Poetry
ANTHOLOGY
Senior English Elective / Instructor: Mrs. Garcia
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Introduction
Poetry as Inspiration, Nourishment, and “Teacher”
Welcome, Poets!
Poet Dean Young says, “The song is always instruction in how to sing,” and in the same way,
poems can be effective teachers. I gathered the poems in this packet after studying hundreds of
poetry books, poetry magazines, and online journals. Reading poetry is an adventure, a bit like a
treasure hunt. You may not always find gems that resonate with you, but you keep the ones that
really sparkle and shine! I fell in love with some of them and have included the most vivid,
memorable, imaginative, creative, touching, or humorous poems—as well as poems that
illustrate particular forms and poetic devices. Haiku will be forthcoming in a separate packet.
Even though I may have included only one poem by a particular author, I often read an entire
book by that author—or nine—to arrive at those selections. In order to help us begin to see a
poet’s style emerging, some poets are represented by more than one poem.  Anywhere you see
the smiley icon, it indicates that you can listen to the poem on YouTube, Poets.org, or a similar
site. These poems were chosen with great care, with you in mind, and I hope that you enjoy them
as much as I have.
-Mrs. Garcia
In A Poet’s Craft, Annie Finch says,
“…the advice I give most often is so simple that a beginning poet might be tempted to
ignore it—and so crucial that it is worth all the rest of the advice put together. Read
poetry. And then read more poetry. Not only read poetry you like, but also read poetry
you hate, poetry that bores you, poetry so difficult it drives you crazy, poetry so easy it
irritates you, poetry that makes you furious, poetry in languages you don’t know, poetry
written by a kindergartener down the block, self-published poetry, Pulitzer-Prize winning
poetry, rapper poetry, ‘Immortal Poetry’ in classroom anthologies, and long-forgotten
poetry in cracked leather bindings on lower shelves in back rooms of junk shops.” (27)
“Some beginning poets are afraid to read poetry by others for fear of losing their ‘own
voice.’ Have you ever had such a fear? Where does one’s ‘own voice’ come from in the
first place?” (40)
In his book, The Art of Recklessness: Poetry as Assertive Force and Contradiction, Dean Young
says,
“I always tell my students not to worry about originality; just try to copy the manners and
musics of the various, the more various the better, poetries you love: your originality will
come from your inability to copy well: YOUR GENIUS IS YOUR ERROR)” (48).
“Originality is not the denial of origins, it is both the acknowledgement of them, the
acquiescence and exploration of that trace in history, the common imperative, while
being in cantankerous, maybe competitive objection and declaration otherwise. People
use language for two reasons: to be understood and not to be understood” (38).
“If you don't have the time to read, you don't have the time or the tools to write.” – Stephen King
“A writer is a reader moved to emulation.” – Saul Bellow (1915-2005)
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Before
CARL ADAMSHICK (1969- ) He was born in Toledo, OH.
I always thought death would be like traveling
in a car, moving through the desert,
the earth a little darker than sky at the horizon,
that your life would settle like the end of a day
and you would think of everyone you ever met,
that you would be the invisible passenger,
quiet in the car, moving through the night,
forever, with the beautiful thought of home.
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The Way of the World
KIM ADDONIZIO (1954- ) She was born in Bethesda, MD and now lives in California.
We know the ugly hate the beautiful,
and the bitter losers are all seething
over bad coffee, washed in the sleazy fluorescence
of fast-food restaurants. We know
the wheelchairs hate the shoes,
and the medicines envy the vitamins,
which is why sometimes a whole bottle
of sleeping pills will gather like a wave
and rush down someone’s throat to drown
in the sour ocean of the stomach.
And let’s not even mention the poor,
since hardly anyone does.
It’s the way of the world—
the sorrowful versus the happy,
and the stupid against everyone,
especially themselves. So don’t pretend
you’re glad when your old friends
get lucky in work, or love,
while you’re still drifting through life
like a lobster in a restaurant tank. Go on
admit it: you’d claw them to death
if you could. But you’re helpless,
knocking futilely against clear glass you can’t
break through. They’re opening champagne,
oblivious of you, just as you don’t notice
how many backs you’ve scrambled over
to get this far, you black eyes glittering,
your slow limbs grimly and steadily working.
From pp. 73-74 of What Is This Thing Called Love, 2004
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Big Man
DICK ALLEN (1939-- ) He just so happens to be a Trumbull resident!
When my father swam, he was a bull
butting the waters,
or an old-fashioned washing machine
churning harder and harder.
With all that effort, you would have thought
he'd beat the high-rollers.
When my father ate, he was an octopus,
thick tendrils writhing,
or a steam shovel chewing a hill,
grunting and chomping.
Not for him the gas pump's dire warning:
Avoid Overtopping.
When my father prayed, he prayed up a storm,
a hurricane, a tornado,
or he was that gunslinger sent
down the streets of Laredo.
Whatever my father did, he did it
like a deathblow.
When my father left, it wasn't the happily ever after
of the Brothers Grimm.
He dropped from the earth like a canyon
drops from its rim.
and not one metaphor I mixed was big enough, not nearly,
to salvage him.
from The Raintown Review
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Funeral Blues (also known as “Stop All the Clocks”)
W. H. AUDEN (1907-1973)
 You can hear this read on YouTube in a scene from the 1994 film, Four Weddings and a Funeral.
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone.
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling in the sky the message He is Dead,
Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever, I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun.
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
(published 1936)
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A Poison Tree
WILLIAM BLAKE (1757-1827)
I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.
And I watered it in fears
Night and morning with my tears,
And I sunned it with smiles
And with soft deceitful wiles.
And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright,
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine And into my garden stole
When the night had veiled the pole;
In the morning, glad, I see
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.
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Evil
KIM BRIDGFORD (1959- ) She grew up in Coal Valley, IL and now lives in Philadelphia.
Is a feeling, swinging on the hour,
Its thick intention hanging like a tire.
Smash, wreck, hurt, undulate, destroy.
For evil holds within itself a joy
Of taking goodness by the hand, so pure
You wouldn’t know the difference from a flower.
Like love, it is a hot and sudden arrow.
Like shame, it layers time with fig-leaf sorrow,
And pulls the curtain wing-spread off a fly,
With iridescent viciousness, to splay
The intersection between do and don’t.
It’s clear the bitter message that’s been sent.
Don’t underestimate it: that hot note
That whispers in your ear and cuts your throat.
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Speech to the Young: Speech to the Progress-Toward
GWENDOLYN BROOKS (1917-2000)
Say to them,
say to the down-keepers,
the sun-slappers,
the self-soilers,
the harmony-hushers,
"even if you are not ready for day
it cannot always be night."
You will be right.
For that is the hard home-run.
Live not for battles won.
Live not for the-end-of-the-song.
Live in the along.
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Bluebird
CHARLES BUKOWSKI (1920-1994) He was a German-born American poet, and he lived in California.
 You can hear this poem on YouTube. I’m not sure if the reader is Bukowski himself, but he does a good job.
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I'm not going
to let anybody see
you.
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pour whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he's
in there.
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?
you want to screw up the
works?
you want to blow my book sales in
Europe?
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody's asleep.
I say, I know that you're there,
so don't be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he's singing a little
in there, I haven't quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it's nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don't
weep, do
you?
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Melissa Quits School
LUCILE BURT has taught high school in Arlington, MA since 1970.
I’m not going down into that cave anymore,
that room under everything
where they stick us freaks
surrounded by storage rooms
and one hundred years of dust
caking little windows near the ceiling.
We’re buried under the weight
of all those rooms above us,
regular rooms with regular kids,
buried where we won’t be a bad influence.
Mrs. Miller says I’ll be sorry,
but I don’t care. I can’t think
down there. It’s hard to breathe
underground.
If school’s so great for my future,
what’s Mrs. Miller doing buried here
like some sad dead bird
teaching freaks
and smelling like booze every morning?
I may be stupid, but I know this:
outside there’ll be light and air
and I won’t feel like I’m dying.
Outside, someone will pay when I work,
give me a coffee break when I can smoke.
No one will say “where’s your pass?”
Sandy and Tina won’t dance away from me,
sidestepping like I’m poison ivy,
and boys won’t try to pry me open.
Steve won’t be hanging on me,
wanting me
to take a couple of hits before class,
wanting me
to cut class to make love,
even though it’s really screwing
and he calls it “making love”
so I’ll do it and he can brag later.
I may be stupid, but I know this:
even just a little light and air
can save your life.
That shark Steve thinks he owns me,
but I know this:
when we cruise in his car
so he can show off his Chevy and me
him looking out the window all the time,
going nowhere, just cruising,
I’m there ‘cause we’re moving,
I’m there alone with Tori Amos,
singing her sad true songs,
leaning my head back,
watching the streetlights come and go,
each flash lighting my face
for a minute in the dark.
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Tuesday 9:00 AM
DENVER BUTSON
A man standing at the bus stop
reading the newspaper is on fire
Flames are peeking out
from beneath his collar and cuffs
His shoes have begun to melt
The woman next to him
wants to mention it to him
that he is burning
but she is drowning
Water is everywhere
in her mouth and ears
in her eyes
A stream of water runs
steadily from her blouse
Another woman stands at the bus stop
freezing to death
She tries to stand near the man
who is on fire
to try to melt the icicles
that have formed on her eyelashes
and on her nostrils
to stop her teeth long enough
from chattering to say something
to the woman who is drowning
but the woman who is freezing to death
has trouble moving
with blocks of ice on her feet
It takes the three some time
to board the bus
what with the flames
and water and ice
But when they finally climb the stairs
and take their seats
the driver doesn't even notice
that none of them has paid
because he is tortured
by visions and is wondering
if the man who got off at the last stop
was really being mauled to death
by wild dogs.
from Triptych, 1999
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Jabberwocky
LEWIS CARROLL (1832–1898)
 YouTube has Johnny Depp reading this, as well as The Muppets!
’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”
He took his vorpal sword in hand;
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree
And stood awhile in thought.
And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
He chortled in his joy.
’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
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The Best Use for My Poems
MICHAEL CIRELLI
for Holden
At the poetry reading, no one got my Sierra Leone
reference. No one sympathetic to the crush
of crows on my shoulders. Not a smirk in the direction
of my sonnet about Monster. No ooh or uuhhmp
for the simile about her, and berries. Not a soul appreciated
the syntax involved with the turquoise of a turtle's
belly. Then, a polite clap like a reluctant breeze, and I was back
on the sideline, with my three-year-old nephew, and a stack
of poems curled tight. He picked up those papers, the long white
cylinder of my unmoving words, and held it to his mouth
like a mic, and lip-synced some tongue I was too old to
remember. He took it next, a billy club, and whacked a woman
awake. Then it became a baton he wagged back and forth till
it blurred. Soon the roll of paper was a telescope. As it opened
more on one end, a bullhorn, a little more, a pylon, and the best use—
a dunce cap.
From p. 49 of Lobster with Ol’ Dirty Bastard, 2008
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Dead Ass
MICHAEL CIRELLI
In the bodega, a young girl wearing
jeans so tight she has to use turpentine
to get them off, says to her friends,
Damn, it’s dead ass raining out!
I was enamored. Instead of cats and dogs,
I pictured donkey corpses falling from
the sky, clogging gutters.
That’s some “serious” rain.
The song on the radio said that the po-po was:
“tryna catch me ridin’dirty.” I imagined
Chamillionaire wearing a 20-lb. gold chain
with mud dripping off Jesus’s shiny toes,
Krazie Bone in four-hundred-dollar jeans,
with grass stains on the knees.
