May 2013
2 posts
spiritual warfare | karla huston
exceptindreams:
i’m always thinking about lot’s wife, wonder what her neighbors thought when she packed up her tunics and cooking pots and left town without so much as a fare thee well. dave, the guy i work with says, “it’s because she was a sinful woman in a sinful town. you know where the word sodomy comes from.” i tell him, “sodomy’s been made legal in texas. i read it in the paper...
when you have forgotten sunday: the love story |...
—and when you have forgotten the bright bedclothes on a wednesday and a saturday, and most especially when you have forgotten sunday— when you have forgotten sunday halves in bed, or me sitting on the front-room radiator in the limping afternoon looking off down the long street to nowhere, hugged by my plain old wrapper of no-expectation and nothing-i-have-to-do and i’m-happy-why? and...
April 2013
14 posts
royal heart | andrea gibson
exceptindreams:
you will never be let down by anyone more than you will be let down by the one you love most in the world it’s how gravity works it’s why they call it “falling” it’s why the truth is harder to tell every year you have more to lose but you can choose to bury your past in the garden beside the tulips water it until it’s so alive it lets go and you belong to yourself again when you...
ars poetica #100: i believe | elizabeth alexander
grammatolatry:
poetry, i tell my students, is idiosyncratic. poetry
is where we are ourselves, (though sterling brown said
“every ‘i’ is a dramatic ‘i’”) digging in the clam flats
for the shell that snaps, emptying the proverbial pocketbook.
poetry is what you find in the dirt in the corner,
overhear on the bus, god in the details, the only way
to get from here to there. poetry (and...
a sonnet of invented memories | miles walser
1. i told you that i was a roadway of potholes, not safe to cross. you said nothing, showed up in my driveway wearing roller-skates. 2. the first time i asked you on a date, after you hung up, i held the air between our phones against my ear and whispered, “you will fall in love with me. then, just months later, you will fall out. i will pretend the entire time that i don’t know it’s coming.” 3....
and they were both right | kapka kassabova
grammatolatry | yesyes
…
what if love is no more than a tangle of muscles aching to be untied by knowing fingers?
what if love is made and nothing else - asked narcissus, leaning over the green iris of water. nothing else, cried echo from the green cochlea of the woods.
and they were both right. and they were both lonely.
you are the place you cannot move | ralph angel
you wake up healthy but you don’t feel right. now everything’s backwards and you’re thinking of someone to blame. and you do, you’re lucky, drinking coffee was easy, the traffic’s moving along, you’re like everyone else just trying to get through the day and the place you’re dreaming of seems possible— somewhere to get to. all you really know is that...
tattoo | carl dennis
if the body is the house of the soul, what’s wrong with a little home decoration more permanent than the drapes in the parlor or the fabric on the dining-room chairs? a forearm, say, adorned with a tropical flower or with a palm tree under a deep blue sky, suggesting the body is glad to recall its stay in eden, whether or not the soul regards that episode as relevant now. or consider the...
rain | raymond carver
grammatolatry | larmoyante
woke up this morning with
a terrific urge to lie in bed all day
and read. fought against it for a minute.
then looked out the window at the rain.
and gave over. put myself entirely
in the keep of this rainy morning.
would i live my life over again?
make the same unforgiveable mistakes?
yes, given half a chance. yes.
summer solstice | stacie cassarino
i wanted to see where beauty comes from without you in the world, hauling my heart across sixty acres of northeast meadow, my pockets filling with flowers. then i remembered, it’s you i miss in the brightness and body of every living name: rattlebox, yarrow, wild vetch. you are the green wonder of june, root and quasar, the thirst for salt. when i finally understand that people fail at love, what...
things that have been lost | yehuda amichai
from newspaper columns and notice boards i find out about things that have been lost. this way i know what people had and what they love.
once my tired head fell on my hairy chest and there i found my father’s smell again, after many years.
my memories are like someone who can’t go back to czechoslovakia or who is afraid to return to chile.
sometimes i see again the white vaulted room with the...
