Poetry Less Than Daily

Jonathan Mayhew trans. Jonathan Mayhew

2005-08-26T14:28:00.000-07:00

ANÉCDOTA RECORDADA EN VANO

Escuchaba yo un disco - en la edad de los tocadiscos -

entró mi padre, me comentó, extrañado y despectivo, que le sonaba a piano de cóctel

En vano habría sido contestarle, avergonzado, que se trataba del gran Bill Evans

que sí tocaba en esa época algo parecido a la música de Cóctel

***

I was listening to a record - in the age of recordplayers -

when my father came in, surprised and dismissive, telling me it sounded like Cocktail piano

It would have been in vain to tell him it was the great Bill Evans

who was in fact playing, in that period, a form of Cocktail piano

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

Guest Editor: David Shapiro

David Shapiro

2005-08-26T11:06:00.000-07:00

Song for Another Envelope

The fatal exceptions occurred

without exception and not fatally.

They stole my throne from me:

it was a tree, or a tree

stump as they rotted it,

cut it to a chair,

democratic as a T

then sank it into the ground

and I forgot to take last snaps

of a serious mossy thing.

Fire at evening, or was it the

evening on fire?

Reader,

butterfly,

migrant drunk, ally,

unemployed luminosity,

mirror in the air, feather,

scrawny light--

You decide.

Andy Carter

2005-08-26T11:05:00.000-07:00

start with the last line or end with the beginning

I have left
that resembles what courage
bruised bananas mashed
up against the nothing
days spent rubbing
stainless steel kiss
fuck hole on my new computer
shooting smack between its toes, our future
unable to stop
I know, I let go
as they ought to
high school couples holding on
they don't speak and they choose not to
cows in a slaughter queue
for the ants to contemplate
a damp pink splotch
into the plum so cold and sweet
I'm going to insert explosives
when not, the victim of it
when convenient the author of history
they buried Ronald on a sunset drenched hill
buried Ronald in Topeka, how inappropriate
lately, I've noticed silence cutting itself
with each shrug the official offer increased
slid across the table, apocryphal
I scribbled on the back of the photo
and only one computer screen
if there were only one extension cord
I love the new Sleater-Kinney
red grows nervously on the tv, the radar, my city

Maggie Nelson

2005-08-25T11:29:00.000-07:00

Morning Prayer

This morning I awoke with a fresh sense

of the total, desperate hell

Our failure to love each other well

O let a jesus come down and make it sweet

Let a jesus take an axe to the wheel

Part the fire with tongs

Carlos Drummond de Andrade

2005-08-10T11:52:00.000-07:00

Residue

From everything a little remained.
From my fear. From your disgust.
From stifled cries. From the rose
a little remained.

A little remained of light
caught inside the hat.
In the eyes of the pimp
a little remained of tenderness,
very little.

A little remained of the dust
that covered your white shoes.
Of your clothes a little remained,
a few velvet rags, very
very few.

From everything a little remained.
From the bombed-out bridge,
from the two blades of grass,
from the empty pack
of cigarettes a little remained.

So from everything a little remains.
A little remains of your chin
in the chin of your daughter.

A little remained of your
blunt silence, a little
in the angry wall,
in the mute rising leaves.

A little remained from everything
in porcelain saucers,
in the broken dragon, in the white flowers,
in the creases of your brow,
in the portrait.

Since from everything a little remains,
why won't a little
of me remain? In the train
travelling north, in the ship,
in newspaper ads,
why not a little of me in London,
a little of me somewhere?
In a consonant?
In a well?

A little remains dangling
in the mouths of rivers,
just a little, and the fish
don't avoid it, which is very unusual.

From everything a little remains.
Not much: this absurd drop
dripping from the faucet,
half salt and half alcohol,
this frog leg jumping,
this watch crystal
broken into a thousand wishes,
this swan's neck,
this childhood secret...
From everything a little remained:
from me; from you; from Abelard.
Hair on my sleeve,
from everything a little remained;
wind in my ears,
burbing, rumbling
from an upset stomach,
and small artifacts:
bell jar, honeycomb, revolver
cartridge, aspirin tablet.

From everything a little remained.

And from everything a little remains.
Oh, open the bottles of lotion
and smoother
the cruel, unbearable odor of memory.

Still, horribly, from everything a little remains,
under the rhythmic waves
under the clouds and the wind
under the bridges and under the tunnels
under the flames and under the sarcasm
under the phlegm and under the vomit
under the cry from the dungeon, the guy they forgot
under the spectacle and under the scarlet death
under the libraries, asylums, victorious churches
under yourself and under your feet already hard
under the ties of family, the ties of class,
from everything a little always remains.
Sometimes a button. Sometimes a rat.

--Carlos Drummond de Andrade. trans. from the Portuguese by Mark Strand

Kenneth Koch

2005-07-31T15:20:00.000-07:00

To High Spirits

You have taken the vodka
That I was probably
Saving for tomorrow.
Go on and take it
For there's more enterprise
In waking naked.