In Oakland, the sound there is “hyphy.” To me,
that alien word means gooney-goo-goo.
To me, that word is my dead father’s kiss.
But to thousands of youngsters whose trousers sink
below the Plimsoll line of their asses, hyphy
music makes their bodies dip up and down
like oil drills.
These words make me feel old, and alabaster.
When I hear something new, it’s like I discovered it
for the first time, like I excavated it from the mouth
of a teenager. So I dust it off with my fossil brush
and try to jam it into the keyhole of academia.
I’m not afraid of dope lyrics, not dope meaning weed
but dope meaning good. My kind uses scrilla to board
up the windows of shook.
Fo’shizzle, crunk, hella: I place in glass jars like rare moths.
I want to hang them on the doors of sonnets
like a welcome sign to an apartment
I don’t live in.
From pp. 33-34 of Lobster with Ol’ Dirty Bastard, 2008
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Brown Skin Lady
MICHAEL CIRELLI
 YouTube has “Michael Cirelli Poetry Reading at the 2012 WCU Poetry Conference” from the 6:08 to 7:49 mark.
He has four poems with this same title, but it’s this one you’ll see in the above video.
If it’s not love then it’s the bomb, the bomb, the bomb, the bomb,
the bomb, the bomb, the bomb that will bring us together.
—The Smiths, “Ask”
If you cut someone off
from their culture they
will die. My lady
can trace her long finger
like a terra cotta branch
through history’s rich
cemeteries and arrive at
The Prophet. There is no
separation of church
and state when your homeland
is called: The Islamic
Republic of Pakistan.
Where I’m from, we pretend
that god stays out
of our taxes, and that culture
is the alchemy that turns
blood white.
I am multiple selves
but I am white. I contain
multitudes bur am still white.
American culture is distinguished
by whether you are born of
old money, new money, or
no money. I can trace
my lineage back to my first loan.
My family tree grows from a safe.
It seems “the most
dangerous nation in the world”
has it right. All the ammo
we drop over there, and the Muslims
are not dead, as I polish off
another eggplant parm. At the airport,
they study my lady’s passport
and wonder where she had hidden
the bomb, and I want to tell
them, she doesn’t hide the bomb,
she is the bomb.
From pp. 27-28 of Vacations on the Black Star Line, 2010
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I Am Hip Hop.
MICHAEL CIRELLI
 You can watch him reading this on YouTube.
You can blame Santa Claus,
who in 1986 in order to save sleigh
space, left Run DMC’s Raising Hell
in the stockings of all the naughty kids
in the suburbs. Little did he know
his prank on white America would leave
parents up in arms forever.
In the same vein, their little angels
would also be throwing their hands in the air
and waving them carefree at role models
with cornrows from the Dirty South
on BET while sturdy women in thongs
“back that thang up” at Jones Beach.
Seventeen years later, I still haven’t grown
into my parachutes or found the laces to my shell toes.
Mom’s worried this “phase” may never end—
You can find me in the club, mimicking
camouflage, with a Larry Bird throwback jersey, mouthing
the words to “Player’s Anthem” like I had game,
like I could relate to the hustle.
Nonetheless, I am still the dash in Jay-Z, the graph,
the clientele, the connoisseur who knows everywhere
I’ll never be. I am the slovenly tongue popularized
by God’s son, the white boy M1 wants to slap,
the Rock & Roll that’s black, the breakbeat, the heart,
the movement, the art—
I claim nothing but hip-hop.
I’m the white Eminem.
When the Puerto Rican chef at the restaurant I work in
told me I look “all NASCAR,”
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I said, “No, I’m hip-hop.”
“Fur ril?” he said. “Yes, Pharrell,” I said.
I actually lived in my grandma’s basement for two years
while she roasted root vegetables upstairs. I’m underground.
I rocked Air Force Ones when they only came in the colors
of privilege or minority—when Sergio Valente pinstripes
were like a fresh sheet of paper. I’m old school.
My pops is incarcerated for pushing dope, the noun.
That makes me part gangsta. You know what time is it—
When I win the Pulitzer Prize, for Realness, the Nobel
for my translation of Hip-Hop, I will step to the stage
and represent Rhode Island to the fullest, shout out God
“first and foremost, without whom none of this would be possible,”
the rotund wrapper with an alabaster beard
who gave me my first Run DMC tape.
This is dedicated to you.
pp. 70-71 of Vacations on the Black Star Line, 2010
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Tawk
MICHAEL CIRELLI
You know, when you talk,
but if you're from where I'm from
you may be "tawking,"
and depending on who you're
tawking to, and where they're from:
which bend of road
or angle of sun or moonlight hits the dark room
of throat, informs
the way they say what they say,
which side of lip
the words plummet from or how tongue
strings 'em together chops
'em screws 'em,
how Mona is from a below
place where the speakers
speak like they're pulling up
word anchors from the deepest
depths of Mouf, or in some parts
more salt, and others more peppa:
whether cayenne or corn—
I'm in love with a boy
from East Oakland whose word is
stretched longer than
twelve hearses,
and his Dickies are starched.
In Texas, it is the vibration of
the dinner bell, in Kansas
something different.
In New Yawk, Nueva Yol,
Brooklawn-Vietnawm,
where the tongues pulse like
marquees, talk keeps the lights on!
When T-Pain dissected
the tone of Flux
Capacitor, of E.T.'s grand
piano, and named his album
Rappa Ternt Sanga, he wasn't being
ignorant, or ignant at that, wasn't bad
at spelling (maybe bad
at rapping which is why
he turned singer), but he was
accounting for the texture of the dirt
in his teef. He was showing it off
in his smile. This makes sense to me.
Because I want everyone
to see the Rhode Island in my elbow.
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I want everyone to know
I was born in a kawfee mug
floating down Narragansett Bay
and raised by a Lion.
And by kawfee mug I mean:
I was born in an alphabet that left its R
on the dressa—and by Narragansett Bay
I mean: an estuary flowing with wrenches
and ratchets and uniforms—and by Lion:
I mean my mother, who's been serving
breakfast to regulars since 1975
(when I showed up),
and to this day they still come to see
her, my ma
who tawks to each and every one
of them cuz she's gotta hotta-gold.
From pp. 72 of Vacations on the Black Star Line, 2010
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Introduction to Poetry
BILLY COLLINS (1941-
) He was born in New York City.
 You can hear him read this on YouTube. He is a very popular poet, and he is on YouTube reading many of his
poems—even at The White House—so if you like his work, there is much more to listen to online.
I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide
or press an ear against its hive.
I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,
or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.
I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.
But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.
They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.
From p. 58 of The Apple That Astonished Paris. 1988.
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Man in Space
BILLY COLLINS (1941-
) He was born in New York City.
 You can listen to him read it at Poetry Foundation: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/176054
It is also on YouTube, set to a video of movie clips. He is a very popular poet, and he is on YouTube reading many
of his poems—even at The White House—so if you like his work, there is much more to listen to online.
All you have to do is listen to the way a man
sometimes talks to his wife at a table of people
and notice how intent he is on making his point
even though her lower lip is beginning to quiver,
and you will know why the women in science
fiction movies who inhabit a planet of their own
are not pictured making a salad or reading a magazine
when the men from earth arrive in their rocket,
why they are always standing in a semicircle
with their arms folded, their bare legs set apart,
their breasts protected by hard metal disks.
From p. 68 of The Art of Drowning, 1995.
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Snow Day
BILLY COLLINS (1941-
) He was born in New York City.
Today we woke up to a revolution of snow,
its white flag waving over everything,
the landscape vanished,
not a single mouse to punctuate the blankness,
and beyond these windows
the government buildings smothered,
schools and libraries buried, the post office lost
under the noiseless drift,
the paths of trains softly blocked,
the world fallen under this falling.
In a while, I will put on some boots
and step out like someone walking in water,
and the dog will porpoise through the drifts,
and I will shake a laden branch
sending a cold shower down on us both.
But for now I am a willing prisoner in this house,
a sympathizer with the anarchic cause of snow.
I will make a pot of tea
and listen to the plastic radio on the counter,
as glad as anyone to hear the news
that the Kiddie Corner School is closed,
the Ding-Dong School, closed.
the All Aboard Children’s School, closed,
the Hi-Ho Nursery School, closed,
along with—some will be delighted to hear—
the Toadstool School, the Little School,
Little Sparrows Nursery School,
Little Stars Pre-School, Peas-and-Carrots Day School
the Tom Thumb Child Center, all closed,
and—clap your hands—the Peanuts Play School.
So this is where the children hide all day,
These are the nests where they letter and draw,
where they put on their bright miniature jackets,
all darting and climbing and sliding,
all but the few girls whispering by the fence.
And now I am listening hard
in the grandiose silence of the snow,
trying to hear what those three girls are plotting,
what riot is afoot,
which small queen is about to be brought down.
Billy Collins, “Snow Day” from Sailing Alone Around the Room: New and Selected Poems (New York: Random House, 2001).
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The Trouble with Poetry
BILLY COLLINS (1941-
) He was born in New York City.
The trouble with poetry, I realized
as I walked along a beach one night—
cold Florida sand under my bare feet,
a show of stars in the sky—
the trouble with poetry is
that it encourages the writing of more poetry,
more guppies crowding the fish tank,
more baby rabbits
hopping out of their mothers into the dewy grass.
And how will it ever end?
unless the day finally arrives
when we have compared everything in the world
to everything else in the world,
and there is nothing left to do
but quietly close our notebooks
and sit with our hands folded on our desks.
Poetry fills me with joy
and I rise like a feather in the wind.
Poetry fills me with sorrow
and I sink like a chain flung from a bridge.
But mostly poetry fills me
with the urge to write poetry,
to sit in the dark and wait for a little flame
to appear at the tip of my pencil.
And along with that, the longing to steal,
to break into the poems of others
with a flashlight and a ski mask.
And what an unmerry band of thieves we are,
cut-purses, common shoplifters,
I thought to myself
as a cold wave swirled around my feet
and the lighthouse moved its megaphone over the sea,
which is an image I stole directly
from Lawrence Ferlinghetti—
to be perfectly honest for a moment—
the bicycling poet of San Francisco
whose little amusement park of a book
I carried in a side pocket of my uniform
up and down the treacherous halls of high school.
From pp. 83-84 of The Trouble with Poetry, 2005
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A Child Explains Dying
ROBERT CRUM
First you close your eyes.
Then you hold your breath.
Then, when it gets too heavy to hold,
you let it go. And it drops to the floor
like a stone. But without a sound.
And then your mother comes to the door
and calls you, saying,
“Come out here this instant!
Your breakfast is getting cold.”
And then your father comes to the door
and calls you, saying,
“No son of mine is going to lie
in bed all day. No son of mine
Is going to be late for school”
And then they shake you,
and when you don’t move
they see the mistake they made
and they cry and cry and cry.
And then they comb your hair
and brush your teeth
and dress you in a suit and tie
just like for Sunday School
And then they bury you in the dirt.
And your teacher gives your desk to someone else.
And your brothers wear your clothes
that you’ll never need again
because you’re a little lamb at the feet
of Jesus in Heaven—you’re a little wooly thing
up in the clouds, going baaa, baaa.
1984. From The Ploughshares Poetry Anthology (1987)
Page 26 of 93
The Lord Is My Shepherd (Psalm 23, A Psalm of David)
KING DAVID
1
The LORD is my shepherd;
I shall not want.