fiction | lisel mueller
going south, we watched spring unroll like a proper novel: forsythia, dogwood, rose; bare trees, green lace, full shade. by the time we arrived in georgia the complications were deep. when we drove back, we read from back to front. maroon went wild, went scarlet, burned once more and then withdrew into pink, tentative, still in bud. i thought if only we could go on and meet again, shy as...
to the former self in art class | hannah faith...
you didn’t know the boy sitting next to you in watercolor 101 was going to shutter himself in the car, stop breathing, break the heart of his father and the whole college. let’s be honest. his cones and cylinders were as lopsided, as badly shaded as everyone else’s cones and cylinders. when you hear the news two years later, you search your own tatty portfolio for clues,...
advertisement for the mountain | christina davis
exceptindreams:
There are two versions of every life. In the first one, you get a mother, a father, your very own room. You learn to walk, which is only done by walking. You learn the past tense of have, which is hunger. You learn to ask almost anything is to ask it to be over, as when the lover asks the other “Are you sleeping? Are you beginning to go away?” (And whether or not you...
spring vow | larissa shmailo
we will love like dogwood kiss like cranes die like moths i promise
unrequited love poem (on watching someone you love...
you will be out with friends when the news of her existence will be accidentally spilled all over your bar stool. respond calmly as if it was only a change in weather, a punch line you saw coming. after your fourth shot of cheap liquor, leave the image of him kissing another woman in the toilet. in the morning, her name will be in every headline: car crash, robbery, flood. when he calls you,...
March 2013
12 posts
o sweet spontaneous | e.e. cummings
o sweet spontaneous earth how often have the doting
fingers of prurient philosophers pinched and poked
thee ,has the naughty thumb of science prodded thy
beauty how often have religions taken thee upon their scraggy knees squeezing and
buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive gods (but true to the incomparable couch of death thy rhythmic lover
thou...
after love | alan michael parker
i wrote letters of introduction
and sent them to every embassy
of every future
just in case you need something
when you get there
including to all the outposts of wind-up afternoons
and to all the banquets where the gods disagree
and to all the bees muscling in all the flowers
and of course to every color.
in the letters i share a couple of our secrets
the story of our argument on the way...
are all of the break-ups in your poems real? |...
if by real you mean as real as a shark tooth stuck in your heel, the wetness of a finished lollipop stick, the surprise of a thumbtack in your purse— then yes, every last page is true, every nuance, bit, and bite. wait. i have made them up—all of them— and when i say i am married, it means i married all of them, a whole neighborhood of past loves. can you imagine the number of bouquets, how many...
a blessing for a wedding | jane hirshfield
today when persimmons ripen today when fox-kits come out of their den into snow today when the spotted egg releases its wren song today when the maple sets down its red leaves today when windows keep their promise to open today when fire keeps its promise to warm today when someone you love has died or someone you never met has died today when someone you love has been born or someone...
it would take | richard donnelly
…
because i want you to suffer no that’s not it
i want the opposite i want you to finally become yourself you said you want to feel i’ll show you how to feel
but first meet me halfway
…
blues for almost forgotten music | roxane beth...
i am trying to remember the lyrics of old songs i’ve forgotten, mostly i am trying to remember one-hit wonders, hymns, and musicals like west side story. singing over and over what i can recall, i hum remnants on buses and in the...
god knows i want to be good | jackleen holton
that’s why last year i went out with michael who drove a white prius and wore beige vegetarian shoes. and when we’d meet at a tofu bistro the same distance from both of our houses, we’d go dutch because we knew the importance of sexual equality. we had good conversations, talked about dwindling rainforests and fragile ecosystems. we liked the same movies and poems. god knows i want to be...
destination: beautiful | eugenia leigh
i’ve come to hunt a time capsule at the west end of sunset boulevard. to rummage the beach for remnants of old friends who’ve abandoned themselves to sprout
new families. suddenly everyone has cleaved to strangers made of diamonds and cake, capable of waving away whole bruised childhoods—rotten fruits we used to feed
this drooling ocean. years ago, a friend and i hiked the will rogers...
piano | patrick phillips
touched by your goodness, i am like that grand piano we found one night on willoughby that someone had smashed and somehow heaved through an open window.
and you might think by this i mean i’m broken or abandoned, or unloved. truth is, i don’t know exactly what i am, any more than the wreckage in the alley knows it’s a piano, filling with trash and yellow leaves.
