Poetic Medicine

Clarinet

2012-02-17T09:26:00.003-05:00

By Terrance Hayes

I am sometimes the clarinet
your parents bought
your first year in band,
my whole body alive
in your fingers, my one ear
warmed by the music
you breathe into it.
I hear your shy laugh
among the girls at practice.
I am not your small wrist
rising & falling as you turn
the sheet music,
but I want to be.
Or pinky bone, clavicle.
When you walk home
from school, birds call
to you in a language
only clarinets decipher.
The leaves whistle
and gawk as you pass.
Locked in my skinny box,
I want to be at least
one of the branches
leaning above you.

The Son

2012-02-16T07:34:00.000-05:00

By Mary Oliver

The son my father never had
lived with me
secretly;
before I sleep
I thought of him
with his strong wrists,
with his eyes.
My mother's body,
too torn from the expulsion
to bear again
fed me,
but the longing was clear.
Soon
I could fight like a boy
I could shoot a gun,
I could get lost
and find my way home.
I could not name the things
I was afraid of
like my own body,
cranky and mysterious
as water.
Of course I dreamed
a miracle would happen.
How they loved him,
his swagger, his long legs!
So, in the end,
I must pity them, I suppose,
for the sorrow
that hangs in the air
even now
when I greet them
as kindly as I can
in my happiness,
in my soft body,
in my long and shining hair -
for it was all true:
the miracle of myself,
their dreams,
their despair.

Valentine for Ernest Mann

2012-02-14T07:59:00.000-05:00

By Naomi Shihab Nye

You can't order a poem like you order a taco.
Walk up to the counter, say, "I'll take two"
and expect it to be handed back to you
on a shiny plate.

Still, I like your spirit.
Anyone who says, "Here's my address,
write me a poem," deserves something in reply.
So I'll tell you a secret instead:
poems hide. In the bottoms of our shoes,
they are sleeping. They are the shadows
drifting across our ceilings the moment
before we wake up. What we have to do
is live in a way that lets us find them.

Once I knew a man who gave his wife
two skunks for a valentine.
He couldn't understand why she was crying.
"I thought they had such beautiful eyes."
And he was serious. He was a serious man
who lived in a serious way. Nothing was ugly
just because the world said so. He really
liked those skunks. So, he re-invented them
as valentines and they became beautiful.
At least, to him. And the poems that had been hiding
in the eyes of skunks for centuries
crawled out and curled up at his feet.

Maybe if we re-invent whatever our lives give us
we find poems. Check your garage, the odd sock
in your drawer, the person you almost like, but not quite.
And let me know.

Mother

2012-02-14T07:56:00.002-05:00

By Alicia Ostriker

although I have put an ocean between us
still do you know how I lie awake at night
the eye in my right palm pictures you
sitting amid your litter, feel buried
by accumulated jars of buttons,
glass lose beneath a decade of bank statements
and funny poems,
hands folding under your chin, staring
at nothing, preparing to be blind
and helpless, for fifty years
it has tortured me that I cannot save you from
madness
and that I do not love you enough

what is enough
nothing is enough

Where Are You My Thrush

2012-02-13T12:12:00.001-05:00

By Amit Parmessur

Musing under a morose tamarind tree, I find
my mind melting into an emotional hurly-burly.
The blankness of the tattered sky above allowing
me to measure my beating heart, I
bring the flute to my lips. I pause.
I need this silence to touch my soul.

I’ve never thought the thread of our amity
would snap, without sound.
How dare time steal us from each
other, drowning us in a crowd of waves.

I falter again, and the flute remains mute.
I hope one day you beat the wind
and warp your snug nest round my patient heart.

O my merry Thrush,
without you I walk without feet!
Without you, my boat sails like a sieve.

Musing under this morose tree I often try
imaginary songs, waiting for your hymn.
They say it is most wonderful
but no one has inspired it the way I have.

I go home, like a brave periwinkle on an
endless errand, before the high stars start to pop.
My melody has combed every wooded area,
has fought every frost and used every patois.

This evening, I’ll drench the flute in the pool
of my anger and wait for an improbable return.

Remember soft Thrush, you are scintillating—
our bond isn’t ordinary, like others.

Amit Parmessur has appeared in around 100 literary magazines such as: Ann Arbor Review, Calliope Nerve, Black-Listed Magazine, Red Fez, Damazine, Zouch Magazine and many others. His book on blog Lord Shiva & other poems has been recently published by The Camel Saloon. He is nominated for the 2011 Pushcart Award and lives in Quatre-Bornes, Mauritius.

The Fury Of Guitars and Sopranos

2012-02-10T08:46:00.000-05:00

By Anne Sexton

This singing
is a kind of dying,
a kind of birth,
a votive candle.
I have a dream-mother
who sings with her guitar,
nursing the bedroom
with a moonlight and beautiful olives.
A flute came too,
joining the five strings,
a God finger over the holes.
I knew a beautiful woman once
who sang with her fingertips
and her eyes were brown
like small birds.
At the cup of her breasts
I drew wine.
At the mound of her legs
I drew figs.
She sang for my thirst,
mysterious songs of God
that would have laid an army down.
It was as if a morning-glory
had bloomed in her throat
and all that blue
and small pollen
ate into my heart
violent and religious.

The Dog Lovers

2012-02-09T07:07:00.000-05:00

By Spike Milligan

So they bought you
And kept you in a
Very good home
Central heating
TV
A deep freeze
A very good home -
No one to take you
For that lovely long run -
But otherwise
‘A very good home’
They fed you Pal and Chum
But not that lovely long run,
Until, mad with energy and boredom
You escaped – and ran and ran and ran
Under a car.
Today they will cry for you -
Tomorrow they will buy another dog.

Heroes

2012-02-08T08:02:00.000-05:00

By Eve Lyons

Confession: I was a teenage metal-head.
In high school I worshipped Joan Jett
with her tight black leather, tiny body, and defiant songs.
I loved all those boys with scraggly hair and screams
for voices like the ones in Def Leppard, AC/DC,
and Metallica – before they got all
serious and political. During lunch period
I would hang out with
stoners, punks, artists, and fags –
not because I was one of them,
but because I wanted to be.

In my Texas high school, being Jewish was
freakish enough. I certainly
didn’t have any heroes, but
I thought Marian Zimmerman was the shit.
At 16, she wore a femme-y leather jacket
and smoked cigarettes with one arm dangling
out the car window and one knee
propped up to rest her smoking hand on.
Most of the girls in my youth group
weren’t having sex, but I found the ones
who were, in the back cabin – the last one
before the woods
that no one was staying in.

Today, working with a group of adolescents
who have already been diagnosed,
I see myself, who could have been diagnosed.
The monthly religious conversions were a “warning sign,”
though of what I’m not sure.
The way I came home from youth group one weekend
and decided I was a vegetarian,
or the odd obsession with Charles Manson
and splicing tapes backwards that
occupied most of the seventh grade – those
were warning signs as well, I’m sure.

I certainly don’t long for adolescence, or the days
of sneaking out of Anna’s second story bedroom window
because of her father’s fury.
We hadn’t done anything but talk
those late nights, and neither of us would come out
for another couple years. I used to listen to Janis Joplin
croon and wish I could have known her
like my father did, or better yet
that she had survived her own high school scars
long enough to have known me. This was
years before swooning over Ani Difranco,
or going to punk shows like 7 Year Bitch.

Back then, there was only Joan Jett.
She loves rock ‘n’ roll, yeah, but
it was her other tracks that seduced me quickly. Her angry
growl when she was “frustrated,” and the
sweet cover of “Crimson and Clover.”
When she sang: “I don’t hardly know her
but I think I could love her” – I knew
there were options.
Even if it would be years till I tried them,
years till I named them.

Back then, I was completely
unsure of who I was
but knew enough to know
I didn’t care.

Previously published in The Dead Mule of Southern Literature, February 2012

Red Wand

2012-02-07T14:11:00.000-05:00

By Sandra Simonds

Sometimes I try to make poetry but mostly
   I try to earn a living. There's something still living
in every urn, I am sure of it. The ash moves
     around inside the vase like the magnetic filings that make
the moustache of Wooly Willy. Maybe a new face counts
     as reincarnation. The wand says, "I'll be your ostrich,
if you'll be my swan." In this life, what did I do wrong?
I think my heart is a magnet too. It attracts anything
that attracts joy like the summer grasses the swans track through.
        OMG, how in love I am with joy and with yours—how I know
that adding to it would only take it further off course,
        off its precarious center, so for once, I won't touch it.
I will stand wand-length away—let it
     glide stupidly on its weightless line, without me.

Farewell to the Sea

2012-02-06T00:04:00.001-05:00

By Juliette M. van de Mheen (stardustraven)

He never wanted to leave
He had seen dolphins
Heard gulls' mews

Memories of great whales
A chance encounter
With a calf, mother and aunt

Sun, waves and wind
Revelling in her vastness
From New York to Java

Sailing on all "Grandes Dames"
In all their glory
S.S. Rotterdam, S.S. Nieuw Amsterdam

Nevermore the freedom
Of a salty, unpredictable mistress
Whether she hummed or roared

She was his gal
This vibrant and ever alluring
Turquoise prima donna

Sadly, his halcyon days
Would not last
Back on shore

This profound grief
Ate away at him
His bouts of anger

Shut us out
If only
He would have allowed....

We brought him away
Between wood and dunes
He rests beside her.

Juliette M. van de Mheen lives and works in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. She has worked at the University Library of Amsterdam, where she worked partially for the Rare and Early Printings Project), and she now works at the Municipal Archive. Five other poems were published at Naturewriting.com, The Shofar Literary Review and Troubadour21. Readers can find her blog here.

Leaving Egypt

2012-02-05T09:23:00.002-05:00

By Merle Feld

The night is so dark
and I am afraid.
I see nothing, smell nothing,
the only reality -
I am holding my mother's hand.

And as we walk
I hear the sounds
of a multitude in motion -
in front, behind,
all around,
a multitude in motion.

I have no thought of tomorrow,
now, in the darkness,
there is only motion
and my mother's hand.

Woman Waving to Trees

2012-02-03T10:07:00.002-05:00

By Dorothea Tanning

Not that anyone would
notice it at first.
I have taken to marveling
at the trees in our park.
One thing I can tell you:
they are beautiful
and they know it.
They are also tired,
hundreds of years
stuck in one spot—
beautiful paralytics.
When I am under them,
they feel my gaze,
watch me wave my foolish
hand, and envy the joy
of being a moving target.

Loungers on the benches
begin to notice.
One to another,
"Well, you see all kinds..."
Most of them sit looking
down at nothing as if there
was truly nothing else to
look at until there is
that woman waving up
to the branching boughs
of these old trees. Raise your
heads, pals, look high,
you may see more than
you ever thought possible,
up where something might
be waving back, to tell her
she has seen the marvelous.

