Poem of the Day

Marvel by David Biespiel

Sun, 21 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0600

I did not call to the Holy Spirit or whistle My lordy, lordy,

Nor hum one scintilla of shame. What hid in the grass

Was neither skiver nor savior, neither cheater nor ace.

Besides, the doves peering over the gutters have all gone awry.

If I’m only a man, born far from a boomer’s shack—

Hoarding sawbucks, cherry-picking the hicks like prey,

And the wusses, and the Horacian declaimers, and the lucky

Grubbers who master heartache and lurk like crooks

Among the rich and the rebadged—then I’m a rival devil,

Carrying my brag like a brakeman. And the one certainty,

That life is to be lost—and no matter the opinion, someone’s

Always a fool—has me rubbed inside like a lonely breed

With the swill edgy and chic and rough. Who asks:

Who needs a cotton-eyed hymn to say what the old shanty

By the track has meant to the human story? Or:

What’s Heaven for? The reach and grasp, the pecked-at days,

The horsey blues that lilac after hours,

The rocks I’ve carried in my coat pocket—

None of it has me shuddering on my knees.

Nevertheless, I marvel at the pigs and the ducks, at dogs and kings,

And revive this peck of flame, this tongue of lack, too easily.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2008).

A Color of the Sky by Tony Hoagland

Sat, 20 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0600

Windy today and I feel less than brilliant,

driving over the hills from work.

There are the dark parts on the road

when you pass through clumps of wood

and the bright spots where you have a view of the ocean,

but that doesn’t make the road an allegory.

I should call Marie and apologize

for being so boring at dinner last night,

but can I really promise not to be that way again?

And anyway, I’d rather watch the trees, tossing

in what certainly looks like sexual arousal.

Otherwise it’s spring, and everything looks frail;

the sky is baby blue, and the just-unfurling leaves

are full of infant chlorophyll,

the very tint of inexperience.

Last summer’s song is making a comeback on the radio,

and on the highway overpass,

the only metaphysical vandal in America has written

MEMORY LOVES TIME

in big black spraypaint letters,

which makes us wonder if Time loves Memory back.

Last night I dreamed of X again.

She’s like a stain on my subconscious sheets.

Years ago she penetrated me

but though I scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed,

I never got her out,

but now I’m glad.

What I thought was an end turned out to be a middle.

What I thought was a brick wall turned out to be a tunnel.

What I thought was an injustice

turned out to be a color of the sky.

Outside the youth center, between the liquor store

and the police station,

a little dogwood tree is losing its mind;

overflowing with blossomfoam,

like a sudsy mug of beer;

like a bride ripping off her clothes,

dropping snow white petals to the ground in clouds,

so Nature’s wastefulness seems quietly obscene.

It’s been doing that all week:

making beauty,

and throwing it away,

and making more.

Tony Hoagland, “A Color of the Sky” from What Narcissism Means to Me. Copyright © 2003 by Tony Hoagland. Reprinted with the permission of Graywolf Press, St. Paul, Minnesota, www.graywolfpress.org.

Source: What Narcissism Means to Me (2003)

Sober Song by Barton Sutter

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0600

Farewell to the starlight in whiskey,

So long to the sunshine in beer.

The booze made me cocky and frisky

But worried the man in the mirror.

Goodnight to the moonlight in brandy,

Adieu to the warmth of the wine.

I think I can finally stand me

Without a glass or a stein.

Bye-bye to the balm in the vodka,

Ta-ta to the menthol in gin.

I'm trying to do what I ought to,

Rejecting that snake medicine.

I won't miss the blackouts and vomit,

The accidents and regret.

If I can stay off the rotgut,

There might be a chance for me yet.

So so long to God in a bottle,

To the lies of rum and vermouth.

Let me slake my thirst with water

And the sweet, transparent truth.

Reprinted from Farewell to the Starlight in Whiskey, Rochester: BOA Editions, 2004, by permission of the author.

