tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5118950557082067722024-03-17T01:15:18.815-06:00Poems of TodayUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger627125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-511895055708206772.post-14880192575379192292023-07-24T13:43:00.001-06:002023-07-24T13:43:38.991-06:00This love is like the ghost of Schrödinger’s dead catI’m sure my moans could carry
across 4000 miles. More maybe.
They go as the crow flies when I think
you’re in another woman’s bed.
I have my fingers crossed
against it— the thought of your closed curves,
your celestial bodies ascending
in euphony…
nauseating—
warm hands, heads, tongues;
caresses are just speculative structures and, god,
I’m linking them all,
killing Spacetime.
Your Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-511895055708206772.post-52995720164130050512022-01-19T10:56:00.000-07:002022-01-19T10:56:20.320-07:00Self-litYou’re humming through the streets,
self-lit. I have to correct strangers
who touch your head without asking,
as if to bless you or to take a blessing from you.
When we leave the city, you become
a boy hunting locusts. Nature stuns you—
you load up your pockets and want to bring it
home with us, but Nature stays with nature, I say,
a refrain learned from another mother.
You cannot be unpuzzled byUnknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-511895055708206772.post-43037652132002095712022-01-18T16:07:00.003-07:002022-01-18T16:23:57.201-07:00[Oye! This is an apartment building ode]Oye! This is an apartment building ode.
But not just any ode, an ode about breathing,
walking, jumping, running, skipping people.
An ode to a time where we’d remember what
odes felt like to read outside. An ode about
oding so hard it boxes itself into a sonnet.
Harder than bus stop benches and light rail
seats, taxes, and systemic poverty. The oding
of this poem is an apartment building sonnet
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-511895055708206772.post-89422896900283702602022-01-18T15:07:00.009-07:002022-01-18T16:28:28.326-07:00#haikuThursday(2022)
5 snow on sliding ice
7 true shoe stories dangling
5 above beyond reach
36 poems dot org (Boulder, CO)Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-511895055708206772.post-55533161244890604692020-07-29T18:42:00.001-06:002020-07-29T18:46:05.527-06:00Basement SuiteKaren Solie (2020)
Left to our use are the fixtures and appliances
Repented of by the homeowners
Who don't realize this is a way to know them.
In the basement one is closer to God
Because closer to consequence
To the creatures no one loves but the specialists.
Rice weevil, bean weevil, rose weevil, pea weevil,
Flour, black vine, and strawberry weevils,
A weevil to every purpose under heaven.
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-511895055708206772.post-5264724875712105012020-07-21T10:35:00.000-06:002020-07-21T10:40:45.755-06:00American Sonnet for My Past and Future AssassinTerrance Hayes (2019)
The black poet would love to say his century began
With Hughes or, God forbid, Wheatley, but actually
It began with all the poetry weirdos & worriers, warriors,
Poetry whiners & winos falling from ship bows, sunset
Bridges & windows. In a second I’ll tell you how little
Writing rescues. My hunch is that Sylvia Plath was not
Especially fun company. A drama queen, Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-511895055708206772.post-47204164817226052052020-07-20T10:46:00.001-06:002020-07-20T10:47:34.544-06:00The Blue BoobyJames Tate (1968, Poetry magazine)
The blue booby lives
on the bare rocks
of Galápagos
and fears nothing.
It is a simple life:
they live on fish,
and there are few predators.
Also, the males do not
make fools of themselves
chasing after the young
ladies. Rather,
they gather the blue
objects of the world
and construct from them
a nest—an occasional
Gaulois package,
a string of Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-511895055708206772.post-19565478453623603442020-04-17T16:21:00.000-06:002020-04-17T16:21:24.613-06:00Waiting for the StormTimothy Steele
Breeze sent a wrinkling darkness
Across the bay. I knelt
Beneath an upturned boat,
And moment by moment felt
The sand at my feet grow colder
The damp air chill and spread.
Then the first raindrops sounded
On the hull over my head.
