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1. The Summer I Was Sixteen
Geraldine Connolly
The turquoise pool rose up to meet us,
its slide a silver afterthought down which
we plunged, screaming, into a mirage of bubbles.
We did not exist beyond the gaze of a boy.
Shaking water off our limbs, we lifted
up from ladder rungs across the fern-cool
lip of rim. Afternoon. Oiled and sated,
we sunbathed, rose and paraded the concrete,
danced to the low beat of "Duke of Earl".
Past cherry colas, hot-dogs, Dreamsicles,
we came to the counter where bees staggered
into root beer cups and drowned. We gobbled
cotton candy torches, sweet as furtive kisses,
shared on benches beneath summer shadows.
Cherry. Elm. Sycamore. We spread our chenille
blankets across grass, pressed radios to our ears,
mouthing the old words, then loosened
thin bikini straps and rubbed baby oil with iodine
across sunburned shoulders, tossing a glance
through the chain link at an improbable world.
from Province of Fire, 1998
Iris Press, Oak Ridge, Tenn.
all night; now it clears, and a robin
burbles from a dripping bush
like the neighbor who means well
but always says the wrong thing.
from Otherwise: New & Selected Poems, 1996
Graywolf Press, St. Paul, Minnesota
3. Lines
Martha Collins
Draw a line. Write a line. There.
Stay in line, hold the line, a glance
between the lines is fine but don't
turn corners, cross, cut in, go over
or out, between two points of no
return's a line of flight, between
two points of view's a line of vision.
But a line of thought is rarely
straight, an open line's no party
line, however fine your point.
A line of fire communicates, but drop
your weapons and drop your line,
consider the shortest distance from x
to y, let x be me, let y be you.
from Some Things Words Can Do, 1998
The Sheep Meadows Press, Riverdale-on-Hudson,
N.Y.
Copyright 1988 by Martha Collins.
2. The Blue Bowl
Jane Kenyon
Like primitives we buried the cat
with his bowl. Bare-handed
we scraped sand and gravel
back into the hole.
They fell with a hiss
and thud on his side,
on his long red fur, the white feathers
between his toes, and his
long, not to say aquiline, nose.
We stood and brushed each other off.
There are sorrows keener than these.
Silent the rest of the day, we worked,
ate, stared, and slept. It stormed
4. The Distances
Henry Rago
This house, pitched now
The dark wide stretch
Of plains and ocean
To these hills over
The night-filled river,
Billows with night,
Swells with the rooms
Of sleeping children, pulls
Slowly from this bed,
Slowly returns, pulls and holds,
Is held where we
Lock all distances!
Ah, how the distances
2
Spiral from that
Secrecy:
Room,
Rooms, roof
Spun to the huge
Midnight, and into
The rings and rings of stars.
from A Sky of Late Summer, 1963
The Macmillan Company
5. “Do You Have Any Advice For Those of Us
Just Starting Out?"
Ron Koertge
Give up sitting dutifully at your desk. Leave
your house or apartment. Go out into the world.
It's all right to carry a notebook but a cheap
one is best, with pages the color of weak tea
and on the front a kitten or a space ship.
Avoid any enclosed space where more than
three people are wearing turtlenecks. Beware
any snow-covered chalet with deer tracks
across the muffled tennis courts.
Not surprisingly, libraries are a good place to write.
And the perfect place in a library is near an aisle
where a child a year or two old is playing as his
mother browses the ranks of the dead.
Often he will pull books from the bottom shelf.
The title, the author's name, the brooding photo
on the flap mean nothing. Red book on black, gray
book on brown, he builds a tower. And the higher
it gets, the wider he grins.
You who asked for advice, listen: When the tower
falls, be like that child. Laugh so loud everybody
in the world frowns and says, "Shhhh."
Then start again.
from Fever, 2006
Red Hen Press
6. Numbers
Mary Cornish
I like the generosity of numbers.
The way, for example,
they are willing to count
anything or anyone:
two pickles, one door to the room,
eight dancers dressed as swans.
I like the domesticity of addition-add two cups of milk and stir-the sense of plenty: six plums
on the ground, three more
falling from the tree.
And multiplication's school
of fish times fish,
whose silver bodies breed
beneath the shadow
of a boat.
Even subtraction is never loss,
just addition somewhere else:
five sparrows take away two,
the two in someone else's
garden now.
There's an amplitude to long division,
as it opens Chinese take-out
box by paper box,
inside every folded cookie
a new fortune.
And I never fail to be surprised
by the gift of an odd remainder,
footloose at the end:
forty-seven divided by eleven equals four,
with three remaining.
Three boys beyond their mothers' call,
two Italians off to the sea,
one sock that isn't anywhere you look.
from Poetry magazine
Volume CLXXVI, Number 3, June 2000
3
8. Passer-by, these are words...
Yves Bonnefoy
7. The Cord
Leanne O’Sullivan
I used to lie on the floor for hours after
school with the phone cradled between
my shoulder and my ear, a plate of cold
rice to my left, my school books to my right.
Twirling the cord between my fingers
I spoke to friends who recognized the
language of our realm. Throats and lungs
swollen, we talked into the heart of the night,
toying with the idea of hair dye and suicide,
about the boys who didn’t love us,
who we loved too much, the pang
of the nights. Each sentence was
new territory, like a door someone was
rushing into, the glass shattering
with delirium, with knowledge and fear.
My Mother never complained about the phone bill,
what it cost for her daughter to disappear
behind a door, watching the cord
stretching its muscle away from her.
Perhaps she thought it was the only way
she could reach me, sending me away
to speak in the underworld.
As long as I was speaking
she could put my ear to the tenuous earth
and allow me to listen, to decipher.
And these were the elements of my Mother,
the earthed wire, the burning cable,
as if she flowed into the room with
me to somehow say, Stay where I can reach you,
the dim room, the dark earth. Speak of this
and when you feel removed from it
I will pull the cord and take you
back towards me.
From Waiting for My Clothes, 2004
Bloodaxe Books
This poem is spoken by an
epitaph -- words on a tombstone.
Passer-by, these are words. But instead of reading
I want you to listen: to this frail
Voice like that of letters eaten by grass.
Lend an ear, hear first of all the happy bee
Foraging in our almost rubbed-out names.
It flits between two sprays of leaves,
Carrying the sound of branches that are real
To those that filigree the still unseen.
Then know an even fainter sound, and let it be
The endless murmuring of all our shades.
Their whisper rises from beneath the stones
To fuse into a single heat with that blind
Light you are as yet, who can still gaze.
May your listening be good! Silence
Is a threshold where a twig breaks in your hand,
Imperceptibly, as you attempt to disengage
A name upon a stone:
And so our absent names untangle your alarms.
And for you who move away, pensively,
Here becomes there without ceasing to be.
from The Partisan Review
Volume LXVII, Number 2, Spring 2001
Translated from the French by Hoyt Rogers
9. The Poet
Tom Wayman
Loses his position on worksheet or page in textbook
May speak much but makes little sense
Cannot give clear verbal instructions
Does not understand what he reads
Does not understand what he hears
Cannot handle “yes-no” questions
Has great difficulty interpreting proverbs
Has difficulty recalling what he ate for breakfast,
etc.
Cannot tell a story from a picture
Cannot recognize visual absurdities
4
Has difficulty classifying and categorizing objects
Has difficulty retaining such things as
addition and subtraction facts, or multiplication
tables
May recognize a word one day and not the next
From In a Small House on the Outskirts of Heaven,
1989
Harbour Publishing
10. Radio
Laurel Blossom
No radio
in car
No radio
No nuthin
(no kidding)
Radio Broken
Nothing Left!
Radio Gone
Note Hole in Dashboard
Warning!
Radio Will Not Play
When Removed
Security Code Required
No radio on board
Would you keep
Anything valuable
In this wreck?
No radio
Already stolen
No valuables
In this van
Absolutely no radio!
Please do not
Break-in
Unnecessarily
Radio broken
Alarm is set
To go off
No radio
No money
No radio
no valuables
No radio or
valuables
in car or trunk
Thank you
For your kind
Consideration
Nothing of value
in car
No radio
No tapes
No telephone
from The Papers Said , 2001
Greenhouse Review Press
No radio
Stolen 3X
No radio
Empty trunk
Empty glove compartment
Honest
In car
Nothing of value
11. Dorie Off To Atlanta
Mark Halliday
Jen? Hi, it’s Dorie. I’m on the bus to LaGuardia. …
Atlanta.
What? … Maybe. I’m not really sure. I mean his
schedule is so
whacked,
5
y’know? … But anyway. I was telling you about
Marcie. Yeah.
