December 2011
31 posts
2 tags
Invictus
by William Ernest Henley
Out of the night that covers me, Black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears Looms but the Horror of the shade, And yet the menace of the years ...
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Inhale, Exhale
by Gesshu Soko
Inhale, exhale Forward, back Living, dying: Arrows, let flown each to each Meet midway and slice The void in aimless flight
Thus I return to the source.
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Balance
by Adam Zagajewski
I watched the arctic landscape from above and thought of nothing, lovely nothing. I observed white canopies of clouds, vast expanses where no wolf tracks could be found.
I thought about you and about the emptiness that can promise one thing only: plenitude— and that a certain sort of snowy wasteland bursts from a surfeit of happiness.
As we drew closer to our landing, ...
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The Piano Speaks
by Sandra Beasley
”[…] For an hour I forgot my fear of rain.
For an hour I was a salamander shimmying through the kelp in search of shore, and under his fingers the notes slid loose from my belly in a long jellyrope of eggs that took root in the mud […]”
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B-Side Poem Story: a Response to PJ
by Amelia M. Garcia
Hello to the could-have-beens, the never-weres, the last-calls-ignored and the times wasted. I’m not exactly sure what to say to the person who slept with their back to me that last night at home, the last time I hoped to remember. During those hours I was writing poems on your spine and pushing them through the spaces in your ribcage. When you coughed in the morning, I...
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Explosion at Winco No. 9
by Diane Gilliam Fisher
Delsey Salyer knowed Tom Junior by his toes, which his steel-toed boots had kept the fire off of. Betty Rose seen a piece of Willy’s ear, the little notched part where a hound had bit him when he was a young’un, playing at eating its food. It is true that it is the men that goes in, but it is us that carries the mine inside. It is us that listens to what all they are...
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Skating in Harlem, Christmas Day
by Cynthia Zarin
Beyond the ice-bound stones and bucking trees, past bewildered Mary, the Meer in snow, two skating rinks and two black crooked paths
are a battered pair of reading glasses scratched by the skater’s multiplying math. Beset, I play this game of tic-tac-toe.
Divide, subtract. Who can tell if love surpasses? Two naughts we’ve learned make one astonished— a hectic...
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A Visit from St. Nicholas
by Clement Clark Moore
‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all thro’ the house Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse; The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there; The children were nestled all snug in their beds, While visions of sugar plums danc’d in their heads, And Mama in her ‘kerchief, and I in my...
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Sandwich Notch Road, Two Days Before Christmas
by John Evans
”[…]No one I know who lives without deep sorrow. No one ever really finished with desire.
The soft animal of my body does not love what it has learned.
How could it? […]”
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Now Winter Nights Enlarge
by Thomas Campion
Now winter nights enlarge This number of their hours; And clouds their storms discharge Upon the airy towers. Let now the chimneys blaze And cups o’erflow with wine, Let well-tuned words amaze With harmony divine. Now yellow waxen lights Shall wait on honey love While youthful revels, masques, and courtly sights Sleep’s leaden spells remove. This time doth well...
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London, Winter
by Luke Davies
Pass unseen through a godforsaken floodplain, city of treachery, siege and publishers. No backbone here at all, nothing to fight, or with. All sunken in unmerciful decay. Every girl who ever rode a pony prostrate in the stables. The one thing that would save us, that would clatter through the galaxies, a chariot perhaps, evaporates. Frost rime blackened on the ponds is left. The...
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Night Snow
by Bai Juyi
I was surprised my quilt and pillow were cold, I see that now the window’s bright again. Deep in the night, I know the snow is thick, I sometimes hear the sound as bamboo snaps.
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A Woman Speaks
by Audre Lorde
Moon marked and touched by sun my magic is unwritten but when the sea turns back it will leave my shape behind. I seek no favor untouched by blood unrelenting as the curse of love permanent as my errors or my pride I do not mix love with pity nor hate with scorn and if you would know me look into the entrails of Uranus where the restless oceans pound. I do not dwell within my birth...
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Weather Report
by B. H. Fairchild
We will have a continuation of today tomorrow
Clouds will form these ragged gloves in which the hands of God make giant fists as He grits His teeth against the slaves of time. And the sun and moon will never rest.
from the boring grind of dark and light: subway tokens glittering on the ground, dogs in their habits, the hours soon or late, nuns and assassins in their daily...
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Autumn Passage
by Elizabeth Alexander
On suffering, which is real. On the mouth that never closes, the air that dries the mouth.
On the miraculous dying body, its greens and purples. On the beauty of hair itself.
On the dazzling toddler: “Like eggplant,” he says, when you say “Vegetable,”
“Chrysanthemum” to “Flower.” On his grandmother’s suffering, larger...
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My First Memory (of Librarians)
by Nikki Giovanni
This is my first memory: A big room with heavy wooden tables that sat on a creaky wood floor A line of green shades—bankers’ lights—down the center Heavy oak chairs that were too low or maybe I was simply too short For me to sit in and read So my first book was always big
In the foyer up four steps a semi-circle desk presided To the left side the card catalogue On the right...
