someone still unearths rusted-­‐out arguments and carries them to the garbage pile. Those who knew what was going on here must make way for those who know little. And less than little. And finally as little as nothing. In the grass that has overgrown causes and effects, someone must be stretched out blade of grass in his mouth gazing at the clouds. The Lighthouse by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow The rocky ledge runs far into the sea, and on its outer point, some miles away, the lighthouse lifts its massive masonry, A pillar of fire by night, of cloud by day. Even at this distance I can see the tides, Upheaving, break unheard along its base, A speechless wrath, that rises and subsides in the white tip and tremor of the face. And as the evening darkens, lo! how bright, through the deep purple of the twilight air, Beams forth the sudden radiance of its light, with strange, unearhly splendor in the glare! No one alone: from each projecting cape And perilous reef along the ocean's verge, Starts into life a dim, gigantic shape, Holding its lantern o'er the restless surge. Like the great giant Christopher it stands Upon the brink of the tempestuous wave, Wading far out among the rocks and sands, The night o'er taken mariner to save. And the great ships sail outward and return Bending and bowing o'er the billowy swells, And ever joyful, as they see it burn They wave their silent welcome and farewells. They come forth from the darkness, and their sails Gleam for a moment only in the blaze, And eager faces, as the light unveils Gaze at the tower, and vanish while they gaze. The mariner remembers when a child, on his first voyage, he saw it fade and sink And when returning from adventures wild, He saw it rise again o'er ocean's brink. Steadfast, serene, immovable, the same, Year after year, through all the silent night Burns on forevermore that quenchless flame, Shines on that inextinguishable light! It sees the ocean to its bosum clasp The rocks and sea-­‐sand with the kiss of peace: It sees the wild winds lift it in their grasp, And hold it up, and shake it like a fleece. The startled waves leap over it; the storm Smites it with all the scourges of the rain, And steadily against its solid form press the great shoulders of the hurricane. The sea-­‐bird wheeling round it, with the din of wings and winds and solitary cries, Blinded and maddened by the light within, Dashes himself against the glare, and dies. A new Prometheus, chained upon the rock, Still grasping in his hand the fire of love, it does not hear the cry, nor heed the shock, but hails the mariner with words of love. "Sail on!" it says: "sail on, ye stately ships! And with your floating bridge the ocean span; Be mine to guard this light from all eclipse. Be yours to bring man neared unto man. The Lighthouse by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow I Hear an Army James Joyce I hear an army charging upon the land, And the thunder of horses plunging; foam about their knees: Arrogant, in black armour, behind them stand, Disdaining the reins, with fluttering whips, the Charioteers. They cry into the night their battle name: I moan in sleep when I hear afar their whirling laughter. They cleave the gloom of dreams, a blinding flame, Clanging, clanging upon the heart as upon an anvil. They come shaking in triumph their long grey hair: They come out of the sea and run shouting by the shore. My heart, have you no wisdom thus to despair? My love, my love, my love, why have you left me alone? Killers a poem by Carl Sandburg I am singing to you Soft as a man with a dead child speaks; Hard as a man in handcuffs, Held where he cannot move: Under the sun Are sixteen million men, Chosen for shining teeth, Sharp eyes, hard legs, And a running of young warm blood in their wrists. And a red juice runs on the green grass; And a red juice soaks the dark soil. And the sixteen million are killing. . . and killing and killing. I never forget them day or night: They beat on my head for memory of them; They pound on my heart and I cry back to them, To their homes and women, dreams and games. I wake in the night and smell the trenches, And hear the low stir of sleepers in lines Sixteen million sleepers and pickets in the dark: Some of them long sleepers for always, Some of them tumbling to sleep to-­‐morrow for always, Fixed in the drag of the world's heartbreak, Eating and drinking, toiling. . . on a long job of killing. Sixteen million men. Carl Sandburg We Never Know BY YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA He danced with tall grass for a moment, like he was swaying with a woman. Our gun barrels glowed white-­‐hot. When I got to him, a blue halo of flies had already claimed him. I pulled the crumbled photograph from his fingers. There's no other way to say this: I fell in love. The morning cleared again, except for a distant mortar & somewhere choppers taking off. I slid the wallet into his pocket & turned him over, so he wouldn't be kissing the ground. After the Wilderness BY ANDREW HUDGINS MAY 3, 1863 When Clifford wasn’t back to camp by nine, I went to look among the fields of dead before we lost him to a common grave. But I kept tripping over living men and had to stop and carry them to help or carry them until they died, which happened more than once upon my back. And I got angry