So
I said to her, I said, Marcie, this one seems
different, y’know?
I said the last few guys you’ve dated–from what
you’ve told
me–
I mean frankly– … Yeah. I said, Marcie, they might
be
like very charming, y’know, and with great jobs,
but frankly–
what it comes down to is, Let’s hit the bed,
and in the morning, Thanks for the excellent coffee.
Y’know?
But this guy– … What? It’s Jason. Yeah.
So I said Marcie, from what you’ve said, Jason
sounds
different–
and from what Bob said about him also. … Bob
knows him
from some project last fall. So I said Marcie, you’ve
had, what,
two coffees, two lunches, and a dinner, and he still
hasn’t– …
No, Bob says he’s definitely straight. …
I think there was a divorce like six years ago or
something. But
my–
What? … That’s right, yeah, I did. At Nathan’s
party after some
show …
Yeah, “The Duchess of Malfi,” I forgot I told you.
What? …
Only for five minutes–one cigarette, y’know? …
Kind of lowKey,
like thoughtful. But my point is– … Yeah, exactly!
So I said,
Marcie, this is a guy who understands, y’know,
that bed is like part of something, y’know?
Like it’s not the big objective for godsake. It’s like
an aspect–
What? … Exactly–it’s an expression of something
much more–
Yes!–it’s like, Can we be companions in life,
y’know?
So I said, Marcie, for godsake–if you don’t give this
guy
like a serious chance, somebody else–y’know? …
Right,
I mean let’s face it– … Jen? I’m losing you here–
am I breaking
up?
Jen, I’ll call you from the airport–Okay bye.
From The Gettysburg Review, vol. 17 no. 1
Gettysburg College
12. Wheels
Jim Daniels
My brother kept
in a frame on the wall
pictures of every motorcycle, car, truck:
in his rusted out Impala convertible
wearing his cap and gown
waving
in his yellow Barracuda
with a girl leaning into him
waving
on his Honda 350
waving
on his Honda 750 with the boys
holding a beer
waving
in his first rig
wearing a baseball hat backwards
waving
in his Mercury Montego
getting married
waving
in his black LTD
trying to sell real estate
waving
back to driving trucks
a shiny new rig
waving
on his Harley Sportster
with his wife on the back
waving
his son in a car seat
with his own steering wheel
my brother leaning over him
in an old Ford pickup
and they are
waving
holding a wrench a rag
a hose a shammy
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waving.
My brother helmetless
rides off on his Harley
waving
my brother's feet
rarely touch the groundwaving waving
face pressed to the wind
no camera to save him.
from Places/Everyone, 1985
(University of Wisconsin Press, 1985)
13. After Us
Connie Wanek
I don't know if we're in the beginning
or in the final stage.
-- Tomas Tranströmer
Rain is falling through the roof.
And all that prospered under the sun,
the books that opened in the morning
and closed at night, and all day
turned their pages to the light;
from Poetry magazine
Volume CLXXVII, Number 3, January 2001
14. Domestic Work, 1937
Natasha Trethewey
All week she's cleaned
someone else's house,
stared down her own face
in the shine of copperbottomed pots, polished
wood, toilets she'd pull
the lid to--that look saying
Let's make a change, girl.
But Sunday mornings are hers-church clothes starched
and hanging, a record spinning
on the console, the whole house
dancing. She raises the shades,
washes the rooms in light,
buckets of water, Octagon soap.
Cleanliness is next to godliness ...
the sketches of boats and strong forearms
and clever faces, and of fields
and barns, and of a bowl of eggs,
and lying across the piano
the silver stick of a flute; everything
Windows and doors flung wide,
curtains two-stepping
forward and back, neck bones
bumping in the pot, a choir
of clothes clapping on the line.
invented and imagined,
everything whispered and sung,
all silenced by cold rain.
Nearer my God to Thee ...
The sky is the color of gravestones.
The rain tastes like salt, and rises
in the streets like a ruinous tide.
We spoke of millions, of billions of years.
We talked and talked.
Then a drop of rain fell
into the sound hole of the guitar, another
onto the unmade bed. And after us,
the rain will cease or it will go on falling,
even upon itself.
She beats time on the rugs,
blows dust from the broom
like dandelion spores, each one
a wish for something better.
from Domestic Work, 1999
Graywolf Press, St. Paul, Minn.
15. Before She Died
Karen Chase
When I look at the sky now, I look at it for you.
7
As if with enough attention, I could take it in for
you.
With all the leaves gone almost from
the trees, I did not walk briskly through the field.
Bill Knott
I lay down in the empty street and parked
My feet against the gutter's curb while from
The building above a bunch of gawkers perched
Along its ledges urged me don't, don't jump.
Late today with my dog Wool, I lay down in the
upper field,
he panting and aged, me looking at the blue.
Leaning
from Laugh at the End of the World:
Collected Comic Poems 1969-1999
BOA Editions, Ltd.
on him, I wondered how finite these lustered days
seem
to you, A stand of hemlock across the lake catches
18. One Morning
Eamon Grennan
my eye. It will take a long time to know how it is
for you. Like a dog's lifetime -- long -- multiplied
by sevens.
from Kazimierz Square, 2000
CavanKerry Press, Fort Lee, N.J.
16. Poetry
Don Paterson
In the same way that the mindless diamond keeps
one spark of the planet's early fires
trapped forever in its net of ice,
it's not love's later heat that poetry holds,
but the atom of the love that drew it forth
from the silence: so if the bright coal of his love
begins to smoulder, the poet hears his voice
suddenly forced, like a bar-room singer's -- boastful
with his own huge feeling, or drowned by violins;
but if it yields a steadier light, he knows
the pure verse, when it finally comes, will sound
like a mountain spring, anonymous and serene.
Beneath the blue oblivious sky, the water
sings of nothing, not your name, not mine.
from The White Lie; New and Selected Poetry,
2001
Graywolf Press, St. Paul, Minn.
17. Advice from the Experts
Looking for distinctive stones, I found the dead
otter
rotting by the tideline, and carried all day the scent
of this savage
valediction. That headlong high sound the
oystercatcher makes
came echoing through the rocky cove
where a cormorant was feeding and submarining in
the bay
and a heron rose off a boulder where he'd been
invisible,
drifted a little, stood again -- a hieroglyph
or just longevity reflecting on itself
between the sky clouding over and the lightly
ruffled water.
This was the morning after your dream of dying, of
being held
and told it didn't matter. A butterfly went jinking
over
the wave-silky stones, and where I turned
to go up the road again, a couple in a blue camper
sat
smoking their cigarettes over their breakfast coffee
(blue
scent of smoke, the thick dark smell of fresh coffee)
and talking in quiet voices, first one then the other
answering,
their radio telling the daily news behind them. It
was warm.
All seemed at peace. I could feel the sun coming off
the water.
from Relations: New and Selected Poems, 1998
8
Graywolf Press, St. Paul, Minn.
19. Marcus Millsap: School Day Afternoon
Dave Etter
National I Hate Myself and Want to Die Day
(which means the next day I will love my life
and want to live forever). The forecast calls
for a cold night in Boston all morning
I climb the steps of the yellow school bus,
move to a seat in back, and we're off,
bouncing along the bumpy blacktop.
What am I going to do when I get home?
I'm going to make myself a sugar sandwich
and go outdoors and look at the birds
and the gigantic blue silo
they put up across the road at Motts'.
This weekend we're going to the farm show.
I like roosters and pigs, but farming's no fun.
When I get old enough to do something big,
I'd like to grow orange trees in a greenhouse.
Or maybe I'll drive a school bus
and yell at the kids when I feel mad:
"Shut up back there, you hear me?"
At last, my house, and I grab my science book
and hurry down the steps into the sun.
There's Mr. Mott, staring at his tractor.
He's wearing his DeKalb cap
with the crazy winged ear of corn on it.
He wouldn't wave over here to me
if I was handing out hundred dollar bills.
I'll put brown sugar on my bread this time,
then go lie around by the water pump,
where the grass is very green and soft,
soft as the body of a red-winged blackbird.
Imagine, a blue silo to stare at,
and Mother not coming home till dark!
and all afternoon. They say
tomorrow will be just like today,
only different. I’m in the cemetery now
at the edge of town, how did I get here?
from Alliance, Illinois
Spoon River Petry Press, 1983
So this is what it's like to have to
practice amiability and learn
to say the orchard looks grand this evening
20. Publication Date
Franz Wright
as the sun slips behind scumbled clouds
and the pears, mellowed to a golden-green,
glow like flames among the boughs.
One of the few pleasures of writing
is the thought of one’s book in the hands of a kindhearted
intelligent person somewhere. I can’t remember
what the
others are right now.
