December 2010
23 posts
1 tag
Heaven To Be | Sharon Olds
When I’d picture my death, I would be lying on my back, and my spirit would rise to my belly-skin and out like a sheet of wax paper the shape of a girl, furl over from supine to prone and like the djinn’s carpet begin to fly, low, over our planet—heaven to be unhurtable, and able to see without cease or stint or stopperage, to lie on the air, and look, and look, not so different from my life. I...
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Lullaby | Reetika Vazirani
I would not sing you to sleep. I would press my lips to your ear and hope the terror in my heart stirs you
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I Walked Past a House Where I Lived Once | Yehuda...
I walked past a house where I lived once: a man and a woman are still together in the whispers there. Many years have passed with the quiet hum of the staircase bulb going on and off and on again. The keyholes are like little wounds where all the blood seeped out. And inside, people pale as death. I want to stand once again as I did holding my first love all night long in the doorway. When we left...
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Giving Up Smoking | Wendy Cope
There’s not a Shakespeare sonnet Or a Beethoven quartet That’s easier to like than you Or harder to forget. You think that sounds extravagant? I haven’t finished yet — I like you more than I would like To have a cigarette.
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Having a Coke with You | Frank O'Hara
is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches partly because of the secrecy...
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The Archipelago Of Kisses | Jeffrey McDaniel
We live in a modern society. Husbands and wives don’t grow on trees, like in the old days. So where does one find love? When you’re sixteen it’s easy, like being unleashed with a credit card in a department store of kisses. There’s the first kiss. The sloppy kiss. The peck. The sympathy kiss. The backseat smooch. The we shouldn’t be doing this kiss. The but your lips...
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I Carry Your Heart | ee cummings
i carry your heart with me i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart)i am never without it (anywhere i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing, my darling) i fear no fate (for you are my fate,my sweet) i want no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true) and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you here is the...
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Confession | Charles Bukowski
waiting for death like a cat that will jump on the bed I am so very sorry for my wife she will see this stiff white body shake it once, then maybe again “Hank!” Hank won’t answer. it’s not my death that worries me, it’s my wife left with this pile of nothing. I want to let her know though that all the nights sleeping beside her even the useless arguments were things...
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The Promise | Marie Howe
In the dream I had when he came back not sick but whole, and wearing his winter coat, he looked at me as though he couldn’t speak, as if there were a law against it, a membrane he couldn’t break. His silence was what he could not not do, like our breathing in this world, like our living, as we do, in time. And I told him: I’m reading all this Buddhist stuff, and listen, we...
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Turning | Annie Guthrie
I can’t sleep. I feel the globe making a rotation, and I’m not supposed to be, but I’m awake for it. I’m at that age when everyone is talking about the kinds of love they’ve been using to get by. It’s a very dark late. The sound of a towel dropping off the rack into the bath carries my name with it. I get up to turn on the dryer to block out all possibilities of ever hearing anything else so fall.
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Heroin | Jim Carroll
Sat for three days in a white room a tiny truck of flowers was driving through the empty window to warn off your neighbors and their miniature flashlights. by afternoon across the lake a blind sportsman had lost his canoe. he swam by evening toward the paper cup in my hand. At dawn, clever housewives tow my Dutch kitchen across the lawn. and in the mail a tiny circus filled with ponies has...
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Maybe I'm amazed | Jim Carroll
Just because there is music, piped into the most false of revolutions it cannot clean these senses of slow wireless death crawling from a slick mirror 1/8th its normal size… Marty was found dead literally blue 12 hours after falling out at the foot of the Cloisters with its millions in rare tapestry and its clear view of the Hudson and even testing your blue pills over and over to reverse my slow...
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Taboo | Nina Suba
In this game, there are words I cannot say. Like if I mean Bill Clinton, I can’t say President or United States. Or if snowball, I can’t say winter or fight Or any other word at the top of my mind - Unless you say it first. I must hold the tip of my tongue And find a way around words, Tell you about pain, for instance, By recounting the sadness of the stars on moonless nights When...
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Ryan Adams
I boycott today and the sun and the light and the orange and the bright i boycott today and the skin and the girls and the feet stomping curls in exchange for my bed and a screen and a nap and naked and still with caveman feet and a soft blanket and no s o u n d or no a r t or no t u n e s and no t h o u g h t because this is the first sun of spring and i will only think of you and i don’t feel...
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Humanity i love you | ee cummings
Humanity i love you because you would rather black the boots of success than enquire whose soul dangles from his watch-chain which would be embarassing for both parties and because you unflinchingly applaud all songs containing the words country home and mother when sung at the old howard Humanity i love you because when you’re hard up you pawn your intelligence to buy a drink and when you’re...
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Fragments for the End of the Year | Jennifer K....
On average, odd years have been the best for me. I’m at a point where everyone I meet looks like a version of someone I already know. Without fail, fall makes me nostalgic for things I’ve never experienced. The sky is molting. I don’t know if this is global warming or if the atmosphere is reconfiguring itself to accommodate all the new bright suffering. I am struck by an overwhelming need to go to...
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April Rain Song | Langston Hughes
Let the rain kiss you.Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops.Let the rain sing you a lullaby.
The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk.The rain makes running pools in the gutter.The rain plays a little sleep-song on our roof at night—
And I love the rain. Who cares if it’s January?
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ee cummings
now all the fingers of this tree(darling)have hands,and all the hands have people;and more each particular person is(my love) alive than every world can understand and now you are and i am now and we’re a mystery which will never happen again, a miracle which has never happened before— and shining this our now must come to then our then shall be some darkness during which fingers are...
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Quiet Girl | Langston Hughes
I would liken you To a night without stars Were it not for your eyes. I would liken you To a sleep without dreams Were it not for your songs.
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What I Would Do | Marc Petersen
If my wife were to have an affair, I would walk to my toolbox in the garage, Take from it my 12” flathead screwdriver And my hickory-handle hammer, The one that helped me build three redwood fences, And I would hammer out the pins In all the door hinges in the house, And I would pull off all the doors And I would stack them in the backyard. And I would empty all the sheets from the linen...
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hester pryne 2.0 | Megan Falley
can you smell the other man? the way my dog won’t look at me when i’ve pet another in the park. when we kiss, are you the mint? is he the fresh-squeezed orange? am i the vessel where both things sour? are you so naive? made of so much light when i stand before you my shadow is a much bigger woman. fingering letters above my breast with blushing, scarlet fingers you ask me to guess. it always feels...
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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 doesn’t tempt me anymore because I’m so full of energy and sense I can even pass by water now because I...
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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...