Nothing Twice

2012-02-02T18:33:00.000-05:00

By Wislawa Szymborska

Nothing can ever happen twice.
In consequence, the sorry fact is
that we arrive here improvised
and leave without the chance to practice.

Even if there is no one dumber,
if you're the planet's biggest dunce,
you can't repeat the class in summer:
this course is only offered once.

No day copies yesterday,
no two nights will teach what bliss is
in precisely the same way,
with precisely the same kisses.

One day, perhaps some idle tongue
mentions your name by accident:
I feel as if a rose were flung
into the room, all hue and scent.

The next day, though you're here with me,
I can't help looking at the clock:
A rose? A rose? What could that be?
Is it a flower or a rock?

Why do we treat the fleeting day
with so much needless fear and sorrow?
It's in its nature not to stay:
Today is always gone tomorrow.

With smiles and kisses, we prefer
to seek accord beneath our star,
although we're different (we concur)
just as two drops of water are.

Translated by Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak

The Worst And The Best

2012-02-01T17:23:00.000-05:00

By Charles Bukowski

in the hospitals and jails
it's the worst
in madhouses
it's the worst
in penthouses
it's the worst
in skid row flophouses
it's the worst
at poetry readings
at rock concerts
at benefits for the disabled
it's the worst
at funerals
at weddings
it's the worst
at parades
at skating rinks
at sexual orgies
it's the worst
at midnight
at 3 a.m.
at 5:45 p.m.
it's the worst
falling through the sky
firing squads
that's the best
thinking of India
looking at popcorn stands
watching the bull get the matador
that's the best
boxed lightbulbs
an old dog scratching
peanuts in a celluloid bag
that's the best
spraying roaches
a clean pair of stockings
natural guts defeating natural talent
that's the best
in front of firing squads
throwing crusts to seagulls
slicing tomatoes
that's the best
rugs with cigarette burns
cracks in sidewalks
waitresses still sane
that's the best

my hands dead
my heart dead
silence
adagio of rocks
the world ablaze
that's the best
for me.

Meditation for Tefillin

2012-01-31T08:01:00.000-05:00

By Elizabeth Sarah

I cannot
bind myself
to You
I can only
unbind myself
continually and
free
Your spirit
within me.

So why
this tender-cruel
parody of
bondage
black
leather
straps
skin
gut and
sacred litany of
power and
submission
which binds us
Your slave-people
still?

Band of Boys

2012-01-30T13:16:00.000-05:00

By Amanda Gayle Oliver

Boys.
Boys beat
Drums
Tap
Women
On
The head,
Exhale
Control.
As he
Breathes in,
Cramps
Inside her
Uterus
Cry out
For release.
Hormones
Gush
Out
Through
Tear ducts,
Orange,
Red,
Corduroy.

Boys.
Boys use
Sticks
To hit
Drums.
Slap women
On
The ass.
Sing
Of freedom
And love.
Women watch,
Watch
As boys
Laugh
Forever
The audience,
While boys
Stand
On chicken
Wire stage
Dicks
Raised
Honoring
The brave.

Boys.
Never
afraid,
Beat.
Tap.
Exhale.
Slap.
Sing.
Bow.
Laugh.
Leave.
She screams.
Screams.
Screams.
Until
She is
Woman,
Anything
But silent.

Amanda Gayle Oliver is a Southern Belle by birth and a New Englander by heart. First published at sixteen, in the Birmingham News, her poetry and prose have also been published in the Boston Literary Magazine, Lamplighter Review, and for the Canadian Alzheimer's Association. Last year she had the honor of having her first play produced ("Stuck," September 2011), and her second play will be produced this Spring in the University of Alabama's Ten Minute Play Festival ("Elevator Play"). She also shares her personal story as a speaker in high school's, churches, and counseling classes. Her talks focus on healing from self-destructive behaviors such as self-mutilation and bulimia. She currently resides in the land of question marks swimming through them while wearing a cap that read Surrender.

Disquisition

2012-01-29T09:48:00.000-05:00

By Chana Bloch

One day I dared to put the O back
in G-d,
I watched Him bulge to God -
paunchy, respectable
and sad.

I brooded about my heresy
until I guessed
that God who loves the circle best
only to find
our angularity
might after all not mind.

He'd take it to heart, perhaps,
if I chose to drop the caps.

But O that fine round O
fleshed out from the scrawny spine
of a minus sign -
or would He object that O
was zero,
taking Him in vain?

God knows,
and O is an O is an O,
and slyly checks
our tic-tac-toe
with His wry X.

The Crocodile

2012-01-27T09:21:00.002-05:00

By Lewis Carroll

How doth the little crocodile
Improve his shining tail,
And pour the waters of the Nile
On every golden scale!

How cheerfully he seems to grin,
How neatly spreads his claws,
And welcomes little fishes in,
With gently smiling jaws!

Remember, Body ...

2012-01-26T20:48:00.000-05:00

By C. P. Cavafy

Body, remember not only how much you were loved,
not only the beds where you lay,
but also those desires for you,
shining clearly in eyes
and trembling in a voice—and some chance
obstacle thwarted them.
Now when everything is the past,
it almost looks as if you gave yourself
to those desires as well—how they shone—
remember—in the eyes that looked at you,
how they trembled for you in the voice—remember, body.

Instructions from the Flight Crew to a Poet of African Descent Living in a State of Emergency

2012-01-25T10:58:00.000-05:00

By Kate Rushin

First,
Secure your own oxygen.
Breathe normally,
Then teach the children.
Be not deceived.
Be not of two minds.
We are inadequate
Gasping, fighting for air.
Treasure your song.
Walk to the river
Give thanks at the grotto
Memorize poplar trees
Imitate barn swallows
Be still. Let the deer
Look into your eyes

There are these moments of permission

2012-01-24T13:47:00.000-05:00

by Camille T. Dungy

     Between raindrops,

               space, certainly,

but we call it all rain.

          I hang in the undrenched intervals,

while Callie is sleeping,

          my old self necessary

and imperceptible as air.

Drunken Folly

2012-01-23T11:34:00.000-05:00

By Linda Crate

the golden age of apollo has ended,
the pomegranate age of dionysus has
begun, people are drinking grapes
straight off the vine; a poor man’s
wine, everyone wants a reason to
raise a glass or two as they get drunk
on everything from champagne to
appletinis to vodka and rum; sober
thoughts are hard to come by
depending on who you speak to,
the ale getting in the way of
things that truly matter, but the
drunkard will not save himself he
raises the glass to his lips and kills
his vital organs down one by one.

Linda Crate is a twenty five year old Pennsylvanian native with a degree in English-Literature. Her poetry has been published in various magazines the latest of which include: Dead Snakes, The Camel Saloon, and Carnage Conservatory.

I look at the world

2012-01-22T09:38:00.001-05:00

By Langston Hughes

I look at the world
From awakening eyes in a black face—
And this is what I see:
This fenced-off narrow space
Assigned to me.

I look then at the silly walls
Through dark eyes in a dark face—
And this is what I know:
That all these walls oppression builds
Will have to go!

I look at my own body
With eyes no longer blind—
And I see that my own hands can make
The world that's in my mind.
Then let us hurry, comrades,
The road to find.

To Be Written On The Mirror In Whitewash

2012-01-20T08:33:00.002-05:00

By Elizabeth Bishop

I live only here, between your eyes and you,
But I live in your world. What do I do?
--Collect no interest--otherwise what I can;
Above all I am not that staring man.

Comet Hyakutake

2012-01-19T22:32:00.009-05:00

By Arthur Sze

Comet Hyakutake's tail stretches for 360 million miles—
in 1996, we saw Hyakutake through binoculars—
the ion tail contains the time we saw bats emerge out of a cavern at dusk—
in the cavern, we first heard stalactites dripping—
first silence, then reverberating sound—
our touch reverberates and makes a blossoming track—
a comet's nucleus emits X-rays and leaves tracks—
two thousand miles away, you box up books and, in two days, will step through the
invisible rays of an airport scanner—
we write on invisible pages in an invisible book with invisible ink—
in nature's infinite book, we read a few pages—
in the sky, we read the ion tracks from the orchard—
the apple orchard where blossoms unfold, where we unfold—
budding, the child who writes, "the puzzle comes to life"—
elated, puzzled, shocked, dismayed, confident, loving: minutes to an hour—
a minute, a pinhole lens through which light passes—
Comet Hyakutake will not pass earth for another 100,000 years—
no matter, ardor is here—
and to the writer of fragments, each fragment is a whole—

Quiz

2012-01-18T08:07:00.000-05:00

By Linh Dinh

Invaders invariably call themselves:

a) berserkers
b) marauders
c) frankincense
d) liberators

Our enemies hate us because:

a) we’re sadists
b) we’re hypocrites
c) we shafted them
d) we value freedom

Our friends hate us because:

a) we’re bullies
b) we hate them
c) we’re hypocrites
d) we value freedom

Pushed to the ground and kicked by a gang of soldiers, about to be shot, you can save your life by brandishing:

a) an uzi
b) a crucifix
c) the Constitution
d) a poem

A poem can:

a) start a war
b) stanch a wound
c) titillate the masses
d) shame a nation

Poets are:

a) clowns
b) parasites
c) legislators
d) terrorists

A nation’s standing in the world is determined by:

a) its buying power
b) its military might
c) its cultural heritage
d) God

A country is rich because of:

a) its enlightened population
b) its political system
c) its small stick
d) its geography

A country is poor because of:

a) its ignorant population
b) its political system
c) its small stick
d) its geography

A man’s dignity is determined by:

a) his appearance (skin color, height, etc)
b) his willingness to use violence
c) his command of English
d) his blue passport

Those willing to die for their beliefs are:

a) idealists
b) terrorists
c) suckers
d) insane

Those willing to die for nothing are:

a) principled
b) patriotic
c) insane
d) cowards

Terrorists:

a) abuse language
b) hit and run
c) shock and awe
d) rely on ingenuity

Smart weapons:

a) render hopeless and dormant kinetic objects
b) kill softly
c) save lives
d) slaughter by science

Pain is:

a) payback for evil-doers
b) a common misfortune
c) compelling drama
d) suck it up!