I just noticed that it is my own private
A sparrow limps past on its little bone crutch saying
I am Federico Garcia Lorca
risen from the dead–
literature will lose, sunlight will win, don’t worry.
From FIELD: Contemporary Poetry and Poetics,
vol. 70, 2004
Oberlin College Press
21. Gouge, Adze, Rasp, Hammer
Chris Forhan
So this is what it's like when love
leaves, and one is disappointed
that the body and mind continue to exist,
exacting payment from each other,
engaging in stale rituals of desire,
and it would seem the best use of one's time
is not to stand for hours outside
her darkened house, drenched and chilled,
blinking into the slanting rain.
It is now one claims there is comfort
in the constancy of nature, in the wind's way
of snatching dogwood blossoms from their
branches,
scattering them in the dirt, in the slug's
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sure, slow arrival to nowhere.
It is now one makes a show of praise
23. She Didn't Mean to Do It
Daisy Fried
for the lilac that strains so hard to win
attention to its sweet inscrutability,
when one admires instead the lowly
Oh, she was sad, oh, she was sad.
She didn't mean to do it.
gouge, adze, rasp, hammer-fire-forged, blunt-syllabled things,
unthought-of until a need exists:
a groove chiseled to a fixed width,
a roof sloped just so. It is now
one knows what it is to envy
the rivet, wrench, vise -- whatever
works unburdened by memory and sight,
while high above the damp fields
flocks of swallows roil and dip,
and streams churn, thick with leaping salmon,
and the bee advances on the rose.
Certain thrills stay tucked in your limbs,
go no further than your fingers, move your legs
through their paces,
but no more. Certain thrills knock you flat
on your sheets on your bed in your room and you
fade
and they fade. You falter and they're gone, gone,
gone.
Certain thrills puff off you like smoke rings,
some like bell rings growing out, out, turning
brass, steel, gold, till the whole world's filled
with the gonging of your thrills.
But oh, she was sad, she was just sad, sad,
and she didn't mean to do it.
from She Didn't Mean to Do It, 2000
University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, Pa.
originally published in New England Review
Volume 21, Number 4, Fall 2000
22. Hand Shadows
Mary Cornish
My father put his hands in the white light
of the lantern, and his palms became a horse
that flicked its ears and bucked; an alligator
feigning sleep along the canvas wall leapt up
and snapped its jaws in silhouette, or else
a swan would turn its perfect neck and drop
a fingered beak toward that shadowed head
to lightly preen my father's feathered hair.
Outside our tent, skunks shuffled in the woods
beneath a star that died a little every day,
and from a nebula of light diffused
inside Orion's sword, new stars were born.
My father's hands became two birds, linked
by a thumb, they flew one following the other.
24. Snow
David Berman
Walking through a field with my little brother Seth
I pointed to a place where kids had made angels in
the snow.
For some reason, I told him that a troop of angels
had been shot and dissolved when they hit the
ground.
He asked who had shot them and I said a farmer.
Then we were on the roof of the lake.
The ice looked like a photograph of water.
Why he asked. Why did he shoot them.
from Red Studio, 2007
Oberlin College Press
I didn't know where I was going with this.
They were on his property, I said.
10
from Donkey Gospel, 1998
Graywolf Press, St. Paul, Minn.
When it's snowing, the outdoors seem like a room.
Today I traded hellos with my neighbor.
Our voices hung close in the new acoustics.
A room with the walls blasted to shreds and falling.
We returned to our shoveling, working side by side
in silence.
26. In the Well
Andrew Hudgins
My father cinched the rope,
a noose around my waist,
and lowered me into
the darkness. I could taste
my fear. It tasted first
of dark, then earth, then rot.
I swung and struck my head
and at that moment got
But why were they on his property, he asked.
from Actual Air, 1999
Open City Books, New York
25. Grammar
Tony Hoagland
Maxine, back from a weekend with her boyfriend,
smiles like a big cat and says
that she's a conjugated verb.
She's been doing the direct object
with a second person pronoun named Phil,
and when she walks into the room,
everybody turns:
some kind of light is coming from her head.
Even the geraniums look curious,
and the bees, if they were here, would buzz
suspiciously around her hair, looking
for the door in her corona.
We're all attracted to the perfume
of fermenting joy,
we've all tried to start a fire,
and one day maybe it will blaze up on its own.
In the meantime, she is the one today among us
most able to bear the idea of her own beauty,
and when we see it, what we do is natural:
we take our burned hands
out of our pockets,
and clap.
another then: then blood,
which spiked my mouth with iron.
Hand over hand, my father
dropped me from then to then:
then water. Then wet fur,
which I hugged to my chest.
I shouted. Daddy hauled
the wet rope. I gagged, and pressed
my neighbor's missing dog
against me. I held its death
and rose up to my father.
Then light. Then hands. Then breath.
first published in The Southern Review, 2001
Volume 37, Number 2, Spring 2001
27. The Poetry of Bad Weather
Debora Greger
Someone had propped a skateboard
by the door of the classroom,
to make quick his escape, come the bell.
For it was February in Florida,
the air of instruction thick with tanning butter.
Why, my students wondered,
did the great dead poets all live north of us?
Was there nothing to do all winter there
11
but pine for better weather?
Had we a window, the class could keep an eye
on the clock and yet watch the wild plum
nod with the absent grace of the young.
We could study the showy scatter of petals.
We could, for want of a better word, call it
“snowy.”
The room filled with stillness, flake by flake.
Only the dull roar of air forced to spend its life
indoors
could be heard. Not even the songbird
of a cell phone chirped. Go home,
I wanted to tell the horse on the page.
You know the way, even in snow
gone blue with cold.
from Southwest Review, 2006
Volume 91, Number 1, Page 90
28. The Green One Over There
Katia Kapovich
My half-brother had dark sad eyes, wheaten hair
and the same gorgeous skin his mother had.
He was cute and smart and innately kind,
unlike me at his age, according to our father.
Five years younger than me,
Tim attracted all the love
my father had frozen in his heart
when I was growing up.
Tim was brought up on my old books.
He did better than I with poetry,
reciting by six some “grownup” verses
which I couldn’t memorize at eleven.
At eight he wrote a poem
at the back of his math exercise book
and forgot about it.
It was a love poem
with an underlined dedication, “To A.”
It so happened that I knew who A was.
The poem read as follows:
“I loved and missed her so much
that I forgot what she looked like,
and when she entered the classroom
in the morning, I did not recognize her.
I did not recognize her long face,
nor her slow neck, nor her skinny hands,
I had completely forgotten her green eyes.”
It was quite a work of art, in my opinion,
but I told him that to sigh about
legs and necks and eyes
was sentimental and girlish.
He listened to me with dry eyes
and then tore out the page and threw it away
into the wastebasket.
He never wrote poetry again, but I did.
At fifteen I wrote a short story
which had some success and was even
published in a teenage literary magazine
called “Asterisks.” It was around that time
that I stopped visiting my dad’s house
after I realized
that everything about this boy
put me down, humiliated me
and filled me with jealousy.
I would meet dad on one condition:
if he wanted to see me,
he had to come to my place
or to stop by at the artsy café,
where my older friend Lena and I
would go after school
to sip strawberry milkshakes.
One day my father
came to my school during class hours
to take me to a hospital: the night before
my half-brother had gotten sick.
We arrived in the middle of the doctor’s rounds.
The waiting area was noisy
and smelled of urine and medication.
Dad had gone inside,
I waited for him to call me in.
Through the door left ajar
I saw a row of iron bunks with striped mattresses.
Tim’s was next to the door.
He lay leaning on a big gray pillow,
a glass of water in his hand.
The doctor wanted him to take a pill,
but he wouldn’t hear of it.
He was willful, obstreperous,
he pushed away the hand of medicine.
“I want that ship, that ship …” he whined.
“What ship?” My father turned pale
and stared at the doctor. “Can’t you see?
The green one, over there!” cried Tim,
12
inserting his finger in the glass of water
where a green ship, a three-funneled steamer,
was slowly sinking at the time.
smoke a cigarette and wipe my tears
with the sleeve of my old pullover.
I am free from regrets but not from pain.
From Gogol in Rome, 2004
Salt Publishing
Ten years of fears, unrequited loves, odd jobs,
of night phone calls. Now they’ve disconnected the
line.
I drop the ashes in the sink, pour turpentine
into a jar, stirring with a spatula. My heart throbs
in my right palm when I pick up the brush again.
29. Fault
Ron Koertge
In the airport bar, I tell my mother not to worry.
