speakyetpause

[speakyetpause]

Elms

—Louise Gluck

All day I tried to distinguish need from desire. Now, in the dark, I feel only bitter sadness for us, the builders, the planers of wood, because I have been looking steadily at these elms and seen the process that creates the writhing, stationary tree is torment, and have understood it will make no forms but twisted forms.

[speakyetpause]

Crying

by Galway Kinnell

Crying only a little bit is no use. You must cry until your pillow is soaked! Then you can get up and laugh. Then you can jump in the shower and splash-splash-splash! Then you can throw open your window and, “Ha ha! ha ha!” And if people say, “Hey what’s going on up there?” “Ha ha!“ sing back, "Happiness was hiding in the last tear! I wept it! Ha ha!”

[speakyetpause]

A City Like a Guillotine Shivers on Its Way to the Neck

by Ilya Kaminsky

Alfonso stumbles from the corpse of the soldier. The townspeople are cheering, elated, pounding him on the back. Those who climbed the trees to watch applaud from the branches. Momma Galya shouts about pigs, pigs clean as men. At the trial of God, we will ask: why did you allow all this? And the answer will be an echo: why did you allow all this?

[speakyetpause]

[speakyetpause]

Standing at The Mirror, The Author Writes A Poem for Himself in Which the Word Hate Is Replaced with The Word Forgive

— Brandon Melendez

& while I wait for my eyes to relearn open I [forgive] myself for the slow rise the deep ache in the crane of my neck from bowing down inside myself

I [forgive] the surrender the swollen knee the bruise on my rib shape & shade of an August sunrise I [forgive] the fence I could swear was the horizon or at least

a way out I [forgive] myself for imagining a way out is a place I could visit like a corner café or ex-lover’s thigh I [forgive] myself for loving

those who have harmed me for cooking them dinner & burning the rice forgetting to add pepper or make myself a plate I [forgive] myself for staying I [forgive]

myself for staying until I left my skin another blanket on the bed until the sound of a door opening turned each room into a reason to leave I counted each second

alone as a tiny victory until I lost count which is the only victory that matters please let healing be not a season but the body that still belongs to me & every day

I remember to buy bread to hide the keys beneath the window succulent or walk along the road dreaming of anything other than traffic is a day I get closer

to a future made better by how I live through it I [forgive] myself for failing today for falling back into bed & drawing the blinds give me time

I’ll get up I promise I know it doesn’t matter where I go every direction is forward I just have to get there I take a step & step naked into the shower the water

so cold I forget to breathe my body yearns to follow the pearls falling through the metal grate to become not quite a ghost but a shadow just out of frame I say no

I [forgive] I [forgive] myself with my body right in front of me

[speakyetpause]

ZAKARIA MOHAMMED 7-24-2019

(translation by Lena Khalaf Tuffaha)

I have eulogized the dead my entire life, and this has exhausted me. When you spend a lifetime singing of the slain, you will be slain as well without knowing how. You become a victim singing a victim, a dead man embalming a dead man and burying him. From this day forward, I will not sing of the slain. I’ll sing of the killers. I’ll sing their shiny daggers, and their hands that do not tremble. I’ll sing their intuition that leads them to those who emerge from their mothers’ wombs as dead men. The slain love their executions. I ask you: how did the white heron turn into stone? How did he sleep in the rock forever? He kept on eating stones his whole life. And I ask you: How did the dead man become a dead man? For his entire life, he kept eating from the plate of death and searching for a killer to slay him.

[speakyetpause]

North Country

In the north country now it is spring and there     is a certain celebration. The thrush has come home. He is shy and likes the     evening best, also the hour just before morning; in that blue and gritty light he     climbs to his branch, or smoothly sails there. It is okay to know only     one song if it is this one. Hear it rise and fall; the very elements of your soul     shiver nicely. What would spring be without it? Mostly frogs. But don’t worry, he

arrives, year after year, humble and obedient     and gorgeous. You listen and you know you could live a better life than you do, be     softer, kinder. And maybe this year you will be able to do it. Hear how his voice     rises and falls. There is no way to be sufficiently grateful for the gifts we are     given, no way to speak the Lord’s name often enough, though we do try, and

especially now, as that dappled breast     breathes in the pines and heaven’s windows in the north country, now spring     has come,     are opened wide.

—Mary Oliver

[speakyetpause]

[speakyetpause]

The Sick Communist’s Answer to the Comrades

Comrades, by hunger, poor housing and inadequate clothing I was made sick and removed from your ranks. I immediately took up the struggle for my recovery.

I declare to everyone who sees me The cause of my sickness I explicitly name the guilty ones.

At the same time I wage the struggle against the sickness funds Who seek to cheat me at every little turn. I wage the struggle from my sickbed.

I have informed myself about the liabilities of the hospital The daily abuses committed against sick members of the oppressed classes. I apply every resource which will help me Recover my good health. And so, although stricken and wounded I have not left your ranks. I will stick with you Until my last breath. I have no thought of yielding. I beg you Continue to depend on me.

— Bertold Brecht, tr. Tom Kuhn

[speakyetpause]

I feel autumn rain Trying to explain something I do not want to know.

—Richard Wright

[speakyetpause]

haiku // Richard Wright

Follow wherever

The tree branches make arches

In the torrid sun.

[speakyetpause]

Late Fragment

And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so? I did. And what did you want? To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth.

—Raymond Carver

[speakyetpause]

ZAKARIA MOHAMMED 7-24-2019

(translation by Lena Khalaf Tuffaha)

I have eulogized the dead my entire life, and this has exhausted me. When you spend a lifetime singing of the slain, you will be slain as well without knowing how. You become a victim singing a victim, a dead man embalming a dead man and burying him. From this day forward, I will not sing of the slain. I’ll sing of the killers. I’ll sing their shiny daggers, and their hands that do not tremble. I’ll sing their intuition that leads them to those who emerge from their mothers’ wombs as dead men. The slain love their executions. I ask you: how did the white heron turn into stone? How did he sleep in the rock forever? He kept on eating stones his whole life. And I ask you: How did the dead man become a dead man? For his entire life, he kept eating from the plate of death and searching for a killer to slay him.

[speakyetpause]

[speakyetpause]

June Jordan, Apologies to All the People in Lebanon (originally published in Village Voice in 1982)

Dedicated to the 600,000 Palestinian men, women, and children who lived in Lebanon from 1948-1983.

[speakyetpause]

[speakyetpause]

Separation

—WS Merwin

Your absence has gone through me Like thread through a needle. Everything I do is stitched with its color.