January 2012
19 posts
traveler | heather sommer
grammatolatry:
your first time out of the country of your own skin, i didn’t bring a map.
you always hated that i’d been lucky enough to pick my way through streets
i couldn’t pronounce to find cathedrals, graveyards. if you were a city, you said,
i’d only like to know your suburbs.
if you were a city, i said, I’d like to know your poor neighborhoods, your inner parts.
read your graffiti....
a christian country | langston hughes
god slumbers in a back alley with a gin bottle in his hand. come on, god, get up and fight like a man.
4 tags
revelry | kings of leon
just know it was you all along
who had ahold of my heart
but the demon & me were
the best of friends from the start
morning song | dorianne laux
this morning begins almost purely, coffee enveloped in cream, those clouds that bloom up like madness in a cup, and i take the first swallow before the color changes, taste the bitterness and the faint sweet behind it, steam rubbing my nose, an animal nuzzle, and the sharp, nearly painful heat at the back of my tongue, the liquid unraveling down the raw tunnel of my throat. and i feel my body...
how to tell a story | shira erlichman
there is a way of telling stories. a red pen. a teacher to move it. instead you have hands, and a Light inside you, and Bones. instead you have ideas, which ricochet, and an anger that won’t sit still, and dogs from outside which come to die in the quiet spots inside of you. and, deliberately, you have noise. you have rape, and cities, the noise of the dumb, and of the very rape of the earth, an...
return key | cory mesler
grammatolatry:
I miss you because memory is a kind editor. The past is a long scroll and in it is the story of us, told with gentle metaphor, and words that bring you back and back, even as you lie there, lying.
crying | galway kinnell
crying only a little bit is no use. you must cry until your pillow is soaked! then you can get up and laugh. then you can jump in the shower and splash-splash-splash! then you can throw open your window and, “ha ha! ha ha!” and if people say, “hey, what’s going on up there?” “ha ha!” sing back, “happiness was hiding in the last tear! i wept...
flood | eliza griswold
i woke to a voice within the room. perhaps. the room itself: “you’re wasting this life expecting disappointment.” i packed my bag in the night and peered in its leather belly to count the essentials. nothing is essential. to the east, the flood has begun. men call to each other on the water for the comfort of voices. love surprises us. it ends.
today, like every other day | jalaluddin rumi
today, like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened. don’t open the door to the study and begin reading. take down a musical instrument. let the beauty we love be what we do. there are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
everything | srikanth reddy
she was watching the solar eclipse through a piece of broken bottle when he left home. he found a blue kite in the forest on the day she lay down with a sailor. when his name changed, she stitched a cloud to a quilt made of rags. they did not meet, so they could never be parted. so she finished her prayer, & he folded his map of the sea
a contribution to statistics | wislawa szymborska
out of a hundred people those who always know better -fifty-two doubting every step -nearly all the rest, glad to lend a hand if it doesn’t take too long -as high as forty-nine, always good because they can’t be otherwise -four, well maybe five, able to admire without envy -eighteen, suffering illusions induced by fleeting youth -sixty, give or take a few, not to be taken lightly...
under ideal conditions | al zolynas
say in the flattest part of North Dakota on a starless moonless night no breath of wind a man could light a candle then walk away every now and then he could turn and see the candle burning seventeen miles later provided conditions remained ideal he could still see the flame somewhere between the seventeenth and eighteenth mile he would lose the light if he were walking backwards he would know the...
you write many poems about death | charles...
yes, and here’s another one and later it might even end up in one of my books. and the book will be sitting on a shelf waiting for you long after I am gone. think of that: in a sense I will be speaking again just for you. and remember this: the page you are looking at now, I once typed the words with care with you in mind under a yellow light with the radio on. If you think about death...
date a girl who reads | rosemarie urquico
date a girl who reads. date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes. she has problems with closet space because she has too many books. date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.
find a girl who reads. you’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag. she’s the one lovingly looking over...
you should date an illiterate girl | charles...
date a girl who doesn’t read. find her in the weary squalor of a midwestern bar. find her in the smoke, drunken sweat, and varicolored light of an upscale nightclub. wherever you find her, find her smiling. make sure that it lingers when the people that are talking to her look away. engage her with unsentimental trivialities. use pick-up lines and laugh inwardly. take her outside when the night...
even this late | mark strand
even this late it happens: the coming of love, the coming of light. you wake and the candles are lit as if by themselves, stars gather, dreams pour into your pillows, sending up warm bouquets of air. even this late the bones of the body shine and tomorrow’s dust flares into breath.
beauty and the beast: an anniversary | jane yolen
it is winter now, and the roses are blooming again, their petals bright against the snow. my father died last april; my sisters no longer write, except at the turning of the year, content with their fine houses and their grandchildren. beast and i putter in the gardens and walk slowly on the forest paths. he is graying around the muzzle and i have silver combs to match my hair. i have no regrets....
eve argues against perfection | diane lockward
and the woman said, the serpent beguiled me, and I did eat. - genesis 3:13 beguiled, my ass. i said no such thing. you say i lost the gift of paradise. i couldn’t lose what i never had. you say the serpent tempted me to eat. you omit that he entered the garden on two legs and walked like a man. and here’s what your story always ignores: i had pure gold, rare...
this deepening takes place again | emily kendal...
what if everything were revealed: where i was last night. you, etc. the rain is coming down like salad. my sister’s hair reminds me of my sister so much i can’t stop looking. who am i to have arms? on the plane one short dream: a baby so small it wasn’t even human, just a bouquet of light with wise cellular eyes. if losing me is the worst thing to happen, your life is still a...