Source: Farewell to the Starlight in Whiskey (BOA Editions, Ltd., 2004)

Blind Joy by John Frederick Nims

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0600

Crude seeing’s all our joy: could we discern

The cold dark infinite vast where atoms burn

—Lone suns—in flesh, our treasure and our play,

Who’d dare to breathe this fern-thick bird-rich day?

John Frederick Nims, “Blind Joy” from Selected Poems (Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1982). Used by permission of Bonnie Nims.

Source: Selected Poems (The University of Chicago Press, 1982)

To a Greek Marble by Richard Aldington

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0600

Pótuia, pótuia

White grave goddess,

Pity my sadness,

O silence of Paros.

I am not of these about thy feet,

These garments and decorum;

I am thy brother,

Thy lover of aforetime crying to thee,

And thou hearest me not.

I have whispered thee in thy solitudes

Of our loves in Phrygia,

The far ecstasy of burning noons

When the fragile pipes

Ceased in the cypress shade,

And the brown fingers of the shepherd

Moved over slim shoulders;

And only the cicada sang.

I have told thee of the hills

And the lisp of reeds

And the sun upon thy breasts,

And thou hearest me not,

Pótuia, pótuia

Thou hearest me not.

Source: Poetry (November 1912).

In the Valley of Cauteretz by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0600

All along the valley, stream that flashest white,

Deepening thy voice with the deepening of the night,

All along the valley, where thy waters flow,

I walk'd with one I loved two and thirty years ago.

All along the valley, while I walk'd to-day,

The two and thirty years were a mist that rolls away;

For all along the valley, down thy rocky bed,

Thy living voice to me was as the voice of the dead,

And all along the valley, by rock and cave and tree,

The voice of the dead was a living voice to me.

The X-Ray by Heidy Steidlmayer

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0600

Mornings, the body’s old

winter monochrome gives

its image of extraordinary cold

to a million hives—

I could imagine a lanthorn

as it swallows its strange light and gleams

from within as if reborn

when the bees come.

Source: Poetry (September 2008).

Eschatology by Sandra McPherson

Sun, 14 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0600

I accompany this life’s events like a personal journalist:

“Little did she know when she got in the car that afternoon ...”;

or “Despite inauspicious beginnings,

this was to be their happiest year.”

Little did I expect that our horoscopes would prove true.

And how could we foresee an answer to

that frankly secular prayer, we with so little faith

as to be false prophets to our most fortunate gifts.

I am glad when doom fails. Inept apocalypse

is a specialty of the times: the suffering of the rich

at the hand of riches; the second and third comings of wars.

Shouldn’t we refuse prediction

that the untried today is guilty, that immeasurable

as this child’s hope is, it will break tomorrow?

Sandra McPherson, “Eschatology” from Radiation (New York: The Ecco Press, 1973). Copyright © 1973 by Sandra McPherson. Reprinted with the permission of the author.

Source: Poetry (April 1970).

here rests by Lucille Clifton

Sat, 13 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0600

my sister Josephine

born july in '29

and dead these 15 years

who carried a book

on every stroll.

when daddy was dying

she left the streets

and moved back home

to tend him.

her pimp came too

her Diamond Dick

and they would take turns

reading

a bible aloud through the house.

when you poem this

and you will she would say

remember the Book of Job.

happy birthday and hope

to you Josephine

one of the easts

most wanted.

may heaven be filled

with literate men

may they bed you

with respect.

Lucille Clifton, "here rests" from Mercy. Copyright © 2004 by Lucille Clifton. Reprinted with the permission of BOA Editions, Ltd.