2
He makes me to lie down in green pastures;
He leads me beside the still waters.
3
He restores my soul;
He leads me in the paths of righteousness
For His name’s sake.
4
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil;
For You are with me;
Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.
5
You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies;
You anoint my head with oil;
My cup runs over.
6
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
All the days of my life;
And I will dwell in the house of the LORD
Forever.
(New King James Version)
Page 27 of 93
“Hope” is the thing with feathers (314)
EMILY DICKINSON (1830-1886) She was born in Amherst, MA.
“Hope” is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all –
And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard –
And sore must be the storm –
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm –
I’ve heard it in the chillest land–
And on the strangest Sea –
Yet – never – in Extremity,
It asked a crumb – of me.
I taste a liquor never brewed (214)
EMILY DICKINSON
I taste a liquor never brewed –
From Tankards scooped in Pearl –
Not all the Frankfort Berries
Yield such an Alcohol!
Inebriate of air – am I –
And Debauchee of Dew –
Reeling – thro' endless summer days –
From inns of molten Blue –
When "Landlords" turn the drunken Bee
Out of the Foxglove's door –
When Butterflies – renounce their "drams" –
I shall but drink the more!
Till Seraphs swing their snowy Hats –
And Saints – to windows run –
To see the little Tippler
Leaning against the – Sun!
Page 28 of 93
Poetry Should Ride the Bus
RUTH FORMAN
poetry should hopscotch in a polka dot dress
wheel cartwheels
n hold your hand
when you walk past the yellow crackhouse
poetry should dress in fine plum linen suits
n not be so educated that it don’t stop in
every now n then to sit on the porch
and talk about the comins and goins of the world
poetry should ride the bus
in a fat woman’s Safeway bag
between the greens n chicken wings
to be served with Tuesday’s dinner
poetry should drop by a sweet potato pie
ask about the grandchildren
n sit through a whole photo album
on a orange plastic covered La-Z-Boy with no place to go
poetry should sing red revolution love songs
that massage your scalp
and bring hope to your blood
when you think you’re too old to fight
yeah
poetry should whisper electric blue magic
all the years or your life
never forgettin to look you in the soul
ever once in a while
n smile.
from We Are The Young Magicians (1993)
Page 29 of 93
You So Woman
RUTH FORMAN
for Anya
lady
when ya purple heels hit concrete
afros swing
cool jazz hot baby
strollin by cry amen
so holy
preachas stutta
thighs so righteous
pews jump up n catch the spirit n
hymns speak in tongues
so sweet
bees leave the daffodils behind
for honey you make table sugar taste sour n
Mrs. Butterworth sho can’t find a damn thing to say
when you around
lookin so good
cockroaches ask you to step on em
sos they can see heaven
befo
and after they die n
you love ya people so much
if you was on pilgrimage
the Sahara Desert would run to the Atlantic
jus to make sure you don’t get thirsty n
camels would kiss you for choosin they back
but Africa don’t got you
we do n glad too
so girl
you jus keep on
makin the sunset procrastinate n
givin the rainbows a complex
you a silk earthquake
you a velvet hurricane
n girl you so woman
i be damn
if you don’t put a full moon to shame.
from pp. 66-67 of We Are the Young Magicians, 1993.
Page 30 of 93
Base Stealer
ROBERT FRANCIS (1901-1987) He spent most of his life in Amherst, MA.
Poised between going on and back, pulled
Both ways taut like a tight-rope walker,
Fingertips pointing the opposites,
Now bouncing tiptoe like a dropped ball,
Or a kid skipping rope, come on, come on!
Running a scattering of steps sidewise,
How he teeters, skitters, tingles, teases,
Taunts them, hovers like an ecstatic bird,
He's only flirting, crowd him, crowd him,
Delicate, delicate, delicate, delicate - Now!
Sheep
ROBERT FRANCIS (1901-1987)
From where I stand the sheep stand still
As stones against the stony hill.
The stones are gray
And so are they.
And both are weatherworn and round,
Leading the eye back to the ground.
Two mingled flocks—
The sheep, the rocks.
And still no sheep stirs from its place
Or lifts it Babylonian face.
Francis, Robert. “Sheep.” In Collected Poems: 1936-1976. Copyright © 1976 by Robert Francis and published by the University
of Massachusetts Press, Amherst. [chapter 10]
I found it in Ted Kooser’s book, The Poetry Home Repair Manual: Practical Advice for Beginning Poets. Lincoln: University of
Nebraska Press, 2005.
Page 31 of 93
Acquanited with the Night
ROBERT FROST (1874-1963) Born in San Francisco, CA, he spent much of his time in rural New England.
I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.
I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.
I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,
But not to call me back or say good-by;
And further still at an unearthly height
One luminary clock against the sky
Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.
Page 32 of 93
If You Are Reading This
NICOLE CARUSO GARCIA
If you are reading this, my love, then we
have reached “for poorer” since our wedding day.
Forgive this frugal anniversary;
unwrap these fragments, gifts I tucked away:
I gather birdsong, chirps that percolate,
the scent of dew and diesel in the air.
Although the sun unlocks the morning gate,
the moon still lingers, just to say she’s there.
The bookstore beckons addicts to her ink.
I fan through brand new titles, crisp and sweet,
inhale the tomes until so paper-drunk
the clerk ejects me back out on the street.
And then, a quest for subtler liquors brings
me to a dozen dog-eared stacks to search.
I hold their scent of reverence in my lungs
like incense burning in an ancient church.
At home, I find transcendence in the act
of making lunch. Behold this afternoon,
a jar of peanut butter, whorl intact,
a landscape yet uncharted by a spoon.
And soon, above the hammock where I sway,
the clouds are powdered wigs with woolly curls.
While edged in pink and cream, against a day
so blue, a vision of Versailles unfurls.
By night, our yard is filled with lullabies,
when thriftiness has shut off every lamp,
and silent music of the fireflies
plucks darkness softly as a golden harp.
And all these things I gathered just for you,
in case we were too poor for fine hotels
or jewels, furs, or villas with a view.
Reserve the satin sheets for jezebels.
Just cool, clean sheets against our sunburned skin,
sheets tucked so tight we have to wiggle in.
from the Spring 2010 issue of Willow Review
Page 33 of 93
Quilts
NIKKI GIOVANNI (1943- )
(for Sally Sellers)
Like a fading piece of cloth
I am a failure
No longer do I cover tables filled with food and laughter
My seams are frayed my hems falling my strength no longer able
To hold the hot and cold
I wish for those first days
When just woven I could keep water
From seeping through
Repelled stains with the tightness of my weave
Dazzled the sunlight with my
Reflection
I grow old though pleased with my memories
The tasks I can no longer complete
Are balanced by the love of the tasks gone past
I offer no apology only
this plea:
When I am frayed and strained and drizzle at the end
Please someone cut a square and put me in a quilt
That I might keep some child warm
And some old person with no one else to talk to
Will hear my whispers
And cuddle
near
Page 34 of 93
Daughters of China
TERRY GODBEY (1955-
) She was born in Bangor, Maine.
Daughters of China, dip your tongues
in cups of oolong tea
like quills into the ink of centuries.
All those hearts unburdened,
silken sorrows, poems
burned by the hundreds.
For every baby girl abandoned
at Qinglong Temple, let tears feed
a silver moonlight stream
from Xian to Nanjing to Shenyang.
Take what is yours—the crumbling earth,
jade mist of morning, providence.
Free the dragon curled inside you.
With feet unbound, step over
each stone rolled onto your path
through the peonies. Push past
any man who tries to stop you.
Godbey, Terry. “Daughters of China.” Dogwood: A Journal of Poetry and Prose. Spring 2009. Ed. Kim Bridgford and Pete
Duval. 11. Print
Page 35 of 93
When the Zombies Come
ROB GRIFFITH
I’ll be ready. I’ve seen films and know
that when the dead stand up and brush the dust
from coats and once-bright shoes, you need a plan.
In bed, I lie awake and plot escapes:
an attic filled with guns and cans of soup;
the basement stacked with flats of bottled water,
batteries, and jerrycans of gas. And if
they come too quickly and catch us in the night,
I’ll barricade the bedroom door, wake my wife,
and scramble out the bedroom window. We’ll ride
the roof’s soft hip, the zombies’ low moans
a flood that billows and breaks against the house.
In time, of course, they’ll win. What happens then,
when all the brains are eaten? When all of us
are rooted out of cellar and bomb shelter?
When all the razor wire is down and all
the army bases overrun? What then?
I like to think they’ll mill and stare, then bend
to take up all our uniforms, our jobs
and lives—a zombie checkout boy who sacks
the bread and eggs; the zombie line ref
who shambles downfield to make the same bad calls;
and zombie teachers gurgling out declensions
for lie and lay. And at a desk, paused
with pen in hand, a zombie poet writes
a sonnet for his zombie love. He sings
of flawless gray skin, of eyes like curdled milk.
from p. 11 of The Raintown Review, Vol. #10 Issue #2, February 2012
Page 36 of 93
Shakespearean Sonnet
R.S. GWYNN He’s known to his friends as Sam.
(With a first line taken from the tv listings)
A man is haunted by his father's ghost.
A boy and girl love while their families fight.
A Scottish king is murdered by his host.
Two couples get lost on a summer night.
A hunchback murders all who block his way.
A ruler's rivals plot against his life.
A fat man and a prince make rebels pay.
A noble Moor has doubts about his wife.
An English king decides to conquer France.
A duke learns that his best friend is a she.
A forest sets the scene for this romance.
An old man and his daughters disagree.
A Roman leader makes a big mistake.
A sexy queen is bitten by a snake.
If I’m not mistaken, the plays are…
Hamlet
Romeo and Juliet
Macbeth
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Richard III
Richard II
Henry IV Part I
Othello
Henry V
Twelfth Night
As You Like It
King Lear
Julius Caesar
Antony and Cleopatra
Page 37 of 93
The Book of Yolek
ANTHONY HECHT (1923-2004) He was born in New York to German-Jewish parents.
As a soldier serving in World War II, he was a witness to the horrors of the Holocaust.
Wir Haben ein Gesetz,
Und nach dem Gesetz soll er sterben.*
[*We have a law, and according to the law he must die (JOHN 19:7)]
The dowsed coals fume and hiss after your meal
Of grilled brook trout, and you saunter off for a walk
Down the fern trail. It doesn't matter where to,
Just so you're weeks and worlds away from home,
And among midsummer hills have set up camp
In the deep bronze glories of declining day.
You remember, peacefully, an earlier day
In childhood, remember a quite specific meal:
A corn roast and bonfire in summer camp.
That summer you got lost on a Nature Walk;
More than you dared admit, you thought of home:
No one else knows where the mind wanders to.
The fifth of August, 1942.
It was the morning and very hot. It was the day
They came at dawn with rifles to The Home
For Jewish Children, cutting short the meal
Of bread and soup, lining them up to walk
In close formation off to a special camp.
How often you have thought about that camp,
As though in some strange way you were driven to,
And about the children, and how they were made to walk,
Yolek who had bad lungs, who wasn't a day
Over five years old, commanded to leave his meal
And shamble between armed guards to his long home.
We're approaching August again. It will drive home
The regulation torments of that camp
Yolek was sent to, his small, unfinished meal,
The electric fences, the numeral tattoo,
The quite extraordinary heat of the day
They all were forced to take that terrible walk.