Humiliation is:

a) the ultimate thrill for bored perverts
b) inevitable in an unequal relationship
c) a fear factor
d) sexy and cathartic

The media’s job is:

a) to seduce
b) to spread
c) to sell
d) to drug

The Internet:

a) allows us to be pure minds
b) connects us to distant bodies
c) disconnects us from the nearest minds and bodies
d) improves illiteracy

Pornography is:

a) a lie that exposes the truth
b) a needed breather from civilization
c) class warfare
d) nostalgia for the garden of Eden

Correct answers: c,d,d,b,b,a,b,a,a,c,b,b,b,c,b,d,b,d,c.
—If you scored 14-19, you’re a well adjusted person, a home-owner, with and income of at least $50,000 a year.
—If you scored 8-13, you either rent or live with your parents, never exercise, and consume at least a 6-pack a day.
—if you scored 7 or less, you’re in trouble with the FBI and/or the IRS, cut your own hair, and use public transit as your primary mode of transportation.

Bluebird

2012-01-17T14:24:00.000-05:00

By Charles Bukowski

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I'm not going
to let anybody see
you.

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pour whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he's
in there.
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?
you want to screw up the
works?
you want to blow my book sales in
Europe?

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody's asleep.
I say, I know that you're there,
so don't be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he's singing a little
in there, I haven't quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it's nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don't
weep, do
you?

On Adoption

2012-01-16T09:07:00.000-05:00

By Lisa Hostein

My new son did not come from the fruit of my womb, but he levies in the deepest recesses of my heart. Another woman gave birth to him, but with his adoption, his life is in my hands. He represents pure potential: the potential to grow and to blossom, to learn and to teach, to lead and to follow, to love and to be loved. He is a new life and a new beginning, a promise of what can be.

Deliverance: Pu'ah Explains

2012-01-15T13:49:00.000-05:00

By Bonnie Lyons

I would like to tell you
I acted out of deep faith
or that God sent me a dream
to prophesy this helpless baby
would grow up to deliver us
all out of Egypt.
But I can't.

Year after year
Shifrah and I struggled
to help mothers push newborns
out of their bodies and
into the world.
Hour after hour
we used the secret knowledge
of our sacred calling,
gentle words of encouragement,
our own powerful hands,
Oh the joy and triumph
when a wet head finally
crosses over, the transport
in every mother's eyes,
pain behind her now.

Besides, Jochebed
was my neighbor: could I
kill her son?

Hebrew cries were camel grunts
to Pharoah's ears
so when we told him
our women delivered their babies
before we midwives could arrive
- that Hebrew women, unlike Egyptian women,
poured babies from their bodies
like wine from a jug -
that stubborn, distrustful, arrogant man
naturally
believed us.

Second Grade, Part Two

2012-01-13T08:13:00.000-05:00

By Debra L. Winegarten

Being eight years old means walking
Alone to the Skillern’s Drug Store
At the Park Forest Shopping Center
With my weekly allowance quarter
Searing a hole in my already-sweaty shorts pocket.

I know what I’ll buy --
The latest Superman or Batman comic book
Whichever one came in that week
And doesn’t already live in the pile on my nightstand at home.

With my new Superman comic slipped in the sleek paper bag
Top carefully folded so my sweaty hands don’t ruin my treasure,
A grown man stops me on the sidewalk,
Eyeing my Star of David necklace and asking if I’m Jewish.

When I nod yes, (I’m not supposed to talk to strangers),
He tells me that’s really too bad for me,
Because didn’t I know that
Jews burn in Hell when they die?

Tears falling so hard I could barely see,
I dropped my weekly treasure and ran home
To Mom so fast I thought
I might keel over before I got to her
And be snatched right down to Hell.

When I told Mom what happened,
She put both hands on my shoulders,
Knelt to my height where she could look square in my eyes,
And in that Dallas drawl of hers, said,
“That’s okay, honey, don’t worry.
We’re Jewish.
We don’t believe in hell.”

A Fable

2012-01-12T15:33:00.003-05:00

By Louise Glück

Two women with
the same claim
came to the feet of
the wise king. Two women,
but only one baby.
The king knew
someone was lying.
What he said was
Let the child be
cut in half; that way
no one will go
empty-handed. He
drew his sword.
Then, of the two
women, one
renounced her share:
this was
the sign, the lesson.
Suppose
you saw your mother
torn between two daughters:
what could you do
to save her but be
willing to destroy
yourself—she would know
who was the rightful child,
the one who couldn’t bear
to divide the mother.

Dear Empire [these are your temples]

2012-01-11T15:18:00.002-05:00

By Oliver de la Paz

Dear Empire,

These are your temples. There are rows of stone countenances, pillar after pillar. As if walking through a forest filled with alabaster heads: here, the frown. The gaze. The luminous stare.

Smoke from the incense curls, shapes itself against the archways, rubs against the grooves of the columns. Only a few men press their heads to their hands.

Outside, archeologists excavate a stone torso. Bound in coils of fraying rope, it rises before us, pulled upwards by a backhoe. Its form momentarily hides the sun, though as it sways, the light strikes our eyes. Saying yes. Saying no.

America

2012-01-10T08:09:00.000-05:00

By Tony Hoagland

Then one of the students with blue hair and a tongue stud
Says that America is for him a maximum security prison

Whose walls are made of RadioShacks and Burger Kings, and MTV episodes
Where you can’t tell the show from the commercials,

And as I consider how to express how full of shit I think he is,
He says that even when he’s driving to the mall in his Isuzu

Trooper with a gang of his friends, letting rap music pour over them
Like a boiling Jacuzzi full of ballpeen hammers, even then he feels

Buried alive, captured and suffocated in the folds
Of the thick satin quilt of America

And I wonder if this is a legitimate category of pain,
Or whether he is just spin doctoring a better grade,

And then I remember that when I stabbed my father in the dream last night,
It was not blood but money

That gushed out of him, bright green hundred-dollar bills
Spilling from his wounds, and—this is the weird part--,

He gasped, “Thank god—those Ben Franklins were
Clogging up my heart—

And so I perish happily,
Freed from that which kept me from my liberty”--

Which is when I knew it was a dream, since my dad
Would never speak in rhymed couplets,

And I look at the student with his acne and cell phone and phony ghetto clothes
And I think, “I am asleep in America too,

And I don’t know how to wake myself either,”
And I remember what Marx said near the end of his life:

“I was listening to th cries of the past,
When I should have been listening to the cries of the future.”

But how could he have imagined 100 channels of 24-hour cable
Or what kind of nightmare it might be

When each day you watch rivers of bright merchandise run past you
And you are floating in your pleasure boar upon this river

Even while others are drowning underneath you
And you see their faces twisting in the surface of the waters

And yet it seems to be your own hand
Which turns the volume higher?

wasted

2012-01-09T08:53:00.003-05:00

By Annie Dennis

I leer at those two hovered hands

always moving paced, like my breath.

They read 11:03 not that it means

much to me.

I continue with my day.

Do my regular rue-teen.

I have my watch anchored on my wrist,

worn and delicate.

Neglected and ignored.

Its honest face glares at me, hurling

a message I again overlook.

Tick, tock, tick, tock.

In a hollow, vacant room

calling out.

Muted warnings, screaming

again rejected.

Leisurely giving in, gradually

drifting softer.

Its petite frame cracks,

its mind unwinds, silence fills the room

a silence no one can ignore.

I see, my watch has died.

Annie Dennis is fifteen years old. She has been writing ever since she could but only recently started writing poetry. She also loves to write songs, play the guitar, sing, listen to music, dance, paint/draw, and photography.

Jacob Blesses Dinah

2012-01-08T01:01:00.000-05:00

By Sue Levi Elwell

I have wrestled with the words with which to bless you,
Dinah, daughter of Leah.
A child, you went out to see the daughters of the land.
You returned a woman.
Did you raise your voice? Your cries were not heard.
Blood flowed through the streets of Shechem
and I was afraid.

Like your mother,
you walk among the people with head unbowed.
May that strength and clarity of vision
continue in the generations to come.

To you, my daughter belong the blessings of breast and the womb,
blessings of justice and care.
Your offspring will learn many tongues
and practice healing arts.
They will build cities of righteousness
and none shall make them afraid.

Different Ways to Pray

2012-01-06T13:06:00.002-05:00

By Naomi Shihab Nye

There was the method of kneeling,
a fine method, if you lived in a country
where stones were smooth.
The women dreamed wistfully of bleached courtyards,
hidden corners where knee fit rock.
Their prayers were weathered rib bones,
small calcium words uttered in sequence,
as if this shedding of syllables could somehow
fuse them to the sky.

There were the men who had been shepherds so long
they walked like sheep.
Under the olive trees, they raised their arms—
Hear us! We have pain on earth!
We have so much pain there is no place to store it!
But the olives bobbed peacefully
in fragrant buckets of vinegar and thyme.
At night the men ate heartily, flat bread and white cheese,
and were happy in spite of the pain,
because there was also happiness.

Some prized the pilgrimage,
wrapping themselves in new white linen
to ride buses across miles of vacant sand.
When they arrived at Mecca
they would circle the holy places,
on foot, many times,
they would bend to kiss the earth
and return, their lean faces housing mystery.

While for certain cousins and grandmothers
the pilgrimage occurred daily,
lugging water from the spring
or balancing the baskets of grapes.
These were the ones present at births,
humming quietly to perspiring mothers.
The ones stitching intricate needlework into children’s dresses,
forgetting how easily children soil clothes.

There were those who didn’t care about praying.
The young ones. The ones who had been to America.
They told the old ones, you are wasting your time.
Time?—The old ones prayed for the young ones.
They prayed for Allah to mend their brains,
for the twig, the round moon,
to speak suddenly in a commanding tone.

And occasionally there would be one
who did none of this,
the old man Fowzi, for example, Fowzi the fool,
who beat everyone at dominoes,
insisted he spoke with God as he spoke with goats,
and was famous for his laugh.

The Sleepover

2012-01-05T15:50:00.002-05:00

By Amanda Gayle Oliver

For Chaney Magnolia Hicks

I will never forget the night
I held your hand.
I believe it will always mean
more than any man's fingers,
that will clasp onto mine.
That one tear sliding down your
cheek, held more emotion than
your words.
Attempting to be so grown up.
I wonder what color hair you had
before it fell away.
And how many days after that
you refused to pray.

I was a few hours more than
a stranger when the nurse
asked me to hold your hand.
How hard you fought to resist,
how intensely you squeezed,
as both of our hands formed a fist.
Only eleven, they put you in this
ring alone to fight an enemy that
Punched you from the inside—out.
I wasn't there for a whole round
Only that one combination that
struck below the belt.

Too many turns, so many
cycles, poisoning a tiny frame.
I want the rounds you ride
to be on a carousel.
I want the spins you take to
be in a crown, a princess dress.
I want to wipe that tear away,
But I know better than to touch.
You will be tough and I will
be vulnerable—
So fragile you might break
my fingers.
It is what I can give, a
memory that lingers.