Source: Mercy (BOA Editions, Ltd., 2004)

A Bowl of Fruit by Robert VanderMolen

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0600

When I think of that room

I see the de Kooning at the end of the hall

Sometimes rain on the long windows

Or the tinkering of drops on the skylight

But not Yvon

Splashing Scotch into a cocktail glass

Otherwise fastidious—

In retrospect

I should have asked her more

About the famous jazz guitarist

She had been engaged to

But that much was true—

Even after she bought me a pocket knife

Sheathed in velvet

Every young man needs a knife

She informed her group

But in the restaurant her friends

Eyed me like a turnip. One that talked—

While she was away at her office,

I tried to read

Her unfinished essay

On the vagaries of diplomacy

Reclining

On a rug of embroidered storks

The two small Rodins

Seemed misplaced

A grand piano

She didn’t play

(though I did, affecting a controlled

passion

while gazing over rooftops

at carefully maintained gardens)—

I don’t remember her smell

I don’t recall her fingers

The last I heard she was living in Barcelona

She never did learn to cook

Now her letters are worth money

Source: Poetry (February 2010).

Niobe by Alfred Noyes

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0600

How like the sky she bends above her child,

One with the great horizon of her pain!

No sob from our low seas where woe runs wild,

No weeping cloud, no momentary rain,

Can mar the heaven-high visage of her grief,

That frozen anguish, proud, majestic, dumb.

She stoops in pity above the labouring earth,

Knowing how fond, how brief

Is all its hope, past, present, and to come,

She stoops in pity, and yearns to assuage its dearth.

Through that fair face the whole dark universe

Speaks, as a thorn-tree speaks thro’ one white flower;

And all those wrenched Promethean souls that curse

The gods, but cannot die before their hour,

Find utterance in her beauty. That fair head

Bows over all earth’s graves. It was her cry

Men heard in Rama when the twisted ways

With children’s blood ran red.

Her silence towers to Silences on high;

And, in her face, the whole earth’s anguish prays.

It is the pity, the pity of human love

That strains her face, upturned to meet the doom,

And her deep bosom, like a snow-white dove

Frozen upon its nest, ne’er to resume

Its happy breathing o’er the golden brace

That she must shield till death. Death, death alone

Can break the anguished horror of that spell.

The sorrow on her face

Is sealed: the living flesh is turned to stone;

She knows all, all, that Life and Time can tell.

Ah, yet, her woman’s love, so vast, so tender,

Her woman’s body, hurt by every dart,

Braving the thunder, still, still hide the slender

Soft frightened child beneath her mighty heart.

She is all one mute immortal cry, one brief

Infinite pang of such victorious pain

That she transcends the heavens and bows them down!

The majesty of grief

Is hers, and her dominion must remain

Eternal. Grief alone can wear that crown.

Source: Collected Poems (1947)

On the Meeting of Garcia Lorca and Hart Crane by Philip Levine

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0600

Brooklyn, 1929. Of course Crane’s

been drinking and has no idea who

this curious Andalusian is, unable

even to speak the language of poetry.

The young man who brought them

together knows both Spanish and English,

but he has a headache from jumping

back and forth from one language

to another. For a moment’s relief

he goes to the window to look

down on the East River, darkening

below as the early night comes on.

Something flashes across his sight,

a double vision of such horror

he has to slap both his hands across

his mouth to keep from screaming.

Let’s not be frivolous, let’s

not pretend the two poets gave

each other wisdom or love or

even a good time, let’s not

invent a dialogue of such eloquence

that even the ants in your own

house won’t forget it. The two

greatest poetic geniuses alive

meet, and what happens? A vision

comes to an ordinary man staring

at a filthy river. Have you ever

had a vision? Have you ever shaken

your head to pieces and jerked back

at the image of your young son

falling through open space, not

from the stern of a ship bound

from Vera Cruz to New York but from

the roof of the building he works on?

Have you risen from bed to pace

until dawn to beg a merciless God

to take these pictures away? Oh, yes,

let’s bless the imagination. It gives

us the myths we live by. Let’s bless

the visionary power of the human—

the only animal that’s got it—,

bless the exact image of your father

dead and mine dead, bless the images

that stalk the corners of our sights

and will not let go. The young man

was my cousin, Arthur Lierberman,

then a language student at Columbia,

who told me all this before he died

quietly in his sleep in 1983

in a hotel in Perugia. A good man,

Arthur, he survived graduate school,

later came home to Detroit and sold

pianos right through the Depression.