Whether on a silent, solitary walk
Or among crowds, far off or safe at home,
You will remember, helplessly, that day,
And the smell of smoke, and the loudspeakers of the camp.
Wherever you are, Yolek will be there, too.
His unuttered name will interrupt your meal.
Prepare to receive him in your home some day.
Though they killed him in the camp they sent him to,
He will walk in as you're sitting down to a meal.
Hecht, Anthony. "The Book of Yolek." The Transparent Man. New York: Knopf, 1990.
Page 38 of 93
In Praise of Their Divorce
TONY HOAGLAND (1953- )
And when I heard about the divorce of my friends,
I couldn't help but be proud of them,
that man and that woman setting off in different directions,
like pilgrims in a proverb
—him to buy his very own toaster oven,
her seeking a prescription for sleeping pills.
Let us keep in mind the hidden forces
which had struggled underground for years
to push their way to the surface—and that finally did,
cracking the crust, moving the plates of earth apart,
releasing the pent-up energy required
for them to rent their own apartments,
for her to join the softball league for single mothers
for him to read George the Giraffe over his speakerphone
at bedtime to the six-year-old.
The bible says, Be fruitful and multiply
but is it not also fruitful to subtract and to divide?
Because if marriage is a kind of womb,
divorce is the being born again;
alimony is the placenta one of them will eat;
loneliness is the name of the wet-nurse;
regret is the elementary school;
endurance is the graduation.
So do not say that they are splattered like dropped lasagna
or dead in the head-on collision of clichés
or nailed on the cross of their competing narratives.
What is taken apart is not utterly demolished.
It is like a great mysterious egg in Kansas
that has cracked and hatched two big bewildered birds.
It is two spaceships coming out of retirement,
flying away from their dead world,
the burning booster rocket of divorce
falling off behind them,
the bystanders pointing at the sky and saying, Look.
Page 39 of 93
Forgiving Buckner
JOHN HODGEN
The world is always rolling between our legs.
It comes for us, dribbler, slow roller,
humming its goat song, easy as pie.
We spit in our gloves, bend our stiff knees,
keep it in front of us, our fathers' advice,
but we miss it every time, its physic, its science,
and it bleeds on through, blue streak, heart sore,
to the four-leaf clovers deep in right field.
The runner scores, knight in white armor,
the others out leaping, bumptious, gladhanding,
your net come up empty, Jonah again.
Even the dance of the dead won't come near you,
heart in your throat, holy of holies,
the oh of your mouth as the stone rolls away,
as if it had come from before you were born
to roll past your life to the end of the world,
till the world comes around again, gathering steam,
heading right for us again and again,
faith of our fathers, world without end.
from FIELD: Contemporary Poetry and Poetics, Number 62, Spring 2000
Oberlin College Press, Oberlin, OH. Copyright 1992 by John Hodgen.
<http://www.loc.gov/poetry/180/154.html>
Page 40 of 93
Waiting Room
JEFF HOLT
This is the place where families cross their legs
And stare, sightless, at unobtrusive art.
This is the place where every minute drags
Like a dead body heaved onto a cart.
A mother clasps her hands, as if in prayer,
Then bows her head and curses quietly.
A husband thinks that if he’d just seen more
His wife would not have needed surgery.
Death breathes upon these souls who wait in need
Of angels wearing scrubs to proffer grace.
All wait alone, and none are reassured
By memories of a loved one’s pleading face.
In purgatory they await the words
Of gods who fail as often as succeed.
from The Raintown Review, Vol. #10, Issue #1 (2011?)
Page 41 of 93
Justice
LANGSTON HUGHES (1902-1967)
That Justice is a blind goddess
Is a thing to which we black are wise:
Her bandage hides two festering sores
That once perhaps were eyes.
I, Too
LANGSTON HUGHES (1902-1967)
I, too, sing America.
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.
Tomorrow,
I’ll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody’ll dare
Say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,”
Then.
Besides,
They’ll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed—
I, too, am America.
Page 42 of 93
mistress stella speaks
TYEJIMBA JESS
you think i’m his property
’cause he paid cash
to grab me by the neck,
swing me ‘cross his knee
and stroke the living song from my hips.
you think he is master of all
my twelve tongues, spreading notes
thick as starless night, strangling spine
till my voice is a jungle of chords.
the truth is that i owned him
since the word love first blessed his lips
since hurt and flight and free
carved their way into the cotton
fused bones of his fretting hand,
since he learned how pleading men hunt
for my face in the well of their throats
till their tongues are soaked with want.
yes, each day he comes back
home from the fields,
from chain gang fury,
from the smell of sometime women
who borrow his body. he bends
his weight around me
like a wilting weed
drinking in my kiss
of fretboard across fingertip
’til he can stand up straight again,
aching from what he left behind,
rising sure as dawn.
from p. 17 of leadbelly (2005)
Page 43 of 93
The Tourist from Syracuse
DONALD JUSTICE (1925-2004) Born/raised in Florida, he taught in Iowa. He was my teacher’s teacher.
One of those men who can be a car salesman
or a tourist from Syracuse or a hired assassin.
John D. MacDonald
You would not recognize me.
Mine is the face which blooms in
The dank mirrors of washrooms
As you grope for the light switch.
My eyes have the expression
Of the cold eyes of statues
Watching their pigeons return
From the feed you have scattered,
And I stand on my corner
With the same marble patience.
If I move at all, it is
At the same pace precisely
As the shade of the awning
Under which I stand waiting
And with whose blackness it seems
I am already blended.
I speak seldom, and always
In a murmur as quiet
As that of crowds which surround
The victims of accidents.
Shall I confess who I am?
My name is all names, or none.
I am the used-car salesman,
The tourist from Syracuse,
The hired assassin, waiting.
I will stand here forever
Like one who has missed his bus—
Familiar, anonymous—
On my usual corner,
The corner at which you turn
To approach that place where now
You must not hope to arrive.
The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry (p. 212-213)
Page 44 of 93
Bike Ride with Older Boys
LAURA KASISCHKE
The one I didn't go on.
I was thirteen,
and they were older.
I'd met them at the public pool. I must
have given them my number. I'm sure
I'd given them my number,
knowing the girl I was. . .
It was summer. My afternoons
were made of time and vinyl.
My mother worked,
but I had a bike. They wanted
to go for a ride.
Just me and them. I said
okay fine, I'd
meet them at the Stop-n-Go
at four o'clock.
And then I didn't show.
I have been given a little gift—
something sweet
and inexpensive, something
I never worked or asked or said
thank you for, most
days not aware
of what I have been given, or what I missed—
because it's that, too, isn't it?
I never saw those boys again.
I'm not as dumb
as they think I am
but neither am I wise. Perhaps
it is the best
afternoon of my life. Two
cute and older boys
pedaling beside me—respectful, awed. When we
turn down my street, the other girls see me ...
Everything as I imagined it would be.
Page 45 of 93
Or, I am in a vacant field. When I
stand up again, there are bits of glass and gravel
ground into my knees.
I will never love myself again.
Who knew then
that someday I would be
thirty-seven, wiping
crumbs off the kitchen table with a sponge, remembering
them, thinking
of this—
those boys still waiting
outside the Stop-n-Go, smoking
cigarettes, growing older.
From Dance and Disappear, 2002
Page 46 of 93
Offensive Poem
JANET KENNY
Staying human gets so hard.
No one escapes the judge’s sword.
Which side is good and which is bad?
Can virtue be its own reward?
The state that bombs today, will be
The next that’s bombed relentlessly.
The colonizers’ infamy
Is damned by colonists like me.
The Maori, and the Navajo,
The Aborigine, all know
They lost their countries long ago.
But I am pure as driven snow.
I did not do the deeds that won
My comfort, luxury and fun.
I did not do what they have done.
I am above the dirt and dung.
I sign petitions and declare
The rights of people everywhere
But if they try to take my share
My blood will boil, my fangs will bare.
from p. 25 of The Raintown Review, Vol. #10 Issue #2, February 2012
Page 47 of 93
Oatmeal
GALWAY KINNELL (1927- )
 You can listen to the poet reading his poem at Poets.org.
I eat oatmeal for breakfast.
I make it on the hot plate and put skimmed milk on it.
I eat it alone.
I am aware it is not good to eat oatmeal alone.
Its consistency is such that is better for your mental health if
somebody eats it with you.
That is why I often think up an imaginary companion to have
breakfast with.
Possibly it is even worse to eat oatmeal with an imaginary companion.
Nevertheless, yesterday morning, I ate my oatmeal—porridge, as he
called it—with John Keats.
Keats said I was absolutely right to invite him: due to its glutinous
texture, gluey lumpishness, hint of slime, and unsual willingness
to disintegrate, oatmeal must never be eaten alone.
He said that in his opinion, however, it is perfectly OK to eat it with
an imaginary companion,
and that he himself had enjoyed memorable porridges with Edmund
Spenser and John Milton.
Even if eating oatmeal with an imaginary companion is not as
wholesome as Keats claims, still, you can learn something from it.
Yesterday morning, for instance, Keats told me about writing the
"Ode to a Nightingale."
He had a heck of a time finishing it those were his words "Oi 'ad
a 'eck of a toime," he said, more or less, speaking through his
porridge.
He wrote it quickly, on scraps of paper, which he then stuck in his
pocket,
but when he got home he couldn't figure out the order of the stanzas,
and he and a friend spread the papers on a table, and they made
some sense of them, but he isn't sure to this day if they got it right.
An entire stanza may have slipped into the lining of his jacket through
a hole in his pocket.
He still wonders about the occasional sense of drift between stanzas,
and the way here and there a line will go into the configuration of a
Moslem at prayer, then raise itself up and peer about, and then lay
itself down slightly off the mark, causing the poem to move
forward with God’s reckless wobble.
He said someone told him that later in life Wordsworth heard about
the scraps of paper on the table, and tried shuffling some stanzas
of his own, but only made matters worse.
I would not have known any of this but for my reluctance to eat
oatmeal alone.
When breakfast was over, John recited "To Autumn."
He recited it slowly, with much feeling, and he articulated the words
lovingly, and his odd accent sounded sweet.
He didn't offer the story of writing "To Autumn," I doubt if there is
Page 48 of 93
much of one.
But he did say the sight of a just-harvested oat field got him started
on it,
and two of the lines, "For Summer has o'er-brimmed their clammy
cells" and "Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours," came
to him while eating oatmeal alone.
I can see him drawing a spoon through the stuff, gazing into the
glimmering furrows, muttering—and it occurs to me:
maybe there is no sublime; only the shining of the amnion's tatters.
For supper tonight I am going to have a baked potato left over from
lunch.
I am aware that a leftover baked potato is damp, slippery, and
simultaneously gummy and crumbly,
and therefore I'm going to invite Patrick Kavanagh to join me.
From pp. 37-38 of When One Has Lived a Long Time Alone (1990)
Page 49 of 93
Abandoned Farmhouse
TED KOOSER (1939- ) A former insurance salesman, he lives in Garland, Nebraska.
He was a big man, says the size of his shoes
on a pile of broken dishes by the house;
a tall man too, says the length of the bed
in an upstairs room; and a good, God-fearing man,
says the Bible with a broken back
on the floor below the window, dusty with sun;
but not a man for farming, say the fields
cluttered with boulders and the leaky barn.
A woman lived with him, says the bedroom wall
papered with lilacs and the kitchen shelves
covered with oilcloth, and they had a child,
says the sandbox made from a tractor tire.