Previously published in Boston Literary Magazine, Fall 2010

Winter Trees

2012-01-04T23:05:00.002-05:00

By William Carlos Williams

All the complicated details
of the attiring and
the disattiring are completed!
A liquid moon
moves gently among
the long branches.
Thus having prepared their buds
against a sure winter
the wise trees
stand sleeping in the cold.

AAA Vacation Guide

2012-01-02T16:58:00.000-05:00

By Ernest Hilbert

“Philadelphia isn’t as bad as Philadelphians say it is.”
—Billboard on Interstate 95

Paris in the Spring, Autumn in New York,
Singers pair a city with a season
As though it belonged to it all year long.
They should try to put a few more to work:
Trenton in winter needs a good reason;
Scranton in summer seems so very wrong.
How about Cincinnati in the spring?
Autumn in Passaic, or in Oakland?
Some cities just lack glamour and appeal,
And there is no point arguing the thing.
No one reads through stacks of brochures to spend
A honeymoon in Allentown. Let’s get real.
Most places on the map, you must believe,
No one wants to visit, only to leave.

A New Law

2012-01-01T12:39:00.002-05:00

By Greg Delanty

Let there be a ban on every holiday.

         No ringing in the new year.

No fireworks doodling the warm night air.

         No holly on the door. I say

let there be no more.

         For many are not here who were here before.

New Year

2011-12-31T22:04:00.000-05:00

By Bei Dao

Translated by David Hinton, Yanbing Chen

a child carrying flowers walks toward the new year
a conductor tattooing darkness
listens to the shortest pause

hurry a lion into the cage of music
hurry stone to masquerade as a recluse
moving in parallel nights

who's the visitor? when the days all
tip from nests and fly down roads
the book of failure grows boundless and deep

each and every moment's a shortcut
I follow it through the meaning of the East
returning home, closing death's door

i am running into a new year

2011-12-29T09:24:00.000-05:00

By Lucille Clifton

i am running into a new year
and the old years blow back
like a wind
that i catch in my hair
like strong fingers like
all my old promises and
it will be hard to let go
of what i said to myself
about myself
when i was sixteen and
twenty-six and thirty-six
even thirty-six but
i am running into a new year
and i beg what i love and
i leave to forgive me

A Woman Dances

2011-12-27T16:27:00.000-05:00

By Osvaldo Sauma

hidden in the night
a woman dances
like saying wings
she spreads her arms
from the air’s core
to the air’s rim
tilting between walls of shadow
to the voids of light

a woman whirls
like a star
turns
on herself
graphs
the paths of chance
and its declensions dances
turns
like lifting a bird
from the earth’s grasp
raises a magnetic time
draws with a blazing coal
the red speech of the caves

spins
shakes
the childish fears
that call to us
from our innerness

a woman dances
by herself
against adversity
at the wood’s heart
to quicken
the blind beat of life
dances on my wounds
to goad me
on the route of remorse

a woman dances
alone against adversity
on the tumbling planet
against a snag in memory
flees on that flight of music
turns on herself
and bares to us a desire
that was driven from Paradise

The Bohemian Roadrunner

2011-12-26T10:58:00.002-05:00

By Jason E. Hodges

Drifting along the highways and backroads of America
are the Bohemian Roadrunners
Wandering without worry or a care in the world
Modern-day Aborigines
Dancing while dreaming
To a drum beat and the warm felt fire light of the night
The impatience and greed that fills the cities they fled from
Seems to be growing well without their attendance
That life was happily traded without hesitation
For a life of music
of arts
of crafts made from the land
made from discarded trash
that last week was so wanted by the hippest of hipster
For the Bohemian Roadrunner is unconscious to the outside
but awake on the inside
More than most they encounter on the road
They are workers of flint
connecting with the spirits of the past
while disconnecting from the material world
A people of purpose:
To have no purpose of all
But to live free
Far from the rules of the rule-makers
The hands of the takers
The fingers of pointing
Far from the judging of the judges
The Bohemian Roadrunner lives and drifts on the land.

Jason Hodges began writing in 1989. Shortly after he began, he saw the movie Drugstore Cowboy with William S. Burroughs. He would go on to discover Charles Bukowski, Harry Crews, Anais Nin, and Anne Sexton. His work can be found at The Fringe, The Camel Saloon, Indigo Rising, The Dirt Worker's Journal, Daily Love, The Rainbow Rose, Dead Snakes, Books on Blog, The Second Hump, and Cross TIME Science Fiction Anthonlogies Volumes 8, 9, and 10. He also interviewed Harry Crews for Our Town Gainesville Edition, Spring 2011.

The Feast of Lights

2011-12-25T08:25:00.000-05:00

By Emma Lazarus

Kindle the taper like the steadfast star
Ablaze on evening's forehead o'er the earth,
And add each night a lustre till afar
An eightfold splendor shine above thy hearth.
Clash, Israel, the cymbals, touch the lyre,
Blow the brass trumpet and the harsh-tongued horn;
Chant psalms of victory till the heart takes fire,
The Maccabean spirit leap new-born.

Remember how from wintry dawn till night,
Such songs were sung in Zion, when again
On the high altar flamed the sacred light,
And, purified from every Syrian stain,
The foam-white walls with golden shields were hung,
With crowns and silken spoils, and at the shrine,
Stood, midst their conqueror-tribe, five chieftains sprung
From one heroic stock, one seed divine.

Five branches grown from Mattathias' stem,
The Blessed John, the Keen-Eyed Jonathan,
Simon the fair, the Burst-of Spring, the Gem,
Eleazar, Help of-God; o'er all his clan
Judas the Lion-Prince, the Avenging Rod,
Towered in warrior-beauty, uncrowned king,
Armed with the breastplate and the sword of God,
Whose praise is: "He received the perishing."

They who had camped within the mountain-pass,
Couched on the rock, and tented neath the sky,
Who saw from Mizpah's heights the tangled grass
Choke the wide Temple-courts, the altar lie
Disfigured and polluted--who had flung
Their faces on the stones, and mourned aloud
And rent their garments, wailing with one tongue,
Crushed as a wind-swept bed of reeds is bowed,

Even they by one voice fired, one heart of flame,
Though broken reeds, had risen, and were men,
They rushed upon the spoiler and o'ercame,
Each arm for freedom had the strength of ten.
Now is their mourning into dancing turned,
Their sackcloth doffed for garments of delight,
Week-long the festive torches shall be burned,
Music and revelry wed day with night.

Still ours the dance, the feast, the glorious Psalm,
The mystic lights of emblem, and the Word.
Where is our Judas? Where our five-branched palm?
Where are the lion-warriors of the Lord?
Clash, Israel, the cymbals, touch the lyre,
Sound the brass trumpet and the harsh-tongued horn,
Chant hymns of victory till the heart take fire,
The Maccabean spirit leap new-born!

A Psalm of Mattathias

2011-12-24T22:00:00.000-05:00

From the Book of Maccabees, Book 2

There is no need for fear
of men dressed in threats of power
all their successes are masks

that will fade like words in a gust of wind
and though one walks as if he wears a crown
in a show of pride — the whole performance collapses

in an instant: one last breath
and his body crowns the dunghill
and his words have turned to worms

today he shines on everyone's tongue
tomorrow no one has heard of him
he's vanished quickly as a winter sunset
gone — turned back into dust
all his schemes turned back
into nothing.

but you, my children, take hold of your lives
by a stronger hand,
by the deep strength in Torah

your hearts unsinkable vessels
bearing its words: sustenance
for a day beyond mere dreams of success

it will bring you into the future
it will bring you courage
worn as surely as a crown.

"How beautiful are thy tents, Jacob"

2011-12-23T18:19:00.000-05:00

By Yehuda Amichai

"How beautiful are thy tents, Jacob."
Even now, when there are neither tents nor Jacob’s
tribes, I say, how beautiful.

Oh, may there come something of redemption,
an old song, a white letter,
a face in the crowd, a door opening
for the eye, multicolored
ice cream for the throat,
oil for the guts, a warm
memory for the breast.

Then my mouth will open wide
in everlasting praise,
open like the belly of a
wide—open calf hung on a hook
in a butcher’s shop of the Old City market.

miss rosie

2011-12-22T13:17:00.002-05:00

By Lucille Clifton

when I watch you
wrapped up like garbage
sitting, surrounded by the smell
of too old potato peels
or
when I watch you
in your old man's shoes
with the little toe cut out
sitting, waiting for your mind
like next week's grocery
I say
when I watch you
you wet brown bag of a woman
who used to be the best looking gal in Georgia
used to be called the Georgia Rose
I stand up
through your destruction
I stand up

Vermont

2011-12-21T13:10:00.000-05:00

By C. A. Morrow

Twisting roads through green speckled hills
Red barns that dot a summer long gone
Skiers seeking perennial winter thrills
In woodlands deep and silently strong

From here to Newhart and Frost they go
To a spirit of Yankee grace and solitude
Where people in tone pleasantly speak
And show God their eternal gratitude

It is a long road that I've often taken
When my mind must gain peace from want
And leave my troubles behind forsaken
As I cross that brook into green Vermont.

Christmas Trees

2011-12-20T15:22:00.000-05:00

By Robert Frost

A Christmas Circular Letter

The city had withdrawn into itself
And left at last the country to the country;
When between whirls of snow not come to lie
And whirls of foliage not yet laid, there drove
A stranger to our yard, who looked the city,
Yet did in country fashion in that there
He sat and waited till he drew us out
A-buttoning coats to ask him who he was.
He proved to be the city come again
To look for something it had left behind
And could not do without and keep its Christmas.
He asked if I would sell my Christmas trees;
My woods—the young fir balsams like a place
Where houses all are churches and have spires.
I hadn't thought of them as Christmas Trees.
I doubt if I was tempted for a moment
To sell them off their feet to go in cars
And leave the slope behind the house all bare,
Where the sun shines now no warmer than the moon.
I'd hate to have them know it if I was.
Yet more I'd hate to hold my trees except
As others hold theirs or refuse for them,
Beyond the time of profitable growth,
The trial by market everything must come to.
I dallied so much with the thought of selling.
Then whether from mistaken courtesy
And fear of seeming short of speech, or whether
From hope of hearing good of what was mine,
I said, "There aren't enough to be worth while."

"I could soon tell how many they would cut,
You let me look them over."

"You could look.
But don't expect I'm going to let you have them."
Pasture they spring in, some in clumps too close
That lop each other of boughs, but not a few
Quite solitary and having equal boughs
All round and round. The latter he nodded "Yes" to,
Or paused to say beneath some lovelier one,
With a buyer's moderation, "That would do."
I thought so too, but wasn't there to say so.
We climbed the pasture on the south, crossed over,
And came down on the north.

He said, "A thousand."

"A thousand Christmas trees!—at what apiece?"