with those men because they kept me from my search and I was out still stumbling through the churned-­‐up earth at dawn, stopping to stare into each corpse’s face, and all the while I was writing in my head the letter I would have to send our father, saying Clifford was lost and I had lost him. I found him bent above a dying squirrel while trying to revive the little thing. A battlefield is full of trash like that — dead birds and squirrels, bits of uniform. Its belly racked for air. It couldn’t live. Cliff knew it couldn’t live without a jaw. When in relief I called his name, he stared, jumped back, and hissed at me like a startled cat. I edged up slowly, murmuring “Clifford, Cliff,” as you might talk to calm a skittery mare, and then I helped him kill and bury all the wounded squirrels he’d gathered from the field. It seemed a game we might have played as boys. We didn’t bury them all at once, with lime, the way they do on burial detail, but scooped a dozen, tiny, separate graves. When we were done he fell across the graves and sobbed as though they’d been his unborn sons. His chest was large — it covered most of them. I wiped his tears and stroked his matted hair, and as I hugged him to my chest I saw he’d wet his pants. We called it Yankee tea. Gregory Orr, Memorial Day “This is Just to Say,” 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
He Would Never Use One Word Where None Would Do,”
Philip Levine
If you said "Nice day," he would look up
at the three clouds riding overhead,
nod at each, and go back to doing whatever he was doing or not doing.
If you asked for a smoke or a light,
he'd hand you whatever he found
in his pockets: a jackknife, a hankie -usually unsoiled -- a dollar bill,
a subway token. Once he gave me
half the sandwich he was eating
at the little outdoor restaurant
on La Guardia Place. I remember
a single sparrow was perched on the back
of his chair, and when he held out
a piece of bread on his open palm,
the bird snatched it up and went back to
its place without even a thank you,
one hard eye staring at my bad eye
as though I were next. That was in May
of '97, spring had come late,
but the sun warmed both of us for hours
while silence prevailed, if you can call
the blaring of taxi horns and the trucks
fighting for parking and the kids on skates
streaming past silence. My friend Frankie
was such a comfort to me that year,
the year of the crisis. He would turn
up his great dark head just going gray
until his eyes met mine, and that was all
I needed to go on talking nonsense
as he sat patiently waiting me out,
the bird staring over his shoulder.
"Silence is silver," my Zaydee had said,
getting it wrong and right, just as he said
"Water is thicker than blood," thinking
this made him a real American.
Frankie was already American,
being half German, half Indian.
Fact is, silence is the perfect water:
unlike rain it falls from no clouds
to wash our minds, to ease our tired eyes,
to give heart to the thin blades of grass
fighting through the concrete for even air
dirtied by our endless stream of words.
since feeling is first
e.e. cummings
since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world
my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
—the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says
we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph
And death i think is no parenthesis
Daddy
by Sylvia Plath
You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.
Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time-Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal
And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.
In the German tongue, in the Polish town
Scraped flat by the roller
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town is common.
My Polack friend
Says there are a dozen or two.
So I never could tell where you
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.
It stuck in a barb wire snare.
Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak.
I thought every German was you.
And the language obscene
An engine, an engine
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.
The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna
Are not very pure or true.
With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck
And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
I may be a bit of a Jew.
I have always been scared of you,
With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.
And your neat mustache
And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You-Not God but a swastika
So black no sky could squeak through.
Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.
You stand at the blackboard, daddy,
In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
But no less a devil for that, no not
Any less the black man who
Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.
But they pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue.
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look
And a love of the rack and the screw.
And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I'm finally through.
The black telephone's off at the root,
The voices just can't worm through.
If I've killed one man, I've killed two-The vampire who said he was you
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.
There's a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.