Money was scarce, say the jars of plum preserves
and canned tomatoes sealed in the cellar hole.
And the winters cold, say the rags in the window frames.
It was lonely here, says the narrow country road.
Something went wrong, says the empty house
in the weed-choked yard. Stones in the fields
say he was not a farmer; the still-sealed jars
in the cellar say she left in a nervous haste.
And the child? Its toys are strewn in the yard
like branches after a storm--a rubber cow,
a rusty tractor with a broken plow,
a doll in overalls. Something went wrong, they say.
from Sure Signs: New and Selected Poems (1980)
Page 50 of 93
An Empty Shotgun Shell
TED KOOSER (1939- )
It's a handsome thing
in its uniform—
all crimson and brass—
standing guard
at the gate to the field,
but something
is wrong at its heart.
It's dark in there,
so dark a whole night
could squeeze in,
could shrink back up in there
like a spider,
a black one
with smoke in its hair.
In the Alley
TED KOOSER (1939- )
In the alley behind the florist's shop,
a huge white garbage truck was parked and idling.
In a cloud of exhaust, two men in coveralls
and stocking caps, their noses dripping,
were picking through the florist's dumpster
and each had selected a fistful of roses.
As I walked past, they gave me a furtive,
conspiratorial nod, perhaps sensing
that I, too (though in my business suit and tie)
am a devotee of garbage – an aficionado
of the wilted, the shopworn, and the free—
and that I had for days been searching
beneath the heaps of worn-out, faded words
to find this brief bouquet for you.
"In the Alley" by Ted Kooser, from Valentines. © University of Nebraska Press, 2008.
Page 51 of 93
A Rainy Morning
TED KOOSER (1939- )
A young woman in a wheelchair,
wearing a black nylon poncho spattered with rain,
is pushing herself through the morning.
You have seen how pianists
sometimes bend forward to strike the keys,
then lift their hands, draw back to rest,
then lean again to strike just as the chord fades.
Such is the way this woman
strikes at the wheels, then lifts her long white fingers,
letting them float, then bends again to strike
just as the chair slows, as if into a silence.
So expertly she plays the chords
of this difficult music she has mastered,
her wet face beautiful in its concentration,
while the wind turns the pages of rain.
from p. 15 of Delights and Shadows
Skywalk
TED KOOSER (1939- )
It bridges the busy street, building to building,
like an enormous cocoon, spun out
between one nowhere and the next, and in it
tight knots of teenaged boys in leather skins
press out against its walls, working their
mandibles, breathing the stream of air,
their faces tight and impatient and sore,
each waiting for his stiff black shell to split
and his beautiful wings to unfold.
from p. 32 of Weather Central
Page 52 of 93
From Ted Kooser’s Winter Morning Walks: One Hundred Postcards to Jim Harrison, 2000
In the autumn of 1998, during my recovery form surgery and radiation from cancer, I began taking a twomile walk each morning. I’d been told by my radiation oncologist to stay out of the sun for a year because of skin
sensitivity, so I exercised before dawn, hiking the isolated country roads near where I live, sometimes with my wife
but most often alone.
During the previous summer, depressed by my illness, preoccupied by the routines of my treatment, and
feeling miserably sorry for myself, I’d all by given up on reading and writing. Then, as autumn began to fade and
winter came on, my health began to improve. One morning in November, following my walk, I surprised myself by
trying my hand at a poem. Soon I was writing every day.
Several years before, my friend Jim Harrison and I had carried on a correspondence in haiku. As a variation
on this, I began pasting my morning poems on postcard and sending them to Jim, whose generosity, patience and
good humor are here acknowledged. What follows is a selection of one hundred of those postcards.
november 14
In the low forties and clear.
My wife and I walk to cold road
in silence, asking for thirty more years.
There’s a pink and blue sunrise
with an accent of read:
A hunter’s cap burns like a coal
in the yellow-gray eye of the woods.
november 17
Cloudy to the west, clear in the east.
Older this morning, the moon
Hid most of her face
Behind a round gray mirror.
In a half-hour’s walk, I saw
six shooting stars. Celestial notes,
I thought, struck from the high end
of the keyboard.
november 18
Cloudy, dark and windy.
Walking by flashlight
at six in the morning,
my circle of light on the gravel
swinging side to side,
coyote, raccoon field mouse, sparrow,
each watching from darkness
this man with the moon on a leash.
Page 53 of 93
november 28
Chilly and clear.
There was a time
when my long gray cashmere topcoat
was cigarette smoke,
and my snappy felt homburg
was alcohol,
and the paisley silk scarf at my neck,
with its fringed end
tossed carelessly over my shoulder,
was laughter rich with irony.
Look at me now.
december 1
Sunny and cold.
The long, December shadows
of bare trees
run far away from the woods.
At sunrise, they cross
and, though softened and torn
by stones and weeds,
strike out into the trees
on the opposite side,
leaving dark trails through the frost.
december 3
Clear and cool.
I have been sitting here resting
after my morning stroll, and the sun
in its soft yellow work gloves
has come in through the window
and is feeling around on the opposite wall,
looking for me, having seen me
cheerfully walking along the road
just as it rose, having followed me home
to see what I have to be happy about.
Page 54 of 93
december 13
Clear and at the freezing point.
just as a dancer, turning and turning,
may fill the dusty light with the soft swirl
of her flying skirts, our weeping willow—
now old and broken, creaking in the breeze—
turns slowly, slowly in the winter sun,
sweeping the rusty roof of the barn
with the pale blue lacework of her shadow.
december 26
Clear and cold.
A little snap at one side of the room,
and an answering snap at the other:
Stiff from the cold and idleness, the old house
is cracking its knuckles. Then the great yawn
of the furnace. Even the lampshade is drowsy,
its belly full of a warm yellow light.
Out under the moon, though, there is at least
one wish against this winter sleep: A road
leads into the new year, deliberate as a bride
in her sparkling white dress of new snow.
Page 55 of 93
Good Morning Blues
LEAD BELLY (1888-1949) born Huddie Ledbetter
Good mornin’ blues, blues how do you do?
Good mornin’ blues, blues how do you do?
I'm doin’ all right, good mornin,’ how are you?
I couldn't sleep last night, I was turning from side to side
Oh Lord, I was turning from side to side
I wasn't sad, I was just dissatisfied.
I couldn't sleep last night, you know the blues walking 'round my bed,
Oh Lord, the blues walking 'round my bed
I went to eat my breakfast, the blues was in my bread.
Good mornin’ blues, blues how do you do?
Good mornin’ blues, blues how do you do?
I'm doin’ all right, good mornin,’ how are you?
Page 56 of 93
Broken English
JAMILA LYSICOTT
 You can watch her reciting this on YouTube. (4 min.)
Today a baffled lady observed the shell where my soul dwells
And announced that I’m “articulate”
Which means that, when it comes to enunciation and diction
I don’t even think of it
‘Cause I’m “articulate”
So when my professor asks a question
And my answer is tainted with a connotation of urbanized suggestion
There’s no misdirected intention
Pay attention
‘Cause I’m “articulate”
So when my father asks, “Wha’ kinda ting is dis?”
My “articulate” answer never goes amiss
I say “father, this is the impending problem at hand”
And when I’m on the block I switch it up just because I can
So when my boy says, “What’s good with you son?”
I just say, “I jus’ fall out wit dem people but I done!”
And sometimes in class
I might pause the intellectual sounding flow to ask
“Yo! Why dese books neva be about my peoples”
Yes, I have decided to treat all three of my languages as equals
Because I’m “articulate”
But who controls articulation?
Because the English language is a multifaceted oration
Subject to indefinite transformation
Now you may think that it is ignorant to speak broken English
But I’m here to tell you that even “articulate” Americans sound foolish to the British
So when my Professor comes on the block and says, “Hello”
I stop him and say “Noooo…
You’re being inarticulate…the proper way is to say ‘what’s good’”
Now you may think that’s too hood, that’s not cool
But I’m here to tell you that even our language has rules
So when Mommy mocks me and says “ya’ll-be-madd-going-to-the-store”
I say “Mommy, that sentence is not following the law
Never does the ‘madd’ go before a present participle
That’s simply the principle of broken English”
If I had the vocal capacity I would sing this from every mountaintop,
From every suburbia, and every hood
‘Cause the only God of language is the one recorded in the Genesis
Of this world saying “it is good”
Page 57 of 93
So I may not always come before you with excellency of speech
But do not judge me by my language and assume
That I’m too ignorant to teach
‘Cause I speak three tongues
One for each:
Home, school, and friends
I’m a tri-lingual orator
Sometimes I’m consistent with my language now
Then switch it up so I don’t bore later
Sometimes I fight back two tongues
While I use the other one in the classroom
And when I mistakenly mix them up
It feels retarded like…I’m cooking in the bathroom
I know that I had to borrow your language because mine was stolen
But you can’t expect me to speak your history wholly while mines is broken
These words are spoken
By someone who is simply fed up with the Eurocentric ideas of this season
And the reason I speak a composite version of your language
Is because mines was raped away along with my history
I speak broken English so the profusing* gashes can remind us
That our current state is not a mystery
I’m so tired of the negative images that are driving our people mad
So unless you’ve seen it rob a bank stop calling my hair bad
I’m so sick of this nonsensical racial disparity
So don’t call it good unless your hair is known for donating to charity
As much as has been raped away from my people
How can you expect me to treat their imprint on your language
As anything less than equal
Let there be no confusion
Let there be no hesitation
This is not a promotion of ignorance
This is a linguistic celebration
That’s why I put ‘tri-lingual’ on my last job application
I can help to diversify your consumer market is all I wanted them to know
And when they call me for the interview I’ll be more than happy to show that
I can say:
“What’s good”
“Whatagwan”
And of course…“Hello”
Because I’m “articulate”
* Profusing is not a word. The word may have originally been profuse, protruding, or perfusing, but may have been
typed incorrectly when this poem was given to me.
Note: Here the poet uses the term “retarded” as slang, but even so, we at THS do not advocate the use of the word in
a pejorative sense. We must respect people who have intellectual disabilities.
Page 58 of 93
The Caricaturist
AUSTIN MacRAE (1979— )
I ain’t no Leonardo, but I know
there’s always something darker down below
the surface. Just because I leave it out
don’t mean that I don’t feel it lurking: doubt,
anger, sadness, every shade of loss
that you can dream of takes a seat across
from me and looks me squarely in the face.
The trick is knowing where to leave some space
for light to shine. You got to find a spark
that catches, flickers, gobbles up the dark
around the eyes, the worry lines that run
across the brow—the rest’s old-fashioned fun.
There’s things you can’t leave out that make you slip.
This shy girl had a mole above her lip.
I made her smile, drew her out of her shell,
and then I fell—plumb silly, but I fell
in love with it, and it was like the mole
was her—her spark, my ticket to her soul.
I drew it extra-large and she got red,
so I whipped her up a pretty rose instead.
That night we rocked my van with Sabbath blaring
to the stars, and afterwards, staring
straight into her eyes, I kissed it good.
Maybe she saw herself the way she should,
not so serious. Maybe art can clear
the eyes, or am I whistling Dixie here?
Well, there you are. You like it? Good. It’s free.
A little gift for listening to me.
In every crowd there’s folks whose light has died.
I crack a joke to light a spark inside,
but nothing will ignite. It’s then I know
the session just ain’t working. When I show
them to themselves, they mutter something hot
and leave. It don’t end up like that a lot,
thank god, but even once a month’s a failure.
