David Hess

Requiem on the Fly

I’m no coroner
of flies. Fly,
you’re dead.

I’m no friend
of flies. Fly,
I’ll find a ride
to your makeshift funeral.

I’m no euologist
of flies. Fly,
you were a good fly. You
touched many around you.

I’m no mortician
of flies. Fly,
I’ll hold a wake for you
with a pall of Kleenex
and a casket of hands.

I’m no shepherd
of flies. Fly,
it only takes one to love one
and to bury one.
I alone’ll lay you to rest.

I’m no chaplain
of flies, no mourner
of em, either. Fly,
may I perform for you
these last words:

Shoo, shoo, my friend.
Get into heaven
Any way you can.

BONUS POEM! Wallace Stevens!

A Rabbit As King Of The Ghosts


The difficulty to think at the end of day,
When the shapeless shadow covers the sun
And nothing is left except light on your fur-

There was the cat slopping its milk all day,
Fat cat, red tongue, green mind, white milk
And August the most peaceful month.

To be, in the grass, in the peacefullest time,
Without that monument of cat,
The cat forgotten in the moon;

And to feel that the light is a rabbit-light
In which everything is meant for you
And nothing need be explained;

Then there is nothing to think of. It comes of itself;
And east rushes west and west rushes down,
No matter. The grass is full

And full of yourself. The trees around are for you,
The whole of the wideness of night is for you,
A self that touches all edges,

You become a self that fills the four corners of night.
The red cat hides away in the fur-light
And there you are humped high, humped up,

You are humped higher and higher, black as stone-
You sit with your head like a carving in space
And the little green cat is a bug in the grass.

Ryan Murphy

Elegiac


Sunset, a grainy photograph,
night is lit
by a small black light.

As a child I would cry
at the sound of katydids.
Turbines of fear. The heart
has several gears.

We compass on the grass.
Two dreams there were,
elegiac and orange.
Your love is like that.

Spencer Short

“And I Have Mastered the Speed & Strength Which Is the Armor of the World”

And so.
Someone has written Fuck You in empty beer cans
across my neighbor’s lawn. It turns out it was my neighbor.
They glow like little teeth. Someone has written

& written & written.
Someone subtracts my father from my mother,
discovers I am the solution, discovers solution is, in fact,
the wrong word. I am what is “left over”

you say & the wires dangle
like a participle in the streets. “I love you”
you say & the night goes off like a gun in a car.

Jack Gilbert -- Three Poems

IN UMBRIA

Once upon a time I was sitting outside the café
watching twilight in Umbria when a girl came
out of the bakery with the bread her mother wanted.
She did not know what to do. Already bewildered
by being thirteen and just that summer a woman,
she now had to walk past the American.
But shed id fine. Went by and around the corner
with style, not noticing me. Almost perfect.
At the last instant could not resist darting a look
down at her new breasts. Often I go back
to that dip of her head when people talk
about this one or that one of the great beauties.



THE EDGE OF THE WORLD

I light the lamp and look at my watch.
Four-thirty. Tap out my shoes
because of the scorpions, and go out
into the field. Such a sweet night.
No moon, but urgent stars. Go back inside
and make hot chocolate on my butane burner.
I search around with the radio through
the skirl of the Levant. “Tea for Two”
in German. Finally, Cleveland playing
the Rams in the rain. It makes me feel
acutely here and everybody somewhere else.




RESPECT
for Albert Schweitzer

This morning I found a baby scorpion,
Perfect, in the saucepan.
Killed it with a piece of marble.

Alan Dugan

UNTITLED POEM

The Monarchs, the butterflies, are commanded:
Go take a flying fuck: Make worms.
This is their own form of intercourse.
I watched a couple for a while
but got bored: watching others’ passions
is strictly for biologists and voyeurs.
When they finally did get separated
after the hard work of the ecstasy
they flew off separately immediately
looking for edible flowers in a breeze.
If one or both of them survive the swallows
who can snap the body of the bug and let
both of the wings drop perfectly intact,
oh they could fly for thousands of miles
southwards on our strong north winds.

Katy Lederer

Dark Ballad

I thought that you had changed me,
but it was only dark. Your shadow creeping
up the wall, the moon in the window,
the subtle dark kneading my feet.

I thought that you had changed me,
but it was just a dream. Atop a pole,
in frigid wind, the moon in the window,
your kiss, which was dutiful, drear.

I thought that you had changed me,
but it was only wind. Your fingers up
the sharded bone, my fretted spine,
all my vertebrae blown, I can't bend.

I thought that you had changed me,
but it was just a trick. You sawing
back and forth above my chest till
I was cut in half, dark magician.

I thought that you had changed me,
but it was only dark. And now I lie
alone at night, my bed as pure and white
as snow, my filthy heart.