12 October 1962
If You Forget Me by Pablo Neruda I want you to know
one thing.
You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.
Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.
If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.
If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.
But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.
Sign for My Father, Who Stressed the Bunt
BY DAVID BOTTOMS
On the rough diamond,
the hand-cut field below the dog lot and barn,
we rehearsed the strict technique
of bunting. I watched from the infield,
the mound, the backstop
as your left hand climbed the bat, your legs
and shoulders squared toward the pitcher.
You could drop it like a seed
down either base line. I admired your style,
but not enough to take my eyes off the bank
that served as our center-field fence.
Years passed, three leagues of organized ball,
no few lives. I could homer
into the left-field lot of Carmichael Motors,
and still you stressed the same technique,
the crouch and spring, the lead arm absorbing
just enough impact. That whole tiresome pitch
about basics never changing,
and I never learned what you were laying down.
Like a hand brushed across the bill of a cap,
let this be the sign
I’m getting a grip on the sacrifice.
Makin’ Jump Shots
BY MICHAEL S. HARPER
He waltzes into the lane
’cross the free-throw line,
fakes a drive, pivots,
floats from the asphalt turf
in an arc of black light,
and sinks two into the chains.
One on one her fakes
down the main, passes
into the free lane
and hits the chains.
A sniff in the fallen air—
he stuffs it through the chains
riding high:
“traveling” someone calls—
and he laughs, stepping
to a silent beat, gliding
as he sinks two into the chains. Once the Dream Begins
BY YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA
I wish the bell saved you.
"Float like a butterfly
& sting like a bee."
Too bad you didn't
learn to disappear
before a left jab.
Fighting your way out of a clench,
you counter-punched & bicycled
but it was already too late—
gray weather had started
shoving the sun into a corner.
"He didn't mess up my face."
But he was an iron hammer
against stone, as you
bobbed & weaved through hooks.
Now we strain to hear you.
Once the dream begins
to erase itself, can the
dissolve be stopped?
No more card tricks
for the TV cameras,
Ali. Please come back to us
sharp-tongued & quick-footed,
spinning out of the blurred
dance. Whoever said men
hit harder when women
are around, is right.
Word for word,
we beat the love
out of each other.
Slam, Dunk, & Hook
BY YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA
Fast breaks. Lay ups. With Mercury's
Insignia on our sneakers,
We outmaneuvered to footwork
Of bad angels. Nothing but a hot
Swish of strings like silk
Ten feet out. In the roundhouse
Labyrinth our bodies
Created, we could almost
Last forever, poised in midair
Like storybook sea monsters.
A high note hung there
A long second. Off
The rim. We'd corkscrew
Up & dunk balls that exploded
The skullcap of hope & good
Intention. Lanky, all hands
& feet...sprung rhythm.
We were metaphysical when girls
Cheered on the sidelines.
Tangled up in a falling,
Muscles were a bright motor
Double-flashing to the metal hoop
Nailed to our oak.
When Sonny Boy's mama died
He played nonstop all day, so hard
Our backboard splintered.
Glistening with sweat,
We rolled the ball off
Our fingertips. Trouble
Was there slapping a blackjack
Against an open palm.
Dribble, drive to the inside,
& glide like a sparrow hawk.
Lay ups. Fast breaks.
