February 2012
24 posts
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Arrow Breaking Apart | Jason Shinder
While lovers sleep, I dig my nails into the earth, holding up traffic. Just now a cloud has pulled up while I was talking to the Emptiness of the Universe and my voice plugged into the waves at the bottom of the ocean. My heart is taped up like a child’s drawing of the moon over the broken window of the sky where the wind always comes back to fill my lungs. I will dance on my shadow. I will open...
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Curves | Karen Braucher
That was the summer I fell asleep in German and woke up in French. I lay down on the earth, stared up through a three-dimensional labyrinth of dark branches stretching toward sky. Curves are so much more caressing than straight lines, n’est-ce pas? Who has time to look at parabolas? Could I express only a parade of diversionary questions? Nein, nein, ...
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Not losing to the rain | Kenji Miyazawa
not losing to the rain not losing to the wind not losing to the snow nor to summer’s heat with a strong body unfettered by desire never losing temper cultivating a quiet joy every day four bowls of brown rice miso and some vegetables to eat in everything count yourself last and put others before you watching and listening, and understanding and never forgetting in the shade of...
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Skin 2 | Shane Koyczan
I don’t imagine you saran-wrapped in black latex or seeping out the edges of something tight and red I don’t close my eyes to dream of your back arched at the impossible angle of a bow pulled tight encouraging your shoulder blades to drip the blood of stockpiled broken hearts but I hope the sound of you not shielding your eyes from my blinding humility will one day top the charts it’s the most...
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When Leather is a Whip | Martín Espada
At night, with my wife sitting on the bed, I turn from her to unbuckle my belt so she won’t see her father unbuckling his belt
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Mixed Emotions | Travis Montez
[one] dehumanized reduced to a sexuality a preference a passage from Leviticus like my existence begins and ends with who is in my bed [two] father forgive me for i have sinned with choir boys and preacher’s sons and teen-aged fathers and felons and professors and revolutionaries and poets and porn directors and porn stars and married men and go go boys and i have loved not one single...
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Memory | Joan I. Siegel
As though darkness were a hand, a tactile memory like playing the piano. You touch lost things: The texture of green walls in the living room where you lived. Walls green as a forest at midnight of the new moon. How a stain on the ceiling was a bird’s wing in the shadows of the table lamp. You and your sister on the floor playing jacks, comfortable as animals in each other’s smell. The...
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Bedecked | Victoria Redel
Tell me it’s wrong the scarlet nails my son sports or the toy store rings he clusters four jewels to each finger. He’s bedecked. I see the other mothers looking at the star choker, the rhinestone strand he fastens over a sock. Sometimes I help him find sparkle clip-ons when he says sticker earrings look too fake. Tell me I should teach him it’s wrong to love the glitter that a boy’s only a boy...
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The Ubiquity Of The Need For Love | Ronald Koertge
I leave the number and a short message on every green Volvo in town
Is anything wrong? I miss you. 574-7423
The phone rings constantly. One says, Are you bald? Another, How tall are you in your stocking feet? Most just reply, Nothing’s wrong. I miss you, too. Come quick.
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Breaking Up | Yevgeny Yevtushenko
I fell out of love: that’s our story’s dull ending, as flat as life is, as dull as the grave. Excuse me—I’ll break off the string of this love song and smash the guitar. We have nothing to save. The puppy is puzzled. Our furry small monster can’t decide why we complicate simple things so— he whines at your door and I let him enter, when he scratches at my door, you always go. Dog, sentimental dog,...
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Survival poem #17 | Marty McConnell
because this is what you do. get up. blame the liquor for the heaviness. call in late to work. go to the couch because the bed is too empty. watch people scream about love on Jerry Springer. count the ways it could be worse. it could be last week when the missing got so big you wrote him a letter and sent it. it could be yesterday, no work to go to, whole day looming. it could be last month or the...
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2 A.M.
| Dorianne Laux
When I came with you that first time
on the floor of your office, the dirty carpet
under my back, the heel of one foot
propped on your shoulder, I went ahead
and screamed, full-throated, as loud
and as long as my body demanded,
because somewhere, in the back of my mind,
packed in the smallest neurons still capable
of thought, I remembered
we were in a warehouse district
and that no...
Anonymous asked: what is the translation of confessions a a green card bearer?
