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[spudcity]

White Egret

The whole earth is filled with the love of God. – Kwame Dawes

A stream in a forest and a boy fishing,

heart aflame, head hush, tasting the world—

lick and pant. The Holy Scripture

is animal not book.

I should know, I have smoked

the soul of God, psalm burning

between fingers on an African afternoon.

And how is it that death can open up

an alleluia from the core of a man?

How easily the profound fritters away in words.

And the simple wisdom of my brother:

What you taste with abandon

even God cannot take from you.

All my life, men with blackened insides

have fought to keep

the flutter of a white egret in my chest

from bursting into flight, into glory.

– Chris Abani

[spudcity]

eschatology

i’m confident that the absolute dregs of possibility for this society, the sugary coffee mound at the bottom of this cup, our last best hope that when our little bit of assigned plasma implodes  it won’t go down as a green mark in the cosmic ledger, lies in the moment when you say hello to a bus driver  and they say it back—

when someone holds the door open for you  and you do a little jog to meet them where they are—

walking my dog, i used to see this older man  and whenever I said good morning,  he replied ‘GREAT morning’—

in fact, all the creative ways our people greet each other may be the icing on this flaming trash cake hurtling through the ether. 

when the clerk says how are you  and i say ‘i’m blessed and highly favored’ 

i mean my toes have met sand, and wiggled in it, a lot.  i mean i have laughed until i choked and a friend slapped my back. i mean my niece wrote me a note: ‘you are so smart + intellajet’

i mean when we do go careening into the sun, 

i’ll miss crossing guards ushering the grown folks too, like ducklings  and the lifeguards at the community pool and men who yelled out the window that they’d fix the dent in my car,  right now! it’d just take a second—

and actually everyone who tried to keep me alive, keep me afloat,  and if not unblemished, suitably repaired.

but I won’t feel too sad about it, becoming a star 

– Eve L. Ewing

[spudcity]

when you have forgotten Sunday: the love story

—And when you have forgotten the bright bedclothes on a Wednesday and a Saturday,

And most especially when you have forgotten Sunday—

When you have forgotten Sunday halves in bed,

Or me sitting on the front-room radiator in the limping afternoon

Looking off down the long street

To nowhere,

Hugged by my plain old wrapper of no-expectation

And nothing-I-have-to-do and I’m-happy-why?

And if-Monday-never-had-to-come—

When you have forgotten that, I say,

And how you swore, if somebody beeped the bell,

And how my heart played hopscotch if the telephone rang;

And how we finally went in to Sunday dinner,

That is to say, went across the front room floor to the ink-spotted table in the southwest corner

To Sunday dinner, which was always chicken and noodles

Or chicken and rice

And salad and rye bread and tea

And chocolate chip cookies—

I say, when you have forgotten that,

When you have forgotten my little presentiment

That the war would be over before they got to you;

And how we finally undressed and whipped out the light and flowed into bed,

And lay loose-limbed for a moment in the week-end

Bright bedclothes,

Then gently folded into each other—

When you have, I say, forgotten all that,

Then you may tell,

Then I may believe

You have forgotten me well.

– Gwendolyn Brooks

[spudcity]

The Bear

Tonight the bear

comes to the orchard and, balancing

on her hind legs, dances under the apple trees,

hanging onto their boughs,

dragging their branches down to earth.

Look again. It is not the bear

but some afterimage of her

like the car I once saw in the driveway

after the last guest had gone.

Snow pulls the apple boughs to the ground.

Whatever moves in the orchard—

heavy, lumbering—is clear as wind.

The bear is long gone.

Drunk on apples,

she banged over the trash cans that fall night,

then skidded downstream. By now

she must be logged in for the winter.

Unless she is choosy.

I imagine her as very choosy,

sniffing at the huge logs, pawing them, trying

each one on for size,

but always coming out again.

Until tonight.

Tonight sap freezes under her skin.

Her breath leaves white apples in the air.

As she walks she dozes,

listening to the sound of axes chopping wood.

Somewhere she can never catch up to

trees are falling. Chips pile up like snow.

When she does find it finally,

the log draws her in as easily as a forest,

and for a while she continues to see,

just ahead of her, the moon

trapped like a salmon in the ice.

–Susan Mitchell

[spudcity]

Dream of the Raven

When the ten-speed, lightweight

bicycle broke down off the

highway lined thick with orange

trees, I noticed a giant raven’s

head protruding from the waxy

leaves. The bird was stuck

somehow, mangled in the

branches, crying out. Wide-eyed,

I held the bird’s face close to

mine. Beak to nose. Dark brown

iris to dark brown iris. Feather to

feather. This was not the

Chihuahuan raven or the

fantailed raven or the common

raven. Nothing was common

about the way we stared at one

another while a stranger

untangled the bird’s claws from

the tree’s limbs and he, finally

free, became a naked child

swinging in the wind.