December 2011
15 posts
calle principe, 25 | jose tolentino mendonca
without warning we lose the vastness of the fields singular enigmas the clarity we swear we’ll preserve but it takes us years to forget someone who merely looked at us
like crazy | anna
i thought i understood it that i could grasp it but i didn’t, not really. only the smudgeness of it; the pink-slippered, all-containered, semi-precious eagerness of it.
i didn’t realize it would sometimes be more than whole, that the wholeness was a rather luxurious idea. because it’s the halves that halve you in half. i didn’t know, don’t know, about the in-between bits; the gory...
song | marie borroff
love is a staying of desire, desire is flight and staying, dies; whatever you have heard in song, this is the truth; the rest is lies. nor is there touch or kiss to prove love other than a foredoomed thing, for though it may conceive love’s fire, the heart cannot sustain it long. lips heavy with the freight of love have hung above me like a bough; out of a deep and mastering drouth i reached...
countersong | marie borroff
yet, yet, in spite of all,
love is, love lasts. though from the lax hand falls what it at first held fast, though custom stills the heartbeat of delight, though day’s each joy must pass beneath the pall of night, yet, yet, in time’s despite, and past all mortal ills, love is, love lasts; if the heart wills.
tree | jane hirshfield
it is foolish to let a young redwood grow next to a house. even in this one lifetime, you will have to choose. that great calm being, this clutter of soup pots and books— already the first branch-tips brush at the window. softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life.
torch song for you | daphne gottleib
since you’ve gone, all i can do is sit at home and sing the great love songs.
i don’t want to set the world on fire.
i just want to start a small
conflagration in your apartment that quickly grows into a five-alarm blaze and you grab the cat and your laptop and run out the door and i, having crawled down the fire escape, come strolling down the street and...
dawn revisited | rita dove
imagine you wake up with a second chance: the blue jay hawks his pretty wares and the oak stands still, spreading glorious shade. if you don’t look back, the future never happens. how good to rise in sunlight, in the prodigal smell of biscuits — eggs and sausage on the grill. the whole sky is yours to write on, blown open to a blank page. come on, shake a leg! you’ll never know...
1 tag
anticipating an ianless christmas | virginia tamez
i sit in a room that is dark (but not dark enough)
and is almost empty
(but then there’s me)
and listen to noise from another room
(where people are happy)
and think about you.
i take off my glasses (so my tears won’t smear the lenses)
and hope someone goes looking for me (but doesn’t find me)
and realize that my hands are cold (my mind was elsewhere)
and think about...
dogfish | mary oliver
you don’t want to hear the story of my life, and anyway i don’t want to tell it, i want to listen
to the enormous waterfalls of the sun.
and anyway it’s the same old story - - - a few people just trying, one way or another, to survive.
mostly, i want to be kind. and nobody, of course, is kind, or mean, for a simple reason.
and nobody gets out of it, having to swim through the...
we should talk about this problem | hafiz
there is a beautiful creature living in a hole you have dug. so at night i set fruit and grains and little pots of wine and milk beside your soft earthen mounds, and i often sing. but still, my dear, you do not come out. i have fallen in love with someone who hides inside you. we should talk about this problem—- otherwise, i will never leave you alone.
13 tags
milos | anis mojgani
let us take a sack of spray paint and spray paint over the paintings let us dance through paris kiss in the shadow of the louvre crawl inside its windows scrawl manifestos over the canvases write morse code on the sculptures roll a sleeping bag on the floor to sleep inside of tell one another a story by flashlight unearth everything from before bury each other inside the other feed grapes to the...
oh yes | charles bukowski
there are worse things than being alone but it often takes decades to realize this and most often when you do it’s too late and there’s nothing worse than too late
snowshoe to otter creek | stacie cassarino
love lasts by not lasting —jack gilbert
i’m mapping this new year’s vanishings: lover, yellow house, the knowledge of surfaces. this is not a story of return. there are times i wish i could erase the mind’s lucidity, the difficulty of sundays, my fervor to be touched by a woman two februarys gone. what brings the body back, grieved and cloven, tromping these woods with...
the great fires | jack gilbert
love is apart from all things. desire and excitement are nothing beside it. it is not the body that finds love. what leads us there is the body. what is not love provokes it. what is not love quenches it. love lays hold of everything we know. the passions which are called love also change everything to a newness at first. passion is clearly the path but does not bring us to love. it opens the...
death is a door | nancy byrd turner
death is only an old door set in a garden wall; on gentle hinges it gives, at dusk when the thrushes call. along the linted are green leaves, beyond the light lies still; very willing and weary feet go over that sill. there is nothing to trouble any heart; nothing to hurt at all. death is only a quiet door in an old wall.