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Untitled | Bob Flanagan
I’ve been a shit and I hate fucking you now because I love fucking you too much; what good’s the head of my cock inside you when my other head, the one with the brains, keeps thinking how fucked up everything is, how fucked I am to be fucking you and thinking these things which take me away from you when all I want is to be close to you but fuck you for letting me fuck you now when all...
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Love After Love | Derek Walcott
The time will come when, with elation you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror and each will smile at the other’s welcome, and say, sit here. Eat. You will love again the stranger who was your self. Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart to itself, to the stranger who has loved you all your life, whom you ignored for another, who knows you by heart. Take...
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The Journey | Mary Oliver
One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice— though the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles. “Mend my life!” each voice cried. But you didn’t stop. You knew what you had to do, though the wind pried with its stiff fingers at the very foundations, though their melancholy was...
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Wait | Galway Kinnell
Wait, for now. Distrust everything, if you have to. But trust the hours. Haven’t they carried you everywhere, up to now? Personal events will become interesting again. Hair will become interesting. Pain will become interesting. Buds that open out of season will become lovely again. Second-hand gloves will become lovely again, their memories are what give them the need for other hands. And...
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What the Living Do | Marie Howe
Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days, some utensil probably fell down there. And the Drano won’t work but smells dangerous, and the crusty dishes have piled up waiting for the plumber I still haven’t called. This is the everyday we spoke of. It’s winter again: the sky’s a deep headstrong blue, and the sunlight pours through the open living room windows because...
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This Morning | Raymond Carver
This morning was something. A little snow lay on the ground. The sun floated in a clear blue sky. The sea was blue, and blue-green, as far as the eye could see. Scarcely a ripple. Calm. I dressed and went for a walk—determined not to return until I took in what Nature had to offer. I passed close to some old, bent-over trees. Crossed a field strewn with rocks where snow had drifted. Kept going...
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Now I Become Myself | May Sarton
Now I become myself. It’s taken Time, many years and places; I have been dissolved and shaken, Worn other people’s faces, Run madly, as if Time were there, Terribly old, crying a warning, “Hurry, you will be dead before—” (What? Before you reach the morning? Or the end of the poem is clear? Or love safe in the walled city?) Now to stand still, to be here, Feel my own...
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Holy | Nicole Blackman
I eat only sleep and air and everyone thinks i’m dumb But i’m smart because i’ve figured it out I am slimmer than you are And I am burning my skin off little by little until I reach bone and self until i get to where I am essential until I get to where I am Food doesnt even tempt me anymore Because I am so full of energy and sense I can even pass by water now Because I am living...
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Cartographies of Silence | Adrienne Rich
1. A conversation begins with a lie. and each speaker of the so-called common language feels the ice-floe split, the drift apart as if powerless, as if up against a force of nature A poem can begin with a lie. And be torn up. A conversation has other laws recharges itself with its own false energy, Cannot be torn up. Infiltrates our blood. Repeats itself. Inscribes with its unreturning stylus the...
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I Say I Say I Say | Simon Armitage
Anyone here had a go at themselves for a laugh? Anyone opened their wrists with a blade in the bath? Those in the dark at the back, listen hard. Those at the front in the know, those of us who have, hands up, let’s show that inch of lacerated skin between the forearm and the fist. Let’s tell it like it is: strong drink, a crimson tidemark round the tub, a yard of lint, white towels...
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Good Girl | Kim Addonizio
Look at you, sitting there being good. After two years you’re still dying for a cigarette. And not drinking on weekdays, who thought that one up? Don’t you want to run to the corner right now for a fifth of vodka and have it with cranberry juice and a nice lemon slice, wouldn’t the backyard that you’re so sick of staring out into look better then, the tidy yard your...
January 2012
3 posts
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They'll | Cheryl Denise
They’ll take your soul and put it in a suit, fit you in boxes under labels, make you look like the Joneses. They’ll tell you go a little blonder, suggest sky-blue tinted contact lenses, conceal that birthmark under your chin. They’ll urge you to have babies get fulfilled. They’ll say marriage is easy, flowers from Thornhills are all you need to keep it together....
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Ex-Boyfriends | Kim Addonizio
They hang around, hitting on your friends or else you never hear from them again. They call when they’re drunk, or finally get sober, they’re passing through town and want dinner, they take your hand across the table, kiss you when you come back from the bathroom. They were your loves, your victims, your good dogs or bad boys, and they’re over you now. One writes a book in which...
