Poem-a-Thon

[Angeline]

Post a poem you found and love in this thread. Did you find a new poet, maybe someone you think others may not have discovered? Are you discovering or resdiscovering a famous modern or classic poet? Post a few of his or her poems in this thread.

One of the best ways to improve your poetry writing is to read poems every day. Let's make it easy for each other to do that by posting poems (or links to them) here for all to enjoy.

 

[Angeline]

Mary Karr

Beauty and the Shoe Sluts

Mother kneels at her closet of dancing shoes
to see which ones I fit -- sherbet-green
taffeta and crimson crocodile, pumps

in Easter pink, plus a dozen black heels
with bows or aglisten with rhinestones,
all wicked run down. Likewise,

she's gnarled as a tree root, her spine's
warped her shorter than me, over whom
she once towered with red hair

brushed back into flame points.
Seeing her handle those scarred leather hides, I quote
the maenads' sad lament from The Bacchae.

After they've chased down
the fleeing god, fucked him dead, sucked
all flesh from his bones, dawn spills light

on their blood-sticky mouths,
and it's like every party you ever stayed
too late at. In chorus they sing and grieve:

"Will they come to me ever again,
the long, long dances?"
And Mother holding a black-patent ankle strap

like a shackle on a spike heel
it must've been teetering hell to wear glances
sidewise from her cloudy hazel eyes and says, "No,

praise God and menopause, they won't."

**********************************

Winter in
The City of Friendship

Friend, some nights when I smoke on the fire escape,
I search beyond the snow-plowed streets
to the cold blue light of the study
in the tower in which you've walled yourself,
surrounded by minions and the books
that bolster your arguments.

Who will question you in this place?
You exile those who question, and your eyes,
which sometimes wheel this way
like searchlights do not make me out,
but cast the bright interior
shape of your face across mine.
Over and over, you erase me this way.

Still, I know the last kind word
that passed between us must circle
your tower. A small white bird,
it pecks your sill, songless,
its heart thrumming dimly.
It will not leave you,
however heavy the shade you draw,
however broad the back you turn.
It taps the frosted glass with a sound
like tiny iron letters embossed
against parchment, keys pressed
by fingers on a hand you refuse
to reach for, however much alone.

 

[denis hale]

Angeline, what a great

idea for a thread!

Here's one.


PASSENGERS by Denis Johnson

The world will burst
like an intestine in the sun,
the dark turn to granite
and the granite to a name,
but there will always be somebody
riding the bus
through these intersections
strewn with broken glass,
among speechless women
beating their little ones,
always a slow alphabet of rain
speaking of drifting and perishing
to the air,
always these definite jails of light
in the sky
at the wedding of this clarity
and this storm, and a woman's turning--
her languid flight of hair
traveling through frame after frame
of memory
where the past turns, its face
sparking like emery,
to open its grace and incredible harm
over my life, and I will never die.

 

[Guest]

My present obsession....

Lorna Crozier.

ONIONS

The onion loves the onion.
It hugs its many layers,
saying, O, O, O,
each vowel smaller
than the last.
Some say it has no heart.
It surrounds itself,
feels whole. Primordial.
First among vegetables.

If Eve had bitten it
instead of the apple,
how different
Paradise.

 

[Angeline]

TY Denis and Tess! These are wonderful!

I haven't spent as much time lately as I'd like reading poets who are new for me, and I need to do it. I love to see how writers approach their art--see what bits work for me--yknow, learn. Please keep the poems coming everyone.

BTW, if you like Mary Karr, she has a stunner of a poem in the current issue of New Yorker (2-2-04 issue). The poem is called "A Blessing From My Sixteen Years' Son." If you get the magazine or your local bookstore carries it, have a look.


Ange

 

[Angeline]

Re: TY Denis and Tess! These are wonderful!

P.S. Tess? Eve who?

 

[denis hale]

Here ya go Ange

AT THE CANTINA by Gary Soto

In the cantina
Of six tables
A woman fingers
The ear lobe
Of a bank teller.
It is late,
And this place is empty
As a crushed hat.
A galaxy of flies
Circles the lamp.
Manuel wipes the counter,
Flicking ashes
Onto the floor.
The voices
Of that couple
With the faces of oxen
On a hot day
Reach over his shoulder
And vanish
Into the mirror.
Finally they leave
Without nodding goodbye,
His hand on her right breast,
Her thumb hooked
In his watch pocket.
Manuel locks up,
Uncorks a bottle
And sits at a table.
All night he drinks
And his hands fold
And unfold,
Against the light
A kingdom of animal shadows--
The Jackal,
The Hummingbird,
The Sleepy-Eyed Llama,
An Iguana munching air--
While the rooster stretches
To the day not there yet.