– ADA LIMÓN

[spudcity]

To The Dead in the Graveyard Underneath My Window

Written in a Moment of Exasperation

How can you lie so still? All day I watch

And never a blade of all the green sod moves

To show where restlessly you toss and turn,

And fling a desperate arm or draw up knees

Stiffened and aching from their long disuse;

I watch all night and not one ghost comes forth

To take its freedom of the midnight hour.

Oh, have you no rebellion in your bones?

The very worms must scorn you where you lie,

A pallid mouldering acquiescent folk,

Meek habitants of unresented graves.

Why are you there in your straight row on row

Where I must ever see you from my bed

That in your mere dumb presence iterate

The text so weary in my ears: "Lie still

And rest; be patient and lie still and rest."

I'll not be patient! I will not lie still!

There is a brown road runs between the pines,

And further on the purple woodlands lie,

And still beyond blue mountains lift and loom;

And I would walk the road and I would be

Deep in the wooded shade and I would reach

The windy mountain tops that touch the clouds.

My eyes may follow but my feet are held.

Recumbent as you others must I too

Submit? Be mimic of your movelessness

With pillow and counterpane for stone and sod?

And if the many sayings of the wise

Teach of submission I will not submit

But with a spirit all unreconciled

Flash an unquenched defiance to the stars.

Better it is to walk, to run, to dance,

Better it is to laugh and leap and sing,

To know the open skies of dawn and night,

To move untrammeled down the flaming noon,

And I will clamour it through weary days

Keeping the edge of deprivation sharp,

Nor with the pliant speaking on my lips

Of resignation, sister to defeat.

I'll not be patient. I will not lie still.

And in ironic quietude who is

The despot of our days and lord of dust

Needs but, scarce heeding, wait to drop

Grim casual comment on rebellion's end;

"Yes, yes . . Wilful and petulant but now

As dead and quiet as the others are."

And this each body and ghost of you hath heard

That in your graves do therefore lie so still.

– Adelaide Crapsey

[spudcity]

In Kyoto...

In Kyoto,

hearing the cuckoo,

I long for Kyoto.

– BASHŌ, TRANSLATED BY JANE HIRSHFIELD

[spudcity]

Hum

I am learning how to sleep              again, to love the descent, or is it,

lying here, a rising up              to summit where sleep wanders

till waking. And when              I cannot, when the water leaches into everything

& capsizes me, I wonder              where you are, father, if anywhere

at all—              Does sleep know you? Does day? Such nights,

dreams fill my waking               & worry weathers the dark, the light horribly

leaking through the curtains—               or, awake, early, I wait for it to seep in

from the east. The land               of dead in the west. The hum of sun—

none, none, then suddenly               up—it, too, cannot be sated

or slaked off, brother sun,               mother moon, father you cannot find

though somewhere still shines.

– Kevin Young

[spudcity]

Rumor

I was born to be gigantic,

said the violet flower that derailed me.

this is a rumor, so there aren’t

any rules to go with it. I built its shape of pegs,

won’t take that lying down, my name is zero,

my name is nonce, my name is nobody, who the hell are you.

yesterday I tried to buy a joke.

I brought it to my home,

took it inside slowly like how you

come out of a bath. there was nothing new

to say about it. to make the violet speak to you,

just go crazy, said my second-grade art teacher

handing me construction paper, glue.

just go crazy, I say now to the flower,

engulfed as I was by her lesson. her lesson to

say more plainly the visual field. to draw to

the lowermost quadrant of the paper.

to draw upon my limits like ribbons of gas,

to “make these limits assets”

(to write about them in essays).

to see the ending from both sides,

so profound was my derailment.

– Nora Claire Miller

[spudcity]

Exemplary

Trees rehearse the gestures of fire. “This is how we will burn,”         say the trees.

Each afternoon the arbor stretches a black ropebridge across the lawn, used on occasion by a child. “One at a time,”         he says to his shadow.

Swallows in precise song revisit each gifted and fugitive Spring, even those they will never see. “Like this,” say the birds, “like this,” up into the soaring quiet.

– Robert Carnevale

[spudcity]

Backwards

The poem can start with him walking backwards into a room. He takes off his jacket and sits down for the rest of his life; that’s how we bring Dad back. I can make the blood run back up my nose, ants rushing into a hole. We grow into smaller bodies, my breasts disappear, your cheeks soften, teeth sink back into gums. I can make us loved, just say the word. Give them stumps for hands if even once they touched us without consent, I can write the poem and make it disappear. Step-Dad spits liquor back into glass, Mum’s body rolls back up the stairs, the bone pops back into place, maybe she keeps the baby. Maybe we’re okay kid? I’ll rewrite this whole life and this time there’ll be so much love, you won’t be able to see beyond it.