No one ever tripped and fell into the San Andreas
Fault. But as she dabs at her dry eyes, I remember
those old movies where the earth does open.
There's always one blonde entomologist, four
deceitful explorers, and a pilot who's good-looking
but not smart enough to take off his leather jacket
in the jungle.
Still, he and Dr. Cutie Bug are the only ones
who survive the spectacular quake because
they spent their time making plans to go back
to the Mid-West and live near his parents
For ten years the window’s turquoise square
has held my eyes in its simple frame.
Now, face to face with the darkening sky,
what more can I say to the glass but thanks
for being transparent, seamless, wide
and stretching perspective across the size
of the visible.
Then I wash the brushes and turn off the light.
This is my last night before moving abroad.
I lie down on the floor, a rolled-up coat
under my head. This is the last night.
Freedom smells of a freshly painted room,
of wooden floors swept with a willow broom,
and of stale raisin bread.
while the others wanted to steal the gold and ivory
then move to Los Angeles where they would rarely
call their mothers and almost never fly home
and when they did for only a few days at a time.
From Gogol in Rome, 2004
Salt Publishing
from Geography of the Forehead, 2000
University of Arkansas Press, Fayetteville, Ark.
31. Otherwise
Jane Kenyon
30. Painting a Room
Katia Kapovich
Here on a March day in ‘89
I blanch the ceiling and walls with bluish lime.
Drop cloths and old newspapers hide
the hardwood floors. All my furniture has been sold,
or given away to bohemian friends.
There is nothing to eat but bread and wine.
An immigration visa in my pocket, I paint
the small apartment where I’ve lived for ten years.
Taking a break around 4 p.m.,
I sit on the last chair in the empty kitchen,
I got out of bed
on two strong legs.
It might have been
otherwise. I ate
cereal, sweet
milk, ripe, flawless
peach. It might
have been otherwise.
I took the dog uphill
to the birch wood.
All morning I did
the work I love.
At noon I lay down
with my mate. It might
13
have been otherwise.
We ate dinner together
at a table with silver
candlesticks. It might
have been otherwise.
I slept in a bed
in a room with paintings
on the walls, and
planned another day
just like this day.
But one day, I know,
it will be otherwise.
from Otherwise, 1996
Graywolf Press, St. Paul, Minn.
a raincoat, an old one, dirty
from not having money enough for the cleaners.
She will take out her glasses, and there
in the bookstore, she will thumb
over my poems, then put the book back
up on its shelf. She will say to herself,
"For that kind of money, I can get
my raincoat cleaned." And she will.
from Sure Signs, 1980
University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, Pa.
34. Song
Eamon Grennan
At her Junior High School graduation,
she sings alone
in front of the lot of us--
32. A Primer of the Daily Round
Howard Nemerov
A peels an apple, while B kneels to God,
C telephones to D, who has a hand
On E's knee, F coughs, G turns up the sod
For H's grave, I do not understand
But J is bringing one clay pigeon down
While K brings down a nightstick on L's head,
And M takes mustard, N drives into town,
O goes to bed with P, and Q drops dead,
R lies to S, but happens to be heard
By T, who tells U not to fire V
For having to give W the word
That X is now deceiving Y with Z,
Who happens just now to remember A
Peeling an apple somewhere far away.
her voice soprano, surprising,
almost a woman's. It is
the Our Father in French,
the new language
making her strange, out there,
fully fledged and
ready for anything. Sitting
together -- her separated
mother and father -- we can
hear the racket of traffic
shaking the main streets
of Jersey City as she sings
from New and Selected Poems
University of Chicago Press, 1960
Deliver us from evil,
and I wonder can she see me
in the dark here, years
33. Selecting a Reader
Ted Kooser
from belief, on the edge
of tears. It doesn't matter. She
doesn't miss a beat, keeps
First, I would have her be beautiful,
and walking carefully up on my poetry
at the loneliest moment of an afternoon,
her hair still damp at the neck
from washing it. She should be wearing
in time, in tune, while into
our common silence I whisper,
Sing, love, sing your heart out!
14
from Relations: New and Selected Poems, 1998
Graywolf Press, St. Paul, Minn.
35. White-Eyes
Mary Oliver
In winter
all the singing is in
the tops of the trees
where the wind-bird
with its white eyes
shoves and pushes
among the branches.
Like any of us
he wants to go to sleep,
but he's restless—
he has an idea,
and slowly it unfolds
that has turned itself
into snow.
Copyright 2002 by Mary Oliver.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced with permission
36. Lesson
Forrest Hamer
It was 1963 or 4, summer,
and my father was driving our family
from Ft. Hood to North Carolina in our 56 Buick.
We'd been hearing about Klan attacks, and we knew
Mississippi to be more dangerous than usual.
Dark lay hanging from the trees the way moss did,
and when it moaned light against the windows
that night, my father pulled off the road to sleep.
from under his beating wings
as long as he stays awake
But his big, round music, after all,
is too breathy to last.
Noises
that usually woke me from rest afraid of monsters
kept my father awake that night, too,
and I lay in the quiet noticing him listen, learning
that he might not be able always to protect us
So, it's over.
In the pine-crown
he makes his nest,
he's done all he can.
from everything and the creatures besides;
perhaps not even from the fury suddenly loud
through my body about his trip from Texas
to settle us home before he would go away
I don't know the name of this bird,
I only imagine his glittering beak
tucked in a white wing
while the clouds—
to a place no place in the world
he named Viet Nam. A boy needs a father
with him, I kept thinking, fixed against noise
from the dark.
which he has summoned
from the north—
which he has taught
to be mild, and silent—
from Call & Response, 1995
Alice James Books, Farmington, Me.
thicken, and begin to fall
into the world below
like stars, or the feathers
of some unimaginable bird
that loves us,
that is asleep now, and silent—
37. Football
Louis Jenkins
I take the snap from the center, fake to the right,
fade back...
I've got protection. I've got a receiver open
downfield...
15
What the hell is this? This isn't a football, it's a
shoe, a man's
brown leather oxford. A cousin to a football maybe,
the same
skin, but not the same, a thing made for the earth,
not the air.
I realize that this is a world where anything is
possible and I
understand, also, that one often has to make do with
what one
has. I have eaten pancakes, for instance, with that
clear corn
syrup on them because there was no maple syrup
and they
weren't very good. Well, anyway, this is different.
(My man
downfield is waving his arms.) One has certain
responsibilities,
one has to make choices. This isn't right and I'm not
going
to throw it.
from Nice Fish: New and Selected Prose Poems,
1995
Holy Cow! Press, Duluth, Minn.
38. For My Daughter
David Ignatow
When I die choose a star
and name it after me
that you may know
I have not abandoned
or forgotten you.
You were such a star to me,
following you through birth
and childhood, my hand
in your hand.
When I die
choose a star and name it
after me so that I may shine
down on you, until you join
me in darkness and silence
together.
from Against the Evidence: Selected Poems 19341994
Wesleyan University Press, Middletown, Conn.
39. What I Would Do
Marc Petersen
If my wife were to have an affair,
I would walk to my toolbox in the garage,
Take from it my 12" flathead screwdriver
And my hickory-handle hammer,
The one that helped me build three redwood fences,
And I would hammer out the pins
In all the door hinges in the house,
And I would pull off all the doors
And I would stack them in the backyard.
And I would empty all the sheets from the linen
closet,
And especially the flannels we have slept between
for
nineteen winters;
And I would empty all the towels, too,
The big heavy white towels she bought on
Saturdays at
Target,
And the red bath towels we got for our wedding,
And which we have never used;
And I would unroll the aluminum foil from its box,
And carry all the pots and pans from the cupboards
to the
backyard,
And lay this one long sheet of aluminum foil over
all our
pots and pans;
And I would dump all the silverware from the
drawer
Onto the driveway; and I would push my
motorcycle over
And let all its gas leak out,
And I would leave my Jeep running at the curb
Until its tank was empty or its motor blew up,
And I would turn the TV up full-blast and open all
the
windows;
And I would turn the stereo up full-blast,
With Beethoven's Ninth Symphony on it,
Schiller's "Ode to Joy," really blasting;
And I would strip our bed;
And I would lie on our stripped bed;
And I would see our maple budding out the
window.
I would see our maple budding out our window,
16
The hummingbird feeder hanging from its lowest
bough.
And my cat would jump up to see what was the
matter
with me.
And I would tell her. Of course, I would tell her.
From her, I hold nothing back.