For years I’ve hung the rejects in my trailer.
You never know when eyes’ll start to burn.
I try to keep the faith that they’ll return,
but some nights all I feel is black around
me, snuffed-out eyes of folks who never found
the light inside. There’s times I turn away
or I’d get snuffed out, too. Some nights I lay
in bed and get all swallowed up by night,
so I get up and try to draw the light
inside my mirror, the flaws I can’t erase,
but for the life of me, I’ve lost my face.
From The Raintown Review, 2011
Page 59 of 93
The White House
CLAUDE McKAY (1889-1948)
Your door is shut against my tightened face,
And I am sharp as steel with discontent;
But I possess the courage and the grace
To bear my anger proudly and unbent.
The pavement slabs burn loose beneath my feet,
A chafing savage, down the decent street;
And passion rends my vitals as I pass,
Where boldly shines your shuttered door of glass.
Oh, I must search for wisdom every hour,
Deep in my wrathful bosom sore and raw,
And find in it the superhuman power
To hold me to the letter of your law!
Oh, I must keep my heart inviolate
Against the potent poison of your hate.
Page 60 of 93
Fire Safety
JOSHUA MEHIGAN (1969—
) He lives in New York City.
Aluminum tank
indifferent in its place
behind a glass door
in the passageway,
like a tea urn
in a museum case;
screaming-machines
that dumbly spend each day
waiting for gas or smoke
or hands or heat,
positioned like beige land mines
overhead,
sanguine on walls,
or posted on the street
like dwarf grandfather clocks
spray painted red;
little gray hydrant
in its warlike stance;
old fire escape,
all-weather paint job peeling,
a shelf for threadbare rugs
and yellowing plants;
sprinkler heads,
blooming from the public ceiling;
all sitting
supernaturally still,
waiting for us to cry out.
And we will.
From Poetry (November 2010)
Page 61 of 93
Ode to the Sea
PABLO NERUDA (1904-1973) Chilean poet.
 Actor Ralph Fiennes reads this beautifully on YouTube.
Here surrounding the island,
There’s sea.
But what sea?
It’s always overflowing.
Says yes,
Then no,
Then no again,
And no,
Says yes
In blue
In sea spray
Raging,
Says no
And no again.
It can’t be still.
It stammers
My name is sea.
It slaps the rocks
And when they aren’t convinced,
Strokes them
And soaks them
And smothers them with kisses.
With seven green tongues
Of seven green dogs
Or seven green tigers
Or seven green seas,
Beating its chest,
Stammering its name,
Oh Sea,
This is your name.
Oh comrade ocean,
Don’t waste time
Or water
Getting so upset
Help us instead.
We are meager fishermen,
Men from the shore
Who are hungry and cold
And you’re our foe.
Don’t beat so hard,
Don’t shout so loud,
Open your green coffers,
Place gifts of silver in our hands.
Give us this day our daily fish.
Page 62 of 93
Alcatraz
SHARON OLDS (1942- )
When I was a girl, I knew I was a man
because they might send me to Alcatraz
and only men went to Alcatraz.
Every time we drove to the city I'd
see it there, white as a white
shark in the shark-rich Bay, the bars like
milk-white ribs. I knew I had pushed my
parents too far, my inner badness had
spread like ink and taken me over, I could
not control my terrible thoughts,
terrible looks, and they had often said
that they would send me there-maybe the very next
time I spilled my milk, Ala
Cazam, the iron doors would slam, I'd be
there where I belonged, a girl-faced man in the
prison no one had escaped from. I did not
fear the other prisoners,
I knew who they were, men like me who had
spilled their milk one time too many,
not been able to curb their thoughts—
what I feared was the horror of the circles: circle of
sky around the earth, circle of
land around the Bay, circle of
water around the island, circle of
sharks around the shore, circle of
outer walls, inner walls,
iron girders, steel bars,
circle of my cell around me, and there at the
center, the glass of milk and the guard's
eyes upon me as I reached out for it.
from p. 45 of Strike Sparks
Page 63 of 93
I Go Back to May 1937
SHARON OLDS (1942- )
This poem is featured in the opening scenes of the film Into the Wild (2007).
I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges,
I see my father strolling out
under the ochre sandstone arch, the
red tiles glinting like bent
plates of blood behind his head, I
see my mother with a few light books at her hip
standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks with the
wrought-iron gate still open behind her, its
sword-tips black in the May air,
they are about to graduate, they are about to get married,
they are kids, they are dumb, all they know is they are
innocent, they would never hurt anybody.
I want to go up to them and say Stop,
don't do it--she's the wrong woman,
he's the wrong man, you are going to do things
you cannot imagine you would ever do,
you are going to do bad things to children,
you are going to suffer in ways you never heard of,
you are going to want to die. I want to go
up to them there in the late May sunlight and say it,
her hungry pretty blank face turning to me,
her pitiful beautiful untouched body,
his arrogant handsome blind face turning to me,
his pitiful beautiful untouched body,
but I don't do it. I want to live. I
take them up like the male and female
paper dolls and bang them together
at the hips like chips of flint as if to
strike sparks from them, I say
Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it.
from The Gold Cell, and also p. 44 of Strike Sparks
Page 64 of 93
Indictment of the Senior Officers
SHARON OLDS (1942- )
In the hallway above the pit of the stairwell
my sister and I would meet at night,
eyes and hair dark, bodies
like twins in the dark. We did not talk of
the two who had brought us there, like generals,
for their own reasons. We sat, buddies
in wartime, her living body the proof of
my living body, our backs to the vast
shell hole of the stairs, down which
we would have to go, knowing nothing
but what we had learned there,
so that now
when I think of my sister, the holes of the needles
in her hips and in the creases of her elbows,
and the marks from the latest husband’s beatings,
and the scars of the operations, I feel the
rage of a soldier standing over the body of
someone sent to the front lines
without training
or a weapon.
from Satan Says, 1980
My Son the Man
SHARON OLDS (1942- )
Suddenly his shoulders get a lot wider,
the way Houdini would expand his body
while people were putting him in chains. It seems
no time since I would help him to put on his sleeper,
guide his calves into the gold interior,
zip him up and toss him up and
catch his weight. I cannot imagine him
no longer a child, and I know I must get ready,
get over my fear of men now my son
is going to be one. This was not
what I had in mind when he pressed up through me like a
sealed trunk through the ice of the Hudson,
snapped the padlock, unsnaked the chains,
and appeared in my arms. Now he looks at me
the way Houdini studied a box
to learn the way out, then smiled and let himself be manacled.
from The Wellspring, 1996
Page 65 of 93
1936, Upstate New York
LINDA PASTAN (1932- )
In rural America, or the country
as we called it, we rented a room
for the summer in the Schmidt's farmhouse
with flowered curtains at the shiny windows
and spotless, tilting wooden floors.
And the smell of cow drifted through
our room like sweet smoke,
and every morning I helped
to gather eggs, pale as seashells
from their nests in the barn.
At night through the walls
the muffled sounds of German
came from a staticky radio,
and each noon the tin mailbox waited
to be filled--a hungry mouth,
its red flag upright in stiff salute.
I drank milk straight from the pail,
my top lip mustached in creamy white,
and when my mother saw the swastika
on an envelope on the kitchen table,
she packed up fast, and we returned
to the steamy city.
Block
LINDA PASTAN (1932- )
I place one word slowly
in front of the other,
like learning to walk again
after an illness.
But the blank page
with its hospital corners
tempts me.
I want to lie down
in its whiteness
and let myself drift
all the way back
to silence.
from pp. 8 and 75 of Carnival Evening
Page 66 of 93
Departures
LINDA PASTAN (1932- )
They seemed to all take off
at once: Aunt Grace
whose kidneys closed shop;
Cousin Rose who fed sugar
to diabetes;
my grandmother’s friend
who postponed going so long
we thought she’d stay.
It was like the summer years ago
when they all set out on trains
and ships, wearing hats with veils
and the proper gloves,
because everybody was going
someplace that year,
and they didn’t want
to be left behind.
Knots
LINDA PASTAN (1932- )
In the retreating tide
of light,
among bulrushes
and eelgrass
my small son teacher
my stuttering hands
the language of sailor's knots
I tell him how
each Jewish bride
was given a knotted chaos
of yarn
and told to order it
into a perfect sphere,
to prove she'd be a patient wife.
Patient, impatient son
I've unknotted shoestrings,
kitestrings, tangled hair.
But standing at high windows
enclosed in the domestic rustle
of birds and leaves
I've dreamed of knotting
bedsheets together
to flee by.
from p. 185 and p. 74 of Carnival Evening
Page 67 of 93
The Fortune Teller
JOANNA PEARSON
In Dublin I walked George’s Street Arcade
past sheer blue scarves and bins of glistening olives,
lank feather boas, vinyl records, cheese,
fat wrinkled paperbacks, and piles of boots,
until I found the fortune-teller’s stall.
She coughed and said she’d closed up shop, was done
for good. You wonder about love, I’m sure,
she added, nodding. All you college girls….
Okay, come here. One more. And curtsying,
she shook her blackened, plastic crystal ball
as if it were a jug of orange juice
and gestured to a metal folding chair.
Sit, she purred, her accent cloudy, thick.
Her hot breath smelled of beer and cinnamon,
and when she took my palm in hers and rubbed,
her hands were cool, as gnarled as winter driftwood.
She said that I would love a man from Rome
or Canada or Boston. Maybe France.
She sighed. The deck of Tarot cards was sticky,
darkly stained, and warped. She stared at me,
not shuffling anything, her small mouth loose,
then drew two airy circles near her breastbone,
said, They had to cut off both of them,
but it’s still here—it’s everywhere, the cancer.
And then she swept the cards onto the ground.
She said I might find love, or I might not,
and asked for twenty euro. I have scars,
you don’t believe? I offered her a bill
and turned to leave. But, quick, grabbing my hand,
she pulled it up beneath her flannel shirt.
My fingers swept along her toothpick ribs,
against the puckered fret of each long ridge—
the two closed eyes carved hard upon her chest.
I closed my eyes and saw into the future.
From The Raintown Review, 2011
Page 68 of 93
Anagrammer
PETER PEREIRA
 You can listen to him read this at PoetryFoundation.org.
If you believe in the magic of language,
then Elvis really Lives
and Princess Diana foretold I end as car spin.
If you believe the letters themselves
contain a power within them,
then you understand
what makes outside tedious,
how desperation becomes a rope ends it.
The circular logic that allows senator to become treason,
and treason to become atoners.
That eleven plus two is twelve plus one,
and an admirer is also married.
That if you could just rearrange things the right way
you’d find your true life,
the right path, the answer to your questions:
you’d understand how the Titanic
turns into that ice tin,
and debit card becomes bad credit.
How listen is the same as silent,
and not one letter separates stained from sainted.
Peter Pereira, "Anagrammer" from What's Written on the Body (Copper Canyon Press, 2007).
www.coppercanyonpress.org. Source: Poetry (September 2003).
Page 69 of 93
Samurai Song
ROBERT PINSKY (1940- ) He was born in Long Branch, NJ.
 You can hear him read this on YouTube.
When I had no roof I made
Audacity my roof. When I had
No supper my eyes dined.
When I had no eyes I listened.
When I had no ears I thought.
When I had no thought I waited.
When I had no father I made
Care my father. When I had
No mother I embraced order.
When I had no friend I made
Quiet my friend. When I had no
Enemy I opposed my body.