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-511895055708206772.post-67357251206122439182020-04-04T10:19:00.001-06:002020-04-04T10:19:45.526-06:00It Could Happen To YouDavid Lehman (2019)
It's June 15, 2017, a Thursday,
fortieth anniversary of the infamous day
the Mets traded Tom Seaver to Cincinnati
and they're still losing
I mean we are
7 to 1 to the Washington Nationals
a team that didn't exist in 1977
the summer of a little tour in France
with Henry James
in a yellow Renault douze
the light a lovely gray
the rain a violin
concerto (Prokofiev's No. 2 in Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-511895055708206772.post-32854877028600755492020-04-02T21:40:00.000-06:002020-04-02T21:40:21.605-06:00Silver Spoon OdeSharon Olds (2018)
I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth
and a silver knife, and a silver fork.
I would complain about it—the spoon was not greasy,
it tasted like braces, my shining access
to cosmetic enhancement. And I complained about
the taste of my fillings in my very expensive
mouth, as if only my family was paying
where did I think the rich got
their money but from Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-511895055708206772.post-10240132524423619092017-10-07T17:26:00.001-06:002017-10-07T17:26:36.707-06:00Todas as minhas coisas são tuasLeonardo Gandolfi
Quando fiz Do you know the way
to San Jose, preparei algumas variantes
que acabaram ficando de fora da versão final,
gravada em 1968 por Dionne Warwick.
A mais importante delas talvez tenha sido
uma pequena quebra de andamento
mais ou menos na metade da música,
indicada sobretudo por uma mudança de nota
nos três trompetes que, naquele instante,
preenchiam os espaços em branco.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-511895055708206772.post-22274896699679544952017-09-13T07:31:00.002-06:002017-10-07T17:22:45.282-06:00pouca coisa
Angélica Freitas
não calcula a perda ao comprar a caixa de alfinetes (da china)
e tampouco de onde vão despontar com suas cabeças (chatas)
e maldiz mao tsé quando sai uma gota de sangue (do dedo)
e quando vê um alfinete na rua não pega (nem morta)
mesmo se igual aos que pontuam as blusas (no armário)
e que rocem na pele produzindo vermelhos (tão raros)
e que alguém sonhe com alfinetes (na Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-511895055708206772.post-10509127678731785112016-04-02T15:12:00.001-06:002016-04-02T15:12:41.139-06:00BoredMargaret Atwood (1995)
All those times I was bored
out of my mind. Holding the log
while he sawed it. Holding
the string while he measured, boards,
distances between things, or pounded
stakes into the ground for rows and rows
of lettuces, and beets, which I then (bored)
weeded. Or sat in the back
of the car, or sat still in boats,
sat, sat, while at the prow, stern, wheel
he drove, steered, Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-511895055708206772.post-33543936014709590952016-03-29T21:45:00.001-06:002016-03-29T21:45:54.579-06:00The ImaginedStephen Dunn (2012)
If the imagined woman makes the real woman
seem bare-boned, hardly existent, lacking in
gracefulness and intellect and pulchritude,
and if you come to realize the imagined woman
can only satisfy your imagination, whereas
the real woman with all her limitations
can often make you feel good, how, in spite
of knowing this, does the imagined woman
keep getting into your bedroom, Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-511895055708206772.post-91420060023642214892016-03-22T17:08:00.000-06:002016-03-22T17:09:18.518-06:00The UnderstudyBridget Lowe (2016)
High spring. The sounds at their
utmost registers. I am building
a language with my bike. Shame
makes the wheels go, shame
pumps its sick jet fuel.
I am flying over tiny hills with moats
of purple flowers. My fantasy
is evidence. My fantasy is a white skull
gleaming through a bed of mulch.
I let go of the handlebars and beat
my chest with shame’s gorilla fist
until the Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-511895055708206772.post-53718755827676830552016-01-23T21:40:00.002-07:002016-01-23T21:40:57.294-07:00Zoo-Keeper's WifeSylvia Plath
I can stay awake all night, if need be ---
Cold as an eel, without eyelids.
Like a dead lake the dark envelops me,
Blueblack, a spectacular plum fruit.
No air bubbles start from my heart. I am lungless
And ugly, my belly a silk stocking
Where the heads and tails of my sisters decompose.
Look, they are melting like coins in the powerful juices ---
The spidery jaws, the spine bones Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-511895055708206772.post-83562771016104673842015-11-20T17:06:00.004-07:002015-11-20T17:07:20.092-07:00Ice for the Ice TradeStephen Burt (2015)
Everybody wants a piece of me.
I have been weighed and measured,
tested and standardized,
throughout my young life. It happens to everyone,
or to everyone with my ability.