Copyright by Marc Petersen.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced with permission
40. Bringing My Son to the Police Station to be
Fingerprinted
Shoshauna Shy
My lemon-colored
whisper-weight blouse
with keyhole closure
and sweetheart neckline is tucked
into a pastel silhouette skirt
with side-slit vents
and triplicate pleats
when I realize in the sunlight
through the windshield
that the cool yellow of this blouse clashes
with the buttermilk heather in my skirt
which makes me slightly queasy
however
the periwinkle in the pattern on the sash
is sufficiently echoed by the twill uppers
of my buckle-snug sandals
while the accents on my purse
pick up the pink
in the button stitches
and then as we pass
through Weapons Check
it's reassuring to note
how the yellows momentarily mesh
and make an overall pleasing
composite
from Poetry Northwest, Spring 2001
University of Washington, Seattle, WA
41. To a Daughter Leaving Home
Linda Pastan
When I taught you
at eight to ride
a bicycle, loping along
beside you
as you wobbled away
on two round wheels,
my own mouth rounding
in surprise when you pulled
ahead down the curved
path of the park,
I kept waiting
for the thud
of your crash as I
sprinted to catch up,
while you grew
smaller, more breakable
with distance,
pumping, pumping
for your life, screaming
with laughter,
the hair flapping
behind you like a
handkerchief waving
goodbye.
from The Imperfect Paradise, 1988
W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, NY
42. June 11
David Lehman
It's my birthday I've got an empty
stomach and the desire to be
lazy in the hammock and maybe
go for a cool swim on a hot day
with the trombone in Sinatra's
"I've Got You Under My Skin"
in my head and then to break for
lunch a corned-beef sandwich and Pepsi
with plenty of ice cubes unlike France
where they put one measly ice cube
in your expensive Coke and when
you ask for more they argue with
you they say this way you get more
Coke for the money showing they
completely misunderstand the nature of
17
American soft drinks which are an
excuse for ice cubes still I wouldn't
mind being there for a couple of
days Philip Larkin's attitude
toward China comes to mind when
asked if he'd like to go there he said
yes if he could return the same day
from The Daily Mirror, 2000
Scribner, New York
might not be a bottle of beer,
that the trickle of bottle-sweat cooling in my palm
might not be wet, might not be cool,
that in fact it’s impossible ever to know
if I’m holding a bottle at all.
I try to follow his logic, flipping the steaks
that are almost certainly hissing
over the bed of coals – coals I’d swear
43. Doing Without
David Ray
were black at first, then gray, then red –
coals we could spread out and walk on
's an interesting
custom, involving such invisible items as the food
that's not on the table, the clothes
that are not on the back
the radio whose music
is silence. Doing without
is a great protector of reputations
since all places one cannot go
are fabulous, and only the rare and
enlightened plowman in his field
or on his mountain does not overrate
what he does not or cannot have.
Saluting through their windows
of cathedral glass those restaurants
we must not enter (unless like
burglars we become subject to
arrest) we greet with our twinkling
eyes the faces of others who do
without, the lady with the
fishing pole, and the man who looks
amused to have discovered on a walk
another piece of firewood.
and why not, I ask, since we’ll never be sure
if our feet burn, if our soles
blister and peel, if our faithlessness
is any better or worse a tool
than the firewalker’s can-do extreme.
Exactly, he smiles. Behind the fence
the moon rises, or seems to.
Have another. Whatever else is true,
the coals feel hotter than ever
as the darkness begins to do
what darkness does. Another what? I ask.
From Poems and Plays #11, spring/summer 2004
45. A New Poet
Linda Pastan
from Gathering Firewood, 1974
Wesleyan University Press, Middletown, CT
Finding a new poet
is like finding a new wildflower
out in the woods. You don't see
44. Knowledge
Philip Memmer
its name in the flower books, and
nobody you tell believes
in its odd color or the way
My philosopher friend is explaining again
that the bottle of well-chilled beer in my hand
its leaves grow in splayed rows
down the whole length of the page. In fact
the very page smells of spilled
18
red wine and the mustiness of the sea
on a foggy day - the odor of truth
and of lying.
And the words are so familiar,
so strangely new, words
you almost wrote yourself, if only
in your dreams there had been a pencil
or a pen or even a paintbrush,
if only there had been a flower.
from Heroes In Disguise, 1991
W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, NY
46. Sure
Arlene Tribbia
I miss my brother sure
he drank Robitussin
washed down with beer
sure he smoked dope
& shot heroin
& went to prison
for selling to
an undercover cop
& sure he robbed
the town’s only hot dog stand,
Gino’s like I overheard
while I laid on my bed
staring up at the stars
under slanted curtains
& sure he used to
leave his two year old
son alone so he could
score on the street
but before all this
my brother sure
used to swing me up
onto his back, run
me around dizzy
through hallways and rooms
& we’d laugh & laugh
fall onto the bed finally
and he’d tickle me
to death sure
From Margie/The American Journal of Poetry
Volume 2, 2004
Copyright 2004 Arlene Tribbia.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced with permission
47. Relearning Winter
Mark Svenvold
Hello Winter, hello flanneled
blanket of clouds, clouds
fueled by more clouds, hello again.
Hello afternoons,
off to the west, that sliver
of sunset, rust-colored
and gone too soon.
And night (I admit to a short memory)
you climb back in with chilly fingers
and clocks, and there is no refusal:
ice cracks the water main, the garden hose
stiffens, the bladed leaves of the rhododendron
shine in the fog of a huge moon.
And rain, street lacquer,
oily puddles and spinning rubber,
mist of angels on the head of a pin,
hello,
and snow, upside-down cake of clouds,
white, freon scent, you build
even as you empty the world of texturehello to this new relief,
this new solitude now upon us,
upon which we feed.
from Soul Data, 1998
University of North Texas Press, Denton, TX
19
48. Loud Music
Stephen Dobyns
My stepdaughter and I circle round and round.
You see, I like the music loud, the speakers
throbbing, jam-packing the room with sound
whether
Bach or rock and roll, the volume cranked up so
each bass notes is like a hand smacking the gut.
But my stepdaughter disagrees. She is four
and likes the music decorous, pitched below
her own voice-that tenuous projection of self.
With music blasting, she feels she disappears,
is lost within the blare, which in fact I like.
But at four what she wants is self-location
and uses her voice as a porpoise uses
its sonar: to find herself in all this space.
If she had a sort of box with a peephole
and looked inside, what she'd like to see would be
herself standing there in her red pants, jacket,
yellow plastic lunch box: a proper subject
for serious study. But me, if I raised
the same box to my eye, I would wish to find
the ocean on one of those days when wind
and thick cloud make the water gray and restless
as if some creature brooded underneath,
a rocky coast with a road along the shore
where someone like me was walking and has gone.
Loud music does this, it wipes out the ego,
leaving turbulent water and winding road,
a landscape stripped of people and languagehow clear the air becomes, how sharp the colors.
A can can roll - or not. What isn't was
or might be, might meaning not yet known.
"Our can of beets is filled with purple fuzz"
is present tense. While words like our and us
are pronouns - i.e. it is moldy, they are icky brown.
A noun's a thing; a verb's the thing it does.
Is is a helping verb. It helps because
filled isn't a full verb. Can's what our owns
in "Our can of beets is filled with purple fuzz."
See? There's almost nothing to it. Just
memorize these rules...or write them down!
A noun's a thing, a verb's the thing it does.
The can of beets is filled with purple fuzz.
from In the Palm of Your Hand: The Poet's Portable
Workshop, 1995
Tilbury House, Publishers, Gardiner, Maine
50. The Death of Santa Claus
Charles Webb
He's had the chest pains for weeks,
but doctors don't make house
calls to the North Pole,
he's let his Blue Cross lapse,
blood tests make him faint,
hospital gown always flap
from Cemetery Nights, 1988
Penguin
open, waiting rooms upset
his stomach, and it's only
indigestion anyway, he thinks,
49. The Grammar Lesson
Steve Kowit
until, feeding the reindeer,
he feels as if a monster fist
has grabbed his heart and won't
A noun's a thing. A verb's the thing it does.
An adjective is what describes the noun.
In "The can of beets is filled with purple fuzz"
stop squeezing. He can't
breathe, and the beautiful white
world he loves goes black,
of and with are prepositions. The's
an article, a can's a noun,
a noun's a thing. A verb's the thing it does.
and he drops on his jelly belly
in the snow and Mrs. Claus
tears out of the toy factory
20
wailing, and the elves wring
their little hands, and Rudolph's
nose blinks like a sad ambulance
light, and in a tract house
in Houston, Texas, I'm 8,
telling my mom that stupid
kids at school say Santa's a big
fake, and she sits with me
on our purple-flowered couch,
and takes my hand, tears
in her throat, the terrible
news rising in her eyes.
from Reading The Water, 2001
Northeastern University Press
51. Hate Poem
Julie Sheehan
I hate you truly. Truly I do.