Mackenzie Carignan

2005-07-20T10:35:00.000-07:00

bear in the air

you follicular me corps me
annotate me balloon me
you prod me diethylstilbestrol me
get over it in the cotton
if it’s open to getting

you billboard me diverge me
study me cosmic me
you amygdaline me oliver me
strange pluck of recent cymbal
like your undone mystical thrust

you fenugreek me rayleigh me
gabardine me hydrofuge me
pin me to a lupine forest without
mush drawers mechanism of sorting

you venturi me command me
ossify me barnacle me
beautiful ocean in a handwriting cassette
instead of knowing instead

Tony Towle

2005-07-18T12:58:00.000-07:00

The Works of Li Po

The mountain flowers are growing and in bloom,
the different insects carry on their business.
At the sound of my rambling you awake
o drunkard
and arise from the dew of the wine shop.

The thick wine is called the wise,
the clear the sage,
poured blissfully in a ditch above the stars
where my city like yours stand by a serene waterfall
and after a jugful we are couds on the eyelid of heaven.

I cannot be less precise because my words have fewer meanings;
'vessel' is a wonderful word in our language,
for as the liquor travels it is also a ship,
bearing the liquid course of the seasons.
Syntactically I am on the vessel
as on the wine curtain of the shore.

Sandra Simonds

2005-07-17T16:00:00.000-07:00

a sonnet called I've heard a lot of conflicting etymologies for "okay"
for tony robinson

ze-

ro killed (apo-

cryphal) or the christchild’s torn paw (Choctaw language)

your chrysanthemum zippo, your bodyweight in pearls and please

[ole correct, all aboard, all right, no use]: oil?

Earp’s torso in a corral of salt and goldfish

"It is no exaggeration to say that the reputation of the Royal Navy

is founded on British oak."

see OK SODA

1. to aggressively court the generation X demographic. I fuck you.

2. ,and outright negative publicity

3. zero killed. all aboard. see the chirstchild’s mauve rib.

4. officially declared out of production by 1995

5. their slogan was “things are going to be OK”

Gina Myers

2005-07-15T14:23:00.000-07:00

The Answer

This is all I ask for—to exist. You’d think
I’d want more, you’d think I’d desire

understanding. But I am glad the earth revolves
around the sun how it does. I am glad

the earth’s rotation axis is tilted 23.5 degrees
from the sun how it is. You’d think more—

You’d think never enough, never enough.
You’d think somewhere else. But no,

these words have nothing more to offer.
You’d think no,no. You’d think naughty girl.

You’d think for Christ’s sake.

Ted Berrigan

2005-07-09T13:01:00.000-07:00

Coda: Song

When having something to do
but not yet being at it
because I'm alone, because of you
I lay down the book, & pick up the house

& move it around until it is
where it is what it is I am doing
that is the something I had to do
because I'm no longer alone, because of you.

Rae Armantrout

2005-06-28T16:19:00.000-07:00

Theory of Everything

It both hurtles
and fidgets,

otherwise
it's empty space?

*

A wide swath
of baby talk--

blue
and feathery green,
I insisted,

swinging up,

but Mother
was no longer playing.

*

Everything that stays
once meaning has cleared out

is true?

*

Tomorrow
the sun eats the earth,

now
so many leaves are new,

not asking
to be recognized.

Joseph Massey

2005-06-27T14:05:00.000-07:00

Back Yard

Lit amber by
back door light

a skunk prowls
bramble's edge

--blackberry vines
and dandelions

bunched alongside
the garage--

into alley's black
spilling moths.

Maggie Nelson

2005-06-25T14:31:00.000-07:00

Imagine

The world is so full of things
you could never imagine

An old man brusing
what's left of his hair

with a plastic fork;
a Hasidic guy pushing a stroller

full of frozen poultry. Then
a postcard bearing cherry blossoms

arrives in the mail
It says that you love me

James Galvin

2005-06-24T15:12:00.000-07:00

Time Optics

Where the ditch vaults the river,
Where the wooden flume weeps over,
Paying the way,
Where its veil makes a thin distance
And has no critics but wind-in-willowshade,
My love and I lay down
In seventeen kinds of native grasses.
We took our time.
Some wasps were building
A Japanese lantern in the branches,
The flume kept weeping into the river.
Chilly ditchwater.
Don't worry, littls wasps, wooden flume.
I'll be alright gone.

Noelle Kocot

2005-05-09T12:34:00.000-07:00

Bicycle Poem

There were cathedrals falling out of your eyes
And your arms were the handlebars
I held in an abbreviated dream of crushed petals
Strewn across the limpid avenues.

I said, "I have poems for you"
But my words were lost in the wind.
I said, "I love you"
And you drifted into sleep.

And so I said nothing and rode you in and out of the rooms
Where we had stretched the boundaries of the soul
Like an endless sheet
And I felt you waking up betwen my legs.

Brenda Shaughnessy

2005-05-08T18:31:00.000-07:00

Cinema Poisoning

I will be your first, your thirst, your third.
I'll cramp up boxy, I will starlet out
in roads of light, or crimes, or words.
My second coming would not be allowed
unless your masokismet lifts her skirts.
So I will hold you flush against the glass.
Your voice & eye are muscle & they hurt
like prodigy too soft or quick in class.

