May 2009
26 posts
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1 tag
The City Limits
by A. R. Ammons When you consider the radiance, that it does not withhold itself but pours its abundance without selection into every nook and cranny not overhung or hidden; when you consider that birds’ bones make no awful noise against the light but lie low in the light as in a high testimony; when you consider the radiance, that it will look into the guiltiest swervings of the weaving...
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The Problem of Describing Trees
by Robert Hass The aspen glitters in the wind. And that delights us. The leaf flutters, turning, Because that motion in the heat of August Protects its cells from drying out. Likewise the leaf Of the cottonwood. The gene pool threw up a wobbly stem And the tree danced. No. The tree capitalized. No. There are limits to saying, In language, what the tree did. It is good sometimes for...
2 tags
NOW
by Denis Johnson Whatever the foghorns are the voices of feels terrible tonight, just terrible, and here by the window that looks out on the waters but is blind, I have been sleeping, but I am awake now. In the night I watch how the little lights of boats come out to us and are lost again in the fog wallowing on the sea: it is as if in that absence not many but a single light gestures and...
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A Man Not Me, An Occult One
by Ryan Scott Nance
For years, I’d thought Hass’ Heroic
Simile was written in Spanish because
of where I’d read it. I could
quote lines of it to myself—— Hacinaron
leñas en el aire lleno de resina.
And in the hills near Liu Zhang Li, the stone
lions, the mist of pre-dawn will always
seem like Whitman to me—— maybe I’d seen his
youthful beard twist in the breeze as he
held his...
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Make Me Make
by Ryan Scott Nance Here’s the character you will be dealing with — not girthful precisely, eats peanuts like pain tablets. The air outside thins by the minutes. The meeting convenes at the top of the lift and, divided, the whole thing stalls. Do you recognize yourself yet, my friend? A private chair in the high-ceilinged hall. Some hack and flood, precious little trunks, hawks on the...
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Brothers at Lakeside
by Ryan Scott Nance
And after pulling through the dark green trough
of the mountain road, a dim carpark behind
a bar. The lake below. The blackened face
is smooth enough for us to see the stars.
But one of us prefers the girls who lift
heavy glasses of beer again, again
to touch their mouths with a galaxy of foam,
and the other one prefers the girls themselves.
If movement were a form...
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The Daytime Song
by Ryan Scott Nance
The work you do is for you,
Baby brother, only not for you.
Ministered in fullness, abruptly.
The scryed cramped handwriting
Of geese on the soccer grass obliges
Us to rewrite the hopes we once
Had for the father for the autumn.
The crumbled asphalt path is papered
In dry leaves. Worn, weathered, wizened.
A badger makes a full heart’s black stop.
The bank of last year’s leaves...
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There She Is
by Linda Gregg
When I go into the garden, there she is. The specter holds up her arms to show that her hands are eaten off. She is silent because of the agony. There is blood on her face. I can see she has done this to herself. So she would not feel the other pain. And it is true, she does not feel it. She does not even see me. It is not she anymore, but the pain itself that moves...
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A Light in the Moon
by Gertrude Stein
A light in the moon the only light is on Sunday. What was the sensible decision. The sensible decision was that notwithstanding many declarations and more music, not even notwithstanding the choice and a torch and a collection, notwithstanding the celebrating hat and a vacation and even more noise than cutting, notwithstanding Europe and Asia and being overbearing, not even...
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After Mayakovsky
by Denis Johnson It’s after one. You’re probably alone. All night the moon rings like a telephone in an empty booth above our separateness. Now is the hour one answers. I am home. Hello, my heart, my god, my president, my darling: I’m alarmed by the alarm clock’s iridescent face, hung like a charm from darkness’s fat ear. This accident that was my life will...
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Pity the Bathtub Its Forced Embrace of the Human...
Matthea Harvey
1. Pity the bathtub that belongs to the queen its feet Are bronze casts of the former queen’s feet its sheen A sign of fretting is that an inferior stone shows through Where the marble is worn away with industrious Polsihing the tub does not take long it is tiny some say Because the queen does not want room for splashing The maid thinks otherwise she knows the king Does not...
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The Larcenist’s Son
by Ryan Scott Nance
Let me tell you how
things are with me. When I
went to San Francisco to get
my passport, I spent so much
money on a business suite with
a view of nothing, and on
room service. That’s the
kind of secret that stays
a secret because no one else
was there. My impudence,
the Four Season’s lobby bar,
a haircut, face face. Is there
really beauty in being broken?
My friend spent a...
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One is One
Marie Ponsot (my lovely lovely professor) Heart, you bully, you punk, I’m wrecked, I’m shocked stiff. You? you still try to rule the world-though I’ve got you: identified, starving, locked in a cage you will not leave alive, no matter how you hate it, pound its walls, & thrill its corridors with messages. Brute. Spy. I trusted you. Now you reel & brawl in your...
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Autobiography 3
by Michael Palmer Yes, I was born on the street known as Glass-as Paper, Scissors or Rock. Several of my ancestors had no hands. Several of my ancestors used their pens in odd ways. A child of seven I prayed for breath. Each day I passed through the mirrored X into droplets of rain congealed around dust I never regretted this situation. Though patient as an alchemist I failed to learn...
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THE GEM IS ON PAGE SIXTY-FOUR
by Matthea Harvey Ahem said the guards when anyone lingered too long With their nose in a posy & then came the stuttered Explanation was required if one seemed to be admiring Anything could provoke a ticket even a certain glazing Of the eye that seemed to signify some secret rapture How the rupture between looking & looking had happened Was a mystery (perhaps there had once...
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Sailing to Byzantium
by W. B. Yeats That is no country for old men. The young In one another’s arms, birds in the trees —Those dying generations—at their song, The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas, Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long Whatever is begotten, born, and dies. Caught in that sensual music all neglect Monuments of unageing intellect. An aged man is but a paltry thing, A tattered coat...
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Failing and Flying
by Jack Gilbert Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew. It’s the same when love comes to an end, or the marriage fails and people say they knew it was a mistake, that everybody said it would never work. That she was old enough to know better. But anything worth doing is worth doing badly. Like being there by that summer ocean on the other side of the island while love was fading out of her,...
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Without Design All Beauty Melts Away
by Linda Gregg
It is cold this evening. One of the first cold evenings of autumn. I have your shirt over my own. I am not hungry. I am starving. And I look for the laws of all this. I write down a new name, Cyrene, beloved of Apollo. To look up. To learn about it before spring. To learn what the earth asks of us. To know that would be happiness. To go the right way. To carry what is not known to...
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They Cripple with Beauty and Butcher with Love
by Linda Gregg Eight years later the woman is given a house for five months at the edge of town in the desert. It’s August and the desert is green. When rain falls, she drives beyond the dark clouds. Past an antelope resting, legs under it, head raised, white marks. Drives slowly around a turtle. If the man lied about love, or even if it was true, there was immense damage. When she awoke she was...
