Nikki Giovanni
“Poetry”
Poetry is motion graceful
As a fawn
Strong like the eye
Finding peace in a crowded room
We poets tend to think our words
are golden
Though emotion speaks too
Loudly to be defined
By silence
Sometimes after midnight or just
Before
The dawn
We sit typewriter in hand
Pulling loneliness around us
Forgetting our lovers or children
who are sleeping
Ignoring the weary wariness
Of our own logic
To compose a poem
No one understands it
It never says “love me” for poets
are
Beyond love
It never says “accept me” for
poems seek not
acceptance but controversy
it only says “I am” and therefore
I concede that you are too
a poem is pure energy
horizontally contained between the
mind
of the poet and the ear of the
reader
if it does not sing discard the dear
for poetry is song
if it does not delight discard
the heart for poetry is joy
if it does not inform then close
off the brain for it is dead
if it cannot heed the insistent
message
that life is precious
which is all we poets
wrapped in our loneliness
are trying to say
“How to Eat a Poem”
Eve Merriam
Don’t be polite.
Bite in.
Pick it up with your fingers and lick the juice
that may run down your chin.
It is ready and ripe now, wherever you are.
You do not need a knife or fork or spoon
Or plate or napkin or tablecloth.
For there is no core
Or stem
Or rind
Or pit
Or seed
Or skin
To throw away.
“Filling Station” Elizabeth Bishop
Oh, but it is dirty!
ESSO-SO-SO-SO
--this little filling station,
To high-strung automobiles.
Oil-soaked, oil-permeated
Somebody loves us all.
To a disturbing, over-all
Black translucency.
Be careful with that match!
Father wears a dirty,
Oil-soaked monkey suit
That cuts him under the arms,
And several quick and saucy
And greasy sons assist him
(it’s a family filling station),
All quite thoroughly dirty.
Do they live in the station?
It has a cement porch
Behind the pumps, and on it
A set of crushed and greaseImpregnated wickerwork;
On the wicker sofa
A dirty dog, quite comfy.
Some comic books provide
The only note of color—
Of certain color. They lie
Upon a big dim doily
Draping a taboret
(part of the set), beside
A big hirsute begonia.
Why the extraneous plant?
Why the taboret?
Why, oh why, the doily?
(Embroidered in daisy stitch
With marguerites, I think,
And heavy with gray crochet.)
Somebody embroidered the doily.
Somebody waters the plant,
Or oils it, maybe. Somebody
Arranges the rows of cans
So that they softly say:
“A Deserted Barn” Larry
Woiwode
I am a deserted barn—
My cattle robbed from me
My horses gone,
Light leaking in my sides, sun
Piercing my tin roof
Where it’s torn.
I am a deserted barn.
Dung’s still in my gutter.
It shrinks each year as side planks
shrink,
Letting in more of the elements,
And flies.
Worried by termites, dung beetles,
Maggots, and rats,
Visited by pigeons and
hawks,
No longer able to say what shall
enter,
Or what shall not,
I am a deserted barn.
I stand in Michigan,
A gray shape at the edge of a cedar
swamp.
Starlings come to my peak,
Dirty, and perch there;
Swallows light on bent
Lightning rods whose blue
Globes have gone to
A tenant’s son and his .22.
My door is torn.
It sags from rusted rails it once
rolled upon,
Waiting for a wind to lift it loose;
Then a bigger wind will take out
My back wall.
But winter is what I fear,
When swallows and hawks
Abandon me, when insects and
rodents retreat,
When starlings, like the last
of bad thoughts, go off,
And nothing is left to fill me
Except reflections—
Reflections, at noon,
From the cold cloak of snow, and
Reflections, at night, from the
reflected light of the moon.
“the/sky/was” E.E. Cummings
The
Sky
Was
Can dy lu
Minous
Edible
Spry
Pinks shy
Lemons
Greens coo l choc
Olate
s.
un der,
a lo
co
mo
tive s pout
ing
vi
o
lets
“Blackberry Eating” Galway
Kinnell
I love to go out in late September
Among the fat, overripe, icy, black
blackberries
To eat blackberries for breakfast,
The stalks very prickly, a penalty
They earn for knowing the
Black art
Of blackberry-making; and as I
stand among them
Lifting the stalks to my mouth, the
ripest berries
Fall almost unbidden to my
tongue,
As words sometimes do, certain
Peculiar words
Like strengths or squinched,
Many-lettered, one-syllabled
lumps,
Which I squeeze, squinch open,
and splurge well
In the silent, startled, icy black
language
Of blackberry-eating in late
September.