My double agent, you would never ask
my miracles of sass & light to train
the athletes of seduction in the crass
voluptuary sciences like rain.

The sex & chess & cello fever's gone
from your myopic trust, my Avalon.

Spencer Short

2005-05-05T13:40:00.000-07:00

It Will But Shake & Totter

Many poems have been written about the turgid sea.
For instance: the one about the man & his lover on the cliffs above the turgid sea.
It is the English Channel
& he is Matthew Arnold in 1851.
Across from him: “ignorant armies,” “clashing by night.”

The armies are not French.
They may be stars if what we’ve always thought of as stars
turned out to be the fading chalk of a fading language,
turned out to be nothing but the small sparks of rocks
being struck by chains in the corners of sky.

Like a Russian novel the sea roils & cedes, roils & cedes.
Fish do their fish-like work among its atavistic depths.
Notice how the moonlight glistens like lacquer
between the crests & troughs, the smell of the brine,
the heavy, salt-stung air.

All night the moon rings & rings.
All night the wind searches the cliffs for a flag,
a kite, a woman’s hat.

Love, I say, let us be true. Let us be.
The world is but a darkling plain. A hill of beans.
We are the few & we are the far between.

Brenda Hillman

2005-05-02T17:59:00.000-07:00

[two untitled fragments]
from Bright Existence

(—How long will you stay here.
Maybe longer. Sometimes,
the bee has so much pollen, it can’t fly!

and lands on the drunk camelia.
I watched you sleep,
delicious flesh, I watched you rise,

you made the dawn jealous,
you kept the future of the day inside,
not showing,—

And when you left, you were
so everywhere! torn spark. The night
had used you up, but you kept going—)

+ + +

(—Why did you tremble when you came in here.
I saw some doves fly the city;
this place, had no door.

You came in with your old sorrow,
with your other sexual loves in your mouth
your wrong previous your two laters

their little silver crosses in your eyes,
I wanted to be the boy,
I would have loved you against the wall
as hard as I could,

but there was no I right then,
desire is the good general,
the wall was nearly gone—)

C.D. Wright

2005-05-01T12:34:00.000-07:00

Gift of the Book

lights go off
all over
rhode island
everyone falls
into bed
I stay awake
reading
re-reading
the long-awaited
prose
of your
body
stunned
by the hunger

Philip Nikolayev

2005-04-30T13:41:00.000-07:00

FOUND SONNET

Glade Powder Fresh™ is a delicate
light fragrance that instantly freshens the air
with the soft scent of talc. Use Glade anywhere
in the home to effectively eliminate

odors. Glade freshens the air while leaving a light
clean scent throughout your home.
Shake well before each use; hold can upright;
press button and spray toward center of the room.

Do not set on stove or
radiator or keep where
temperature

will exceed 120° F, as container
may burst. Do not puncture
or throw in fire.

Robert Desnos

2005-04-29T10:59:00.000-07:00

SKY SONG

The flower of the Alps told the seashell: "You're shining"
The seashell told the sea: "You echo"
The sea told the boat: "You're shuddering"
The boat told the fire: "You're glowing brightly"
The fire told me: "I glow less brightly than her eyes"
The boat told me: "I shudder less than your heart does when she appears"
The sea told me: "I echo less than her name does in your love-making"
The seashell told me: "I shine less brightly than the phosphorus of desire in your hollow dream"
The flower of the Alps told me: "She's beautiful"
I said: "She's beautiful, so beautiful, she moves me."

Maureen Thorson

2005-04-28T12:30:00.000-07:00

What's Your Number?

Snaggle-Toothed Andrea drove
Me crazy, but she was classic
Mayport, another girl coming into
Whatever sexiness youth doles
Out and with no one at home who
Loved her enough to keep her
From splashing it round. In the
Meantime, she was crude, she
Made rough jokes while being
Too eager to please. She was ripe
For abuse, sitting there like
The finish line at the end of a race:
You know people are going to cross it,
Just not who's gonna get there first.

Frank O'Hara

2005-04-26T10:08:00.000-07:00

STEPS

How funny you are today New York
like Ginger Rogers in Swingtime
and St. Bridget’s steeple leaning a little to the left

here I have just jumped out of a bed full of V-days
(I got tired of D-days) and blue you there still
accepts me foolish and free
all I want is a room up there
and you in it
and even the traffic halt so thick is a way
for people to rub up against each other
and when their surgical appliances lock
they stay together
for the rest of the day (what a day)
I go by to check a slide and I say
that painting’s not so blue

where’s Lana Turner
she’s out eating
and Garbo’s backstage at the Met
everyone’s taking their coat off
so they can show a rib-cage to the rib-watchers
and the park’s full of dancers with their tights and shoes
in little bags
who are often mistaken for worker-outers at the West Side Y
why not
the Pittsburgh Pirates shout because they won
and in a sense we’re all winning
we’re alive

the apartment was vacated by a gay couple
who moved to the country for fun
they moved a day too soon
even the stabbings are helping the population explosion
though in the wrong country
and all those liars have left the UN
the Seagram Building’s no longer rivalled in interest
not that we need liquor (we just like it)

and the little box is out on the sidewalk
next to the delicatessen
so the old man can sit on it and drink beer
and get knocked off it by his wife later in the day
while the sun is still shining

oh god it’s wonderful
to get out of bed
and drink too much coffee
and smoke too many cigarettes
and love you so much

James Galvin

2005-04-25T11:53:00.000-07:00

POSTCARD

Days are cubes of light
That equal each other
Whether anything happens in them or not,
No matter what anyone did or didn't do,
They are equal.