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Northern Pike | James Wright
All right. Try this, Then. Every body I know and care for, And every body Else is going To die in a loneliness I can’t imagine and a pain I don’t know. We had To go on living. We Untangled the net, we slit The body of this fish Open from the hinge of the tail To a place beneath the chin I wish I could sing of. I would just as soon we let The living go on living. An old poet whom we...
September 2011
13 posts
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Domestic Situation | Ernest Hilbert
Maybe you’ve heard about this. Maybe not. A man came home and chucked his girlfriend’s cat In the wood chipper. This really happened. Dinner wasn’t ready on time. A lot Of other little things went wrong. He spat On her father, who came out when he learned About it. He also broke her pinky, Stole her checks, and got her sister pregnant. But she stood by him, stood strong, through it all, Because...
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Untitled | Marilyn Hacker
You did say, need me less and I’ll want you more. I’m still shell-shocked at needing anyone, used to being used to it on my own. It won’t be me out on the tiles till four- thirty, while you’re in bed, willing the door open with your need. You wanted her then, more. Because you need to, I woke alone in what’s not yet our room, strewn, though, with your guitar, shoes,...
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You Should Date An Illiterate Girl | Charles...
Date a girl who doesn’t read. Find her in the weary squalor of a Midwestern bar. Find her in the smoke, drunken sweat, and varicolored light of an upscale nightclub. Wherever you find her, find her smiling. Make sure that it lingers when the people that are talking to her look away. Engage her with unsentimental trivialities. Use pick-up lines and laugh inwardly. Take her outside when the...
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Some of the Men | Michael Dickman
I had to walk around for a long time before I could see anything The leaves circling down the street imitating the insides of seashells imitating my fingerprints I could sense my father sitting alone in his little white Le Car staring off at the empty parking lot No radio No wind No birds Just some guy in his car looking out at the blacktop and the shadows of telephone wires It isn’t a sad...
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Never Go Back | Carol Ann Duffy
In the bar where the living dead drink all day and a jukebox reminisces in a cracked voice there is nothing to say. You talk for hours in agreed motifs, anecdotes shuffled and dealt from a well-thumbed pack, snapshots. The smoky mirrors flatter; your ghost buys a round for the parched, old faces of the past. Never return to the space where you left time pining till it died. Outside, the streets...
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Alcohol | Franz Wright
You do look a little ill. But we can do something about that, now. Can’t we. The fact is you’re a shocking wreck. Do you hear me. You aren’t all alone. And you could use some help today, packing in the dark, boarding buses north, putting the seat back and grinning with terror flowing over your legs through your fingers and hair … I was always waiting, always here. Know anyone else who can say...
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Suddenly Adult | Jack Gilbert
The train’s stopping wakes me. Weeds in the gully are white with the year’s first snow. A lighted train goes slowly past absolutely empty. Also going to Fukuoka. I feel around in myself to see if I mind. Maybe I am lonely. It is hard to know. It could be hidden in familiarity.
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Exile | Jeffrey Mcdaniel
Mathematicians still don’t understand the ball our hands made, or how your electrocuted grandparents made it possible for you to light my cigarettes with your eyes. It isn’t as simple as me climbing into the window to leave six ounces of orange juice and a doughnut by the bed, or me becoming the sand you dug your toes in, on the beach, when you wished to hide them from the sun and the fixed eyes...
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i thank You God for this most amazing | E.E....
i thank You God for most this amazing day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes (i who have died am alive again today, and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay great happening illimitably earth) how should tasting touching hearing...
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Translations of Love | Fatima Lim-Wilson
Close to drowning, that is happiness. Each breath knives, keeps us alive. Meteorlike, rushing through the tunnel’s Mouth, joy chases its own crescendo. We glorify in conclusions Always finding the next to the last page, Undrawn curtains. Reckless as infants discovering fire, Wild mushrooms, the lure of heights, We grow fangs, relearn the rhythm Of a crawl. The years tumble, Disarray of lost...
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Grow | Amanda Bass
I’ve felt the world turning But never quite this slow I can feel my heart burning God it hurts to grow
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A Word on Statistics | Wislawa Szymborska...
Out of every hundred people,
those who always know better: fifty-two.
Unsure of every step: almost all the rest.
Ready to help, if it doesn’t take long: forty-nine.
Always good, because they cannot be otherwise: four — well, maybe five.
Able to admire without envy: eighteen.