When I had no temple I made
My voice my temple. I have
No priest, my tongue is my choir.
When I have no means fortune
Is my means. When I have
Nothing, death will be my fortune.
Need is my tactic, detachment
Is my strategy. When I had
No lover I courted my sleep.
From p. 136 in The Best American Poetry (2000)
Page 70 of 93
Lady Lazarus
SYLVIA PLATH (1932-1963 suicide) She was born in Jamaica Plain, MA.
Just FYI: In the Bible (John 11:1-45), Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead.
I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it—
A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot
A paperweight,
My face featureless, fine
Jew linen.
Peel off the napkin
O my enemy.
Do I terrify?—
The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.
Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me
And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.
This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.
What a million filaments.
The peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see
Them unwrap me hand and foot—
The big strip tease.
Gentlemen, ladies
These are my hands
My knees.
I may be skin and bone,
Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened I was ten.
It was an accident.
The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut
Page 71 of 93
As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.
Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.
I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I've a call.
It's easy enough to do it in a cell.
It's easy enough to do it and stay put.
It's the theatrical
Comeback in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
Amused shout:
'A miracle!'
That knocks me out.
There is a charge
For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart—
It really goes.
And there is a charge, a very large charge
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood
Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.
So, so, Herr Doktor.
So, Herr Enemy.
I am your opus,
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby
That melts to a shriek.
I turn and burn.
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.
Ash, ash—
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there—
A cake of soap,
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.
Herr god, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.
Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.
23-29 October 1962. From The Collected Poems by Sylvia Plath, Harper & Row.
Page 72 of 93
Mad Girl’s Love Song
SYLVIA PLATH (1932-1963 suicide) She was born in Jamaica Plain, MA.
This poem is written in a closed form called a villanelle.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
Page 73 of 93
Ballad of Birmingham
DUDLEY RANDALL (1914-2000)
(On the bombing of a church in Birmingham, Alabama, 1963)
“Mother dear, may I go downtown
Instead of out to play,
And march the streets of Birmingham
In a Freedom March today?”
“No, baby, no, you may not go,
For the dogs are fierce and wild,
And clubs and hoses, guns and jails
Aren’t good for a little child.”
“But, mother, I won’t be alone.
Other children will go with me,
And march the streets of Birmingham
To make our country free.”
“No, baby, no, you may not go,
For I fear those guns will fire.
But you may go to church instead
And sing in the children’s choir.”
She has combed and brushed her night-dark hair,
And bathed rose petal sweet,
And drawn white gloves on her small brown hands,
And white shoes on her feet.
The mother smiled to know her child
Was in the sacred place,
But that smile was the last smile
To come upon her face.
For when she heard the explosion,
Her eyes grew wet and wild.
She raced through the streets of Birmingham
Calling for her child.
She clawed through bits of glass and brick,
Then lifted out a shoe.
“O, here’s the shoe my baby wore,
But, baby, where are you?”
from Cities Burning (1968)
Page 74 of 93
Wanting to Die
ANNE SEXTON (1928-1974 suicide)
Since you ask, most days I cannot remember.
I walk in my clothing, unmarked by that voyage.
Then the almost unnameable lust returns.
Even then I have nothing against life.
I know well the grass blades you mention,
the furniture you have placed under the sun.
But suicides have a special language.
Like carpenters they want to know which tools.
They never ask why build.
Twice I have so simply declared myself,
have possessed the enemy, eaten the enemy,
have taken on his craft, his magic.
In this way, heavy and thoughtful,
warmer than oil or water,
I have rested, drooling at the mouth-hole.
I did not think of my body at needle point.
Even the cornea and the leftover urine were gone.
Suicides have already betrayed the body.
Still-born, they don't always die,
but dazzled, they can't forget a drug so sweet
that even children would look on and smile.
To thrust all that life under your tongue!—
that, all by itself, becomes a passion.
Death's a sad bone; bruised, you'd say,
and yet she waits for me, year after year,
to so delicately undo an old wound,
to empty my breath from its bad prison.
Balanced there, suicides sometimes meet,
raging at the fruit, a pumped-up moon,
leaving the bread they mistook for a kiss,
leaving the page of the book carelessly open,
something unsaid, the phone off the hook
and the love, whatever it was, an infection.
Page 75 of 93
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? (Sonnet 18)
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (1564-1616)
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st;
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun (Sonnet 130)
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound:
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.
My love is as a fever, longing still (Sonnet 147)
My love is as a fever, longing still
For that which longer nurseth the disease,
Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,
The uncertain sickly appetite to please.
My reason, the physician to my love,
Angry that his prescriptions are not kept,
Hath left me, and I desperate now approve
Desire is death, which physic did except.
Past cure I am, now reason is past care,
And frantic-mad with evermore unrest;
My thoughts and my discourse as madmen's are,
At random from the truth vainly express'd;
For I have sworn thee fair and thought thee bright,
Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.
Page 76 of 93
Saturday at the Canal
GARY SOTO
I was hoping to be happy by seventeen.
School was a sharp check mark in the roll book,
An obnoxious tuba playing at noon because our team
Was going to win at night. The teachers were
Too close to dying to understand. The hallways
Stank of poor grades and unwashed hair. Thus,
A friend and I sat watching the water on Saturday,
Neither of us talking much, just warming ourselves
By hurling large rocks at the dusty ground
And feeling awful because San Francisco was a postcard
On a bedroom wall. We wanted to go there,
Hitchhike under the last migrating birds
And be with people who knew more than three chords
On a guitar. We didn’t drink or smoke,
But our hair was shoulder length, wild when
The wind picked up and the shadows of
This loneliness gripped loose dirt. By bus or car,
By the sway of train over a long bridge,
We wanted to get out. The years froze
As we sat on the bank. Our eyes followed the water,
White-tipped but dark underneath, racing out of town.
From p. 229 of Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry (2003), edited by Billy Collins.
Page 77 of 93
Brad Pitt
AARON SMITH
With cotton candy armpits and sugary
Crevices, sweat glazing your donut skin.
Have you ever been fat, Brad?
Have you ever wanted a Snickers
More than love and lain on your bed
While the phone rang and rolled one
On your tongue, afraid to eat it, afraid
It would make your jeans too tight? Have you
Barfed, Brad, because you ate it,
Ate all the take-out, licked
Brown sauce off the box while you sobbed?
Brad Pitt down in the pits chaining menthol
Ciggys in your thick-wallet life,
It’s not so bad Brad, sad Brad, is it?
From Blue on Blue Ground by Aaron Smith (2005)
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Eating Poetry
MARK STRAND (1934-
)
Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry.
The librarian does not believe what she sees.
Her eyes are sad
and she walks with her hands in her dress.
The poems are gone.
The light is dim.
The dogs are on the basement stairs and coming up.
Their eyeballs roll,
their blond legs burn like brush.
The poor librarian begins to stamp her feet and weep.
She does not understand.
When I get on my knees and lick her hand,
she screams.
I am a new man.
I snarl at her and bark.
I romp with joy in the bookish dark.
Page 79 of 93
The First Photograph of Hitler
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA (1923-2012) She was a Polish poet and Nobel Prize winner.
And who is this baby in a robe?
Why, it’s little Dolphie, the son of Mr. and Mrs. Hitler!
Perhaps he’ll grow up to be a doctor of law?
Or he’ll be a tenor in the Vienna Opera?
Whose tiny hand is it, whose tiny ear, eye, nose?
Whose little belly full of milk, we don’t know yet:
A printer, councilor, merchant, priest?
Where will these funny legs take him, where to?
To a garden, a school the office, a wedding,
perhaps with the mayor’s daughter?
Sweet tot, little angel, crumb, tiny ray of light,
when he was coming into their world a year ago,
there was no lack of signs in heaven and earth:
Spring sun, geraniums in windows,
music of organ-grinders in the courtyard,
auspicious omen in pink tissue paper,
prophetic dream of the mother just before the delivery:
To see a dove in a dream—good news,
to catch this dove—a long-awaited guest will arrive.
Knock, knock, who’s there? So beats Dolphie’s tiny heart.
Pacifier, diapers, bib, rattle,
the boy, thank God!, knock on wood, is healthy,
Looks like his parents, like a pussycat in a basket
Like children from all other family albums.
Well, we probably won’t cry now,
Mister Photographer will go click under his black hood.
Studio Klinger, Grabenstrasse Braumen,
and Braumen is a small but dignified town,
solid firms, decent neighbors,
smell of dough rising, and grey soap.
One hears neither the howling of dogs nor the steps of destiny.
The history teacher loosens his collar
and yawns over the students’ notebooks.
Translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh
From p. 307-308 of Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry (2003), edited by Billy Collins.
Page 80 of 93
AB Negative (The Surgeon’s Poem)
BRYAN TURNER (1967- ) He is a soldier-poet who served for seven years in the U.S. Army, serving in Iraq and
Bosnia. He currently lives in California.
Thalia Fields lies under a grey ceiling of clouds,
just under the turbulence, with anesthetics
dripping from an IV into her arm,
and the flight surgeon says The shrapnel
cauterized as it traveled through her
here, breaking this rib as it entered,
burning a hole through the left lung
to finish in her back, and all of this
she doesn’t hear, except perhaps as music —
that faraway music of people’s voices
when they speak gently and with care,
a comfort to her on a stretcher
in a flying hospital en route to Landstahl,
just under the rain at midnight, and Thalia
drifts in and out of consciousness
as a nurse dabs her lips with a moist towel,
her palm on Thalia’s forehead, her vitals
slipping some, as burned flesh gives way
to the heat of the blood, the tunnels within
opening to fill her, just enough blood
to cough up and drown in; Thalia
sees the shadows of people working
to save her, but she cannot feel their hands,
cannot hear them any longer,
and when she closes her eyes
the most beautiful colors rise in darkness,
tangerine washing into Russian blue,
with the droning engine humming on
in a dragonfly’s wings, island palms
painting the sky an impossible hue
with their thick brushes dripping green…
a way of dealing with the fact
that Thalia Fields is gone, long gone,
about as far from Mississippi
as she can get, ten thousand feet above Iraq
with a blanket draped over her body
and an exhausted surgeon in tears,
his bloodied hands on her chest, his head
sunk down, the nurse guiding him
to a nearby seat and holding him as he cries,
though no one hears it, because nothing can be heard
where pilots fly in blackout, the plane
like a shadow guiding the rain, here
in the droning engines of midnight.
From pp. 15-16 of Here, Bullet (2005)
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Eulogy
BRYAN TURNER (1967- ) He is a soldier-poet who served for seven years in the U.S. Army, serving in Iraq and
Bosnia. He currently lives in California.
 You can hear him read this on YouTube.
It happens on a Monday, at 11:20 A.M.,
as tower guards eat sandwiches
and seagulls drift by on the Tigris River.
Prisoners tilt their heads to the west
though burlap sacks and duct tape blind them.
The sound reverberates down concertina coils
the way piano wire thrums when given slack.
And it happens like this, on a blue day of sun,
when Private Miller pulls the trigger
to take brass and fire into his mouth:
the sound lifts the birds up off the water,
a mongoose pauses under the orange trees,
and nothing can stop it now, no matter what
blur of motion surrounds him, no matter what voices
crackle over the radio in static confusion,
because if only for this moment the earth is stilled,
and Private Miller has found what low hush there is
down in the eucalyptus shade, there by the river.