maybe i’m all that’s...
wherein the author provides footnotes and...
by 351, when madness2 had overcome her3; when her body4 sloshed5 like6 rubbery meat7 in the softest swells of armsag8 and stomach fold9; when the night brought10 marching ants11 to her12 pillow13 and14wailing15 teapots16 swarmed in the kitchen17; when the cannibals came18 wearing eyeliner and capped teeth19; when the flock of birds erupted from her throat20, leaving her...
when my ex called in sick | darla biel
i almost brought him soup. so strong was my habit of caring for him,
i was willing to make it from scratch, the flesh falling
from hen bones, the rings of celery and translucent onions,
the round carrots floating, the slim bay leaf slip
so potent i only need one.
the space between | elena georgiou
stuck in an unnamed place half way between love and in love, you call me late at night and ask if i’m sleeping. i tell you, i’m writing. you ask about what? love, i say. when i write about us, i stop myself from saying we make love or we have sex. i search for a euphemism that won’t bind me, won’t define us. i arrive at the phrase move together. and only now, in writing...
February 2013
11 posts
diogenes the bartender closes up | mary karr
thank god for the bankrupt drunk with the gold american express. he bought my gin. he understood my thoughts, punched the saddest numbers on the jukebox. his divorce will join the myths in my best iliad. and bless the blue maintenance man, that holy ghosts, a blue-eyed vet who mops the four corners of my world, a ring of keys ...
diogenes tries to forget | mary karr
it’s one of those days when everything is half-off, half-on. my shirt, for example, which i notice is buttoned wrong while staring in the diner window. i think i want a slice of pecan pie, some life sweeter than this, life my childhood in texas. there’s no pie today, just you, by accident again, bent over your coffee like the “v” the geese fly south.
it’s a fall day. because we’re...
diogenes consoles a friend | mary karr
you can make a friend of grief paint its face white, offer it a kimono to wear, a cup of tea. when all your real friends are gone you can walk through the woods with it, burying little jars stuffed with their memories – photobooth snapshots, a glass eye, a ring, until real life grows so vague your landlord thinks you’re crazy. grief expects this and makes some funny insults about his...
with lorenzo at the center of the universe, el...
we had to cross the street twice because of rats. but there it was. the zócalo at night and la calle de la moneda like a dream out of canaletto. forget canaletto. this was real. and you were there, lorenzo. the cathedral smoky-eyed and still rising like a pyramid after all these centuries. you named the four holy centers—amecameca, tepeyac, and two others i can’t remember. i remember you,...
delia elena san marco | jorge luis borges
we said goodbye on a corner in once. from the other sidewalk i turned to look back; you too had turned, and you waved goodbye to me.
a river of vehicles and people were flowing between us. it was five o’clock on an ordinary afternoon. how was i to know that the river was acheron the doleful, the insuperable?
we did not see each other again, and a year later you were dead.
and now i seek out that...
for my mother when she doesn't feel beautiful |...
oofpoetry | clementinevonradics
don’t worry about your body. it isn’t as small as it once was, but honestly, the world needs more of you. you look in the mirror like you’ve done something wrong, but you look perfect. anyone who says otherwise is telling a lie to make you feel weak. and you know better. you’ve survived every single day, for as long as you’ve been alive. you could spit fire if...
For You, Friend
brighteryellow:
this Valentine’s Day, I intend to stand for as long as I can on a kitchen stool and hold back the hands of the clock, so that wherever you are, you may walk even more lightly in your loveliness; so that the weak, mid-February sun (whose chill I will feel from the face of the clock) cannot in any way lessen the lights in your hair, and the wind (whose subtle insistence I...
the loneliest job in the world | tony hoagland
as soon as you begin to ask the question, who loves me? you are completely screwed, because the next question is how much? and then it is hundreds of hours later, and you are still hunched over your flowcharts and abacus, trying to decide if you have gotten enough. this is the loneliest job in the world: to be an accountant of the heart. it is late at night. you are by yourself, and all around...