He felt some need of softening that to me:
"A thousand trees would come to thirty dollars."

Then I was certain I had never meant
To let him have them. Never show surprise!
But thirty dollars seemed so small beside
The extent of pasture I should strip, three cents
(For that was all they figured out apiece),
Three cents so small beside the dollar friends
I should be writing to within the hour
Would pay in cities for good trees like those,
Regular vestry-trees whole Sunday Schools
Could hang enough on to pick off enough.
A thousand Christmas trees I didn't know I had!
Worth three cents more to give away than sell,
As may be shown by a simple calculation.
Too bad I couldn't lay one in a letter.
I can't help wishing I could send you one,
In wishing you herewith a Merry Christmas.

Transformation

2011-12-19T12:18:00.001-05:00

By Martin Rosner

I am old, but the marsh
Is so much older,
Yet we have bonded through
The years that I have aged,
And it remains serenely changeless,
Retaining the cosmic elixir
That endows it as a womb.
The spicy, musky odor it emits
Is that of life transforming
From decay encoded inexplicably
By some supremely mystic force.
I hope it operates for man
As well as the other creatures
Generated in the marsh and on this earth
That we vainly strive to understand.
At last I must accept
That like the marsh,
Earth demands decay
In order to create new life.

Martin Rosner, M.D. has been published in numerous magazines and newspapers including 17 poems in "The New York Times" and is currently part of the course in modern poetry at American International College. He lives in New Jersey.

Love

2011-12-18T15:28:00.000-05:00

By Czeslaw Milosz

Love means to learn to look at yourself
The way one looks at distant things
For you are only one thing among many.
And whoever sees that way heals his heart,
Without knowing it, from various ills—
A bird and a tree say to him: Friend.

Then he wants to use himself and things
So that they stand in the glow of ripeness.
It doesn’t matter whether he knows what he serves:
Who serves best doesn’t always understand.

Atheism

2011-12-16T11:21:00.000-05:00

By Richard Coughlan

Atheism offers nothing to me
It never has and it never will
It doesn’t make me feel good or comforts me
Its not there for me when I’m sick or ill
It can’t intervene in my times of need
It wont protect me from hate and lies
It doesn’t care if I fail or succeed
And it won’t wipe the tears from my eyes
It does nothing when I’ve got nowhere to run
It won’t give me wise words or advise
It has no teachings for me to learn
It can’t show me what’s bad or nice
It has never inspired or incited anyone
It won’t help me fulfill all my goals
It won’t tell me to stop when I’m having fun
It has never saved one single soul
It doesn’t take credit for everything I achieved
It won’t make me get down on bended knees
It doesn’t demand that I have to believe
It won’t torture me for eternity
It won’t teach me to hate or despise others
It can’t tell me what’s right or wrong
It won’t tell anybody that they can’t be lovers
It has told nobody that they don’t belong
It won’t make you think that life is worth living
It has nothing to offer me, that’s true

But the reason that atheism offers me nothing is because I’ve never asked it to.

Atheism offers nothing because it doesn’t need to
Religion promises everything because you want it to

You don’t need a religion or to have faith
You just want it because you need to feel safe

I want to feel reality and nothing more
So atheism offers me everything
That religion has stolen from me before

The tao of touch

2011-12-15T23:48:00.002-05:00

By Marge Piercy

What magic does touch create
that we crave it so. That babies
do not thrive without it. That
the nurse who cuts tough nails
and sands calluses on the elderly
tells me sometimes men weep
as she rubs lotion on their feet.

Yet the touch of a stranger
the bumping or predatory thrust
in the subway is like a slap.
We long for the familiar, the open
palm of love, its tender fingers.
It is our hands that tamed cats
into pets, not our food.

The widow looks in the mirror
thinking, no one will ever touch
me again, never. Not hold me.
Not caress the softness of my
breasts, my inner thighs, the swell
of my belly. Do I still live
if no one knows my body?

We touch each other so many
ways, in curiosity, in anger,
to command attention, to soothe,
to quiet, to rouse, to cure.
Touch is our first language
and often, our last as the breath
ebbs and a hand closes our eyes.

Solar

2011-12-14T12:38:00.000-05:00

By Robin Becker

The desert is butch, she dismisses your illusions
about what might do to make your life
work better, she stares you down and doesn’t say
a word about your past. She brings you a thousand days,
a thousand suns effortlessly each morning rising.
She lets you think what you want all afternoon.
Rain walks across her mesa, red-tailed hawks
writhe in fields of air, she lets you look at her.
She laughs at your study habits, your orderly house,
your need to name her “vainest woman you’ve ever met.”
Then she turns you toward the voluptuous valleys,
she gives you dreams of green forests,
she doesn’t care who else you love.
She sings in the grass, the sagebrush, the small trees
struggling and the tiny lizards scrambling
up the walls. You find her when you’re ready
in the barbed wire and fence posts, on the scrub where you walk
with your parched story, where she walks, spendthrift,
tossing up sunflowers, throwing her indifferent
shadow across the mountain. Haven’t you guessed?
She’s the loneliest woman alive but that’s her gift;
she makes you love your own loneliness,
the gates to darkness and memory. She is your best, indifferent
teacher, she knows you don’t mean what you say.
She flings aside your technical equipment,
she requires you to survive in her high country
like the patient sheep and cattle who graze and take her
into their bodies. She says lightning, and
get used to it. Her storms are great moments
in the history of American weather, her rain remakes the world,
while your emotional life is run-off from a tin roof.
Like the painted clown at Picuris Pueblo
who started up the pole and then dropped into the crowd,
anonymous, she paws the ground, she gallops past.
What can you trust? This opening, this returning,
this arroyo, this struck gong inside your chest?
She wants you to stay open like the hibiscus
that opens its orange petals for a single day.
At night, a fool, you stand on the chilly mesa,
split open like the great cleft of the Rio Grande Gorge,
trying to catch a glimpse of her, your new, long-term companion.
She gives you a sliver of moon, howl of a distant dog,
windy premonition of winter.

A Practical Mom

2011-12-13T16:56:00.002-05:00

can go to Bible study every Sunday
and swear she’s still not convinced,
but she likes to be around people who are.
We have the same conversation
every few years—I’ll ask her if she stops
to admire the perfect leaves
of the Japanese maple
she waters in her backyard,
or tell her how I can gaze for hours
at a desert sky and know this
as divine. Nature, she says,
doesn’t hold her interest. Not nearly
as much as the greens, pinks, and grays
of a Diebenkorn abstract, or the antique
Tiffany lamp she finds in San Francisco.
She spends hours with her vegetables,
tasting the tomatoes she’s picked that morning
or checking to see which radishes are big enough to pull.
Lately everything she touches bears fruit,
from new-green string beans to winning
golf strokes, glamorous hats she designs and sews,
soaring stocks with their multiplying shares.
These are the things she can count in her hands,
the tangibles to feed and pass on to daughters
and grandchildren who can’t keep up with all
the risky numbers she depends on, the blood-sugar counts
and daily insulin injections, the monthly tests
of precancerous cells in her liver and lungs.
She’s a mathematical wonder with so many calculations
kept alive in her head, adding and subtracting
when everyone else is asleep.

By Amy Uyematsu

Afterimage

2011-12-12T10:12:00.001-05:00

By Phil Lane

Here is a photograph,
a composite of youth:
boys race down a flagstone path,
bicycles rush over macadam streets,
the world is black and white,
uncomplicated.

In paper-thin portraits,
in auburn tomes,
the dead live on,
their monochrome faces,
their frozen smiles
filed and dated
like evidence,
pressed under glass
like fossils.

Here is a photograph,
an abstract of youth
that paints the past distort,
lithographs the lines
worth saving,
turns bitter experience
into something
you can frame—

Phil Lane's poems have been lost in cyberspace for the past decade. A very, very precise google search can uncover many of them. Mr. Lane lives in New Jersey and teaches English for a private tutoring company.

Shabbat

2011-12-09T18:29:00.001-05:00

By Maya Pindyck

Dig the ditch for the dirt
and not for the hole, as does the man
who wishes to skirt the holy laws,
and whose sons, in the same spirit,
butcher open bags of potato chips
so that no bag remains, so that no one
can accuse them of reusing that bag
for some utilitarian purpose.

Cutting off the head of a chicken
is another story. You think you can
cut off a chicken’s head for its beak
and the chicken won’t die? The rabbis
have decided that no such intention
can be true, unless the Jew in question
is really stupid. Such are the laws
hanging by a thread from the mountain.

The Fight or Flight Response

2011-12-08T08:17:00.003-05:00

By Sherman Alexie

Years ago, in Spokane, a woman saved
A family of orphaned baby geese.
An amateur ornithologist, she raised
Those birds into adulthood, and then released

Them into the pond at Manito Park,
Where a dozen swans, elegant and white,
Tore the tame geese open and ate their hearts.
Of course, all of this was broadcast live

On the local news. Eyewitnesses wept.
My mother and I shrugged, not at death,
But at those innocent folks who believe
That birds don't murder, rape, and steal.

Like us, swans can be jealous and dangerous,
And, oh, so lovely, sure and monogamous.

The Beauty of Things

2011-12-07T07:32:00.000-05:00

By Robinson Jeffers

To feel and speak the astonishing beauty of things - earth, stone and water,
Beast, man and woman, sun, moon and stars—
The blood-shot beauty of human nature, its thoughts, frenzies and passions,
And unhuman nature its towering reality—
For man’s half dream; man, you might say, is nature dreaming, but rock
And water and sky are constant—to feel
Greatly, and understand greatly, and express greatly, the natural
Beauty, is the sole business of poetry.
The rest’s diversion: those holy or noble sentiments, the intricate ideas,
The love, lust, longing: reasons, but not the reason.

Approach of Winter

2011-12-05T13:50:00.000-05:00

By William Carlos Williams

The half-stripped trees
struck by a wind together,
bending all,
the leaves flutter drily
and refuse to let go
or driven like hail
stream bitterly out to one side
and fall
where the salvias, hard carmine,—
like no leaf that ever was—
edge the bare garden.

Enemies

2011-12-02T18:07:00.000-05:00

By Dante Micheaux

for Ishion Hutchinson

The thing about entertaining them,
about keeping their company,
about fraternizing,
is you must remember
they are bloodless
and have many faces,
though it’s easy enough
to walk in sunlight,
where either you or they
become invisible,
never together seen;
easy to get in bed with them,
to bed them,
to be seduced by them—
listing in their own dominance.
Remember what makes one human,
animal, is not the high road
but the baseness in the heart,
the knowledge that they could,
at any moment, betray you.