PFC B. Miller
(1980—March 22, 2004)
From p. 20 of Here, Bullet (2005)
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Here, Bullet
BRYAN TURNER (1967- ) He is a soldier-poet who served for seven years in the U.S. Army, serving in Iraq and
Bosnia. He currently lives in California.
 You can hear him read this on YouTube.
If a body is what you want,
then here is bone and gristle and flesh.
Here is the clavicle-snapped wish,
the aorta's opened valves, the leap
thought makes at the synaptic gap.
Here is the adrenaline rush you crave,
that inexorable fight, that insane puncture
into heat and blood. And a dare you to finish
what you've started. Because here, Bullet,
here is where I complete the word you bring
hissing through the air, here is where I moan
the barrel's cold esophagus, triggering
my tongue's explosives for the rifling I have
inside of me, each twist of the round
spun deeper, because here, Bullet,
here is where the world ends, every time.
from p. 13 of Here Bullet (2005)
Page 83 of 93
Sadiq
BRYAN TURNER (1967- ) He is a soldier-poet who served for seven years in the U.S. Army, serving in Iraq and
Bosnia. He currently lives in California.
“It is a condition of wisdom in the archer to be patient
because when the arrow leaves the bow, it returns no more.”
- SA’DI
It should make you shake and sweat,
nightmare you, strand you in a desert
of irrevocable desolation, the consequences
seared into the vein, no matter what adrenaline
feeds the muscle its courage, no matter
what god shines down on you, no matter
what crackling pain and anger
you carry in your fists, my friend,
it should break your heart to kill.
From p. 56 of Here, Bullet (2005)
Page 84 of 93
What Every Soldier Should Know
BRYAN TURNER (1967- ) He is a soldier-poet who served for seven years in the U.S. Army, serving in Iraq and
Bosnia. He currently lives in California.
To yield force to is an act of necessity, not of will;
it is at best an act of prudence.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
If you hear gunfire on a Thursday afternoon,
it could be for a wedding, or it could be for you.
Always enter a home with your right foot;
the left is for cemeteries and unclean places.
O-guf! Tera armeek is rarely useful.
It means Stop! Or I’ll shoot.
Sabah el khair is effective.
It means Good morning.
Inshallah means Allah be willing.
Listen well when it is spoken.
You will hear the RPG coming for you.
Not so the roadside bomb.
There are bombs under the overpasses,
in trashpiles, in bricks, in cars.
There are shopping carts with clothes soaked
in foogas, a sticky gel of homemade napalm.
Parachute bombs and artillery shells
sewn into the carcasses of dead farm animals.
Graffiti sprayed onto the overpasses:
I will kell you, American.
Men wearing vests rigged with explosives
walk up, raise their arms and say Inshallah.
There are men who earn eighty dollars
to attack you, five thousand to kill.
Small children who will play with you,
old men with their talk, women who offer chai—
and any one of them
may dance over your body tomorrow.
from p. 9 of Here Bullet
Page 85 of 93
Dog’s Death
JOHN UPDIKE (1932-2009)
She must have been kicked unseen or brushed by a car.
Too young to know much, she was beginning to learn
To use the newspapers spread on the kitchen floor
And to win, wetting there, the words, "Good dog! Good dog!"
We thought her shy malaise was a shot reaction.
The autopsy disclosed a rupture in her liver.
As we teased her with play, blood was filling her skin
And her heart was learning to lie down forever.
Monday morning, as the children were noisily fed
And sent to school, she crawled beneath the youngest's bed.
We found her twisted limp but still alive.
In the car to the vet's, on my lap, she tried
To bite my hand and died. I stroked her warm fur
And my wife called in a voice imperious with tears.
Though surrounded by love that would have upheld her,
Nevertheless she sank and, stiffening, disappeared.
Back home, we found that in the night her frame,
Drawing near to dissolution, had endured the shame
Of diarrhoea and had dragged across the floor
To a newspaper carelessly left there. Good dog.
Another Dog’s Death by JOHN UPDIKE
For days the good old bitch had been dying, her back
pinched down to the spine and arched to ease the pain,
her kidneys dry, her muzzle white. At last
I took a shovel into the woods and dug her grave
in preparation for the certain. She came along,
which I had not expected. Still, the children gone,
such expeditions were rare, and the dog,
spayed early, knew no nonhuman word for love.
She made her stiff legs trot and let her bent tail wag.
We found a spot we liked, where the pines met the field.
The sun warmed her fur as she dozed and I dug;
I carved her a safe place while she protected me.
I measured her length with the shovel’s long handle;
she perked in amusement, and sniffed the heaped-up earth.
Back down at the house, she seemed friskier,
but gagged, eating. We called the vet a few days later.
They were old friends. She held up a paw, and he
injected a violet fluid. She swooned on the lawn;
we watched her breathing quickly slow and cease.
In a wheelbarrow up to the hole, her warm fur shone.
Page 86 of 93
The Mystery of the Caves
MICHAEL WATERS (1949-
) He was born in Brooklyn, NY.
I don’t remember the name of the story,
but the hero, a boy, was lost,
wandering a labyrinth of caverns
Filling stratum by stratum with water.
I was wondering what might happen:
would he float upward toward light?
Or would he somersault forever
in an underground black river?
I couldn’t stop reading the book
because I had to know the answer.
because my mother was leaving again—
the lid of the trunk thrown open,
blouses torn from their hangers,
the crazy shouting among rooms.
The boy found it impossible to see
which passage led to safety.
One yellow finger of flame
wavered on his last match.
There was a blur of perfume—
Mother breaking miniature bottles,
Then my father gripping her,
but too tightly, by both arms.
The boy wasn’t able to breathe.
I think he wanted me to help,
but I was small, and it was late.
And my mother was sobbing now,
no longer cursing her life,
repeating my father’s name
among bright islands of skirts
circling the rim of the bed.
I can’t recall the whole story,
what happened at the end….
Sometimes I worry that the boy
is still searching below the earth
for a thin pencil of light,
that I can almost hear him
through great volumes of water,
through centuries of stone,
crying my name among blind fish,
wanting so much to come home.
from Anniversary of the Air (1985), reprinted in Parthenopi (2005).
Page 87 of 93
Did I Miss Anything?
TOM WAYMAN (1945- )
Nothing. When we realized you weren’t here
we sat with our hands folded on our desks
in silence, for the full two hours
Everything., I gave an exam worth
40 percent of the grade for this term
and assigned some reading due today
on which I’m about to hand out a quiz
worth 50 percent
Nothing. None of the content of this course
has value or meaning
Take as many days off as you like:
any activities we undertake as a class
I assure you will not matter either to you or me
and are without purpose
Everything. A few minutes after we began last time
a shaft of light suddenly descended and an angel
or other heavenly being appeared
and revealed to us what each woman or man must do
to attain divine wisdom in this life and the hereafter
This is the last time the class will meet
before we disperse to bring the good news to all people on earth
Nothing. When you are not present
how could something significant occur?
Everything. Contained in this classroom
is a microcosm of human experience
assembled for you to query and examine and ponder
This is not the only place such an opportunity has been gathered
but it was one place
And you weren’t here
From pp. 37-38 of Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry (2003), edited by Billy Collins.
Page 88 of 93
This Is Just to Say
WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS (1883-1963) He was born in Rutherford, NJ.
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
Page 89 of 93
Five Houses Down
CHRISTIAN WIMAN (1966- ) He was raised in West Texas and is now the Editor of Poetry Magazine.
I loved his ten demented chickens
and the hell-eyed dog, the mailbox
shaped like a huge green gun.
I loved the eyesore opulence
of his five partial cars, the wonder-cluttered porch
with its oilspill plumage, tools
cauled in oil, the dark
clockwork of disassembled engines
christened Sweet Baby and benedicted Old Bitch;
and down the steps into the yard the explosion
of mismatched parts and black scraps
amid which, like a bad sapper cloaked
in luck, he would look up stunned,
patting the gut that slopped out of his undershirt
and saying, Son,
you lookin’ to make some scratch?
All afternoon we’d pile the flatbed high
with stacks of Exxon floormats
mysteriously stencilled with his name,
rain-rotted sheetrock or miles
of misfitted pipes, coil after coil
of rusted fencewire that stained for days
every crease of me, rollicking it all
to the dump where, while he called
every ragman and ravened junkdog by name,
he catpicked the avalanche of trash
and fished some always fixable thing
up from the depths. Something
about his endless aimless work
was not work, my father said.
Somehow his barklike earthquake curses
were not curses, for he could goddam
a slipped wrench and ******** a stuck latch,
but one bad word from me
made his whole being
twang like a nail mis-struck. Ain’t no call for that,
son, no call at all. Slipknot, whatknot, knot
from which no man escapes—
prestoed back to plain old rope;
whipsnake, blacksnake, deep in the wormdirt
worms like the clutch of mud:
I wanted to live forever
five houses down
in the womanless rooms a woman
sometimes seemed to move through, leaving him
twisting a hand-stitched dishtowel
or idly wiping the volcanic dust.
It seemed like heaven to me:
Page 90 of 93
beans and weenies from paper plates,
black-fingered tinkerings on the back stoop
as the sun set, on an upturned fruitcrate
a little jamjar of rye like ancient light,
from which, once, I took a single, secret sip,
my eyes tearing and my throat on fire.
From pp. 7-9 of Every Riven Thing (2010)
Page 91 of 93
I Said Yes But I Meant No
DEAN YOUNG (1955- ) He was born in Columbia, PA.
People are compelled to be together good and bad.
You’ve agreed to shrimp with the geology couple.
If you like one 85% and the other 35%
That’s not so bad.
You need to like one at least 70%
and like the other not less than 25%
otherwise it’s agonizing and pointless
like being crucified without religious significance.
Averages are misleading.
I like that couple 110% could mean
each is appreciated 55% which will not kill you
but neither will sleeping in you own urine.
One should like oneself between 60 and 80%.
Under 45%, one becomes an undertaking,
prone to eating disorders, public weeping,
useless for gift wrapping and relay races.
Over 85% means you are a self-involved bore,
I don’t care about your Nobel Prize in positrons
or your dog sled victories.
Of course there is a great variance throughout the day.
You may feel 0% upon first waking
but that is because you don’t yet know you exist
which is why baby-studies have been a bust.
Then as you venture forth to boil water,
You may fee a sudden surge to 90%,
Hey, I’m GOOD at boiling water!
which can be promptly counteracted by turning on your e-mail.
It is important not to let variance become too extreme,
a range of 40% is allowable,
beyond that it is as great storms upon drought-stricken land.
i.e. mudslides.
Sugar, retirement plans, impending jail time
all are influential factors.
Generally, most data has been gathered
regarding raising percentages,
the modern world it is argued is plentiful
with opportunities of negative effect.
The tanker spills and the shore birds turn black and lose their ability to float.
Sometimes a good scrub is all that’s needed.
A fresh shirt.
Shock therapy has never been fully discounted
and people have felt significant surges
from backpacking into remote and elevated areas,
a call home.
Yet the very same may backfire.
Thwamp, thwamp, the helicopter lowers the rescue crew,
the phone slammed down.
Each case is profoundly nuanced.
Page 92 of 93
like the lock systems of Holland.
Some, frankly, are beyond help,
but it you are a tall woman, wear shoes to make you taller!
Candy corn, what kind of person doesn’t like candy corn?
Tell that 70 / 35 % rock couple you can not come,
you forgot your fencing lesson,
your cat just had a puppy,
your tongue is green,
you are in fact dying.
From p. 243-245 of Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry (2003), edited by Billy Collins.
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