He loaned my brother a used one

to compose hideous songs on,

which Arthur thought were genius.

What an imagination Arthur had!

Philip Levine, “On the Meeting of Garcia Lorca and Hart Crane” from The Simple Truth: Poems. Copyright © 1992 by Philip Levine. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.

Source: The Simple Truth: Poems (Alfred A. Knopf, 1994)

Untitled by Bei Dao

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0600

people hurry on, arrive

return in another life, fade into bird dreams

the sun flees wheat fields

then comes back trailing after beggars

who's rivaled sky for height

that singer who died young

soars in the weather map

flies into snowstorms holding a lamp

I bought a newspaper

got change back from the day

and at the entrance to night

eased into a new identity

celebrated fish

move through everyone's tears

hey, you folks upstream achievers so hale and hearty

how far is it to tomorrow

"Untitled" by Bei Dao, translated by David Hinton with Yanbing Chen, from LANDSCAPE OVER ZERO, copyright © 1995, 1996 by Zhao Zhenkai, Translation copyright © 1995, 1996 by David Hinton with Yanbing Chen. Used by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.

Source: LANDSCAPE OVER ZERO (New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1996)

How Things Fall by Kevin Stein

Sun, 07 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0600

There’s the intuition of a key

about to enter a lock, familiar

and confident as a foot poised above

a worn sock. That’s not what

made him leave their darkened house

in favor of the yard, its cool

September breeze. It wasn’t a notion

of anything he could say out loud,

or even how hard she’d slapped him,

that made him look to the bathroom,

its lush, golden GE light

spilling out the open window.

What turned his head was the thunk

of acorns dropping through the huge

bur oak, what startled him with a picture

as clear as Newton’s of how things fall.

His wife, seated on the tub, was masturbating

with left and right hands—head arched,

neck and shoulders flushed, both eyes

closed. Drawn to her now the way the man

at the liquor store is drawn to pain,

the guy who punches his own face for quarters

to buy Mad Dog 20/20, he crouches

at the threshold and listens as she groans,

Fuck me, oh fuck me, Davey, a name he’d never

heard her say in such anger or bliss,

in sickness or in health. And since

it is not his name, given or otherwise,

and since he cannot bear her name

for infidelity, or his own list—Windy

(with an “i”), Cindy, Stacy, Heather—

he crawls on his belly through the wet,

welcoming fall ground to the osage-orange

and their puke-green hedgeapples,

nearly flourescent in the harvest moon.

They look like brains to him, as human

and useless against the body’s yearnings

as his own. He smashes a few against

the hard trunks of hedge trees, eats

the spongy center and prays that

his mother, who only meant to warn him,

was right about their poisons.

And all he can think to do is ask God,

Please don’t let me vomit.

Reprinted from A Circus of Want by Kevin Stein by permission of the University of Missouri Press. Copyright © 1992 by the Curators of the University of Missouri.

Source: A Circus of Want (University of Missouri Press, 1992)

The Old Swimmin' Hole by James Whitcomb Riley

Sat, 06 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0600

Oh! the old swimmin'-hole! whare the crick so still and deep

Looked like a baby-river that was laying half asleep,

And the gurgle of the worter round the drift jest below

Sounded like the laugh of something we onc't ust to know

Before we could remember anything but the eyes

Of the angels lookin' out as we left Paradise;

But the merry days of youth is beyond our controle,

And it's hard to part ferever with the old swimmin'-hole.

Oh! the old swimmin'-hole! In the happy days of yore,

When I ust to lean above it on the old sickamore,

Oh! it showed me a face in its warm sunny tide

That gazed back at me so gay and glorified,

It made me love myself, as I leaped to caress

My shadder smilin' up at me with sich tenderness.

But them days is past and gone, and old Time's tuck his toll

From the old man come back to the old swimmin'-hole.

Oh! the old swimmin'-hole! In the long, lazy days

When the humdrum of school made so many run-a-ways,

How plesant was the jurney down the old dusty lane,

Whare the tracks of our bare feet was all printed so plane

You could tell by the dent of the heel and the sole

They was lots o' fun on hands at the old swimmin'-hole.

