May 2009
26 posts
1 tag
1 tag
Uncanny Earth, A Funny Thing to Feel
by Joshua Green
But not funny like comix or a dog
kvetching, neither funny
like funambulism nor the town carnival where
for three dollars you can sledgehammer a car,
not Beckett’s ashcan through which heads
come up, Keaton with the barrelgrinder’s
monkey funny, that funny
silence called an ex, a sex pot, sextodecimo
pages torn from a book, not the...
1 tag
The Visitation
by Brigit Pegeen Kelly God sends his tasks and one does them or not, but the sky delivers its gifts at the appointed times: With spit and sigh, with that improbable burst of flame, the balloon comes over the cornfield, bringing another country with it, bringing from a long way off those colors that are at first the low sound of a horn, but soon are many horns, and clocks, and bells, and clappers...
April 2009
24 posts
1 tag
The Definition of Love
by Andrew Marvell My Love is of a birth as rare As ‘tis for object strange and high: It was begotten by Despair Upon Impossibility. Magnanimous Despair alone Could show me so divine a thing, Where feeble Hope could ne’er have flown But vainly flapped its Tinsel wing. And yet I quickly might arrive Where my extended soul is fixt, But Fate does iron wedges drive, And always crowds...
1 tag
Today
by Ryan Scott Nance
Clear day. Today she went to see
her daddy’s grave. On top, an insect.
Shoo-shoo. Let it be. It wants to stay.
Snowy. All day inside. Alone.
The flakes like brush fire ash. Snarling.
No phone. No mail. Make broth and drink it.
Cloudy. The moon half there tonight.
On board a train scar-scar, scar-scar.
Gingerbread cake across the aisle.
Clear day. An insect lay beside
the...
2 tags
JUEGOS PROHIBIDOS
by Yang Mu A Translation from the Chinese by Ryan T. Scott Nance Noontime The leaves at the window screen lightly shudder, shudder with some sort of feeling: an inconceivable grand romance the G isn’t easy to manage, she says— her hair slides over to the left) She squints down at her ring finger suffering to press a Granadan air. A nun in the window chants the Rosary, happens to look up— far off,...
1 tag
Breakdown
The bus I’ve boarded is filled
with passengers whose mouths have
just closed after months of singing.
Little starfish, or cloves, punctuate
above their chins. The driver breathes
and shifts heavily on his vinyl seat.
The first floating neon sign sputters on.
I feel I am a threat, an inappropriate
handkerchief. The rubber-lipped doors
squeak when they close. The bus motor
hums all...
2 tags
Santa Lucia
by Robert Hass
I
Art & love: he camps outside my door, innocent, carnivorous. As if desire were actually a flute, as if the little song transcend, transcend could get you anywhere. He brings me wine; he believes in the arts and uses them for beauty. He brings me vinegar in small earthen pots, postcards of the hillsides by Cezanne desire has left alone, empty farms in August and...
2 tags
Letter to a Poet
by Robert Hass
A mockingbird leans from the walnut, bellies, riffling whte, accomplishes
his perch upon the eaves. I witnessed this act of grace in blind California
in the January sun where families bicycle on Saturday and the mother with high cheekbones
and coffee-coloured iridescent hair curses her child in the language of Pushkin -
John, I am dull from thinking of your pain, this...
1 tag
wei shen-me?!?!
There was a late spring night, a few weeks before my apartment building (and the Japanese Embassy beside it) was town down, when i was alone in the house. I’d opened all the windows and was lying in the dark, listening to the taxis and scooters buzz down the alley outside and i was thinking of a love adventure gone awry. And then i heard a voice from far off, clear but veiled by distance, of...
Watchratherfancy:
Time Lapse: Growing a Beard and Walking to Germany is Today’s BIG Thing - APR 22, 2009
1 tag
The Idea of Order at Key West
with audio of his reading http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15749
by Wallace Stevens
She sang beyond the genius of the sea. The water never formed to mind or voice, Like a body wholly body, fluttering Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry, That was not ours although we understood, Inhuman, of the veritable ocean. The sea was not a mask. ...
1 tag
My Mojave
by Donald Revell Sha- Dow, As of A meteor At mid- Day: it goes From there. A perfect circle falls Onto white imperfections. (Consider the black road, How it seems white the entire Length of a sunshine day.) Or I could say Shadows and mirage Compensate the world, Completing its changes With no change. In the morning after a storm, We used brooms. Out front, There was broken glass to collect. In...
“For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we are still just able...”
– First Elegy, Duino Elegies, Rainer Maria Rilke
2 tags
Mummy of a Lady Named Jemutesonekh
XXI Dynasty
by Thomas James
My body holds its shape. The genius is intact. Will I return to Thebes? In that lost country The eucalyptus trees have turned to stone. Once, branches nudged me, dropping swollen blossoms, And passionflowers lit my father’s garden. Is it still there, that place of mottled shadow, The scarlet flowers breathing in the darkness? I remember how I died. It...
1 tag
Garden-throat’s Tale
He dreamt first he was met
on a snow-blown block at night
by a slasher who scalpelled a trough
from his chin to the tip of his sternum
and pulled his esophagus out.
He lay, breathing more openly in
the wintry air until a nurse
in burgundy found him and
fit him with a length of green
garden hose, and stapled him shut.
Next he dreamt the slasher had
been the one to fit him
with the...
1 tag
Witness
But whether or not he
places him in custody, he shall
first cause his house to be
searched unexpectedly, and all
chests to be opened and all
boxes in the corners, and all
implements found to be taken
away. Ah, we’ve found the
bad feather he’ll simper,
against the rounded edge
of the Dutch hutch. And
there will be no error.
The black queen, held phantasmically
in his palm like a...
1 tag
Saying It
Leaves flap through the dark windows
like stiff-veined flags. Wind stirs
much of the street. An uncut lime
is small and fits in the palm’s hollow,
near the wrist. It turns like a key:
the apartment door and the neighbors’
door, the front door to the sidewalk
beneath the tree of urgent flags,
and the windows which seem so much
like passages—— should be looked through,
but not stepped...