The Serenity Prayer

2011-12-01T15:16:00.001-05:00

By Reinhold Niebuhr

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
Taking, as He did, this sinful world
as it is, not as I would have it;
Trusting that He will make all things right
if I surrender to His Will;
That I may be reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy with Him
Forever in the next.
Amen.

Low-Tide

2011-11-29T16:05:00.000-05:00

By Edna St. Vincent Millay

These wet rocks where the tide has been,
Barnacled white and weeded brown
And slimed beneath to a beautiful green,
These wet rocks where the tide went down
Will show again when the tide is high
Faint and perilous, far from shore,
No place to dream, but a place to die,—
The bottom of the sea once more.
There was a child that wandered through
A giant's empty house all day,—
House full of wonderful things and new,
But no fit place for a child to play.

Stars

2011-11-28T10:25:00.002-05:00

By Douglas Polk

Stars uncountable in their multitudes,
decorate the sky above the Platte,
a river once sacred to Sioux and Pawnee,
vivid proof of the unknown,
and the unexplored,
seemingly eternal,
and so, so far beyond man’s understanding,
Space and time existing beyond the imagination,
Yet we humans rule the planet like gods,
A fool’s paradise
just ask the stars above the Platte.

Douglas Polk is a writer of poetry from central Nebraska. Feeling persecuted most of his life he has published three books of poetry; In My Defense, The Defense Rests, and On Appeal. He lives with his wife and two boys and two dogs on the plains of Nebraska.

it's the way you play the game

2011-11-27T12:52:00.001-05:00

By Charles Bukowski

call it love
stand it up in the failing
light
put it in a dress
pray sing beg cry laugh
turn off hte lights
turn on the radio
add trimmings:
butter raw eggs, yesterday's
newspaper;
one new shoelace, then add
paprika, sugar, salt, pepper,
phone your drunken aunt in
Calexico;
call it love, you
skewer it good, add
cabbage and applesauce,
then heat it from the right
side,
put it in a box
give it away
leave it on a doorstep
vomiting as you go
into the
hydrangea.

Eternity

2011-11-25T16:30:00.001-05:00

By William Blake

He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy
He who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity's sunrise

Muchas Gracias Por Todo

2011-11-24T14:00:00.000-05:00

By Naomi Shihab Nye

This plane has landed thanks to God and his mercy.
That's what they say in Jordan when the plane sets down.

What do they say in our country? Don't stand up till we tell you.
Stay in your seats. Things may have shifted.

This river has not disappeared thanks to that one big storm
when the water was almost finished.

We used to say thanks to the springs
but the springs dried up so we changed it.

This rumor tells no truth thanks to people.
This river walk used to be better when no one came.

What about the grapes? Thanks to the grapes
we have more than one story to tell.

Thanks to a soft place in the middle of the evening.
Thanks to three secret hours before dawn.

These deer are seldom seen because of their shyness.
If you see one you count yourselves among the lucky on the earth.

Your eyes get quieter.
These deer have nothing to say to us.

Thanks to the fan, we are still breathing.
Thanks to the small toad that lives in cool mud at the base of the zinnias.

Thanksgiving Letter from Harry

2011-11-23T14:43:00.002-05:00

By Carl Dennis

I guess I have to begin by admitting
I'm thankful today I don't reside in a country
My country has chosen to liberate,
That Bridgeport's my home, not Baghdad.
Thankful my chances are good, when I leave
For the Super Duper, that I'll be returning.
And I'm thankful my TV set is still broken.
No point in wasting energy feeling shame
For the havoc inflicted on others in my name
When I need all the strength I can muster
To teach my eighth-grade class in the low-rent district.
There, at least, I don't feel powerless.
There my choices can make some difference.

This month I'd like to believe I've widened
My students' choice of vocation, though the odds
My history lessons on working the land
Will inspire any of them to farm
Are almost as small as the odds
One will become a monk or nun
Trained in the Buddhist practice
We studied last month in the unit on India.
The point is to get them suspecting the world
They know first hand isn't the only world.

As for the calling of soldier, if it comes up in class,
It's not because I feel obliged to include it,
As you, as a writer, may feel obliged.
A student may happen to introduce it,
As a girl did yesterday when she read her essay
About her older brother, Ramon,
Listed as "missing in action" three years ago,
And about her dad, who won't agree with her mom
And the social worker on how small the odds are
That Ramon's alive, a prisoner in the mountains.

I didn't allow the discussion that followed
More time than I allowed for the other essays.
And I wouldn't take sides: not with the group
That thought the father, having grieved enough,
Ought to move on to the life still left him;
Not with the group that was glad he hadn't made do
With the next-to-nothing the world's provided,
That instead he's invested his trust in a story
That saves the world from shameful failure.

Let me know of any recent attempts on your part
To save our fellow-citizens from themselves.
In the meantime, if you want to borrow Ramon
For a narrative of your own, remember that any scene
Where he appears under guard in a mountain village
Should be confined to the realm of longing. There
His captors may leave him when they move on.
There his wounds may be healed,
His health restored. A total recovery
Except for a lingering fog of forgetfulness
A father dreams he can burn away.

Not Any Ist

2011-11-22T22:57:00.002-05:00

By Velcrow Ripper

Got a ride with a logger’s boss on my way to a Sufi gathering

My chameleon self emerged
Took over

The veil dropped down
The armour went up

I accept his offering of a bottle of beer
“Where are you going?”

I cop out.
“To a drumming workshop…”

He puts on some reggae
“You’ll probably like this…”

His voice a trifle anxious
Trying to meet me halfway

Stopped off at his clearcut on the way down
Bumped through the rutted road gouged through the used to be forest
Lying on a pile of used to be trees were the loggers, sound asleep

The boss laughs: “those guys are always playing tricks on me…”

They jump to their feet as we pull up
Playing caught napping on the job

We get out of the truck
Laughter is exchanged

The fallers name is Roy
A little plump with rosy cheeks

An easy manner
A welcoming smile
A gentle soul

His father was a logger before him
The daredevil of the camp: a high rigger

The one who climbed three hundred feet up the spar tree
To chain on the skyline

Behead the giant
With his cross cut saw

Cling to the mad sway
As it creaked and groaned in helpless despair
And finally surrendered to a gentle wafting

The triumphant Lilliputan
Would chain the skyline to the naked tree
And return to earth.

“I’ve got a B.A. in pyschology,” says Roy
“But I like to work outside. I love the woods.”

But
Do the woods love him?

Just doing his job.
He knows what his job is doing to the land
He’d log better if he had the chance

If the company would let him

Just a foot soldier
But the questions arisen before:
Would there be wars
If there were no soldiers?

“What’s it like up in Canada?
I want to go up there to work.
You still got trees up there.”

“Only ten or fifteen more years of trees,
I’d say, and that’s it.”

“They’ll probably find one of them
spotted owls up there anyways.”

“Them environmentalists are probably up there right now,
painting spots on all the owls that don’t got any.”

They laugh and offer me a smoke.

I don’t mention that I’ve been called
One of them environmentalists

Though I insist
I’m not any ist at all

Just a human

A human
With epiphytes in my armpits
Moss and fern and lichen

The dust and heat and sadness and power of the blockades coursing and crackling
Through my nervous system.
Microreyzal fungi curling through my intestines.

Right now I’m one of the guys.
Shape shifter.

“Excuse me a minute,” says Roy, firing up his chainsaw.
He cuts down a tree.
It falls screaming to the ground.

I think of those native tribes that used to pierce their flesh
And hang
In days of ritual atonement
Before falling a great cedar

I imagine Roy
Pierced and hanging

He’d probably log a little more carefully.

I Continue to Dream

2011-11-21T08:49:00.002-05:00

By Langston Hughes

I take my dreams and make of them a bronze vase
and a round fountain with a beautiful statue in its center.
And a song with a broken heart and I ask you:
Do you understand my dreams?
Sometimes you say you do,
And sometimes you say you don't.
Either way it doesn't matter.
I continue to dream.

Refusing at Fifty-Two to Write Sonnets

2011-11-20T19:21:00.002-05:00

By Thomas Lynch

It came to him that he could nearly count
How many Octobers he had left to him
In increments of ten or, say, eleven
Thus: sixty-three, seventy-four, eighty-five.
He couldn't see himself at ninety-six—
Humanity's advances notwithstanding
In health-care, self-help, or new-age regimens—
What with his habits and family history,
The end he thought is nearer than you think.

The future, thus confined to its contingencies,
The present moment opens like a gift:
The balding month, the grey week, the blue morning,
The hour's routine, the minute's passing glance—
All seem like godsends now. And what to make of this?
At the end the word that comes to him is Thanks.

Chayei Sarah

2011-11-19T21:51:00.000-05:00

By Laurie Patton

Ishmael:
I was thirteen,
and I remember the music
and my mother whispering,
"Why such a party, when
it is only a weaing?"
And the smell of lamb
and the hand drums;
and the involuntary sound
coming from my own throat -
half laughter, half-sob -
after I saw my mother's face
in the firelight;
and I knew
my little brother
was now my rival.
But God was still good to us -

Isaac:
- and I was three,
and I remember
starinh out in the dark
of the morning
and seeing two shadows
and then the clear outline
of your mother
clutching a water bottle,
and watching her wave
in the air,
as if she were talking
to Someone.
But God was still good to us -

Ishmael:
- and now we stare together
into the cave
that holds our father -

Isaac:
- our father's bones
and his memory,
in the place before Mamre -

Ishmael:
- and yet I fear
for the future -

Isaac:
- since perhaps
the only thing
we can do together

Isaac and Ishmael:
is to bury
and to mourn
our dead.

The Times They Are A-Changin'

2011-11-17T17:54:00.000-05:00

By Bob Dylan

Come gather ’round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won’t come again
And don’t speak too soon
For the wheel’s still in spin
And there’s no tellin’ who that it’s namin’
For the loser now will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin’

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There’s a battle outside and it is ragin’
It’ll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don’t criticize
What you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is rapidly agin’
Please get out of the new one if you can’t lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin’

The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is rapidly fadin’
And the first one now will later be last
For the times they are a-changin’

To hear Bob sing this song, go here.

Killing the plants

2011-11-16T12:33:00.003-05:00

By Jane Kenyon

That year I discovered the virtues
of plants as companions: they don't
argue, they don't ask for much,
they don't stay out until 3:00 A.M., then
lie to you about where they've been....

I can't summon the ambition
to repot this grape ivy, of this sad
old cactus, or even to move them out
onto the porch for the summer,
where their lives would certainly
improve. I give them
a grudging dash of water – that's all
they get. I wonder if they suspect
that like Hamlet I rehearse murder
all hours of the day and night,
considering the town dump
and compost pile as possible graves....

The truth is that if I permit them
to live, they will go on giving
alms to the poor: sweet air, miraculous
flowers, the example of persistence.