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Westgate-on-Sea
by John Betjeman
Hark, I hear the bells of Westgate, I will tell you what they sigh, Where those minarets and steeples Prick the open Thanet sky.
Happy bells of eighteen-ninety, Bursting from your freestone tower! Recalling laurel, shrubs and privet, Red geraniums in flower.
Feet that scamper on the asphalt Through the Borough Council grass, Till they hide inside the shelter Bright...
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The Guest
by Anna Akhmatova
The blizzard beats with snow On my windows, as before. I have not become new, Yet a visitor is at my door. I asked, “What do you want?” “To be in hell with you.” I laughed, “Oh, you will spell For both of us misfortune.” But, lifting his lean hand, He lightly touched the flowers. “Tell me, how are you kissed? How do you kiss the...
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Love After Love
by Derek Walcott
The time will come when, with elation you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror and each will smile at the other’s welcome, and say, sit here. Eat. You will love again the stranger who was your self. Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart to itself, to the stranger who has loved you all your life, whom you ignored for another, who knows...
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After Reading 'Antony and Cleopatra'
by Robert Louis Stevenson
As when the hunt by holt and field Drives on with horn and strife, Hunger of hopeless things pursues Our spirits throughout life. The sea’s roar fills us aching full Of objectless desire— The sea’s roar, and the white moon-shine, And the reddening of the fire. Who talks to me of reason now? It would be more delight To have died in Cleopatra’s arms...
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The Zen of La Llorona
by Deborah Miranda
La Llorona rises over my town— a solitary curve, sharpened by someone else’s fury. I read a small gray Zen book Everyone loses everything. Lovers, families, friends, possessions, egos— we keep nothing of this world, not even our bodies. It’s as if you’d lost your favorite teacup, you see. No amount of searching, weeping or wailing will bring...
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Instructions
by Neil Gaiman
Touch the wooden gate in the wall you never saw before. Say “please” before you open the latch, go through, walk down the path. A red metal imp hangs from the green-painted front door, as a knocker, do not touch it; it will bite your fingers. Walk through the house. Take nothing. Eat nothing. However, if any creature tells you that it hungers, feed it. If it tells...
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Three Moves
by John Logan
Three moves in sixth months and I remain the same. Two homes made two friends. The third leaves me with myself again. (We hardly speak.) Here I am with tame ducks and my neighbors’ boats, only this electric heat against the April damp. I have a friend named Frank— the only one who ever dares to call and ask me, “How’s your soul?” I hadn’t thought about...
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Blind Curse
by Simon J. Ortiz
You could drive blind for those two seconds, and they would be forever. I think that as a diesel truck passes us eight miles east of Mission. Churning through the storm, heedless of the hills sliding away. There isn’t much use to curse, but I do. Words fly away, tumbling invisibly toward the unseen point where the prairie and sky meet. The road is like that in those...
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Rain
by Jack Gilbert
Suddenly this defeat. This rain. The blues gone gray And the browns gone gray And yellow A terrible amber. In the cold streets Your warm body. In whatever room Your warm body. Among all the people Your absence The people who are always Not you. I have been easy with trees Too long. Too familiar with mountains. Joy has been a habit. Now Suddenly This rain.
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Hedgehog
by Paul Muldoon
The snail moves like a Hovercraft, held up by a Rubber cushion of itself, Sharing its secret
With the hedgehog. The hedgehog Shares its secret with no one. We say, Hedgehog, come out Of yourself and we will love you.
We mean no harm. We want Only to listen to what You have to say. We want Your answers to our questions.
The hedgehog gives nothing Away, keeping itself to...
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12/3/11
by Tyler Knott Gregson
Too little of you and my goodness, far too much of everyone else.
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Happy the Lab'rer
by Jane Austen
Happy the lab’rer in his Sunday clothes! In light-drab coat, smart waistcoat, well-darn’d hose, And hat upon his head, to church he goes; As oft, with conscious pride, he downward throws A glance upon the ample cabbage rose That, stuck in button-hole, regales his nose, He envies not the gayest London beaux. In church he takes his seat among the rows, Pays to the place...
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Verse 10
by Tao Te Ching
Can you coax your mind from its wandering and keep to the original oneness? Can you let your body become supple as a newborn child’s? Can you cleanse your inner vision until you see nothing but the light? Can you love people and lead them without imposing your will? Can you deal with the most vital matters by letting events take their course? Can you step back from you own mind...
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You May Turn Over and Begin
by Simon Armitage
‘Which of these films was Dirk Bogarde not in? One hundredweight of bauxite makes how much aluminium? How many tales in The Decameron’? General Studies, the upper sixth, a doddle, a cinch for anyone with an ounce of common sense or a calculator with a memory feature. Having galloped through but not caring enough to check or double-check, I was dreaming of milk white breasts and...
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Love Poem
by Laura Kasischke
The water glass. The rain. The scale waiting for the weight. The car. The key. The rag. The dust. Once
I was a much younger woman in a hallway, and I saw you: I said to myself Here he comes. My future’s husband.
And even before that. I was the pink throbbing of the swim bladder inside a fish in the River Styx. I was the needle’s eye. I was the air around the wing...