Led to error by youth (which passes): sixty, plus or minus.
Those not to be messed with: four-and-forty.
...
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The Farmer | Jeffrey McDaniel
There’s a field where I grow only bruises, inner gnawing, and heartache. Each Saturday I harvest the crop, haul it to the open-air market, and sell it straight from my flatbed truck. Fresh agony only three bucks a bushel. Sun-dried torment by the pound. Seven years running, my pain has been voted best in the region, and while I’m not wealthy, in my own small way, I help keep the...
August 2011
4 posts
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The Journey | Mary Oliver
‘One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice— though the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles. “Mend my life!” each voice cried. But you didn’t stop. You knew what you had to do, though the wind pried with its stiff fingers at the very foundations, though their...
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Out Here Even Crows Commit Suicide | Colleen J....
In a world where all the heroes are pilots with voices like God he brought her a strand of some woman’s hair to wear on her wing. She looked sideways at the ground silent behind the cloudy film covering her eyes knowing she would be his forever. They cruised the city nights each one spiralling away from the other but always coming home to gather stories. Dark streets bright tavern lights drunks...
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Overweight | James L. White
Cooking for someone can be loaded with danger. He’ll get here at six and I’m filled with a small fear of conversation at the table. I always toy with the edge across my throat, between the cabbage, the duck and coffee we stare into. There are many ways to scream. I’ve chosen the silent one because I”m afraid of being discovered as I am, not who he remembers 20 years ago. I...
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To Myself | Franz Wright
You are riding the bus again
burrowing into the blackness of Interstate 80, the sole passenger
with an overhead light on. And I am with you. I’m the interminable fields you can’t see,
the little lights off in the distance (in one of those rooms we are living) and I am the rain
and the others all around you, and the loneliness you love, and the universe that loves you...
May 2011
1 post
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Bar Napkin Sonnet #23 | Moira Egan
Sometimes you have to swallow. I love you might otherwise escape your lust-dumb lips. By dumb I mean here dim-witted, not mute, though I have learned the Helen Keller trick to see no, hear no, speak no thing like truth. How could this big dumb guy I’m sitting with have made me come so hard I damn near swooned? And now he’s watching baseball as if it’s a new religion. Jesus Christ. Who knew that...
March 2011
19 posts
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drunk sonnet 10 | daniel bailey
THE AIRPORT IS A TERRIBLE PLACE TO EXIST THE GROCERY STORE IS A TERRIBLE PLACE TO EXIST PETSMART IS A TERRIBLE PLACE TO EXIST THE THAI PLACE IS A TERRIBLE PLACE TO EXIST MY OWN BED IS A TERRIBLE PLACE TO EXIST INSIDE MY CAR IS A TERRIBLE PLACE TO EXIST ALL THESE STREETS, THIS CITY, THIS STATE THIS COUNTRY IS A TERRIBLE PLACE TO EXIST IN FRONT OF THIS TV IS A TERRIBLE PLACE TO EXIST IN THIS BODY IS...
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Anxiety | Frank O'Hara
I’m having a real day of it.
There was something I had to do. But what? There are no alternatives, just the one something. I have a drink, it doesn’t help - far from it! I feel worse. I can’t remember how I felt, so perhaps I feel better. No, Just a little darker. ...
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Invention of the Monsters | Aimee Nezhukumatathil
When a Yemeni bride complains of sharp pains on her scalp, her hairdresser insists it is only the hairpins holding the braided black wedding wig in place. Jealous Sister finally admits sneaking a scorpion under the whorl of egg-stiffened braids, loops of red ribbon, gold seedbeads. How beautiful, this body–exquisite even in its poison. Take Dali’s angels– winged cats soaring above sand...
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Maybe I Need You | Andrea Gibson
The winter I told you I think icicles are magic you stole an enormous icicle from a neighbors shingle and gave it to me as a gift I kept it in my freezer for seven months until the day I hurt my foot I needed something to reduce the swelling love isn’t always magic sometimes its just melting or its black and blue where it hurts the most last night I saw your ghost pedaling a bicycle with a...
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The Garden | Dorianne Laux
We were talking about poetry. We were talking about nuclear war. She said she couldn’t write about it because she couldn’t imagine it. I said it was simple. Imagine this doorknob is the last thing you will see in this world. Imagine you happen to be standing at the door when you look down, about to grasp the knob, your fingers curled toward it, the doorknob old and black with oil from being turned...