But the lost joys is past! Let your tears in sorrow roll

Like the rain that ust to dapple up the old swimmin'-hole.

Thare the bullrushes growed, and the cattails so tall,

And the sunshine and shadder fell over it all;

And it mottled the worter with amber and gold

Tel the glad lilies rocked in the ripples that rolled;

And the snake-feeder's four gauzy wings fluttered by

Like the ghost of a daisy dropped out of the sky,

Or a wownded apple-blossom in the breeze's controle

As it cut acrost some orchard to'rds the old swimmin'-hole.

Oh! the old swimmin'-hole! When I last saw the place,

The scenes was all changed, like the change in my face;

The bridge of the railroad now crosses the spot

Whare the old divin'-log lays sunk and fergot.

And I stray down the banks whare the trees ust to be—

But never again will theyr shade shelter me!

And I wish in my sorrow I could strip to the soul,

And dive off in my grave like the old swimmin'-hole.

As Children Know by Jimmy Santiago Baca

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0600

Elm branches radiate green heat,

blackbirds stiffly strut across fields.

Beneath bedroom wood floor, I feel earth—

bread in an oven that slowly swells,

simmering my Navajo blanket thread-crust

as white-feathered and corn-tasseled

Corn Dancers rise in a line, follow my calf,

vanish in a rumple and surface at my knee-cliff,

chanting. Wearing shagged buffalo headgear,

Buffalo Dancer chases Deer Woman across

Sleeping Leg mountain. Branches of wild rose

trees rattle seeds. Deer Woman fades into hills

of beige background. Red Bird

of my heart thrashes wildly after her.

What a stupid man I have been!

How good to let imagination go,

step over worrisome events,

those hacked logs

tumbled about

in the driveway.

Let decisions go!

Let them blow

like school children’s papers

against the fence,

rattling in the afternoon wind.

This Red Bird

of my heart thrashes within the tidy appearance

I offer the world,

topples what I erect, snares what I set free,

dashes what I’ve put together,

indulges in things left unfinished,

and my world is left, as children know,

left as toys after dark in the sandbox.

"As Children Know" by Jimmy Santiago Baca, from Black Mesa Poems. Copyright © 1989 by Jimmy Santiago Baca. Used by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp., www.ndpublishing.com.

Source: Black Mesa Poems (New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1989)

Absalom by Muriel Rukeyser

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0600

I first discovered what was killing these men.

I had three sons who worked with their father in the tunnel:

Cecil, aged 23, Owen, aged 21, Shirley, aged 17.

They used to work in a coal mine, not steady work

for the mines were not going much of the time.

A power Co. foreman learned that we made home brew,

he formed a habit of dropping in evenings to drink,

persuading the boys and my husband—

give up their jobs and take this other work.

It would pay them better.

Shirley was my youngest son; the boy.

He went into the tunnel.

My heart my mother my heart my mother

My heart my coming into being.

My husband is not able to work.

He has it, according to the doctor.

We have been having a very hard time making a living since

this trouble came to us.

I saw the dust in the bottom of the tub.

The boy worked there about eighteen months,

came home one evening with a shortness of breath.

He said, "Mother, I cannot get my breath."

Shirley was sick about three months.

I would carry him from his bed to the table,

from his bed to the porch, in my arms.

My heart is mine in the place of hearts,

They gave me back my heart, it lies in me.

When they took sick, right at the start, I saw a doctor.

I tried to get Dr. Harless to X-ray the boys.

He was the only man I had any confidence in,

the company doctor in the Kopper's mine,

but he would not see Shirley.

He did not know where his money was coming from.

I promised him half if he'd work to get compensation,

but even then he would not do anything.

I went on the road and begged the X-ray money,

the Charleston hospital made the lung pictures,

he took the case after the pictures were made.

And two or three doctors said the same thing.

