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...