1 tag
lessening | linda gregg
exceptindreams:
without even looking in the album i realized suddenly, two months later, you had stolen the picture of me, the one in color in the greek waves. after you had hurt me so much, how could you also take the picture from me of a time before i knew you? when i was with jack. steal the small proof that once i lived well, was loved and beautiful.
frankly | naomi shihab nye
no one has time for the dying. and they don’t have time for us either. our lunch dates and appointments, their fitful sleeps and crusted eyes. students circling in a parking lot down the road certainly don’t have time. first period coming too soon will scatter clumps of flirtation. moms in fitness garb with grocery lists and car pool numbers stuck to refrigerators, have too many of the...
things i didn't know i loved | nazim hikmet
i didn’t know i loved the earth can someone who hasn’t worked the earth love it i’ve never worked the earth it must be my only platonic love
and here i’ve loved rivers all this time whether motionless like this they curl skirting the hills european hills crowned with chateaus or whether stretched out flat as far as the eye can see i know you can’t wash in the same...
a silver splendour, a flame | catherynne m....
truth is: i was always that kind of girl. truth is: they don’t make dresses any whiter than mine. truth is: i am not demeter’s daughter. i am heisenberg’s ripe tomato i am niels bohr’s piece on the side. in the winter i am a particle. in the summer i am a wave. and i didn’t get to be queen of hell by letting folks off easy.
January 2013
17 posts
the ubiquity of the need for love | ronald koertge
exceptindreams:
i leave the number and a short message on every green Volvo in town
is anything wrong? i miss you. 574-7423
the phone rings constantly. one says, are you bald? another, how tall are you in your stocking feet? most just reply, nothing’s wrong. i miss you, too. come quick.
his elderly father as a young man | leo dangel
this happened before i met your mother: i took jennie johanson to a summer dance, and she sent me a letter, a love letter, i guess, even if the word love wasn’t in it. she wrote that she had a good time and didn’t want the night to end. at home, she lay down on her bed but stayed awake, listening to the songs of morning birds outside her window. i read that letter a hundred times and...
cats and you and me | charles bukowski
the egyptians loved the cat were often entombed with it instead of with the child and never with the dog. and now here good people with the souls of cats are very few yet here and now many fine cats with great style lounge about in the alleys of the universe. about our argument tonight whatever it was about and no matter how unhappy it made us feel remember that there is a cat somewhere adjusting...
i have always confused desire with apocalypse |...
we met over a small earthquake. now, my knees shake whenever you come around and i’ve noticed your hand has a slight tremor.
no matter how much sunlight | alison townsend
…
but afterwards i couldn’t stop crying at how close that underworld still is, and how clearly i remember the taste of dirt in my mouth. and how the predilection for sadness is embedded within me, an obsidian arrow lodged in the heart, no matter how tight your good arms are around me, or how much sunlight i stand in, or how far i’ve traveled away from the dark.
there is no word | tony hoagland
there isn’t a word for walking out of the grocery store with a gallon jug of milk in a plastic sack that should have been bagged in double layers —so that before you are even out the door you feel the weight of the jug dragging the bag down, stretching the thin plastic handles longer and longer and you know it’s only a matter of time until bottom suddenly splits. there is no single, unimpeachable...
hands | angela shannon
when they told us we could have each other, i didn’t know what to do, how to hold you. i hadn’t embraced anyone in years. i had lost my hands to scrubbing, stirring, and scraping fabric against iron. i hadn’t used them for touching since david popped out of me thirty five years ago. these hands aren’t hands, they’re just tools used for cleaning what never going to come clean with dirt being thrown...
glass | kim addonizio
in every bar there’s someone sitting alone and absolutely absorbed by whatever he’s seeing in the glass in front of him, a glass that looks ordinary, with something clear or dark inside it, something partially drunk but never completely gone. everything’s there: all the plans that came to nothing, the stupid love affairs, and the terrifying ones, the ones where actual...
each from different heights | stephen dunn
that time i thought i was in love and calmly said so was not much different from the time i was truly in love and slept poorly and spoke out loud to the wall and discovered the hidden genius of my hands and the times i felt less in love, less than someone, were, to be honest, not so different either. each was ridiculous in its own way and each was tender, yes, sometimes even the false is tender. i...
