handonmystupidheart

[handonmystupidheart]

WS MERWIN

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“Time does not bring relief; you all have lied” - Edna St. Vincent Millay

(transcript under the cut)

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Mary Oliver, "To Be Human Is to Sing Your Own Song." Blue Horses

[handonmystupidheart]

AN OCTOPUS HAS THREE WHOLE HEARTS

and sometimes I lie awake thinking

about all that lub-dubbing

on the ocean floor and no one to hear it.

What kind of god gives a cephalopod

three but a human only one?

I want more thumps. I want more time.

I want to waste my love on everything.

Give me a heart for Ohio. Another

for a silk butter moon. Another

for the park bench man who swoons

for doves, his quiet hands full of crumbs.

JOY SULLIVAN

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THE PRESENCE IN ABSENCE

Poetry is not made of words.

I can say it’s January when 

it’s August. I can say, “The scent 

of wisteria on the second floor 

of my grandmother’s house

with the door open onto the porch

in Petaluma,” while I’m living

an hour’s drive from the Mexican 

border town of Ojinaga.

It is possible to be with someone

who is gone. Like the silence which 

continues here in the desert while

the night train passes through Marfa

louder and louder, like the dogs whining

and barking after the train is gone.

LINDA GREGG

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NEW YEAR’S

Let other mornings honor the miraculous. Eternity has festivals enough. This is the feast of our mortality, The most mundane and human holiday.

On other days we misinterpret time, Pretending that we live the present moment. But can this blur, this smudgy in-between, This tiny fissure where the future drips

Into the past, this flyspeck we call now Be our true habitat? The present is The leaky palm of water that we skim From the swift, silent river slipping by.

The new year always brings us what we want Simply by bringing us along—to see A calendar with every day uncrossed, A field of snow without a single footprint.

DANA GIOIA

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LIFE ON EARTH

The odds are we should never have been born.

Not one of us. Not one in 400 trillion to be

exact. Only one among the 250 million

released in a flood of semen that glides

like a glassine limousine filled with tadpoles

of possible people, one of whom may

or may not be you, a being made of water

and blood, a creature with eyeballs and limbs

that end in fists, a you with all your particular

perfumes, the chords of your sinewy legs

singing as they form, your organs humming

and buzzing with new life, moonbeams

lighting up your brain’s gray coils,

the exquisite hills of your face, the human

toy your mother longs for, your father

yearns to hold, the unmistakable you

who will take your first breath, your first

step, bang a copper pot with a wooden spoon,

trace the lichen growing on a boulder you climb

to see the wild expanse of a field, the one

whose heart will yield to the yellow forsythia

named after William Forsyth—not the American

actor with piercing blue eyes, but the Scottish

botanist who discovered the buttery bells

on a highland hillside blooming

to beat the band, zigzagging down

an unknown Scottish slope. And those

are only a few of the things 

you will one day know, slowly chipping away

at your ignorance and doubt, you

who were born from ashes and will return

to ash. When you think you might be

through with this body and soul, look down

at an anthill or up at the stars, remember

your gambler chances, the bounty 

of good luck you were born for.

DORIANNE LAUX

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chen chen summer was forever :(

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Leonard Cohen, from The Complete Poems

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A poem by Molly Fisk

Against Panic

You recall those times, I know you do, when the sun   lifted its weight over a small rise to warm your face,    when a parched day finally broke open, real rain    sluicing down the sidewalk, rattling city maples    and you so sure the end was here, life a house of cards    tipped over, falling, hope's last breath extinguished    in a bitter wind. Oh, friend, search your memory again —    beauty and relief are still there, only sleeping. 

Molly Fisk

More poems by Molly Fisk are available through her website.

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A poem by Craig Morgan Teicher

Tying a Garbage Bag

Looking down at my hands, I see myself as if for the first time for the thousandth time, drawing into a bow the awkward leaves of the black trash bag into which I have just deftly dumped a plastic wastebasket full of tissues and tampon wrappers, plus a flowerpot brimming with cigarette butts. I find myself admiring the swift dexterity with which I fashioned, almost effortlessly, the weird knot to seal off the bag from the world its contents had been contaminating. So now it takes only this to dazzle my pride. I had dreamed of splitting the wind with my lips but will settle, for now, for being the unacknowledged legislator of this bag. 

Craig Morgan Teicher

First published in The Kenyon Review (March/April, 2020)

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who's your favorite poet?

very hard question! i'm not sure i can name just one, so i'll share my favorite poem instead 💌