The youngest boy did not get to go down there with me,

he lay and said, "Mother, when I die,

I want you to have them open me up and

see if that dust killed me.

Try to get compensation,

you will not have any way of making your living

when we are gone,

and the rest are going too."

I have gained mastery over my heart

I have gained mastery over my two hands

I have gained mastery over the waters

I have gained mastery over the river.

The case of my son was the first of the line of lawsuits.

They sent the lawyers down and the doctors down;

they closed the electric sockets in the camps.

There was Shirley, and Cecil, Jeffrey and Oren,

Raymond Johnson, Clev and Oscar Anders,

Frank Lynch, Henry Palf, Mr. Pitch, a foreman;

a slim fellow who carried steel with my boys,

his name was Darnell, I believe. There were many others,

the town of Glen Ferris, Alloy, where the white rock lies,

six miles away; Vanetta, Gauley Bridge,

Gamoca, Lockwood, the gullies,

the whole valley is witness.

I hitchhike eighteen miles, they make checks out.

They asked me how I keep the cow on $2.

I said one week, feed for the cow, one week, the children's flour.

The oldest son was twenty-three.

The next son was twenty-one.

The youngest son was eighteen.

They called it pneumonia at first.

They would pronounce it fever.

Shirley asked that we try to find out.

That's how they learned what the trouble was.

I open out a way, they have covered my sky with crystal

I come forth by day, I am born a second time,

I force a way through, and I know the gate

I shall journey over the earth among the living.

He shall not be diminished, never;

I shall give a mouth to my son.

Muriel Rukeyser, "Absalom" from The Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser. Copyright (c) 1978 by Muriel Rukeyser. Reprinted with the permission of William Rukeyser.

Source: The Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005)

Scenes of Childhood by James Merrill

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0600

My mother’s lamp once out,

I press a different switch:

A field within the dim

White screen ignites,

vibrating to the rapt

Mechanical racket

Of a real noon field’s

Crickets and gnats.

And to its candid heart

I move with heart ajar,

With eyes that smart less

From pollen or heat

Than from the buried day

Now rising like a moon,

Shining, unwinding

Its taut white sheet.

Two or three bugs that lit

Earlier upon the blank

Sheen, all peaceable

Insensibility, drowse

As she and I cannot

Under the risen flood

Of thirty years ago

A tree, a house

We had then, a late sun,

A door from which the primal

Figures jerky and blurred

As lightning bugs

From lanterns issue, next

To be taken for stars,

For fates. With knowing smiles

And beaded shrugs

My mother and two aunts

Loom on the screen. Their plucked

Brows pucker, their arms encircle

One another.

Their ashen lips move.

From the love seat’s gloom

A quiet chuckle escapes

My white-haired mother

To see in that final light

A man’s shadow mount

Her dress. And now she is

Advancing, sister-

less, but followed by

A fair child, or fury—

Myself at four, in tears.

I raise my fist,

Strike, she kneels down. The man’s

Shadow afflicts us both.

Her voice behind me says

It might go slower.

I work dials, the film jams.

Our headstrong old projector

Glares at the scene which promptly

Catches fire.

Puzzled, we watch ourselves

Turn red and black, gone up

In a puff of smoke now coiling

Down fierce beams.

I switch them off. A silence.

Your father, she remarks,

Took those pictures; later

Says pleasant dreams,

Rises and goes. Alone

I gradually fade and cool.

Night scatters me with green

Rustlings, thin cries.

Out there between the pines

Have begun shining deeds,

Some low, inconstant (these

Would be fireflies),

Others as in high wind

Aflicker, staying lit.

There are nights we seem to ride

With cross and crown

Forth under them, through fumes,

Coils, the whole rattling epic—

Only to leap clear-eyed

From eiderdown,

Asleep to what we’d seen.

Father already fading—

Who focused your life long

Through little frames,

Whose microscope, now deep

In purple velvet, first

Showed me the skulls of flies,

The fur, the flames

Etching the jaws—father:

Shrunken to our true size

Each morning, back of us,

Fields wail and shimmer.