 

[annaswirls]

this is a great idea, one I was not sure had been done before and just hadn't found

here is ee cummings oh how typical yeah whatever it plays in my mind when I need something to feel


Since feeling is first
Who pays any attention
To the syntax of things
Will never wholly kiss you;

Wholly to be a fool
While Spring is in the world

My blood approves,
And kisses are a better fate
Than wisdom
Lady I swear by all flowers. Don’t cry
--the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids’ flutter which says

we are for each other; then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life’s not a paragraph

And death I think is no parenthesis

 

[annaswirls]

Teaching the Ape to Write

They didn't have much trouble
teaching the ape to write poems:
first they strapped him into the chair
then tied his pencil around his hand
(the paper had already been nailed down)
Then Dr. Bluespire leaned over his shoulder
and whispered into his ear:
"You look like a god sitting there.
Why don't you try writing something?"


~James Tate

 

[annaswirls]

Anna Swir

I used to feel horrible keeping this screen name I used years ago, felt I was doing her a disservice-- but I feel like it fits me and it reminds me of my favorite poet, my Anna, and my aspiration to keep improving as a human and a writer.


Poetry Reading

I'm curled into a ball
like a dog
that is cold.

Who will tell me
why I was born,
why this monstrosity
called life.

The telephone rings. I have to give
a poetry reading.


I enter.
A hundred people, a hundred pairs of eyes.
They look, they wait.
I know for what.

I am supposed to tell them
why they were born.
Why there is
this monstrosity called life.


~Anna Swir

Translated from the Polish by Czeslaw Milosz and Leonard Nathan

 

[Angeline]

Denis, I know that Gary Soto poem...

those animal shadows...what an image of whimsy and irony and sadness. sigh...


Here's some Yusef Komunyakaa

My Father's Love Letters

On Fridays he'd open a can of Jax
After coming home from the mill,
& ask me to write a letter to my mother
Who sent postcards of desert flowers
Taller than men. He would beg,
Promising to never beat her
Again. Somehow I was happy
She had gone, & sometimes wanted
To slip in a reminder, how Mary Lou
Williams' "Polka Dots & Moonbeams"
Never made the swelling go down.
His carpenter's apron always bulged
With old nails, a claw hammer
Looped at his side & extension cords
Coiled around his feet.
Words rolled from under the pressure
Of my ballpoint: Love,
Baby, Honey, Please.
We sat in the quiet brutality
Of voltage meters & pipe threaders,
Lost between sentences
The gleam of a five-pound wedge
On the concrete floor
Pulled a sunset
Through the doorway of his toolshed.
I wondered if she laughed
& held them over a gas burner.
My father could only sign
His name, but he'd look at blueprints
& say how many bricks
Formed each wall. This man,
Who stole roses & hyacinth
For his yard, would stand there
With eyes closed & fists balled,
Laboring over a simple word, almost
Redeemed by what he tried to say.

 

[Angeline]

and for lovely swirly Anna---

Namimg the Stsars
by Joyce Sutphen

This present tragedy will eventually
turn into myth, and in the mist
of that later telling the bell tolling
now will be a symbol, or, at least,
a sign of something long since lost.

This will be another one of those
loose changes, the rearrangement of
hearts, just parts of old lives
patched together, gathered into
a dim constellation, small consolation.

Look, we will say, you can almost see
the outline there: her fingertips
touching his, the faint fusion
of two bodies breaking into light.

 

[Linbido]

Good thread!

In The Storm Of Roses
~ Ingeborg Bachmann

Wherever we turn in the storm of roses,
the night is lit up by thorns, and the thunder
of leaves, once so quiet within the bushes,
rumbling at our heels.



And an oldie greeky thingy...