“Forgotten Language” Shel Silverstein
Once I spoke the language of flowers,
Once I understood each word the caterpillar said,
Once I smiled in secret at the gossip of the starlings,
And shared a conversation with the housefly
In my bed.
Once I heard and answered all the questions
of the crickets,
And joined the crying of each falling dying
flake of snow,
Once I spoke the language of the flowers…
How did it go?
How did it go?
“Hector the Collector” Shel
Silverstein
Hector the Collector
Collected bits of string,
Collected dolls with broken heads
And rusty bells that would not
ring.
Pieces out of picture puzzles,
Bent-up nails and ice-cream sticks,
Twists of wires, worn-out tires,
Paper bags and broken bricks.
Old chipped vases, half shoelaces,
Gatlin’ guns that wouldn’t shoot,
Leaky boats that wouldn’t float
And stopped-up horns that
wouldn’t toot.
Butter knives that had no handles,
Copper keys that fit no locks,
Rings that were too small for
fingers,
Dried-up leaves and patched-up
socks.
Worn-out belts that had no
buckles.
‘Lectric trains that had no tracks.
Airplane models, broken bottles,
Three-legged chairs and cups with
cracks.
Hector the collector
Loved these things with all his
soul—
Loved them more than shining
diamonds,
Loved them more than glistenin;
gold.
Hectore called to all the people,
“Come and share my treasure
trunk!”
And all the silly sightless people
Came and looked…and called it
junk.
“The Lost Parrott” Naomi Shihab Nye
He talks slowly, like his voice travels far
To get out of his body
A dream-parrot?
No, a real parrot!
Write about it
He squirms, looks nervous,
Before anything else he loves
everyone else is almost finished
Gets away.
And he hasn’t started
If felt
What left?
The parrot
He hunches over the table, pencil
gripped in fist,
Shaping the heavy letters
Days later we will write storypoems, sound-poems,
But always the same subject for
Carlos
It left
He will insist on reading it and the
class will look puzzled
The class is tired of the parrot
Write more, Carlos
I can’t
Why not?
I don’t know where it went
Each day when I leave he stares at
the ceiling
Maybe he is planning an
expedition
Into the back streets of San
Antonio
Armed with nets and ripe mangoes
He will find the parrot nesting in a
rain gutter
This time he will guard it
carefully, make sure it stays
Before winter comes and his paper
goes white in all directions
“My Father’s Song”
Simon Ortiz
Wanting to say things,
I miss my father tonight.
His voice, the slight catch,
The depth from his thin chest,
The tremble of emotion
In something he has just said
To his son, his song:
We planted corn one Spring at
Acu—we planted several times
But this one particular time
I remember the soft damp sand in
my hand.
My father had stopped at one point
to show me an overturned furrow;
The plowshare had unearthed
The burrow nest of a mouse
In the soft moist sand.
Very gently, he
Scooped tiny pink animals
Into the palm of his hand
And told me to touch them.
We took them to the edge
Of the field and put
Them in the shade
Of a sand moist clod.
I remember the very softness
Of cool and warm sand and tiny
alive mice and my father saying
things.
“The Charge of the Light Brigade”
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
1
Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
“Forward, the Light Brigade!”
“Charge for the guns!” he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
2.
“Forward, the Light Brigade!”
Was there a man dismay’d?
Not tho’ the soldier knew
Someone had blunder’d
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
3.
Cannon to the right of them,
Cannon to the left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley’d and thunder’d;
Storm’d at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.
“Corners of the Sky” Author
Unknown
Our earth is round, and, among
other things
That means that you and I can hold
Completely different
Points of view and both be right.
The difference of our positions
will show
Stars in your window. I cannot
even imagine.
Your sky may burn with light,
While mine, at the same moment,
Spreads beautiful to darkness.
Still, we must choose how we
separately corner
The circling universe of our
experience
Once chosen, our cornering will
determine
The message of any star and
darkness we encounter.
“Under the Apple Tree”
Diana Rivera
I like it here,
Under the apple tree,
Knotty, with its hollow
Belly
Here
Sitting on its branch
Above stone fences that separate
pastures,
Taking life
Here
With the sun that strokes
The sides of trees
Casting its shadows on emerald
hills.
I like it here,
Entering the dark crevice of
trunks,
Studying the butterfly’s tiny blue
hearts
On powdery wings.
Like horses with their swerved
necks,
I concentrate on grass.
Earthworms insert themselves into
the earth like glossy, pink pins!