Implosions

2011-11-15T23:11:00.000-05:00

By Adrienne Rich

The world’s
not wanton
only wild and wavering

I wanted to choose words that even you
would have to be changed by

Take the word
of my pulse, loving and ordinary
Send out your signals, hoist
your dark scribbled flags
but take
my hand

All wars are useless to the dead

My hands are knotted in the rope<
and I cannot sound the bell

My hands are frozen to the switch
and I cannot throw it

The foot is in the wheel

When it’s finished and we’re lying
in a stubble of blistered flowers<
eyes gaping, mouths staring
dusted with crushed arterial blues
I’ll have done nothing
even for you?

Ghosts

2011-11-14T12:14:00.002-05:00

By John Middlebrook

When we moved from our old home,
we thought our memories moved with us.

Still curious, one day, we stop for a look.

We see the new owners
have made it all different,
and we shake our heads in disbelief.

Through the windows, in the willow,
we see their kids playing—
unaware, no doubt, of the very best limbs.

Outside, we whisper
and sidestep their prunings.
We are amazed at how small
it all has become.

Their son, a toy cowboy,
grabs his lasso
and plastic play gun.
He claims we never lived there;
we agree and move on.

Like a somber procession of grainy photos
we carry away our remains within us.
We are migrating spirits
tethered together by a story as shared
as the air that we breathe.

Up the road, we look back,
and through a keyhole we see
that the place we once lived
is no longer there.

It slips like a dream
into the maze of memory.
There, it keeps our common past.

Its dormant scent lingers
with artifacts left in trunks
and envelopes of lace -
the traces of what we were,
and what we hoped to be.

John Middlebrook lives in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where he manages a consulting firm focused on non-profit organizations. He has been writing poetry since he was a graduate student at the University of Chicago, where he also served on the poetry staff of Chicago Review. His work has appeared in Writers' Bloc, Foundling Review, and Yes, Poetry, and he can be found on the web here.

Hymn of Not Much Praise for New York City

2011-11-13T07:52:00.000-05:00

By Thomas James Merton

When the windows of the West Side clash like cymbals in the setting sunlight,

And when wind wails amid the East Side’s aerials,

And when, both north and south of thirty-fourth street,

In all the dizzy buildings,

The elevators clack their teeth and rattle the bars of their cages,

Then the children of the city,

Leaving the monkey-houses

of their office-buildings and apartments,

With the greatest difficulty open their mouths, and sing:

“Queen among the cities of the Earth: New York!

Rich as a cake, common as a doughnut,

Expensive as a fur and crazy as cocaine,

We love to hear you shake

Your big face like a shining bank

Letting the mad world know you’re full of dimes!

”This is your night to make maraccas out of all that metal money

Paris is in the prison-house, and London dies of cancer.

This is the time for you to whirl,

Queen of our hopped-up peace,

And let the excitement of your somewhat crippled congas

Supersede the waltzes of more shining

Capitals that have been bombed.

“Meanwhile we, your children,

Weeping in our seasick zoo of windows while you dance,

Will gobble aspirins,

And try to keep our cage from caving in.

All the while our minds will fill with these petitions,

Flowering quietly in between our gongs of pulse.

These will have to serve as prayers:

“ ‘O lock us in the safe jails of thy movies!

Confine us to the semiprivate wards and white asylums

Of the unbearable cocktail parties, O New York!

Sentence us for life to the penitentiaries of thy bars and nightclubs,

And leave us stupefied forever by the blue, objective lights

That fill the pale infirmaries of thy restaurants,

And the clinics of thy schools and offices,

And the operating-rooms of thy dance-halls.

“ ‘But never give us any explanations, even when we ask,

Why all our food tastes of iodoform,

And even the freshest flowers smell of funerals.

No, never let us look about us long enough to wonder

Which of the rich men, shivering in the overheated office,

And which of the poor men, sleeping face-down on the Daily Mirror,

Are still alive, and which are dead.’ ”

Lower East Side

2011-11-11T07:16:00.000-05:00

By Harvey Shapiro

On Houston street, walking west,
the moon coming up over Katz's Delicatessen,
we pass a synagogue ancient as Tiberias.
You don't have to be touched
by the hand of God
to pick up on these New York cliches.
We get finished walking the dog
and climb to your Catholic-kitsch apartment
where your Mother of God helps me out of my clothes
and history and the ruined smell of these lives.

Dr. Burnout

2011-11-10T16:24:00.007-05:00

By Millie Niss

Is not in he’s taking the afternoon off

To vacuum his office barcalounger

And test the springiness of the upholstery

With the new Jamaican receptionist

He’s been eyeing for the last two weeks

Dr. doesn’t want to hear about your feelings

After all, they’re immaterial the fall

Of psychodynamic psychiatry is well-past

So please stick to symptoms, side-effects and such

And leave the feelings for your twelve-step group

On overcoming therapy addiction. Diagnosis

Is a mere formality useful for insurance purposes

We wouldn’t want you to read in any more

Meaning than can be coded in ICD-9 instead

We’d rather characterize your condition

By the characteristic response you have to

Certain pharmacologic agents so rather than to say

That you’re depressed which has so many extra-clinical connotations
better to say you have

Prozac-responsive syndrome. Don’t bother to detail

The depths of your despair how you want to throw yourself

In front of the number 104 bus and end it all, enough

To say you have suicidal ideation and not waste

The doctor’s time he is busy preparing his suntan

For the Psychiatric Association conference in Acapulco

Where it wouldn’t do to have pasty skin so please be brief

And to the point and pay your bill promptly the dr.

Is running a business not a charity so have your

Visa or mastercard ready (sorry no American express) as

You leave and please do not forget your next appointment

Careful follow-up is essential to correct treatment.

Previously published in Yale Journal of Health and Medicine

Dispatch

2011-11-09T09:29:00.000-05:00

By Alfonso Quijada Urías

I content myself that some day
the owner of this poor grocery store
will make paper funnels
out of my writings
to wrap up his sugar and his coffee
for people of the future
who now for obvious reasons
cannot savor his sugar or his coffee.

Translated by Darwin J. Flakoll

My Thoughtful Son

2011-11-08T07:24:00.000-05:00

By Hal Sirowitz

I can't kill myself, Mother said,
because it's prohibited by Jewish law,
so I'm relying on you to do it for me,
& you've been doing a good job. You
already took a few days off my life
when you got mud on your shoes,
& left a trail of mud all over the house. I had
to get on my knees to scrub the floor,
& I thought to myself, My son is
only trying to be kind, he's shortening
my life so I won't have to worry
about old age, but if he really cared
about me, he'd put an end to me right now.

Meditation on the Adjournment of Congress

2011-11-07T08:07:00.003-05:00

By Robert Laughlin

A rolling stone
gathers no moss
and
a vacant Capitol
codifies no idiocy.

Robert Laughlin lives in Chico, California. His poems have appeared in Bryant Literary Review, Camroc Press Review, elimae, The Orange Room Review, and Pearl. His website can be found here.

"And these are Hagar's poems to this very day"

2011-11-06T23:08:00.000-05:00

By Anda Pinkerfeld-Amir

There in your tent, carpets are spread out,
caressed by the palms of your feet.
Every cord and thread, I wove myself,
every blossom raised from the mass of
threads -
my song of fingers for you.
Every flower, made magic by my love
to gladden your soul.

And how can these carpets soften for you,
how can your eyes drink the bounty of their
colors?
How is it that the petals don't burst
into blazing flame,
consuming your legs?
How can you walk complacently
on the blessing of my hands,
sent to you in my carpet,
your tranquility unconsumed by the wailing
of leaves,
weeping over my disgrace?

Translated by Wendy Zierler

A Litany for Survival

2011-11-04T12:18:00.002-04:00

By Audre Lorde

For those of us who live at the shoreline
standing upon the constant edges of decision
crucial and alone
for those of us who cannot indulge
the passing dreams of choice
who love in doorways coming and going
in the hours between dawns
looking inward and outward
at once before and after
seeking a now that can breed
futures
like bread in our children's mouths
so their dreams will not reflect
the death of ours:

For those of us
who were imprinted with fear
like a faint line in the center of our foreheads
learning to be afraid with our mother's milk
for by this weapon
this illusion of some safety to be found
the heavy-footed hoped to silence us
For all of us
this instant and this triumph
We were never meant to survive.

And when the sun rises we are afraid
it might not remain
when the sun sets we are afraid
it might not rise in the morning
when our stomachs are full we are afraid
of indigestion
when our stomachs are empty we are afraid
we may never eat again
when we are loved we are afraid
love will vanish
when we are alone we are afraid
love will never return
and when we speak
we are afraid our words will not be heard
nor welcomed
but when we are silent
we are still afraid

So it is better to speak
remembering
we were never meant to survive

Because You Asked about the Line between Prose and Poetry

2011-11-03T07:12:00.001-04:00

By Howard Nemerov

Sparrows were feeding in a freezing drizzle
That while you watched turned into pieces of snow
Riding a gradient invisible
From silver aslant to random, white, and slow.
There came a moment that you couldn't tell.
And then they clearly flew instead of fell.

Careful with that axe, Eugene

2011-11-02T22:35:00.000-04:00

By Bob Kemp

Careful with that axe, Eugene,
Don't let it split your shin.
You are mad and very sick;
Don't let it fall again.

Don't take it near the dog.
Don't you bash your brain.
You know you killed the pesky cat;
you diced it in the rain.

You've been to Salem once,
Don't want to go again.
They shock you with electricity;
and make you, oh, so sane.

So be careful with that axe.
You never want to fall.
Or bleed great pools of crimson blood;
and die right in the hall.

Eulogy

2011-11-01T12:51:00.000-04:00

By Paul Guest

So that this will seem like words between
old friends, I'll say it was painless
And quick. I'll say it was mercy
and behind my face where I put
things like The Truth and dreams about
supernovae, I'll try to mean it
But it was his time, we should all admit
Shouldn't we, who loved him
the way we love traffic
and cell phones during spectacular sex
and the degradations of puberty
shouldn't we all feel
as though light were swelling within us,
inflaming us? Tell me where
you were when you heard
but tell me later, much later,
the kind of later mathematicians get excited about
By then memory will have torn
away from my body like a scab
I'll no longer have to pick at
and I'll listen to you like a stethoscope.
It will be good for my heart.
It will be good for your heart.
In the air of that deferred spring
we'll be healthy, speaking
of an ancient wound neither of us
really remember, except
that by starlight we promised
to honor this question mark
in the periodic sentence of our lives.
Whatever you say, remember
that we cried. The dead love that we weep.
that we stain ourselves with
salt, that we become for a moment
indistinguishable from the sea,
that our shining faces rock with grief.