The emptiest are lovely,
Though one is drawn to the bright-edged shards
Of days that cracked
From disappointment and longing.

Some days I go looking for oceans.
If I find one I search the beach
For the teeth I left
In a glass of water
In a motel room in Nebraska.

I'm losing the ability to tremble.
I find appearances helpful.
Some days I go looking for the sky.

Maggie Sullivan

2005-04-24T14:55:00.000-07:00

This Bus Is All Right!

This bus is all right!
Like me, it’s late for History of Western Civilization Part Two class.
Actually, it doesn’t bother.
It goes to the beach, really slowly.
Wherever you’re coming from, for a dollar thirty-five,
it lets you deep inside.
In fact, the driver says, “Move all the way back!”
When you come out, you’re in a completely different place,
without feeling invaded, dirty, inadequate,
rejected or regret.
You don’t have to say anything on this bus.
You don’t have to have a comeback, or explain.
You don’t have to practice, or have traveled a lot.
You don’t have to be able to see a pattern.

Robyn Sarah

2005-04-23T15:25:00.000-07:00

RIVETED

It is possible that things will not get better
than they are now, or have been known to be.
It is possible that we are past the middle now.
It is possible that we have crossed the great water
without knowing it, and stand now on the other side.
Yes: I think that we have crossed it. Now
we are being given tickets, and they are not
tickets to the show we had been thinking of,
but to a different show, clearly inferior.

Check again: it is our own name on the envelope.
The tickets are to that other show.

It is possible that we will walk out of the darkened hall
without waiting for the last act: people do.
Some people do. But it is probable
that we will stay seated in our narrow seats
all through the tedious denouement
to the unsurprising end -- riveted, as it were;
spellbound by our own imperfect lives
because they are lives,
and because they are ours.

Carlos Drummond de Andrade

2005-04-23T14:33:00.000-07:00

DON'T KILL YOURSELF

Carlos, calm down, love
is what you are seeing:
a kiss today, tomorrow no kiss,
the day after tomorrow is Sunday
and nobody knows what will happen
on Monday.

It's useless to resist
or to commit suicide.
Don't kill yourself. Don't kill yourself.
Save all of yourself for the wedding
though nobody knows when or if
it will ever come.

Carlos, earthy Carlos, love
spent the night with you
and your deepest self
is raising a terrible racket,
prayers,
stereos,
saints in procession,
ads for the best soap,
a racket for which nobody knows
the why or wherefor.

Meanwhile, you walk
upright, unhappy.
You are the palm tree, you are the shout
that nobody heard in the theater
and all the lights went out.
Love in darkness, no, in daylight,
is always sad, Carlos, my boy,
don't tell anyone,
nobody knows or will know.

trans. fr. the Portugese by Mark Strand

Donald Revell

2005-04-22T17:48:00.000-07:00

Moving Day

My bed abandoned
On a ranch road
Waits for anyone,
And they should hurry.
It's a good bed.
If the roads were level
I'd have it still.

Not half so lucky,
The teapot's in pieces
In a trash barrel.
It was *white* white
When I bought it
And I was new to poetry
Twenty years ago.

We're not home yet.
And I'm still new
To my callings:
Teacher, drunkard, absent minister.
I was in Carcassonne once.
I saw two horses there
And God who invented them.

An Apology to my 3-5 Loyal Readers

2005-04-22T12:33:00.000-07:00

I know that I should probably change the name of this site to "Poetry Less Than Daily" but I don't like the sound of that so much.

I've been quite busy/burdened lately, but I hope to return to a super-regular publishing schedule very soon. Watch this space.

Maggie Nelson

2005-04-22T12:32:00.000-07:00

A Misunderstanding

I thought Zen poems
were supposed to sound wise.

Now I'm going to buy
as much beer as five dollars

can buy and drink it
right here on the sofa.

Mary Ruefle

2005-04-18T12:46:00.000-07:00

The Taking of Moundville by Zoom

If you were very, very small, smaller than a leprechaun, smaller than a gnome or a fairy, and you lived in a vagina, every time a penis came in there would be a natural disaster. Your dishes would fall out of the cupboards and break and the furniture slide all the way to the other side of the room. It would take a long time to clean up afterwards.

Kenneth Koch

2005-04-17T14:52:00.000-07:00

Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams

1
I chopped down the house that you had been saving to live in next summer.
I am sorry, but it was morning, and I had nothing to do
and its wooden beams were so inviting.

2
We laughed at the hollyhocks together
and then I sprayed them with lye.
Forgive me. I simply do not know what I am doing.