You won’t be able to see beyond it, I’ll rewrite this whole life and this time there’ll be so much love. Maybe we’re okay kid, maybe she keeps the baby. Mum’s body rolls back up the stairs, the bone pops back into place, Step-Dad spits liquor back into glass. I can write the poem and make it disappear, give them stumps for hands if even once they touched us without consent, I can make us loved, just say the word. Your cheeks soften, teeth sink back into gums we grow into smaller bodies, my breasts disappear. I can make the blood run back up my nose, ants rushing into a hole, that’s how we bring Dad back. He takes off his jacket and sits down for the rest of his life. The poem can start with him walking backwards into a room.

– Warsan Shire

[spudcity]

My Hand 

I have put my hand in a baby shepherd’s mouth and watched him whine with pleasure. I have seen him roll on his back with his white stomach facing the sun and paw helplessly. I think he is full of some low form of love, something that Dante would have pitied as he moved from heaven to heaven, something akin to the drowned buttercup or the red woodpecker swinging on his bag of fat. There would be a crease at the corner of Dante’s eye, a roundness in his cheek, that is for that animal alone; a tiny sign interrupting his climbing and his falling, his concentration on justice and liberation.

–Gerald Stern

[spudcity]

Somewhere

Somewhere between Norway and Ireland volcanic rocks and glaciers leap from the sea My map has failed me, I’m there

the boom of my ship knocking against each obstacle, cones of ice engraved by gray waves

Blue in our sails shows the sun is somewhere in the vicinity but will never come to this particular latitude

or parades of comic and beautiful animals stricken by my depression  There is nothing here

to love  This seascape fits exactly with the geography of my mind: whatever is close is dangerous

–Fanny Howe

[spudcity]

Ode to a Man in Dress Clothes

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, yes, all it takes is a pair of shiny black shoes and such a wave of tenderness collapses over me that I see his ties, at rest on their little carousel, imagine that he held them up in the mirror at the department store, unsure.

– Gretchen Marquette

[spudcity]

Happy Days

Garçon, you snore so rhapsodically but hup hup, peach schnapps & Coke Zero with a gumball-green mermaid swizzle stick— I need me a diabetic shock.

I yearned so long to be ensorcelling, yet I’m always a meter maid, never a mermaid. I’d populate this world w’ idlers of my kind, but pistil-less, I’m pissily only one.

Who made me this way? Oh you. Oolong Ma. (Go bury yourself in a sandpit, Ma, while my galpals and I split a cranmuffin 5 ways and watch.)

So here I gig, in this club empty as a tampon dispenser inside the shell of a Texas gas station—still I’ll stand, declaim:

Not enough letters in my soup, garçon! All I’m doing is inging like an atting instrel, I’m rank when I need to be frank!

Just you wait, I’ll hijack all type— My specialty? Scandinavian Modern Pinkface.

– Cathy Park Hong

[spudcity]

Invitation

Paul Guest, I am looking forward to your birthday and the long chain of fitful celebrations that will follow and be broken by something like inconsiderate death or the envelope of oblivion. Paul Guest, I’m looking forward to your arrival, your flight, your train, your steamer rocking in on a lucky wave. When will you be here, Paul Guest, with your combs and pockets and mad fits of despair? Paul Guest, when will you ever be happy? When will you sign treaties and agreements and accords and truces tied up with ribbon, when will you decide to live peaceably with yourself, Paul Guest? When will you open cans of soup that would have kept forever, forever in their vacuums of salt, and stir them on to a fire and think yourself at last an imposter under the grave stars no more? When will you fall asleep and be full and not long for a distant woman, your words no signposts for the way back to wherever you were, Paul Guest? What will you say, Paul Guest? No one knows. No one ever has spoken the right thing or walked away not hating his mouth for the sake of the air that was in it, that wouldn’t take shape, keep it, or at least fall into quiet, which is an endless water. Paul Guest, you have tried to vanish a thousand times, Paul Guest.

– Paul Guest

[spudcity]

8. Light Articulation of the Left Hand

He could understand the things at home. —Wallace Stevens, “Things of August”  

Scribbled on the expansive mist, the desire of many dwindles to us and our “activities,” wholesome or otherwise. Soon it becomes apparent that neither they nor I have any prise on the fabliau’s demands of unity. We are aching neither here nor there. The tent caterpillars shrug off the tent, and proceed. Was there a maxillary half-buried in the silt? If so, what were we doing in earth-heaven? Times came to be, trembled on the tilt of a sword’s point and slid off into the grass. See, there was no warranty. It’s not like stuff you send away for and it comes and you can’t remember why you ordered it. These, our time, were like grain, necessary and inedible. In time the minute palace got chucked. We were standing on the green, putting, and our recollections came to resemble history: serious, but not too serious, redundant—and so on.

–John Ashbery