Elegy V
~ Ovid

In summer's heat and mid-time of the day
To rest my limbs upon a bed I lay,
One window shut, the other open stood,
Which gave such light, as twinkles in a wood,
Like twilight glimpse at setting of the sun,
Or night being past, and yet not day begun.
Such light to shamefast maidens must be shown,
Where they must sport, and seem to be unknown.
Then came Corinna in a long loose gown,
Her white neck hid with tresses hanging down:
Resembling fair Semiramis going to bed
Or Layis of a thousand wooers sped.
I snatched her gown, being thin, the harm was small,
Yet strived she to be covered there withal.
And striving thus as one that would be chaste,
Betrayed herself, and yeilded at the last.
Stark naked as she stood before mine eye,
Not one wen in her body could I spy.
What arms and shoulders did I touch and see,
How apt her breasts were to be pressed by me.
How smooth a belly under her waist saw I?
How large a leg, and what a lusty thigh?
To leave the rest, all liked me passing well,
I clinged her naked body, down she fell,
Judge you the rest, being tired she bade me kiss,
Jove sent me more such afternoons as this.

 

[darkmaas]

For something completely different...

allow me to post a poem by Kanai Mieko. She wrote it in the late sixties or early seventies.



The House of Madam Juju

Turning, following the arrows through
the slimy passages of the city’s intestines
to the house of Madam Juju
above the revolving dome of the sea.
A wind blows up out of the subways
and the underground arcades
smelling of rich soup
a wind with just a hint of late autumn
as you slide your cracked lips along
the burning naked body of Madam Juju.
How skillfully you suck
mulberry facets from deep in marble.
And young women drip liquid on
the strawberry fields above the revolving sea.
The young women paint and claw
in Madam Juju’s soft embrace,
their blue tinted eyes shut, moaning
They drop tears of ecstasy
and exchange saliva with the obscene Madam.
The stain of crushed strawberries
is drying on the back of your shirt.
The sun and blissful clouds above the strawberry fields
brighten the afterglow of thought
and will disappear over the flaccid horizon.
But strawberry fields forever
Strawberry fields, yes, forever
Madam Juju wipes up the young ladies’ liquid
with her whip while the sun trembles down.
You disappear through the gate
of the whiplashing Madam Juju.
Tender screams!
Your hips twitch continually
under Madam Juju’s stinging blows
in a recital of tireless, eternal convulsions
forever, spastically repeating words of love.
As she raises her whip Madam Juju
encourages you, gently, almost singing
Shoot every arrow!
Take careful aim
The violence of words of love
That awful violence ah
A single shaft of love
The gland of love writhes like an acrobat
over the strawberry field horizon
to the house of Madam Juju.
The whipping party starts at dusk.
As the rhythemical movements of the young women
lay waste to strawberry fields.
It will go on forverer.
You won’t find satisfaction
even if you climb to the morning star.




Now that you've enjoyed the poem, allow me to tell you that in Japanese, "strawberry", is a euphamism for young girl and Madam Juju is a famous line of cosmetics. Reread the poem and enjoy a new understanding of the metaphors.

darkmaas

 

[Rybka]

Denis Hale on Steroids!

This expands the subject matter somewhat, but I have always been fascinated by this song. An "official" site claims these are the actual words (but they're not what I used to hear when I listened to the radio). - I really would like to know if/how music like this influenced Denis and Annaswirls.

Blinded by the Light - Bruce Springsteen

Madman drummers bummers and Indians in the summer with a teenage diplomat
In the dumps with the mumps as the adolescent pumps his way into his hat
With a boulder on my shoulder feelin' kinda older I tripped the merry-go-round
With this very unpleasing sneezing and wheezing the calliope crashed to the ground
Some all-hot half-shot was headin' for the hot spot snappin' his fingers clappin' his hands
And some fleshpot mascot was tied into a lover's knot with a whatnot in her hand
And now young Scott with a slingshot finally found a tender spot and throws his lover in the sand
And some bloodshot forget-me-not whispers daddy's within earshot save the buckshot turn up the band

And she was blinded by the light
Cut loose like a deuce another runner in the night
Blinded by the light
She got down but she never got tight, but she'll make it alright

Some brimstone baritone anti-cyclone rolling stone preacher from the east
He says: "Dethrone the dictaphone, hit it in its funny bone, that's where they expect it least"
And some new-mown chaperone was standin' in the corner all alone watchin' the young girls dance
And some fresh-sown moonstone was messin' with his frozen zone to remind him of the feeling of romance