3
I gave away the money that you had been saving to live on for the next ten years.
The man who asked for it was shabby
and the firm March wind on the porch was so juicy and cold.

4
Last evening we went dancing and I broke your leg.
Forgive me. I was clumsy and
I wanted you here in the wards, where I am the doctor!

Lee Ann Brown

2005-04-14T12:57:00.000-07:00

After Sappho

So many people
advised me against you.
How glad I am
we could not resist.

R.S. Gwynn

2005-04-13T11:22:00.000-07:00

Shakespearean Sonnet

With a first line taken from the tv listings

A man is haunted by his father's ghost.
Boy meets girl while feuding 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.

Mark Bibbins

2005-04-12T15:04:00.000-07:00

By the Skin of Our Luck

I used to ride around in the hole
in your lapel. From there I could watch

the fires climb out of the dumpsters
and into the sky while you caught

cinders on your tongue like snow.
I felt safe when I figured out

what you actually wanted,
despite the odd aerosol can

exploding in the night behind us
and the pleasure of your hand

sometimes finding me though otherwise
you let me pretend I was hidden.

The sun followed us all the way
to Mallorca, as did the lone helicopter

that trails me to this day.
I don’t even hear it anymore

but I see what it does to the surface
of the water and your hair

and I’m sorry—you thought it was
your fault, didn’t you, all those years.

Back from Hiatus

2005-04-12T14:59:00.001-07:00

Dailier will be more dailier now that the site owner has returned from lavish travels and vain travails.

Watch this spot.

Back from Hiatus

2005-04-12T14:59:00.000-07:00

Dailier will be more dailier now that the site owner has returned from lavish travels and vain travails.

Watch this spot.

Aaron McCollough

2005-04-05T13:40:00.000-07:00

EROS, ETHOS, ECONOMUOS

The air is good in here
we say of the pine-tree

and breaking twigs to move
the soul with what we have

to stick against the fact
of empty sky.

Just look! Cardinals
have nested here since fall

as we have come to rest
and raise our young

in a dangerous
and tangible wilderness.

Secrets inside we can’t
quite name. Hopes. Shapely wants.

The silhouette of cones,
which don’t resemble cones

in silhouette but trees
upended. Dear, we lease

the stem alive and smooth,
though tearing the bark off—

the wet, green, denuded
careen of this not ours

to love.

Etheridge Knight

2005-04-04T20:08:00.000-07:00

FEELING FUCKED UP

Lord she’s gone done left me done packed / up and split
and I with no way to make her
come back and everywhere the world is bare
bright bone white crystal sand glistens
dope death dead dying and jiving drove
her away made her take her laughter and her smiles
and her softness and her midnight sighs—

Fuck Coltrane and music and clouds drifting in the sky
fuck the sea and tress and the sky and birds
and alligators and all the animals that roam the earth
fuck marx and mao fuck fidel and nkrumah and
democracy and communism fuck smack and pot
and red ripe tomatoes fuck joseph fuck mary fuck
god jesus and all the disciples fuck fanon nixon
and malcolm fuck the revolution fuck freedom fuck
the whole muthafucking thing
all i want now is my woman back
so my soul can sing

Robert Creeley, RIP

2005-03-30T17:27:00.000-08:00

I Know a Man

As I sd to my
friend, because I am
always talking, -- John, I

sd, which was not his
name, the darkness sur-
rounds us, what

can we do against
it, or else, shall we &
why not, buy a goddamn big car,

drive, he sd, for
christ's sake, look
out where yr going.

Poetry Dailier on Hiatus

2005-03-30T11:40:00.000-08:00

Off to Vancouver, Philly, and NYC. Will post new poems when I can, but PD'er will be on a very irregular schedule for the next couple of weeks.

Crystal Curry

2005-03-29T12:38:00.000-08:00

Cherries

We wanted it far more finger to nose; low pile
on knee-high seats, haywired. We wanted it shamrock,

erotic wind. Bright city, we’re doing it lightning,
come in. We wanted it come to rest on the craps table,

so we would feel so very money storm then.
Better than tens. Whirling lights, then.

We wanted it get down to steer & crustacean,
a triple-cash up to the oompah they were & galleons.

We wanted it so exponential in the gold award castle.
Pluto, oh petunia, can you see we wanted it so extra mega

that we swallowed those lucky & all their ladies, their
trucking & weekend. We were feeler, hoof

& fruit multiplier. We wanted it so sizzling seven,
we fell into a doghouse for king watermelon. For you,

a doghouse, for balloon bars. We did it so diamond deluxe,
we wanted it more pretend, so we did it on Santa’s

jackpot bed & felt so very more big pulsar then--

Jennifer Moxley

2005-03-28T12:16:00.000-08:00

From A Distance I Can See

You have a lovely and familiar gravity,

and like in the apartment of my youthful reveries

wach time I walk into you my city-bound Greyhound

rolls through the rain-drenched streets,

a lightscape full of traffic and wondrous people

lies ahead, once you’ve caught view they shall demand

the tapering of all your beautiful fingers,

they shall tell your eyes to stop shooting such glances

for they are blocking your lips from seeming

red as they are, and what of gentle memory,

it frames your face and returns home devastated

to inform me of such bouondaries shifting

that in them, as in you, my dreams shall rest just dreams,

the rain drenched city of adulthood, vanish in advances.

