June 2012
21 posts
i'm not home, it's probably better | jo shapcott
i am calling to wish you well. i am calling because i want to change something i said. a year ago you asked me three questions. i thought you were asking my birthday wishes and answered all wrong. if you remember (if i know you you’ll pretend you don’t) i answered: 1) no, i have always been homely. 2) yes i believe you have always been too lovely for anyone to bear. 3) silk. it is not...
May 2012
16 posts
now that i am in madrid i can think | frank o'hara
i think of you and the continents brilliant and arid and the slender heart you are sharing my share of with the american air as the lungs i have felt sonorously subside slowly greet each morning and your brown lashes flutter revealing two perfect dawns colored by new york see a vast bridge stretching to the humbled outskirts with only you standing on the edge of the purple like an only tree ...
where babies come from | jeffery mcdaniel
for my eighth birthday i got a toy train set my father helped assemble. my job was to hand him pieces of track and re-light the cigarettes that went out in his mouth. halfway through, i asked him where babies come from. he told me that eight years ago today i showed up on the front stoop in a cardboard box, how he spent the whole afternoon putting me together, just like this train set, that i was...
wedged | hal sirowitz
you were the one who followed me into the elevator & asked for my phone number, she said. i didn’t lead you on. in fact, i tried discouraging you. i told you i had lots of problems. i was used to being alone. but now that you’ve wedged yourself into my life, don’t think leaving me will be as smooth as our first elevator ride. it’ll be like walking up a flight of...
everything in our world did not seem to fit |...
once they started invading us. taking our houses and trees, drawing lines, pushing us into tiny places. it wasn’t a bargain or deal or even a real war. to this day they pretend it was. but it was something else. we were sorry what happened to them but we had nothing to do with it. you don’t think what a little plot of land means till someone takes it and you can’t go back. your...
the unbearable weight of staying | warsan shire
i don’t know when love became elusive what i know, is that no one i know has it my fathers arms around my mothers neck fruit too ripe to eat, a door half way open when your name is a just a hand i can never hold everything i have ever believed in, becomes magic. i think of lovers as trees, growing to and from one another searching for the same light, my mothers laughter in a dark room, a...
continuity | a.r. ammons
eating-poetry:
I’ve pressed so far away from my desire that
if you asked me what I want I would,
accepting the harmonious completion of the drift, say annihilation,
probably.
lending out books | hal sirowitz
you’re always giving, my therapist said. you have to learn how to take. whenever you meet a woman, the first thing you do is lend her your books. you think she’ll have to see you again in order to return them. but what happens is, she doesn’t have the time to read them, & she’s afraid if she sees you again you’ll expect her to talk about them, & will want to...
the sun never says | hafiz
even after all this time the sun never says to the earth, “you owe me.” look what happens with a love like that, it lights the whole sky.
incident | norman maccaig
i look across the table and think (fiery with love) ask me, go on, ask me to do something impossible, something freakishly useless, something unimaginable and inimitable like making a finger break into blossom or walking for half an hour in twenty minutes or remembering tomorrow. i will you to ask it. but all you say is will you give me a cigarette? and i smile and, returning to the marvelous...
clarification | franz wright
someone once told me about a buddhist monk who on awakening each morning said “master!” then he would answer “yes, master?” and then in a loud voice demand “become sober!” listen to what i am saying, but listen especially to what i am not saying— of all the powers of love, this: it is possible to die; which means it’s possible to live. now it is possible to die without being mad or afraid.
how to build an owl | kathleen lynch
1. decide you must.
2. develop deep respect for feather, bone, claw.
3. place your trembling thumb where the heart will be: for one hundred hours watch so you will know where to put the first feather.
4. stay awake forever. when the bird takes shape gently pry open its beak and whisper into it: mouse.
5. let it go.
lesson one | julie hill alger
at least i’ve learned this much: life doesn’t have to be all poetry and roses. life can be bus rides, gritty sidewalks, electric bills, dishwashing, chapped lips, dull stubby pencils with the erasers chewed off, cheap radios played too loud, the rank smell of stale coffee yet still glow with the inner fire of an opal, still taste like honey.
lies i've told my 3 year old lately | raul...
trees talk to each other at night. all fish are named either lorna or jack. before your eyeballs fall out from watching too much tv, they get very loose. tiny bears live in drain pipes. if you are very very quiet you can hear the clouds rub against the sky. the moon and the sun had a fight a long time ago. everyone knows at least one secret language. when nobody is looking, i can fly. we are all...
sweetness | stephen dunn
just when it has seemed i couldn’t bear one more friend waking with a tumor, one more maniac
with a perfect reason, often a sweetness has come and changed nothing in the world
except the way i stumbled through it, for a while lost in the ignorance of loving
someone or something, the world shrunk to mouth-size, hand-size, and never seeming small.
i acknowledge there is no sweetness ...
poem without forgiveness | dean young
grammatolatry | theoryoflostthings
some piece of you stays in me and i’ll never give it back. the heart hoards its thorns just as the rose profligates. just because you’ve had enough doesn’t mean you wanted too much.
