August 2012
21 posts
yes, no, yes, the future, gone, happy, yes, no,...
eating-poetry:
the first sentence of this poem is not about you. in this respect, it is unlike the last sentence and my heart. is the heart a thing that can be about something? we were about to break up and after that, we broke up. did it have to end in this—i mean, was there anything else i could have done? see fifth-to-last sentence. when dinner wilts into memory, when the frost florescent...
the primer | christina davis
eating-poetry:
she said, i love you.
he said, nothing.
(as if there were just one of each word and the one who used it, used it up).
in the history of language the first obscenity was silence.
chance meeting | susan browne
i know him, that man walking- toward me up the crowded street of the city, i have lived with him seven years now, i know his fast stride, his windy wheatfield hair, his hands thrust deep in his jacket pockets, hands that have known my body, touched its softest part, caused its quick shudders and slow releasings, i have seen his face above my face, his mouth smiling, moaning his eyes closed and...
in blackwater woods | mary oliver
look, the trees are turning their own bodies into pillars of light, are giving off the rich fragrance of cinnamon and fulfillment, the long tapers of cattails are bursting and floating away over the blue shoulders of the ponds, and every pond, no matter what its name is, is nameless now. every year everything i have ever learned in my lifetime leads back to this: the fires and the black river of...
anniversary | cecilia woloch
didn’t i stand there once, white-knuckled, gripping the just-lit taper, swearing i’d never go back? and hadn’t you kissed the rain from my mouth? and weren’t we gentle and awed and afraid, knowing we’d stepped from the room of desire into the further room of love? and wasn’t it sacred, the sweetness we licked from each other’s hands? and were we not lovely, then, were we not as lovely as...
across a great wilderness without you | keetje...
the deer come out in the evening. god bless them for not judging me, i’m drunk. i stand on the porch in my bathrobe and make strange noises at them— language, if language can be a kind of crying. the tin cans scattered in the meadow glow, each bullet hole suffused with moon, like the platinum thread beyond them where the river runs the length...
when we first faced | philip larkin
eating-poetry:
when first we faced, and touching showed how well we knew the early moves, behind the moonlight and the frost, the excitement and the gratitude, there stood how much our meeting owed to other meetings, other loves.
the decades of a different life that opened past your inch-close eyes belonged to others, lavished, lost; nor could i hold you hard enough to call my years of...
relax | ellen bass
bad things are going to happen. your tomatoes will grow a fungus and your cat will get run over. someone will leave the bag with the ice cream melting in the car and throw your blue cashmere sweater in the drier. your husband will sleep with a girl your daughter’s age, her breasts spilling out of her blouse. or your wife will remember she’s a lesbian and leave you for the woman next...
how is your heart? | charles bukowski
during my worst times on the park benches in the jails or living with whores I always had this certain contentment- I wouldn’t call it happiness- it was more of an inner balance that settled for whatever was occuring and it helped in the factories and when relationships went wrong with the girls. it helped through the wars and the hangovers the backalley fights the hospitals. to awaken in a...
that romantic sunset | laura van slyke
grammatolatry:
i remember you said something like, “the sun doesn’t set anywhere unless it sets in tucson,” that dusk when we sat on the hood of my car, folded into each other like the specks of white inside the stitches of denim jeans. that was back when we used to laugh at how we had become who parents and lambs and various shades of pure white stayed up late wringing their hands over. that...
she considers the dimensions of her soul | young...
the shape of her soul is a square. she knows this to be the case because she often feels its corners pressing sharp against the bone just under her shoulder blades and across the wings of her hips. at one time, when she was younger, she had hoped that it might be a cube, but the years have worked to dispel this illusion of space, so that now she understands: it is a simple plane, a shape with...
self-portrait by someone else | courtney kampa
the afternoon we traced our 2nd grade bodies with poster paint, legs v-shaped on paper like the outlines of victims at a crime scene, i was the only girl stuck partnered with a boy— his fists filthy from prying back scalps of onion grass, bug shells crushed up in his teeth because he’d liked the sound. he refused all paint-colors but blue. leaned over me, complaining loudly to his friends. then...
Chapter 1.1. (N.)
babybirch:
the boy is beautiful, you hear your friend say. he has a mouth worth kissing. but you bet he kisses all the time. and in fact you are right. the first time it seems dangerous. like 17 year old lust. milky. burnt. he does not wash his hands after he touches you, and this thrills you. as though he is saying he wants you on him. that no matter what, you are not dirty. later he...
sentimental moment or why did the baguette cross...
don’t fill up on bread i say absent-mindedly the servings here are huge my son, whose hair may be receding a bit, says did you really just say that to me? what he doesn’t know is that when we’re walking together, when we get to the curb i sometimes start to reach for his hand
a retiring teacher says goodbye to jim from...
at first my classes complained they couldn’t understand you, your speech was foreign language to their educated eyes. but, as chapters peeled away, the gold of your soul emerged like moonlight in fog and words like “loyalty and “goodness” appeared in my room and they were speaking about you, jim. each school year i loved you more and some nights i’d lie awake wishing i could dive...
the city | constantine p. cavafy
you said: “i’ll go to another country, go to another shore, find another city better than this one. whatever i try to do is fated to turn out wrong and my heart lies buried like something dead. how long can i let my mind moulder in this place? wherever i turn, wherever i look, i see the black ruins of my life, here, where i’ve spent so many years, wasted them, destroyed them totally.” you won’t...
the poem i didn't write | raymond carver
here is the poem i was going to write earlier, but didn’t because i heard you stirring. i was thinking again about that first morning in zurich. how we woke up before sunrise. disoriented for a minute. but going out onto the balcony that looked down over the river, and the old part of the city. and simply standing there, speechless. nude. watching the sky lighten. so thrilled and happy. as if we’d...
regardless | charles bukowski
the nights you fight best are when all the weapons are pointed at you, when all the voices hurl their insults while the dream is being strangled. the nights you fight best are when reason gets kicked in the gut, when the chariots of gloom encircle you. the nights you fight best are when the laughter of fools fills the air, when the kiss of death is mistaken for love. the nights you fight best are...
a non-comprehensive guide to feeling better
with help from anis mojgani and buddy wakefield.
“here am i” | anis mojgani
will it make me something? will i be something? am i something?
and the answer comes:
i already am. i always was. and i still have time to be.
“the information man” | buddy wakefield
at least you know how to recognize moments of brilliance, because even at your worst you are fucking...
air and light and time and space
“—you know, I’ve either had a family, a job, something has always been in the way but now I’ve sold my house, I’ve found this place, a large studio, you should see the space and the light. for the first time in my life I’m going to have a place and the time to create.” no baby, if you’re going to create you’re going to create whether you work 16 hours a day in a coal mine or you’re going to...
maps | sharlene teo
this is not a love poem. love cannot be so deliberate, plotting itself into a sky- scraper, sharp valley, clean comet. it should have no grid in the bold and lonely atlas of everybody’s alphabet.
this is not a love poem. i want to bury you in houses, bearings, constellations: concentric paths that hover about you like a minor illness, cartoon phantom. i want to distil trite silence into a...