Yeah he was blinded by the light
Cut loose like a deuce another runner in the night
Blinded by the light
He got down but she never got tight, but he's gonna make it tonight

Some silicone sister with her manager's mister told me I got what it takes
She said I'll turn you on sonny, to something strong if you play that song with the funky break,
And go-cart Mozart was checkin' out the weather chart to see if it was safe to go outside
And little Early-Pearly came in by her curly-wurly and asked me if I needed a ride,
Oh, some hazard from Harvard was skunked on beer playin' backyard bombardier
Yes and Scotland Yard was trying hard, they sent a dude with a calling card,
he said, do what you like, but don't do it here
Well I jumped up, turned around, spit in the air, fell on the ground
Asked him which was the way back home
He said take a right at the light, keep goin' straight until night, and then boy, you're on your own

And now in Zanzibar a shootin' star was ridin' in a side car hummin' a lunar tune
Yes, and the avatar said blow the bar but first remove the cookie jar we're gonna teach those boys to laugh too soon

And some kidnapped handicap was complainin' that he caught the clap from some mousetrap he bought last night,

Well I unsnapped his skull cap and between his ears I saw
a gap but figured he'd be all right

He was just blinded by the light
Cut loose like a deuce another runner in the night
Blinded by the light
Mama always told me not to look into the sights of the sun
Oh but mama that's where the fun is

 

[Angeline]

Mike Dockins

I've never heard of him before, but I came across this poem, which I thought was just wonderful. It was published in The Gettysburg Review last year. Enjoy.

______________________________________

American Love Story
Mike Dockins


1. THE GIRL

Hallelujah, she knows how to shoot pool.
She sinks her eight ball, drinks me under
the table. I whimper for a date, a smooch,
a slap. She hits the jukebox, that old song.
I change taverns but she's there: pigtails
that fill me with moon silt and planet jelly,
lips that just keep on being lips, little belly
I want to ski across. At home she's on top
of the fridge, dog-earing my favorite Azorean
epic. She drives the bus I take, cleans my
teeth, cuts my hair, cashes my paychecks,
taunting me: Going out tonight, Jerry? See
you there, Doll, I say, shaking with optimism.

2. THE SCHEME

If I can carry the pigskin ten more yards,
she'll take me to the movies, an action flick
with Swiss banks and tanks and jagged Alps.
I'll miss hockey, but her swinging ponytail
is better than a puck slung on ice. Her face
becomes warm, hot, thermonuclear. God,
I love her. She has perfect teeth, a straight
spine, and thighs that make frat boys bang
petulant fists during beer pong. Lord, if I sink
this basket, she'll marry me in Lake Tahoe: my
feet in Nevada, hers in California. If I'm clever,
I'll slip into a triple-cherry slot, and I'll love her
more with each rolling coin, each lucky pull.

 

[Guest]

Last Ink ~ excerpt

By Michael Ondaatje

In certain countries aromas pierce the heart and one dies
half waking in the night as an owl and a murder's cart go by

the way someone in your life will talk out love and grief
then leave your company laughing.

In certain languages the calligraphy celebrates
where you meet the plum blossom and moon by chance

- the dusk light, the cloud pattern,
recorded always in your heart

and the rest of the world - chaos,
circling your winter boat.

Night and the Plum and Moon.

Years later you shared it
on a scroll or nudged
the ink onto stone
to hold the vista of life.

A condesary of time in the mountains
- your rain-swollen gate. a summer
scarce with human meeting.
Just bells from another village.

The memory of a woman walking down stairs.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[denis hale]

Nude!

NUDE by Daniel Halpern

In one of Watteau's pencil sketches
there's a woman sleeping on her side,
partly covered, the space behind her
darklt penciled in, her right arm
reaching out, probably around someone
who has left.
What makes me think her arm
is not merely cast out
is the way Watteau sketched dampness into her hair,
the way he remembered to pencil in
the good-time cloth-bracelet on that wrist,
and the space next to her,
which he left without a mark.

 

[Angeline]

Re: Nude!

NUDE by Daniel Halpern

In one of Watteau's pencil sketches
there's a woman sleeping on her side,
partly covered, the space behind her
darklt penciled in, her right arm
reaching out, probably around someone
who has left.
What makes me think her arm
is not merely cast out
is the way Watteau sketched dampness into her hair,
the way he remembered to pencil in
the good-time cloth-bracelet on that wrist,
and the space next to her,
which he left without a mark.