A.R. Ammons

2005-03-27T11:02:00.000-08:00

Easter Morning

I have a life that did not become,
that turned aside and stopped,
astonished:
I hold it in me like a pregnancy or
as on my lap a child
not to grow or grow old but dwell on

it is to his grave I most
frequently return and return
to ask what is wrong, what was
wrong, to see it all by
the light of a different necessity
but the grave will not heal
and the child,
stirring, must share my grave
with me, an old man having
gotten by on what was left

when I go back to my home country in these
fresh far-away days, it's convenient to visit
everybody, aunts and uncles, those who used to say,
look how he's shooting up, and the
trinket aunts who always had a little
something in their pocketbooks, cinnamon bark
or a penny or nickel, and uncles who
were the rumored fathers of cousins
who whispered of them as of great, if
troubled, presences, and school
teachers, just about everybody older
(and some younger) collected in one place
waiting, particularly, but not for
me, mother and father there, too, and others
close, close as burrowing
under skin, all in the graveyard assembled,
done for, the world they
used to wield, have trouble and joy
in, gone

the child in me that could not become
was not ready for others to go,
to go on into change, blessings and
horrors, but stands there by the road
where the mishap occurred, crying out for
help, come and fix this or we
can't get by, but the great ones who
were to return, they could not or did
not hear and went on in a flurry and
now, I say in the graveyard, here
lies the flurry, now it can't come
back with help or helpful asides, now
we all buy the bitter
incompletions, pick up the knots of
horror, silently raving, and go on
crashing into empty ends not
completions, not rondures the fullness
has come into and spent itself from

I stand on the stump
of a child, whether myself
or my little brother who died, and
yell as far as I can, I cannot leave this place, for
for me it is the dearest and the worst,
it is life nearest to life which is
life lost: it is my place where
I must stand and fail,
calling attention with tears
to the branches not lofting
boughs into space, to the barren
air that holds the world that was my world

though the incompletions
(& completions) burn out
standing in the flash high-burn
momentary structure of ash, still it
is a picture-book, letter-perfect
Easter morning: I have been for a
walk: the wind is tranquil: the brook
works without flashing in an abundant
tranquility: the birds are lively with
voice: I saw something I had
never seen before: two great birds,
maybe eagles, blackwinged, whitenecked
and -headed, came from the south oaring
the great wings steadily; they went
directly over me, high up, and kept on
due north: but then one bird,
the one behind, veered a little to the
left and the other bird kept on seeming
not to notice for a minute: the first
began to circle as if looking for
something, coasting, resting its wings
on the down side of some of the circles:
the other bird came back and they both
circled, looking perhaps for a draft;
they turned a few more times, possibly
rising--at least, clearly resting
then flew on falling into distance till
they broke across the local bush and
trees: it was a sight of bountiful
majesty and integrity: the having
patterns and routes, breaking
from them to explore other patterns or
better ways to routes, and then the
return: a dance sacred as the sap in
the trees, permanent in its descriptions
as the ripples round the brook's
ripplestone: fresh as this particular
flood of burn breaking across us now
from the sun.

David Hess

2005-03-26T11:19:00.000-08:00

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!

2005-03-25T17:53:00.000-08:00

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

2005-03-25T11:38:00.000-08:00

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

2005-03-24T11:08:00.000-08:00

“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

2005-03-23T11:15:00.000-08:00

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

2005-03-22T01:08:00.000-08:00

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

2005-03-21T13:26:00.000-08:00

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.

Terrance Hayes

2005-03-18T11:41:00.000-08:00

POEM

Soul, I am going to ask you again
to return the thin white gloves
I lent you that night.
They were not a gift.
Return the pearls
and at least twelve
of the eighty-seven kisses
I filled with water,
I am dying of thirst.
Have you forgotten
my name? Soul, a week ago
you scurried beneath the fence.
I need armor
if I am to leave this house.
I would like to wear
into the world
which drags me around
like a piece of tin.
I need the gleam
of the black Packard
crouching in the drive
and the strong fingers of the girl
picking thorns for a crown.
Soul, return the black boots
and felt-bottomed collection plate.
I was waiting
for the hour’s darkest page to turn
when you cast down
a succession of notes.
I remember watching you
cross a footpath into the woods.
I remember watching you
vanish into a thatch hut.
Soul, return or return
your slow extractions.
It is time you ceased being a poem.
Show me the words
written on the back of the map.

César Vallejo

2005-03-17T10:37:00.000-08:00

Ágape

Today no one has come to inquire,
nor have they wanted anything from me this afternoon.

I have not seen a single cemetery flower
in so happy a procession of lights.
Forgive me, Lord! I have died so little!

This afternoon everyone, everyone goes by
without asking or begging me anything.

And I do not know what it is they forget, and it is
heavy in my hands like something stolen.

I have come to the door,
and I want to shout at everyone:
If you miss something, here it is!

Because in all the afternoons of this life,
I do not know how many doors are slammed on a face,
and my soul takes something that belongs to another.