November 2011
17 posts
all that is glorious around us | barbara crooker
is not, for me, these grand vistas, sublime peaks, mist-filled overlooks, towering clouds, but doing errands on a day of driving rain, staying dry inside the silver skin of the car, 160,000 miles, still running just fine. or later, sitting in a café warmed by the steam from white chicken chili, two cups of dark coffee, watching the red and gold leaves race down the street, confetti from...
draft #2006 | adrienne rich
viii they asked me, is this time worse than another i said, for whom? wanted to show them something. while i wrote on the chalkboard they drifted out. i turned back to an empty room. maybe i couldn’t write fast enough. maybe it was too soon.
you do not need many things | ryokan
my house is buried in the deepest recess of the forest every year, ivy vines grow longer than the year before. undisturbed by the affairs of the world i live at ease, woodmen’s singing rarely reaching me through the trees. while the sun stays in the sky, i mend my torn clothes and facing the moon, i read holy texts aloud to myself. let me drop a word of advice for believers of my faith. to enjoy...
a working list of things i will never tell you |...
my friend sarah wrote a poem about pink ponies. i’m scared you’re my pink pony. hers is dead. it is really sad. you’re not dead. you live in ohio, or washington, or wherever. you are a shadow my body leaves on other girls. i have a growing queue of things i know will make you laugh and i don’t know where to put them. i mourn like you’re dead. if you had asked me to stay, i would not have said no....
one parting | carl sandburg
why did he write to her, “i can’t live without you”? and why did she write to him, “i can’t live without you”? for he went west, she went east, and they both lived.
8 tags
two cures for love | wendy cope
1. don’t see him. don’t phone or write a letter. 2. the easy way: get to know him better.
1 tag
as much as i ever could | city and colour
love, love of mine won’t you lay by my side and rest your weary eyes before we’re out of time? give me one last kiss for soon such distance will stretch between our lips now the day’s losing light bring me your love tonight bring me your love tonight lost at sea my heart beat was growing weak hoping you’d hear my plea and come save my life as the storm grew fierce and...
on last lines | suzanne buffam
the last line should strike like a lover’s complaint. you should never see it coming. and you should never hear the end of it.
to build a quiet city in his mind | weldon kees
to build a quiet city in his mind: a single overwhelming wish; to build, not hastily, for there is so much wind, so many eager smilers to be killed, obstructions one might overlook in haste: the ruined structures cluttering the past, a little at a time and slow is best, crawling as though through endless corridors, remembering always there are many doors that open to admit the captured guest once...
misgivings | william matthews
“perhaps you’ll tire of me,” muses my love, although she’s like a great city to me, or a park that finds new ways to wear each flounce of light and investiture of weather. soil doesn’t tire of rain, i think, but i know what she fears: plans warp, planes explode, topsoil gets peeled away by floods. and worse than what we can’t control is what we could; those drab, scuttled marriages we shed so...
how to miss a man | kerrin mccadden
breathing is just a rhythm. tell yourself this so that the breathing becomes a song. sing this song all day while you shop in the hardware store for things you do not need. sing it again while you cook supper for yourself. cook supper for yourself, even if you don’t want to. go for a walk, even if you don’t want to. put your shoes on and get the leash and even bring the dog. she will be so pleased...
the promise | marie howe
in the dream i had when he came back not sick but whole, and wearing his winter coat, he looked at me as though he couldn’t speak, as if there were a law against it, a membrane he couldn’t break. his silence was what he could not not do, like our breathing in this world, like our living, as we do, in time. and i told him: i’m reading all this buddhist stuff, and listen, we don’t die when we die....
the laughing heart | charles bukowski
your life is your life don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission. be on the watch. there are ways out. there is a light somewhere. it may not be much light but it beats the darkness. be on the watch. the gods will offer you chances. know them. take them. you can’t beat death but you can beat death in life, sometimes. and the more often you learn to do it, the more light there will be. your life...
untitled | e. ethelbert miller
when there are no more poems to be written go & wake the dead tell them that the war is over that victory is ours tell them that the living too have found peace
failing and flying | jack gilbert
poetry365:
everyone forgets that icarus also flew. it’s the same when love comes to an end, or the marriage fails and people say they knew it was a mistake, that everybody said it would never work. that she was old enough to know better. but anything worth doing is worth doing badly. like being there by that summer ocean on the other side of the island while love was fading out of her,...
separation | w.s. mervin
your absence has gone through me like thread through a needle. everything i do is stitched with its color.