This is lovely and filled with such clever wordplay--I think I've heard of him before Denis. He has been around (i.e., published) for a while, right?

 

[Angeline]

Last Ink ~ excerpt

By Michael Ondaatje


.............

Sigh.


Anyone who hasn't read Ondaatje (who wrote among other things the novella The English Patient), should. He writes with such subtle grace. Thanks, poetess.

 

[Angeline]

Here's who I've been reading today...

I think I'm in love...


uh in a literary sense, ee.
___________________________________

Simon Perchik

These iron faucets, one
for water from the South, its twin
icy streams and every morning
I turn two valves
the way each child is born
from riverbeds and the sink

filling with skies, with open seas
where the sun looks at its reflection
--the light half wind
half bathing the Earth

--every morning a few drops
on my forehead, just enough sunlight
to remind us all how death
when this bowl drains
as if a great wave, beginning at sunrise
continent over continent --you see it

in stands when the crowds
wait for the crest to be carried
together, washing the water
with water not yet whirlpools and absences

--I hold these two tools
not sure what it is I'm making
or loosening or stone
from stones that weep
even in wells, were brought to this basin
and like a sudden flower
points where the sun and my hand too
wants to go home.

*
Yet the moon barely mutters
pinpoints its lips the way seawater
pours into your lap, giving birth
to drifts and heaviness --your arms

weigh more, the marrow
flowing into some dried ditch
you nurse with snow, let it settle
in your arms, filling them with tides

that match the moon's still warm lips
its voice and lullabies --you sing
making snowballs, naming them so they float
between the mornings and faster.

*
You teach these fish alarm
shake and from a small box
rattled the way babies already bathed
are powdered, fed --it's a milky world

with gills sobbing against a wall
and the glass swaying in barely sunset
--goldfish are not used to clocks

and though you teach them time
it's always with seconds to spare
to jump, the flakes explode
even before they strike the ground

as rain covered with flames
till all that's left from the sky
is its water and smoke, its flakes
floating on the surface

--you point out how each spark
is picked off as if it were an apple
and between your teeth the headwind
falling to the bottom to be rocked asleep

--you use a manual, at 12 o'clock
midnight and noon the way twins, one
in darkness, one reading directions
and though you hold the tank close

these fish learn when it's time
for the lid to open --from above
a weight half crumpled, half
breathing in and breathing in.

 

[eagleyez]

such a delight to discover these...

bravo to all.

(ange )

 

[Angeline]

such a delight to discover these...

bravo to all.

(ange )

Thank you, Neil. Um, ee dear.

 

[eagleyez]

Thank you, Neil. Um, ee dear.

can we get a little light on that palm tree?

(just call me smiley clown)

 

[Guest]

Anyone who hasn't read Ondaatje (who wrote among other things the novella The English Patient), should. He writes with such subtle grace. Thanks, poetess.

I just can't resist adding - what I think is one of the most erotic poems I've ever read.

The Cinnamon Peeler

by Michael Ondaatje

If I were a cinnamon peeler
I would ride your bed
and leave the yellow bark dust
on your pillow.

Your breasts and shoulders would reek
you could never walk through markets
without the profession of my fingers
floating over you. The blind would
stumble certain of whom they approached
though you might bathe
under rain gutters, monsoon.

Here on the upper thigh
At this smooth pasture
neighbours to your hair
or the crease
that cuts your back. This ankle.
You will be known among strangers
as the cinnamon peeler‘s wife.

I could hardly glance at you
before marriage
never touch you
- your keen nosed mother, your rough brothers.
I buried my hands
in saffron, disguised them
over smoking tar,
helped the honey gatherers…

When we swam once
I touched you in water
and our bodies remained free,
you could hold me and be blind of smell.
You climbed the bank and said

this is how you touch other women
the grass cutter’s wife, the lime burner’s daughter.
And you searched your arms
for the missing perfume.

and knew

what good is it
to be the lime burner’s daughter
left with no trace
as if not spoken to in the act of love
as if wounded without the pleasure of a scar.

You touched
your belly to my hand
in the dry air and said
I am the cinnamon
peeler’s wife. Smell me.