Today nobody has come;
and today I have died so little in the afternoon!

Catherine Wagner

2005-03-16T09:26:00.000-08:00

LOVER

Prince Genji was in love with me in the eleventh century. He put his hand through my screens. Why Lady Murasaki you may go.

Sir Walter Scott courted me wi’glove and ring, wi’ brotch and knife. I said you faker.

Sartre I fucked, it was bad.

Djuna Barnes was in love with me I told her I was scared she said Lie down!

Byron said he was we only flirted.

Will you said Lady Mary Wortley Montague stay after tea. Your ankle my dear as you rose from the clavichord.

Your hair being of the softest brightness and your bosom of the brightest softness I am loath to choose between and must address myself to both—so Philip Sidney

Once sat on Wystan Auden’s lap—kissed his jaw and rubbed his belly. I stuck my hand in his pants and found his old thing. We were both delighted. “Hag,” he said.

Job I said God punish you for a righteous man I am raw.

Come in while I dress. I will not, said Charlotte Bronte and waited in the snow.

Virginia W and I bathing—neglected pond. A honeybee pricked my lower thigh. Quoth she, where the bee suck

Joe Safdie

2005-03-15T02:04:00.000-08:00

DOUBLE SONNET

At the beginning
of "The Wizard of Oz"
the fate of a Kansas farm
during the Depression

is vividly rendered --
an early example
of realism keeping company
with the magical.

"We've got to get away --
We've got to run away!"
"But why are you running away?
Well, Professor Marvel,

a homicidal cretin just got re-elected
as President of the United States

* * *

"She's putting her hand on her heart!"
The Munchkins seem to like rhyme
as a poetic device
(which, witch, etc.)

but show an unfortunate Cartesianism
in verifying the death
of the Wicked Witch

as do those who tally
the civilian dead in Iraq

Margaret Hamilton:
Best Actress of All Time
(the problem of evil
in the world, etc.)

from now on you'll be history

E.E. Cummings

2005-03-14T11:37:00.000-08:00

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
wich is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth
day of life and love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

Brenda Hillman

2005-03-13T03:06:00.000-08:00

River Song

Panic diagonals
their river-method duck’s-head breath

You preferred the park
before the leaves came out

Later was too late for the river fronds
to unbraid the hair of the raven

The moon has two birthdays
you’re the personal servant of taillights

Spectator of day’s finest closing

At dusk you apologize

The colors forgive you because they change

LeRoi Jones

2005-03-12T13:25:00.000-08:00


As a possible lover

Practices
silence, the way of wind
bursting
its early lull. Cold morning
to night, we go so
slowly, without
thought
to ourselves. (Enough
to have thought
tonight, nothing
finishes it. What
you are, will have
no certainty, or
end. That you will
stay, where you are,
a human gentle wisp
of life. Ah…)
  practices
loneliness,
as a virtue. A single
specious need
to keep 
what you have
never really 
had.

Ron Padgett

2005-03-10T02:47:00.000-08:00

Dog

The New York streets look nude and stupid
With Ted and Edwin no longer here
To light them up with their particularity
Of loving them and with intelligence
In some large sense of the word:
New York’s lost some of its rough charm
And there’s just no getting around it
By pretending the rest of us can somehow make up for it
Or that future generations will. I hear
A dog barking in the street and it’s drizzling
At 6 A.M. and there’s nothing warm
Or lovable or necessary about it, it’s just
Some dog barking in some street somewhere.
I hate that dog.

Catherine Wagner

2005-03-09T11:43:00.000-08:00


I Am Darling You




 let me king around
 you king all over, mighty

Bring a town in, okay,
add a country,

slavish all over me, please.

Darned mighty, sleeping,
oyster eyes.

Feel little. Little my head to sleep.

I suffer you, you basic.

Deign down, lean at me, chosen.

Judas Icarus.

He made enough for me to take to lunch.

Alan DeNiro

2005-03-08T10:04:00.000-08:00

Moby Dick II

You! With the semipermanent features!
And the Best Buy in your pocket!
And the limber subliminal cells telling you what to buy!
And the popsicle stick scythe!
What do you think you can cut with that?
You have a Lincoln Navigator for a sphincter!
What do you hope to accomplish with that?
Naming vehicles after famous presidents like that!
And also perhaps Vasco de Gama!
Go ahead and titter! This poem
Will never change your life!
But then again you’re a vampire!
So you’re kind of dead anyways!
Who was Ahab’s first mate and later died?
Starbuck!

Robyn Schiff

2005-03-07T12:21:00.000-08:00

Good-Bye Finch

When that which closes
hopes. Better to
measure. Leaner
weaves the raven
nearer the center, our
single reminder which the black bird makes
“find me, I am here” music,
crying out
“this food is not filling.” Find me
time, pleasure, ocean, ever,
or pure abstraction
as if the lightness

Forget that which is
rare? ounce? blessed?
Do you know the word for
what you do not
want. Transactions take place
Always a disruption
Transactions take the place of you

A. R. Ammons

2005-03-07T11:10:00.000-08:00

Come Prima

I know
there is
perfection in the being
of my being,
that I am
holy in amness
as stars or paperclips,

that the universe,
moving from void to void,
pours in and out
through me:

there is a point,
only itself,
that fills space,
an emptiness
that is plenitude:

a void that is all being,
a being that is void:

I am perfect:
the wind is perfect:
ditchwater, running, is perfect:
everything is:

I raise my hand

Apologia pro blogia absentia

2005-03-07T11:07:00.000-08:00

We here at Poetry Dailier apologize for sleeping in yesterday and neglecting to post a poem. In the future, feel free to harass us.