Everything about me hates everything about you.
The flick of my wrist hates you.
The way I hold my pencil hates you.
The sound made by my tiniest bones were they
trapped
in the jaws of a moray eel hates you.
Each corpuscle singing in its capillary hates you.
Look out! Fore! I hate you.
The blue-green jewel of sock lint I’m digging
from under my third toenail, left foot, hates you.
The history of this keychain hates you.
My sigh in the background as you explain relational
databases
hates you.
The goldfish of my genius hates you.
My aorta hates you. Also my ancestors.
A closed window is both a closed window and an
obvious
symbol of how I hate you.
My voice curt as a hairshirt: hate.
My hesitation when you invite me for a drive: hate.
My pleasant “good morning”: hate.
You know how when I’m sleepy I nuzzle my head
under your arm? Hate.
The whites of my target-eyes articulate hate. My wit
practices it.
My breasts relaxing in their holster from morning
to night hate you.
Layers of hate, a parfait.
Hours after our latest row, brandishing the sharp
glee of hate,
I dissect you cell by cell, so that I might hate each
one
individually and at leisure.
My lungs, duplicitous twins, expand with the utter
validity
of my hate, which can never have enough of you,
Breathlessly, like two idealists in a broken
submarine.
from PLEIADES, vol. 24:2
Central Missouri State Press
52. Witness
Martha Collins
If she says something now he'll say
it's not true if he says it's not true
they'll think it's not true if they think
it's not true it will be nothing new
but for her it will be a weightier
thing it will fill up the space where
he isn't allowed it will open the door
of the room where she's put him
away he will fill up her mind he will fill
up her plate and her glass he will fill up
her shoes and her clothes she will never
forget him he says if she says
something now if she says something ever
he never will let her forget and it's true
for a week for a month but the more
she says true and the more he says not
the smaller he seems he may fill up
his shoes he may fill up his clothes
the usual spaces he fills but something
is missing whatever they say whatever
they think he is not what he was
and the room in her mind is open she
walks in and out as she pleases she says
what she pleases she says what she means.
21
from Some Things Words Can Do, 1998
Sheep Meadow Press
53. Who Burns for the Perfection of Paper
Martín Espada
At sixteen, I worked after high school hours
at a printing plant
that manufactured legal pads:
Yellow paper
stacked seven feet high
and leaning
as I slipped cardboard
between the pages,
then brushed red glue
up and down the stack.
No gloves: fingertips required
for the perfection of paper,
smoothing the exact rectangle.
Sluggish by 9 PM, the hands
would slide along suddenly sharp paper,
and gather slits thinner than the crevices
of the skin, hidden.
The glue would sting,
hands oozing
till both palms burned
at the punch clock.
Ten years later, in law school,
I knew that every legal pad
was glued with the sting of hidden cuts,
that every open law book
was a pair of hands
upturned and burning.
from City of Coughing and Dead Radiators, 1993
W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, NY
54. How Many Times
Marie Howe
No matter how many times I try I can't stop my
father
from walking into my sister's room
and I can't see any better, leaning from here to look
in his eyes. It's dark in the hall
and everyone's sleeping. This is the past
where everything is perfect already and nothing
changes,
where the water glass falls to the bathroom floor
and bounces once before breaking.
Nothing. Not the small sound my sister makes,
turning
over, not the thump of the dog's tail
when he opens one eye to see him stumbling back
to bed
still drunk, a little bewildered.
This is exactly as I knew it would be.
And if I whisper her name, hissing a warning,
I've been doing that for years now, and still the dog
startles and growls until he sees
it's our father, and still the door opens, and she
makes that small oh turning over.
from The Good Thief, 1988
Persea Books, New York, NY
55. Locals
James Lasdun
They peopled landscapes casually like trees,
being there richly, never having gone there,
and whether clanning in cities or village-thin stands
were reticent as trees with those not born there,
and their fate, like trees, was seldom in their hands.
Others to them were always one of two
evils: the colonist or refugee.
They stared back, half-disdaining us, half-fearing;
inferring from our looks their destiny
as preservation or as clearing.
I envied them. To be local was to know
which team to support: the local team;
22
where to drop in for a pint with mates: the local;
best of all to feel by birthright welcome
anywhere; be everywhere a local ...
but the woman who is freezing to death
has trouble moving
with blocks of ice on her feet
Bedouin-Brython-Algonquins; always there
before you; the original prior claim
that made your being anywhere intrusive.
There, doubtless, in Eden before Adam
wiped them out and settled in with Eve.
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.
Whether at home or away, whether kids
playing or saying what they wanted,
or adults chatting, waiting for a bus,
or, in their well-tended graves, the contented dead,
there were always locals, and they were never us.
from Landscape with Chainsaw, 2001
W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, NY
56. 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
from Triptych, 1999
The Commoner Press, New York
57. My Moral Life
Mark Halliday
Two years hence. When I'm ready.
After one more set of poems
about my beautiful confusion.
After I've read Anna Karenina
and Don Quixote
and the first volume at least of Proust
and one big novel by Thomas Mann—
say three years. Three years hence:
after I've written an essay about the word "enough"
and after I've done something so delectable
weaving together phrases from Henry James and
Bob Dylan
and after I've written an amazing meditation on Luis
Buñuel
and after I've spent a month in Frankfort, Michigan
being very real and thoughtful and full of
perspective
and fresh cherry pie
then—
then—
in four years at the most—
23
I see it there ahead of me casting a silver shadow
back upon me now, bathing me in its promise,
validating the self that will arrive at it
in four years or less (maybe just two years?)...
Glimpsing it there is sometimes like already living
it
almost and feeling justifiably proud.
Water pollution and toxic waste and air pollution;
the poverty of black people in my city;
the nuclear arms industry; in my moral life these
things
are not just TV, they push my poems to the edge of
my desk,
they push Henry James into a sweet corner,
they pull me to meetings and rallies and marches
and meetings and rallies and marches.
There I am in a raincoat on the steps of City Hall
disappointed by the turnout but speaking firmly
into the local news microphone about the issue,
the grim issue.
When I'm ready.
Four years from today!
Silver shadow
from Tasker Street, 1992
University of Massachusetts Press
58. Once upon a Time There Was a Man
Mac Hammond
Once upon a time there was, there was a man
Who lived inside me wearing this cold armour,
The kind of knight of whom the ladies could be
proud
And send with favours through unlikely forests
To fight infidels and other knights and ordinary
dragons.
Once upon a time he galloped over deep green
moats
On bridges princes had let down in friendship
And sat at board the honoured guest of kings
Talking like a man who knew the world by heart.
In every list he fought, the trumpets on the parapets,
The drums, declared his mastery, the art of arms;
His horse, the household word of every villager,
Was silver-shod and, some said, winged.
Once upon a time, expecting no adventure
In the forest everybody knows, at midnight,
He saw a mountain rise beneath the moon.
An incredible beast? With an eye of fire?
He silently dismounted, drew his famous sword
And hid behind the heavy tress and shrubs to see
If what he thought he saw was real. He fled
And the giant eye of the moon pursues him still.
from The Horse Opera and Other Poems, 1992
Ohio State University Press
59. Legs
Mark Halliday
In the last year of my marriage,
among a hundred other symptoms I wrote a poem
called
"The Woman across the Shaft"—she was someone
I never met—she had long bare legs
on a summer night when she answered the phone
in her kitchen and lifted her legs to the table
while she talked and laughed and I tried to listen
from my window across an airshaft between
buildings
and watched her legs. I doubt she was beautiful
but her legs were young and long
and she laughed on the phone
while I sat in my dark of dissolving faith
and I tried to capture or contain the unknown
woman
in a poem: the real and the ideal,
the mess of frayed bonds versus untouched
possibility,
so forth. Embarrassed now
I imagine a female editor
who received "The Woman across the Shaft"
as a submission to her magazine—the distaste she
felt—
perhaps disgust she felt—I imagine her
grimacing slightly as she considers writing
"Pathetic"
on the rejection slip but instead lets the slip stay
blank
and then returns to another envelope
from a writer she has learned to trust,
crossing her long legs on her smart literary desk.
from Selfwolf, 1988
24
Ohio University, Athens, OH
60. Notice
Steve Kowit
This evening, the sturdy Levi's
I wore every day for over a year
& which seemed to the end
in perfect condition,
suddenly tore.
How or why I don't know,
but there it was: a big rip at the crotch.
A month ago my friend Nick
walked off a racquetball court,
showered,
got into this street clothes,
& halfway home collapsed & died.
