Nomad Exquisite

Wallace Stevens

As the immense dew of Florida
Brings forth
The big-finned palm
And green vine angering for life,

As the immense dew of Florida
Brings forth hymn and hymn
From the beholder,
Beholding all these green sides
And gold sides of green sides,

And blessed mornings,
Meet for the eye of the young alligator,
And lightning colors
So, in me, comes flinging
Forms, flames, and the flakes of flames.

Treatment

Ange Mlinko (2009)

It’s a little spa for the mind—seeing butterflies
set themselves down by the dozen like easels

on bromeliads, when out on the street the boutiques
are dilapidated, construction can’t be told from ruin.

A single taste bud magnified resembles an orchid
but what that one’s drinking from is a woman’s eye

which must be brineless. I wonder what she consumes
that her tears taste like fructose. For minutes she’s all its.

Then the moon rises and the river flows backward.
Composed of millions of tiny north poles, iron’s

punched out of the environment, hammered into railways.
Pubs serve shepherd’s pies with marcelled mashed-potato crusts

and each tree casts its shade in the form of its summary leaf.
Is a woman’s eye a single taste bud magnified?

Yet construction can’t be told from ruin.
Out on the street the boutiques are dilapidated

by the dozen like easels. And the mind—it’s a little spa.

Tossing and Turning

John Updike (1969)

The spirit has infinite facets, but the body
confiningly few sides.
There is the left,
the right, the back, the belly, and tempting
in-betweens, northeasts and northwests,
that tip the heart and soon pinch circulation
in one or another arm.
Yet we turn each time
with fresh hope, believing that sleep
will visit us here, descending like an angel
down the angle our flesh’s sextant sets,
tilted toward that unreachable star
hung in the night between our eyebrows, whence
dreams and good luck flow.
Uncross
your ankles. Unclench your philosophy.
This bed was invented by others; know we go
to sleep less to rest than to participate
in the twists of another world.
This churning is our journey.
It ends,
can only end, around a corner
we do not know
we are turning.

Untitled

Octavio Paz

A woman whose movements are a river's
Transparent gesturing that water has
A girl made of water
Where may be read the irreversible present
A little water where the eyes may drink
The lips swallow in a long single drink
The tree the cloud the lamp
Myself and that girl

Let The Record Show

Dora Malech

I spent the morning trying to remember
the joke about the peanut and the assault.
People dropped bombs on each other elsewhere.
I knew that many of them were at fault

and many blameless. I kept my office locked
and the lights off. The phone just kept ringing.
I didn't answer. Nor when someone knocked.
I was supposed to be doing something.

Two Bodies

Octavio Paz

Two bodies face to face
are at times two waves
and night is an ocean.

Two bodies face to face
are at times two stones
and night a desert.

Two bodies face to face
are at times two roots
laced into night.

Two bodies face to face
are at times two knives
and night strikes sparks.

Two bodies face to face
are two stars falling
in an empty sky.

Self-Service

John Updike (1978)

Always I wanted to do it myself
and envied the oily-handed boy
paid by the station to lift
the gun from its tail tin holster
and squeeze. That was power,
hi-octane or lo-, and now no-lead.

What feminism has done for some sisters
self-service has done for me.
The pulsing hose is mine, the numbers
race—the cents, the liquid tenths—
according to my pressure, mine!
I squeeze. This is power:

transparent, horsepower, blood
of the sands, bane of the dollar,
soul-stuff; the nozzle might jump
from my grip, it appears to tremble
through its fumes. Myself,
I pinch off my share, and pay.