We had moves we didn't know
We had. Our bodies spun
On swivels of bone & faith,
Through a lyric slipknot
Of joy, & we knew we were
Beautiful & dangerous. Fast Break
BY EDWARD HIRSCH
In Memory of Dennis Turner, 1946-1984
A hook shot kisses the rim and
hangs there, helplessly, but doesn’t drop,
and for once our gangly starting center
boxes out his man and times his jump
perfectly, gathering the orange leather
from the air like a cherished possession
and spinning around to throw a strike
to the outlet who is already shoveling
an underhand pass toward the other guard
scissoring past a flat-footed defender
who looks stunned and nailed to the floor
in the wrong direction, trying to catch sight
of a high, gliding dribble and a man
letting the play develop in front of him
in slow motion, almost exactly
like a coach’s drawing on the blackboard,
both forwards racing down the court
the way that forwards should, fanning out
and filling the lanes in tandem, moving
together as brothers passing the ball
between them without a dribble, without
a single bounce hitting the hardwood
until the guard finally lunges out
and commits to the wrong man
while the power-forward explodes past them
in a fury, taking the ball into the air
by himself now and laying it gently
against the glass for a lay-up,
but losing his balance in the process,
inexplicably falling, hitting the floor
with a wild, headlong motion
for the game he loved like a country
and swiveling back to see an orange blur
floating perfectly through the net. Why I Might Go to the Next Football Game
BY DENIS JOHNSON
sometimes you know
things: once at a
birthday party a little
girl looked at her new party
gloves and said she
liked me, making suddenly the light much
brighter so that the very small
hairs shone above her lip. i felt
stuffed, like a swimming pool, with
words, like i knew something that was in
a great tangled knot. and when we sat
down i saw there were
tiny glistenings on her
legs, too. i knew
something for sure then. but it
was too big, or like the outside too
everywhere, or maybe
hiding inside, behind
the bicycles where i later
kissed her, not using my tongue. it was
too giant and thin to squirm
into, and be so well inside of, or
too well hidden to punch, and feel. a few
days later on the asphalt playground i
tackled her. she skinned her
elbow, and i even
punched her and felt her, felt
how soft the hairs were. i thought
that i would make a fine football-playing
poet, but now i know
it is better to be an old, breathing
man wrapped in a great coat in the stands, who
remains standing after each play, who knows
something, who rotates in his place
rasping over and over the thing
he knows: “whydidnhe pass? the other
end was wide open! the end
was wide open! the end was wide open . . . ”
No world is intact
and no one cares about you.
I leaned down over
don’t care about, I care about
you
I leaned down over the
world in portrayal
of carefulness, answering
something you couldn’t say.
walking or fallen and you
were supposed
to give therapy to me—
me leaning down
brushing with painted feathers
to the left chance your operatic,
broken
book.
- Alice Notley
Ski Lift to Death!
by Matthew Rohrer
It was a basement with its own basement,
and in that basement were machines
and dusty weapons, the engines of the house;
where the floor gave way because of intense pressure
from below, and magma boiled up
through the wood-looking tiles;
where to leap to safety
broke my sister's foot;
where the animals that weren't as smart as we
were captured and admired;
where we watched in horror as the ski lift
lifted the men inexorably to death;
it was my favorite room in the house.
7th Game : 1960 Series
BY PAUL BLACKBURN
—for Joel—
Nice day,
sweet October afternoon
Men walk the sun-shot avenues,
Second, Third, eyes
intent elsewhere
ears communing with transistors in shirt pockets
Bars are full, quiet,
discussion during commercials
only
Pirates lead New York 4-1, top of the 6th, 2
Yankees on base, 1 man out
What a nice day for all this !
Handsome women, even
dreamy jailbait, walk
nearly neglected :
men’s eyes are blank
their thoughts are all in Pittsburgh
Last half of the 9th, the score tied 9-all,
Mazeroski leads off for the Pirates
The 2nd pitch he simply, sweetly
CRACK!
belts it clean over the left-field wall
Blocks of afternoon
acres of afternoon
Pennsylvania Turnpikes of afternoon . One
diamond stretches out in the sun
the 3rd base line
and what men come down
it
The final score, 10-9
Yanquis, come home
Ski Lift to
Death!
by Matthew Rohrer
It was a basement with its own basement,
and in that basement were machines
and dusty weapons, the engines of the house;
where the floor gave way because of intense pressure
from below, and magma boiled up
through the wood-looking tiles;
where to leap to safety
broke my sister's foot;
where the animals that weren't as smart as we
were captured and admired;
where we watched in horror as the ski lift
lifted the men inexorably to death;
it was my favorite room in the house.
Poetry you need to read: Elaine Equi, Ron
Padgett, Alice
Woman Found In Wooded Area
She ran through the woods
to escape him.
He followed the path
knowing he would reach
the same place.
She wore stockings.
The thorns tore at them
and she bled.
When she came out,
her breath was visible
and he could smell her.
Like a deer, she stilled,
hoping he could not see her.
But he could.