Now I live quietly
and mostly in the dark, amid sawdust and sheer
or streaky wooden surfaces. My role,
when I reach maturity,
may be to help people behave
more sociably, and reduce
the irritations of Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-511895055708206772.post-18479094880053347352015-11-17T23:14:00.000-07:002015-11-17T23:15:48.525-07:00PokerPaul Farley (2015)
You’re told this deck was found
in some shattered bothy or croft
north of the Great Glen,
missing its six of diamonds,
shuffled and dealt to a soft
pliancy, greased with lanolin
and you’re told this deck lived behind
the bar in a barracks town
and came out to play most nights,
cut between the Falklands
and Iraq, its spring long gone,
dark-edged with mammal sweat
and you’re Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-511895055708206772.post-63166012383433201322015-02-03T20:48:00.000-07:002015-02-03T20:50:55.983-07:00The Duck Shit at Clarion CreekIdra Novey (2014)
We liked to stick it in a BB gun and shoot it.
We tattooed with it. We said hallelujah,
the poor man's tanning lotion.
Then the frack wells began, something black
capping the water and we got high
watching a green-backed heron die.
We got funny at Clarion, flung
each other's underwear into the trees.
Why was it we got naked there
and nowhere else? Maybe we knew
we were getting Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-511895055708206772.post-88587608413167592242013-10-09T18:55:00.002-06:002013-10-09T19:05:44.702-06:00I Can't SwimHeather Christle (2013)
I can't swim because I can't fit
into the water
I am
two million feet tall
but thank you for inviting me
I am standing in line
inside my giant shirt
If someone wanted to weaponize me
they would tell me to lie down on New York
and the city I destroyed
would hurt me back
I eat stars
it's a riot
I know
my big mouth
full of their lightUnknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-511895055708206772.post-28129015737999422252013-08-01T20:12:00.001-06:002013-08-01T20:16:48.703-06:00We All Want To See A MammalElizabeth Bradfield (2013)
We all want to see a mammal,
Squirrels & snowshoe hares don't count.
Voles don't count. Something, preferably,
that could do us harm. There's a long list:
bear, moose, wolf, wolverine. Even porcupine
would do. The quills. The yellowed
teeth & long claws.Beautiful here. Peaks & avens.
Meltwater running its braided course, but we want
to see a mammal. Our day our lives Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-511895055708206772.post-80612170265009797502013-07-30T18:41:00.003-06:002013-07-30T18:43:03.827-06:00Hermit CrabStephen Burt (2013)
That shell is pretty, but that shell is too small for me.
Each home is a hideout; each home is a secret; each home
is a getaway under the same hot lamp, a means
to a lateral move at low velocity.
I live in a room in the room
of a boy I barely see.
Sometimes the boy & his talkative friends raise
too-warm hands & try to set me free
& I retreat into myself, hoping they place
meUnknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-511895055708206772.post-85843984193352711552013-07-17T06:59:00.001-06:002013-07-17T07:00:12.675-06:00The Dream of a Fire EngineKimiko Hahn (2012)
Without the sun filtered through closed eyelids,
without the siren along the service road,
without Grandpa's ginger-colored hair,
Mother's lipstick, Daughter's manicure,
firecrackers, a monkey's ass, a cherry, Rei's lost elephant,
without communist or past tense,
or a character seeing her own chopped-off feet dancing in fairy slippers,
or Mao's favorite novel about a chamber&#Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-511895055708206772.post-84253731379765726552013-07-15T21:06:00.000-06:002013-07-15T21:06:10.802-06:00Ode to a Man in Dress ClothesGretchen Marquette (2013)
When I see a man
in a dress shirt, I want
to walk up behind him,
place my hand
between his shoulders,
to rest it there
for a moment. I think
about his socks, how
he chose one pair
that morning and the rest
are still at home
in a drawer.
And his shoes—
god those shoes, they break me,
especially when they're polished, what
does he do to make them shine
like that, Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-511895055708206772.post-30147929357313873732013-07-01T18:16:00.002-06:002013-07-01T18:16:41.363-06:00Self-HelpMichael Ryan (2013)
What kind of delusion are you under?
The life he hid just knocked you flat.
You see lightning but not the thunder.
What God hath joined let no man put asunder.
Did God know you'd marry a rat?
What kind of delusion are you under?
His online persona simply stunned her
as it did you when you started to chat.
You see the lightning but not the thunder.
To the victors go the Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0