To go out is to fall

Under fresh spells, cool web

And stinging song new-hatched

Each day, all summer.

A minute galaxy

About my head will easily

Needle me back. The day’s

Inaugural Damn

Spoken, I start to run,

Inane, like them, but breathing

In and out the sun

And air I am.

The son and heir! In the dark

It makes me catch my breath

And hear, from upstairs, hers—

That faintest hiss

And slither, as of life

Escaping into space,

Having led its characters

To the abyss

Of night. Immensely still

The heavens glisten. One broad

Path of vague stars is floating

Off, a shed skin

Of all whose fine cold eyes

First told us, locked in ours:

You are the heroes without name

Or origin.

Michiko Dead by Jack Gilbert

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0600

He manages like somebody carrying a box

that is too heavy, first with his arms

underneath. When their strength gives out,

he moves the hands forward, hooking them

on the corners, pulling the weight against

his chest. He moves his thumbs slightly

when the fingers begin to tire, and it makes

different muscles take over. Afterward,

he carries it on his shoulder, until the blood

drains out of the arm that is stretched up

to steady the box and the arm goes numb. But now

the man can hold underneath again, so that

he can go on without ever putting the box down.

Jack Gilbert, “Michiko Dead” from The Great Fires: Poems 1982-1992. Copyright © 1994 by Jack Gilbert. Reprinted with the permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.

Source: The Great Fires: Poems 1982-1992 (Alfred A. Knopf, 1994)

The Apples by W. S. Di Piero

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0600

The city budget squads have trimmed its hours.

“You can’t get in, just go home why don’t you.”

I couldn’t tell how old she was.

Chalky braids crisscrossed her head;

the trenchcoat bunched around her waist

like paper flowers, her bare legs

streaked pink.

She held a net bag, very French,

filled with cans.

It's equinox.

Sycamore leaves bank at curbs

and blip in bike-wheel spokes.

My old library’s closed. It’s always closed

when I make visits home.

Starlings rake song across the wires.

I used to ride my meaty Schwinn

to this better neighborhood.

“You can’t. You can’t.” She quivered

and chopped the bag against her knee.

Saying that,

I make a mimicry of her.

I learned to do it

in the big, lemony room of floodlit books.

Gg Zz Bb leafed from the walls.

Sky-blue globe. Soiled card catalog.

Robinson Crusoe walked across the room,

studying matter, its provisioning use

and weedy homemade powers: I put my feet

into his splayed prints in the sand,

but when he looked behind, he said

Find your own place, kid. Grow up.

You can’t you can’t. I lost her

in the splintered Sears and Pep Boys doors

down the block, the lost-lease sales

and recycling bins.

I feel her words, or think I do,

like matter, plasmic and boreal.

A bus diesels from the curb;

leaves chase its wheels.

Noon light

drenching the tall windows

prints images behind the steel mesh:

clouds crossing sky, stone housefronts,

football rising end over end,

sneakers on power lines like skins

of souls fled or stolen.

Equinox. Measure, middle,

I know I know. All I feel is motion

sucking me in its draft.

The middle’s a fiction. I dreamed again

I materialize in the big room,

high ceilings, maybe a sky, the walls

all books sickly organized, but among them

the one true book I’ll find by accident.

It will occur to my hands, like Crusoe,

near a textbook’s see-through images

of the body’s solid veins, muscle mass,

bloodworks and nerve draperies.

It’s the book I knew I’d find.

I don’t want half measures. The season

slides to winter. That thought’s complete.

Her voice, too, stands watch,

sits, I mean, with me on the cold steps,

while I kill time

reading the book I brought along.

Ruskin, who loved fireflies and unities,

says that the dragon

who guards the golden apples

never sleeps, he hoards them

in his finny coils,

and his greatest skill is mimicry,

mocking human voices,

calling to us in tones

we recognize, until we believe

he’s something or someone else.

Then it’s too late.