Familiar

2011-10-31T15:22:00.000-04:00

By Eve Lyons

“I just know I’m going to hell,” she says.
because she can’t help staring
at all the young studious men
wearing kipot.
She’s fascinated, and I don’t blame her,
even though if I were gawking at all the
strong Black men strolling,
she’d be offended.
But I’m staring, too.
I’m so in love
with the idea that even in this country
where I often feel at war
I can see my own tribe,
recognize it, smile, know that it’s there
whether I show up or not.
In college in Portland, Oregon
I’d wander the mall with David.
It was the only place
he could find dark skin,
even if there were very few
named Morales or Garcia.
He couldn’t stand to be around
a sea of white faces,
any more than I can live
surrounded by churches
without feeling something choking me.
It’s like coming across a map,
finding your way to
diversity flags and pink triangles
in a city you’ve only known three days.
It’s good to find yourself
far from where you left her.

Previously published in Contemporary World Literature, February 2011

Noah

2011-10-30T10:12:00.000-04:00

By Rivka Miriam

Noah installed wheels on his ark
dragging it after him
in case the flood suddenly returned.
Grapevines, noticing fins on his temples
and shiny scales at the opening of his shirt,
turned into raisins, dried out their juices
to ease his fear of their drowning wetness.
Noah installed wheels on his ark
and when the children hung from its side-poles
for a ride
Noah lovingly offered them brittle clods
of Ararat.

Mexico City Blues [113th Chorus]

2011-10-28T14:27:00.000-04:00

By Jack Kerouac

Got up and dressed up
     and went out & got laid
Then died and got buried
     in a coffin in the grave,
Man—
     Yet everything is perfect,
Because it is empty,
Because it is perfect
     with emptiness,
Because it's not even happening.

Everything
Is Ignorant of its own emptiness—
Anger
Doesn't like to be reminded of fits—

You start with the Teaching
     Inscrutable of the Diamond
And end with it, your goal
     is your startingplace,
No race was run, no walk
     of prophetic toenails
Across Arabies of hot
     meaning—you just
     numbly don't get there

At a Window

2011-10-27T11:33:00.000-04:00

By Carl Sandburg

Give me hunger,
O you gods that sit and give
The world its orders.
Give me hunger, pain and want,
Shut me out with shame and failure
From your doors of gold and fame,
Give me your shabbiest, weariest hunger!

But leave me a little love,
A voice to speak to me in the day end,
A hand to touch me in the dark room
Breaking the long loneliness.
In the dusk of day-shapes
Blurring the sunset,
One little wandering, western star
Thrust out from the changing shores of shadow.
Let me go to the window,
Watch there the day-shapes of dusk
And wait and know the coming
Of a little love.

Hero

2011-10-25T16:11:00.002-04:00

By Jason E. Hodges

Vietnam was a bitch
That war slipped home in the spirits of our fathers
Our brothers
Our uncles
Stepping off that plane your shadow seemed to be a little darker
For darkness was consuming your shadow turning it a different shade of black
Your smile had all but faded
Your eyes constantly combing the treetops afraid a shot would ring out
Yet we kept loving you unconditionally
Even when the madness danced in your eyes
Long wooded walks with you were almost an impossible feat
For even as a child I could see the shadows call out to you
You did what you had to do
At least this is what you told yourself to make it seem right
But there’s nothing right about war
Then came the drinking
Trying to wash it all away
Drown out the voices you heard in the night
Stop the snakes from coming out of the walls of our home
A home that was supposed to protect you, could protect you no longer
For the beast at the bottom of the bottle only fueled the nightmares
Then came the outburst of tears at dinner
if it tasted too much like rations
But hell, beans were all you could afford after the war
The war that never stopped in your thinking
Like a road without any end and no stop sign in sight
Like a sea without land the flashbacks kept coming
Relentless in the depths of your mind
Until the flag was folded into the triangle of honor
Given to our family to smooth the teardrops of sadness
One more hero gone from the fight.

Jason Hodges began writing in 1989. Shortly after he began, he saw the movie Drugstore Cowboy with William S. Burroughs. He would go on to discover Charles Bukowski, Harry Crews, Anais Nin, and Anne Sexton. His work can be found at The Fringe, The Camel Saloon, Indigo Rising, The Dirt Worker's Journal, Daily Love, The Rainbow Rose, Dead Snakes, Books on Blog, The Second Hump, and Cross TIME Science Fiction Anthonlogies Volumes 8, 9, and 10. He also interviewed Harry Crews for Our Town Gainesville Edition, Spring 2011.

Why We Are Truly a Nation

2011-10-24T01:38:00.002-04:00

By William Matthews

Because we rage inside
the old boundaries,
like a young girl leaving the Church,
scared of her parents.

Because we all dream of saving
the shaggy, dung-caked buffalo,
shielding the herd with our bodies.

Because grief unites us,
like the locked antlers of moose
who die on their knees in pairs.

For Strong Women

2011-10-21T15:33:00.003-04:00

By Marge Piercy

A strong woman is a woman who is straining
A strong woman is a woman standing
on tiptoe and lifting a barbell
while trying to sing "Boris Godunov."
A strong woman is a woman at work
cleaning out the cesspool of the ages,
and while she shovels, she talks about
how she doesn't mind crying, it opens
the ducts of the eyes, and throwing up
develops the stomach muscles, and
she goes on shoveling with tears in her nose.

A strong woman is a woman in whose head
a voice is repeating, I told you so,
ugly, bad girl, bitch, nag, shrill, witch,
ballbuster, nobody will ever love you back,
why aren't you feminine, why aren't
you soft, why aren't you quiet, why aren't you dead?

A strong woman is a woman determined
to do something others are determined
not be done. She is pushing up on the bottom
of a lead coffin lid. She is trying to raise
a manhole cover with her head, she is trying
to butt her way through a steel wall.
Her head hurts. People waiting for the hole
to be made say, hurry, you're so strong.

A strong woman is a woman bleeding
inside. A strong woman is a woman making
herself strong every morning while her teeth
loosen and her back throbs. Every baby,
a tooth, midwives used to say, and now
every battle a scar. A strong woman
is a mass of scar tissue that aches
when it rains and wounds that bleed
when you bump them and memories that get up
in the night and pace in boots to and fro.

A strong woman is a woman who craves love
like oxygen or she turns blue choking.
A strong woman is a woman who loves
strongly and weeps strongly and is strongly
terrified and has strong needs. A strong woman is strong
in words, in action, in connection, in feeling;
she is not strong as a stone but as a wolf
suckling her young. Strength is not in her, but she
enacts it as the wind fills a sail.

What comforts her is others loving
her equally for the strength and for the weakness
from which it issues, lightning from a cloud.
Lightning stuns. In rain, the clouds disperse.
Only water of connection remains,
flowing through us. Strong is what we make
each other. Until we are all strong together,
a strong woman is a woman strongly afraid.

Mitt Romney As Doll

2011-10-20T15:37:00.000-04:00

By Calvin Trillin

Yes, Mitt's so slick of speech and slick of garb, he
Reminds us all of Ken, of Ken and Barbie -
So quick to shed his moderate regalia,
He may, like Ken, be lacking genitalia.

Previously published in The Nation, 1/21/08

Trying to talk with a man

2011-10-19T09:41:00.000-04:00

By Adrienne Rich

Out in this desert we are testing bombs,

that's why we came here.

Sometimes I feel an underground river
forcing its way between deformed cliffs
an acute angle of understanding
moving itself like a locus of the sun
into this condemned scenery.

What we’ve had to give up to get here –
whole LP collections, films we starred in
playing in the neighborhoods, bakery windows
full of dry, chocolate-filled Jewish cookies,
the language of love-letters, of suicide notes,
afternoons on the riverbank
pretending to be children

Coming out to this desert
we meant to change the face of
driving among dull green succulents
walking at noon in the ghost town
surrounded by a silence

that sounds like the silence of the place
except that it came with us
and is familiar
and everything we were saying until now
was an effort to blot it out –
coming out here we are up against it

Out here I feel more helpless
with you than without you
You mention the danger
and list the equipment
we talk of people caring for each other
in emergencies - laceration, thirst -
but you look at me like an emergency

Your dry heat feels like power
your eyes are stars of a different magnitude
they reflect lights that spell out: EXIT
when you get up and pace the floor

talking of the danger
as if it were not ourselves
as if we were testing anything else.

The Republic of Poetry

2011-10-18T12:41:00.000-04:00

By Martín Espada

In the republic of poetry,
a train full of poets
rolls south in the rain
as plum trees rock
and horses kick the air,
and village bands
parade down the aisle
with trumpets, with bowler hats,
followed by the president
of the republic,
shaking every hand.

In the republic of poetry,
monks print verses about the night
on boxes of monastery chocolate,
kitchens in restaurants
use odes for recipes
from eel to artichoke,
and poets eat for free.

In the republic of poetry,
poets read to the baboons
at the zoo, and all the primates,
poets and baboons alike, scream for joy.

In the republic of poetry,
poets rent a helicopter
to bombard the national palace
with poems on bookmarks,
and everyone in the courtyard
rushes to grab a poem
fluttering from the sky,
blinded by weeping.

In the republic of poetry,
the guard at the airport
will not allow you to leave the country
until you declaim a poem for her
and she says Ah! Beautiful.

Our Spot

2011-10-17T07:53:00.000-04:00

By Tammy Ann Burley

Dust surrounds the area that once was.
Our spot now lies under ash.
I look at our place.
And remember what once stood.
A big tall tree.
Where acorns would fall.
A bench underneath.
Were we would sit and talk.
Hours would pass.
Neither of us wanted to make that walk.
We hated saying goodbye.
You hated seeing the tears I shed as we cried.
We know it’s over.
I walked back to our spot.
I look around and close my eyes.
Remembering the past.
Wishing what we had could have last.
Now that dream is dead.
I set fire to that tree.
I killed our spot.
Along with you and me.

Tammy Ann Burley is an undergraduate student studying English. She was published in The Anthology of Poetry when she was 15, and a few other poetry sites online since then. She loves writing and hopes to continue to write throughout her life. She hopes people enjoy her work.

Money Won’t Change It (but time will take you on)

2011-10-16T12:19:00.004-04:00

By Cornelius Eady

You’re rich, lady, hissed the young woman at
My mother as she bent in her garden.
Look at what you’ve got, and it was
Too much, the collards and tomatoes,
A man, however lousy, taking care
of the bills.

This was the reason for the early deaths
My mother was to find from that point on,
Turned dirt and the mock of roots,
Until finally, she gave her garden up.
You can’t have nothing, she tells us,
Is the motto of our neighborhood,
These modest houses
That won’t give an inch.