Take heed, you who read this,
& drop to your knees now & again
like the poet Christopher Smart,
& kiss the earth & be joyful,
& make much of your time,
& be kindly to everyone,
even to those who do not deserve it.
For although you may not believe
it will happen,
you too will one day be gone,
I, whose Levi's ripped at the crotch
for no reason,
assure you that such is the case.
Pass it on.
bending kindly to ask, Who are you?
Sometimes I'd say,
I am a Dallas Cheerleader!
or The Wicked Witch of the West!
I was myself one evening every year
from six to eight o'clock,
as the orange lanterns gleamed
on my claws, my beak, my fangs,
or my star, my wand, my slippers.
Halloween was the perfect holiday.
No songs about snow and families,
no creamed onions or long, fantastic graces,
no football games I had to watch in the yard,
just a night of flowing capes and almond eye slits,
of makeup without quarrels,
and sheets without memories.
Mother would slave over my costume
as though I was a turkey dinner for my uncles.
After a while, only my dog could recognize me.
Even now, nineteen, I go out,
gaudy with ugliness and streaming with beauty.
the doors are opened and I feel
I could not have turned out better.
from Poems and Plays, Number 8, Spring / Summer
2001
Middle Tennessee State University
62. The Birthday
Elizabeth Seydel Morgan
from The Dumbbell Nebula, 2000
Heyday Books
61. Unconditional Day
Julie Lechevsky
At 13 they brought me on television
to tell of my first love
under the bleachers.
I thought it was the real thing.
And the country shared it the way
they share candy on Halloween,
when I could dress up in anything as anyone,
and strangers would open their doors,
I'm driving tonight into November.
The cold black sky is coming at me
and before I know it
it snuffs out the gold October glow
I left behind in Charlottesville,
those calendar leaves, the big ball sun
setting behind the rolling steeplechaseits little obstacles casting shadowsthe lighted windows on the darkening hill,
silhouettes of hosts in my rearview mirror,
the last orange light on Foxfield Road.
Into the dark I can speed east and think
of the last night in October, Halloween,
25
when you were born thirty years ago.
Or I could not think of that night,
I know you'll be glad if I don't. It's still
today in Los Angeles, you're looking
for work. We're both looking for work
to keep us in days to get up.
I like this night highway blacking out
autumn, making us one with all seasons.
Only my headlights and pairs of red taillights
ahead, you turning thirty where the leaves never
fall, the children not masked yet, the last sun
of the month still in the sky.
from Five Points, Summer 2001 Volume 5, Number
3
Georgia State University
63. How to Listen
Major Jackson
I am going to cock my head tonight like a dog
in front of McGlinchy's Tavern on Locust;
I am going to stand beside the man who works all
day combing
his thatch of gray hair corkscrewed in every
direction.
I am going to pay attention to our lives
unraveling between the forks of his fine-tooth
comb.
For once, we won't talk about the end of the world
or Vietnam or his exquisite paper shoes.
For once, I am going to ignore the profanity and
the dancing and the jukebox so I can hear his head
crackle
beneath the sky's stretch of faint stars.
world.
So do the servants in the kitchen,
who don't even rub their eyes.
The cook's right hand, lifted
an exact century ago,
completes its downward arc
to the kitchen boy's left ear;
the boy's tensed vocal cords
finally let go
the trapped, enduring whimper,
and the fly, arrested mid-plunge
above the strawberry pie,
fulfills its abiding mission
and dives into the sweet, red glaze.
As a child I had a book
with a picture of that scene.
I was too young to notice
how fear persists, and how
the anger that causes fear persists,
that its trajectory can't be changed
or broken, only interrupted.
My attention was on the fly;
that this slight body
with its transparent wings
and lifespan of one human day
still craved its particular share
of sweetness, a century later.
from Alive Together: New & Selected Poems, 1996
Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge, LA
65. Our Other Sister
for Ellen
Jeffrey Harrison
from Leaving Saturn, 2002
The University of Georgia Press, Athens, GA
The cruelest thing I did to my younger sister
wasn't shooting a homemade blowdart into her
knee,
where it dangled for a breathless second
64. Immortality
Lisel Mueller
before dropping off, but telling her we had
another, older sister who'd gone away.
What my motives were I can't recall: a whim,
In Sleeping Beauty's castle
the clock strikes one hundred years
and the girl in the tower returns to the
or was it some need of mine to toy with loss,
to probe the ache of imaginary wounds?
But that first sentence was like a strand of DNA
26
that replicated itself in coiling lies
when my sister began asking her desperate
questions.
I called our older sister Isabel
and gave her hazel eyes and long blonde hair.
I had her run away to California
where she took drugs and made hippie jewelry.
Before I knew it, she'd moved to Santa Fe
and opened a shop. She sent a postcard
every year or so, but she'd stopped calling.
I can still see my younger sister staring at me,
her eyes widening with desolation
then filling with tears. I can still remember
how thrilled and horrified I was
that something I'd just made up
had that kind of power, and I can still feel
the blowdart of remorse stabbing me in the heart
as I rushed to tell her none of it was true.
But it was too late. Our other sister
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
had already taken shape, and we could not
call her back from her life far away
or tell her how badly we missed her.
it is the best
afternoon of my life. Two
cute and older boys
pedaling beside me—respectful, awed. When we
from Feeding the Fire, 2001
Sarabande Books, Louisville, KY
turn down my street, the other girls see me ...
Everything as I imagined it would be.
66. 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
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
I'd given them my number,
knowing the girl I was. . .
thirty-seven, wiping
crumbs off the kitchen table with a sponge,
remembering
them, thinking
of this—
It was summer. My afternoons
those boys still waiting
have given them my number. I'm sure
27
outside the Stop-n-Go, smoking
cigarettes, growing older.
from Dance and Disappear, 2002
University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst, MA
67. Loyal
William Matthews
They gave him an overdose
of anesthetic, and its fog
shut down his heart in seconds.
I tried to hold him, but he was
somewhere else. For so much love
one of the principals is missing,
it's no wonder we confuse love
with longing. Oh I was thick
with both. I wanted my dog
to live forever and while I was
working on impossibilities
I wanted to live forever, too.
I wanted company and to be alone.
I wanted to know how they trash
a stiff ninety-five-pound dog
and I paid them to do it
and not tell me. What else?
I wanted a letter of apology
delivered by decrepit hand,
by someone shattered for each time
I'd had to eat pure pain. I wanted
to weep, not "like a baby,"
in gulps and breath-stretching
howls, but steadily, like an adult,
according to the fiction
that there is work to be done,
and almost inconsolably.
from Selected Poems and Translations 1969-1991,
1992
Houghton Mifflin, New York, NY
68. Break
Dorianne Laux
We put the puzzle together piece
by piece, loving how one curved
notch fits so sweetly with another.
A yellow smudge becomes
the brush of a broom, and two blue arms
fill in the last of the sky.
We patch together porch swings and autumn
trees, matching gold to gold. We hold
the eyes of deer in our palms, a pair
of brown shoes. We do this as the child
circles her room, impatient
with her blossoming, tired
of the neat house, the made bed,
the good food. We let her brood
as we shuffle through the pieces,
setting each one into place with a satisfied
tap, our backs turned for a few hours
to a world that is crumbling, a sky
that is falling, the pieces
we are required to return to.
from Awake, 2001
University of Arkansas Press
69. Blind
Charles Webb
It's okay if the world goes with Venetian;
Who cares what Italians don't see?Or with Man's Bluff (a temporary problem
Healed by shrieks and cheating)-or with date:
Three hours of squirming repaid by laughs for
years.
But when an old woman, already deaf,
Wakes from a night of headaches, and the dark
Won't disappear-when doctors call like tedious
Birds, "If only..." up and down hospital hallsWhen, long-distance, I hear her say, "Don't worry.
Honey, I'll be fine," is it a wonder
If my mind speeds down blind alleys?
If the adage "Love is blind" has never seemed
So true? If, in a flash of blinding light
I see Justice drop her scales, yank off
Her blindfold, stand revealed - a monster-god
With spidery arms and a mouth like a black holeWhile I leap, ant-sized, at her feet, blinded
By tears, raging blindly as, sense by sense,
My mother is sucked away?
28
from Reading the Water, 1997
Northeastern University Press
70. The Hand
Mary Ruefle
The teacher asks a question.
You know the answer, you suspect
you are the only one in the classroom
who knows the answer, because the person
in question is yourself, and on that
you are the greatest living authority,
but you don’t raise your hand.
You raise the top of your desk
and take out an apple.
You look out the window.