W. S. Di Piero, “The Apples” from Skirts and Slacks. Copyright © 2001 by W. S. Di Piero. Reprinted with the permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.

Source: Skirts and Slacks: Poems (Alfred A. Knopf, 2001)

Disdain Returned by Thomas Carew

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0600

He that loves a rosy cheek,

Or a coral lip admires,

Or from star-like eyes doth seek

Fuel to maintain his fires;

As old Time makes these decay,

So his flames must waste away.

But a smooth and steadfast mind,

Gentle thoughts and calm desires,

Hearts with equal love combin'd,

Kindle never-dying fires.

Where these are not, I despise

Lovely cheeks, or lips, or eyes.

No tears, Celia, now shall win

My resolv'd heart to return;

I have search'd thy soul within,

And find nought, but pride, and scorn;

I have learn'd thy arts, and now

Can disdain as much as thou.

Some power, in my revenge, convey

That love to her I cast away.

The Bat by Ellen Bryant Voigt

Sat, 27 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0600

Reading in bed, full of sentiment

for the mild evening and the children

asleep in adjacent rooms, hearing them

cry out now and then the brief reports

of sufficient imagination, and listening

at the same time compassionately

to the scrabble of claws, the fast treble

in the chimney—

then it was out,

not a trapped bird

beating at the seams of the ceiling,

but a bat lifting toward us, falling away.

Dominion over every living thing,

large brain, a choice of weapons—

Shuddering, in the lit hall

we swung repeatedly against

its rising secular face

until it fell; then

shoveled it into the yard for the cat

who shuttles easily between two worlds.

Ellen Bryant Voigt, “The Bat” from The Forces of Plenty (New York: W.W. Norton, 1983).

Source: The Forces of Plenty (1983)

Bach in the DC Subway by David Lee Garrison

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0600

As an experiment,

The Washington Post

asked a concert violinist—

wearing jeans, tennis shoes,

and a baseball cap—

to stand near a trash can

at rush hour in the subway

and play Bach

on a Stradivarius.

Partita No. 2 in D Minor

called out to commuters

like an ocean to waves,

sang to the station

about why we should bother

to live.

A thousand people

streamed by. Seven of them

paused for a minute or so

and thirty-two dollars floated

into the open violin case.

A café hostess who drifted

over to the open door

each time she was free

said later that Bach

gave her peace,

and all the children,

all of them,

waded into the music

as if it were water,

listening until they had to be

rescued by parents

who had somewhere else to go.

Poem reprinted from Rattle, Vol. 14, No. 2, Winter 2008, by permission of David Lee Garrison and the publisher.

On Inhabiting an Orange by Josephine Miles

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0600

All our roads go nowhere.

Maps are curled

To keep the pavement definitely

On the world.

All our footsteps, set to make

Metric advance,

Lapse into arcs in deference

To circumstance.

All our journeys nearing Space

Skirt it with care,

Shying at the distances

Present in air.

Blithely travel-stained and worn,

Erect and sure,

All our travels go forth,

Making down the roads of Earth

Endless detour.

Josephine Miles, “On Inhabiting an Orange” from Collected Poems. Copyright � 1983 by Josephine Miles. Reprinted with the permission of the University of Illinois Press.

Source: Poetry (September 1934).

Silent Music by Floyd Skloot

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0600

My wife wears headphones as she plays

Chopin etudes in the winter light.

Singing random notes, she sways

in and out of shadow while night

settles. The keys she presses make a soft

clack, the bench creaks when her weight shifts,

golden cotton fabric ripples across

her shoulders, and the sustain pedal clicks.

This is the hidden melody I know

so well, her body finding harmony in

the give and take of motion, her lyric

grace of gesture measured against a slow

fall of darkness. Now stillness descends

to signal the end of her silent music.

Reprinted from “Prairie Schooner,” Volume 80, Number 2 (Summer, 2006) by permission of the University of Nebraska Press. Copyright © 2006 by the University of Nebraska Press. Floyd Skloot’s most recent book is “The End of Dreams,” 2006, Louisiana State University Press.