Wednesday, July 29, 2020

Basement Suite

Karen 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.

The basement is a tree house in the roots
Think of it that way
And cold on five sides, like childhood

When water in the pipes was a talking animal
And it was advertised that soil neutralized
The toxins applied to it, that

Our bodies did, and that the sea
Carried poison on its back into the hills.
Our faces to the wall, to radial domestic passages

Beyond it, heartbeats and adjustments
Attenuated through the half-space, lo-fi
The light is radio light.

The house tries to forget we are here
Yet there are bars on the windows
In some places, like childhood.

A slight clinging smell is associated.
Every living situation has one.
It's not the Underworld, for Christ's sake

Which is everywhere, without depth
But the gaze does learn to creep along the baseboards
And sharpen its knives on them.

Walking on the surface again
If we can bear it
After so long sheltering in place, we may appreciate

More than anyone a bit of natural warmth
Though money flows no more freely up here
Look around you.



Tuesday, July 21, 2020

American Sonnet for My Past and Future Assassin

Terrance 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, thin-skinned,
And skittery, she thought her poems were ordinary.
What do you call a visionary who does not recognize
Her vision? Orpheus was alone when he invented writing.
His manic drawing became a kind of writing when he sent
His beloved a sketch of an eye with an X struck through it.
He meant I am blind without you. She thought he meant
I never want to see you again. It is possible he meant that, too.

Monday, July 20, 2020

The Blue Booby

James 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 beads,
a piece of cloth from
a sailor’s suit. This
replaces the need for
dazzling plumage;
in fact, in the past
fifty million years
the male has grown
considerably duller,
nor can he sing well.
The female, though,

asks little of him—
the blue satisfies her
completely, has
a magical effect
on her. When she returns
from her day of
gossip and shopping,
she sees he has found her
a new shred of blue foil:
for this she rewards him
with her dark body,
the stars turn slowly
in the blue foil beside them
like the eyes of a mild savior.



Friday, April 17, 2020

Waiting for the Storm

Timothy 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.




Saturday, April 4, 2020

It Could Happen To You

David 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 D Major)

and I had books to read


Huxley Woolf Forster and their enemy F.R. Leavis

Empson a little dull for my taste

also Freud on errors, Norman Mailer on orgasms,

James Baldwin in Paris

Dostoyevsky's Notes from Underground Part 1


and John Ashberry tells me he is reading The Possessed

translated as The Demons in the newfangled translation

while Ron and I stay faithful to Constance Garnett


I went upstairs stood on the terrace ate some cherries

admired the outline of trees in the dark


and Rosemary Clooney

sang "It Could Happen To You"


and I was a healthy human being, not a sick man

for the first summer in three years.





Thursday, April 2, 2020

Silver Spoon Ode

Sharon 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 everyone else?

My mother beat me in 4/4 time,

and I often, now, rant to her beat—I wear

her rings as if I killed her for them, as my

people killed, and climbed up over

the dead. And I sound as if I am bragging

about it. I was born with a spoon instead of a

tongue in my mouth—dung spoon,

diamond spoon. And who would I be

to ask forgiveness? I would be a white girl.

And I hear Miss Lucille, as if on the mountain

where I'd stand beside her, and brush away the insects,

and sometimes pick one off her, sometimes

by the wings, and toss it away. And Lucille

is saying, to me, You have asked for enough,

and been given in excess. And that thing in your mouth,

open your mouth and let that thing go,

let if fly back into the mine where it was brought

up from the underworld at the price of

lives, beloved lives. And now,

enough, Shar, now a little decent silence.