You don’t raise your hand and there is
some essential beauty in your fingers,
which aren’t even drumming, but lie
flat and peaceful.
The teacher repeats the question.
Outside the window, on an overhanging branch,
a robin is ruffling its feathers
and spring is in the air.
From Cold Pluto, 1996, 2001
Carnegie Mellon University Press
71. Some Clouds
Steve Kowit
Now that I've unplugged the phone,
no one can reach meAt least for this one afternoon
they will have to get by without my advice
or opinion.
Now nobody else is going to call
& ask in a tentative voice
if I haven't yet heard that she's dead,
that woman I once lovednothing but ashes scattered over a city
that barely itself any longer exists.
Yes, thank you, I've heard.
It had been too lovely a morning.
That in itself should have warned me.
The sun lit up the tangerines
& the blazing poinsettias
like so many candles.
For one afternoon they will have to forgive me.
I am busy watching things happen again
that happened a long time ago.
as I lean back in Josephine's lawnchair
under a sky of incredible blue,
broken - if that is the word for it by a few billowing clouds,
all white & unspeakably lovely,
drifting out of one nothingness into another.
from Mysteries of the Body, 1994
Uroboros Books
72. Schoolboys with Dog, Winter
William Matthews
It’s dark when they scuff off to school.
It’s good to trample the thin panes of casual
ice along the track where twice a week
a freight that used to stop here lugs grain
and radiator hoses past us to a larger town.
It’s good to cloud the paling mirror
of the dawn sky with your mouthwashed breath,
and to trash and stamp against the way
you’ve been overdressed and pudged
into your down jacket like a pastel
sausage, and to be cruel to the cringing
dog and then to thump it and hug it and croon
to it nicknames. At last the pale sun rolls
over the horizon. And look!
The frosted windows of the schoolhouse gleam.
from Foreseeable Futures, 1987
Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, NY
29
73. The End and the Beginning
Wislawa Szymborska
After every war
someone has to clean up.
Things won't
straighten themselves up, after all.
Someone has to push the rubble
to the side of the road,
so the corpse-filled wagons
can pass.
Someone has to get mired
in scum and ashes,
sofa springs,
splintered glass,
and bloody rags.
Someone has to drag in a girder
to prop up a wall,
Someone has to glaze a window,
rehang a door.
Photogenic it's not,
and takes years.
All the cameras have left
for another war.
We'll need the bridges back,
and new railway stations.
Sleeves will go ragged
from rolling them up.
Someone, broom in hand,
still recalls the way it was.
Someone else listens
and nods with unsevered head.
But already there are those nearby
starting to mill about
who will find it dull.
From out of the bushes
sometimes someone still unearths
rusted-out arguments
and carries them to the garbage pile.
Those who knew
what was going on here
must make way for
those who know little.
And less than little.
And finally as little as nothing.
In the grass that has overgrown
causes and effects,
someone must be stretched out
blade of grass in his mouth
gazing at the clouds.
from Miracle Fair: Selected Poems of Wislawa
Szymborska, 2001
W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, NY
74. Daddy
Sylvia Plath
You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.
Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time ---Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal
And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off the beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.
In the German tongue, in the Polish town
Scraped flat by the roller
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town is common.
My Polack friend
Says there are a dozen or two.
So I never could tell where you
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.
30
It stuck in a barb wire snare.
Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak.
I thought every German was you.
And the language obscene
An engine, an engine,
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.
The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna
Are not very pure or true.
With my gypsy ancestress and my weird luck
And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
I may be a bit of a Jew.
I have always been scared of you,
With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.
And your neat mustache
And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You ---Not God but a swastika
So black no sky could squeak through.
Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.
You stand at the blackboard, daddy,
In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
But no less a devil for that, no not
Any less the black man who
Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.
But they pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue.
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look
And a love of the rack and the screw.
And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I'm finally through.
The black telephone's off at the root,
The voices just can't worm through.
If I've killed one man, I've killed two ---The vampire who said he was you
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.
There's a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagersnever liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.
75. Cut
Sylvia Plath
for Susan O'Neill Roe
What a thrill ---My thumb instead of an onion.
The top quite gone
Except for a sort of hinge
Of skin,
A flap like a hat,
Dead white.
Then that red plush.
Little pilgrim,
The Indian's axed your scalp.
Your turkey wattle
Carpet rolls
Straight from the heart.
I step on it,
Clutching my bottle
Of pink fizz. A celebration, this is.
Out of a gap
A million soldiers run,
Redcoats, every one.
Whose side are they on?
O my
Homunculus, I am ill.
I have taken a pill to kill
31
The thin
Papery feeling.
Saboteur,
Kamikaze man ---The stain on your
Gauze Ku Klux Klan
Babushka
Darkens and tarnishes and when
The balled
Pulp of your heart
Confronts its small
Mill of silence
How you jump ---Trepanned veteran,
Dirty girl,
Thumb stump.
76. Anna Who Was Mad
Anne Sexton
Anna who was mad,
I have a knife in my armpit.
When I stand on tiptoe I tap out messages.
Am I some sort of infection?
Did I make you go insane?
Did I make the sounds go sour?
Did I tell you to climb out the window?
Forgive. Forgive.
Say not I did.
Say not.
Say.
Speak Mary-words into our pillow.
Take me the gangling twelve-year-old
into your sunken lap.
Whisper like a buttercup.
Eat me. Eat me up like cream pudding.
Take me in.
Take me.
Take.
Give me a report on the condition of my soul.
Give me a complete statement of my actions.
Hand me a jack-in-the-pulpit and let me listen in.
Put me in the stirrups and bring a tour group
through.
Number my sins on the grocery list and let me buy.
Did I make you go insane?
Did I turn up your earphone and let a siren drive
through?
Did I open the door for the mustached psychiatrist
who dragged you out like a gold cart?
Did I make you go insane?
From the grave write me, Anna!
You are nothing but ashes but nevertheless
pick up the Parker Pen I gave you.
Write me.
Write.
77. For My Lover, Returning to His Wife
Anne Sexton
She is all there.
She was melted carefully down for you
and cast up from your childhood,
cast up from your one hundred favorite aggies.
She has always been there, my darling.
She is, in fact, exquisite.
Fireworks in the dull middle of February
and as real as a cast-iron pot.
Let's face it, I have been momentary.
A luxury. A bright red sloop in the harbor.
My hair rising like smoke from the car window.
Littleneck clams out of season.
She is more than that. She is your have to have,
has grown you your practical your tropical growth.
This is not an experiment. She is all harmony.
She sees to oars and oarlocks for the dinghy,
has placed wild flowers at the window at breakfast,
sat by the potter's wheel at midday,
set forth three children under the moon,
three cherubs drawn by Michelangelo,
done this with her legs spread out
in the terrible months in the chapel.
If you glance up, the children are there
like delicate balloons resting on the ceiling.
She has also carried each one down the hall
after supper, their heads privately bent,
two legs protesting, person to person,
her face flushed with a song and their little sleep.
I give you back your heart.
I give you permission for the fuse inside her, throbbing
angrily in the dirt, for the bitch in her
and the burying of her wound -
32
for the burying of her small red wound alive for the pale flickering flare under her ribs,
for the drunken sailor who waits in her left pulse,
for the mother's knee, for the stocking,
for the garter belt, for the call the curious call
when you will burrow in arms and breasts
and tug at the orange ribbon in her hair
and answer the call, the curious call.
She is so naked and singular
She is the sum of yourself and your dream.
Climb her like a monument, step after step.
She is solid.
As for me, I am a watercolor.
I wash off.
78. A Paper Bag
Margaret Atwood
I make my head, as I used to,
out of a paper bag,
pull it down to the collarbone,
draw eyes around my eyes
with purple and green
spikes to show surprise,
a thumb-shaped nose,
a mouth around my mouth
penciled by touch, then colored in
flat red.
With this new head, the body now
stretched like a stocking and exhausted could
dance again; if I made a
tongue I could sing.
An old sheet and it’s Halloween;
but why is it worse or more
frightening, this pinface
head of square hair and no chin?
Like an idiot, it has no past
and is always entering the future
through its slots of eyes, purblind
and groping with its thick smile,
a tentacle of perpetual joy.
Paper head, I prefer you
because of your emptiness;
from within you any
word could still be said.
from Selected Poems II, 1987
Houghton Mifflin, Boston
79. A Poem of Friendship
Nikki Giovanni
We are not lovers
because of the love
we make
but the love
we have
We are not friends
because of the laughs
we spend
but the tears
we save
I don’t want to be near you
for the thoughts we share
but the words we never have
to speak
I will never miss you
because of what we do
but what we are
together
from The Collected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni, 2003