SOLDIER MISSING ON DESERT MANEUVERS
Sun blinding down behind a lava cone.
Dark comes, but not cooling.
How long till dawn, till he sees
a distant scroll of dust - dancing-devil
moving closer, becoming truck
to take him back to camp.
Another day of seeking shadow
at his post, scanning all directions
for that dust-devil that doesn't come.
No truck to the lost horizon.
How far can a soldier walk or crawl
on two canteens of water?
Which blind star might guide him
on the death-march home?
Taylor Graham
L.A. Police Chief Daryl Gates Dead at 83
—We were the finest.
So the parents blamed the children,
and the children marched barefoot
through the alleys, spray-painting
their age. And the preacher introduced
the word lascivious and accused
the congregation of not tiding
when the daughter died.
And the deacon board smoked.
And the economists saluted Reagan.
And the police called it an economy of dust.
Our meteorologist predicted
a low-pressure system in the abdomen.
And the junkies swore perfume rung the air.
The grocer had his union; the butcher couldn’t
outrun his quarter of spoiled blood.
And the girls wore extra rings
and caked their skin with Vaseline.
And the men slept the afternoon,
growing childishly morose as they dreamed.
And I think I thought we’d burn then, when the
refinery blew, and rust began
to bleed through the whitewashed fence,
when the lawns were done, and the schoolyard darkened,
and the side streets began to split.
Amaud Jamaul Johnson
Bad People
BY MARK HALLIDAY
The guys who drank quarts of Busch last night
here by the backstop of this baseball diamond
had names given them by their mothers and fathers—
“Jack” and “Kenny” let us say.
Jack might be
a skinny guy in a black fake-leather jacket,
he’s twenty-five, his gray pants are too loose on his hips,
his jaws always have these little black extra hairs,
his mother won’t talk to him on the phone,
she lives on french fries and ketchup,
he hasn’t been able to send her any cash
in the last two years, ever since he lost
his job unloading produce trucks at Pathmark;
Jack’s father disappeared when he was ten.
“No big deal,” Jack says, “he was a bastard anyway,
he used to flatten beer cans on the top of my head.”
Kenny offers a laugh-noise. He’s heard all that before.
Kenny is forty-eight, a flabby man with reddened skin,
he is employed at the Italian Market selling fish
just four hours a day but his shirts hold the smell;
his female companion Deena left him a note last month:
“You owe me $12 chocolate $31 wine $55 cable TV plus
donuts—I have had it—taking lamp and mirror
they are mine.” Kenny hasn’t seen her since.
He hangs with Jack because Jack talks loud
as if the world of cops and people with full-time jobs
could be kept at bay by talking, talking loud . . .
(I’m talking gently and imaginatively here
as if the world of bums and jerks could be kept far off—)
Jack and Kenny. (Or two other guys dark to me with wounds
oozing in Philadelphia ways less ready to narrate.)
Last night at midnight they got cheesesteaks at Casseloni’s
and bought four quarts at the Fireside Tavern
and wandered into this park. After one quart of Busch
Jack said he was Lenny Dykstra
and found a stick for his bat. “Pitch to me asshole” he said
so Kenny went to the mound and pitched his bottle
for want of anything better and Jack swung in the dark and missed;
Kenny’s bottle smashed on home plate and Jack heard in the sound
the absurdity of all his desiring since seventh grade,
absurdity of a skinny guy who blew everything since seventh
when he hit home runs and chased Joan Rundle around the gym
so Jack took his own empty bottle and smashed it down
amid the brown shards of Kenny’s bottle.
Then they leaned on the backstop to drink the other two quarts
and they both grew glum and silent
and when they smashed these bottles it was like
what else would they do? Next morning
Nick and I come to the park with a rubber ball
and a miniature bat. Nick is not quite three
but he knows the names of all the Phillies starters
and he knows the area around home plate is not supposed to be
covered with jagged pieces of brown glass. Like a good dad
I warn him not to touch it and we decide to establish
a new home plate closer to the mound (there’s no trash can
handy). “Who put that glass there?” Nick wants to know
and to make a long story short I say “Bad People.”
Nick says “Bad? How come?”