Dean Young

2005-03-05T11:11:00.000-08:00

He Said Turn Here

and then Tony showed us the lake
where he had thrown some of his sadness last summer
and it had dissolved like powder
so he thought maybe the lake could take
some of the radiant, aluminum kind
he had been making lately.
And it did.
It was a perfect lake,
none of the paint had chipped off,
no bolts showing, the arms that Dante
and Virgil would have to hack through
not even breaking the surface.
Mumbling Italian to itself,
it had climbed down two wooden stairs
back to the beach now that the rains were done.
How strange to be water so close to the ocean
yet the only other water you get to talk to
comes from the sky. Maybe this is why
it seems so willing to take on
Tony’s sadness which sometimes corrodes
his friends, which is really
many different sadnesses, smaller
and smaller, surrounded by more
and more space, each a world and
at its core an engine like a bee
inside a lily, like buzzing inside
the bee. It seems like nothing
could change its color although
we couldn’t tell what color it was,
it kept changing. In the summer,
Tony says he comes down early each day
and there’s no one around so the lake
barely says a thing when he dives in
and once when his kitchen was on fire in Maine
and he was asleep, the lake came and bit his hand,
trying to drag him to safety
and some nights in New Mexico,
he can hear it howling,
searching for him in the desert
so we’re glad Tony has this lake
and we promise to come back in August
and swim with him across,
maybe even race.

David Shapiro

2005-03-04T10:21:00.000-08:00

After Ryokan

In my bowl

In the thin snow

In front of my window
In the window sky
In the blue distance
In the scattered door

In every quarter of the evening land
In the pool near your room
In the shadow on the highway—
In the staves of the sky

I seem to hear your voice.

Wallace Stevens (RETRO PO!)

2005-03-03T09:49:00.000-08:00

Anecdote of the Prince of Peacocks

In the moonlight
I met Berserk,
In the moonlight
On the bushy plain.
Oh, sharp he was
As the sleepless!

And, “Why are you red
In this milky blue?”
I said.
“Why sun-colored,
As if awake
In the midst of sleep?”

“You that wander,”
So he said,
“On the busy plain,
Forget so soon.
But I set my traps
In the midst of dreams.”

I knew from this
That the blue ground
Was full of blocks
And blocking steel.
I knew the dread
Of the bushy plain,
And the beauty
Of the moonlight
Falling there,
Falling
As sleep falls
In the innocent air.

Nick Twemlow

2005-03-02T10:20:00.000-08:00

Default Margins

I am in my brain smoking my gun.
Get off Luvox, restore all defaults,
give me a breast to suckle & a blurb to write,
a symphony to conduct as I tick off
the latest sniper developments,
fucking a poem so fast & hard I come out its mouth.
I’m snorkeling through my exhaustion to kiss you.
Come crackle with me
as we formulate one hypothesis
to drain the faucet & another to keep us
anesthetized through lunch. I miss
the crayon-shaving candor we displayed
during courtship, the little boy
I’d like to become. I shave ticker tape into the sink
as the parade canters through my head,
did a protest turn violent on the capitol steps?
Film at eleven, you shuffle in to rinse, captions
by midnight. I kid you about every little thing,
I’m the shy type, and so am I.
Do you crave further information?
Tune the station to the thickets
of picketers, kindling in the far-stick madness;
the pyres rioters lug in their wake; the marble slab
of meat that is the body politic;
& finally, the barn ablaze, the horses’ whinnies
tapering to a vulgar hiss, the scrum of flies
encircling a carcassed cow’s eye. If I brandish
a gun in the first line, do I have to fire it
by poem’s end? It is not my policy
to frighten with consequences.

Two Poems: PF Potvin & Amy Gerstler

2005-03-01T11:34:00.000-08:00

An Unforgettable Nod

PF Potvin

 
I stood at the door until she commanded.  “Get over here and fuck me.  I’m not 
anorexic for nothing.”
 
*

Fuck You Poem # 45

Amy Gerstler


Fuck you in slang and conventional English.
Fuck you in lost and neglected lingoes.
Fuck you hungry and sated; faded, pock marked and defaced. 
Fuck you with orange rind, fennel and anchovy paste.
Fuck you with rosemary and thyme, and fried green olives on the side. 
Fuck you humidly and icily. 
Fuck you farsightedly and blindly.
Fuck you nude and draped in stolen finery. 
 
Fuck you while cells divide wildly and birds trill. 
Thank you for barring me from his bedside while he was ill.
Fuck you puce and chartreuse. 
Fuck you postmodern and prehistoric. 
Fuck you under the influence of opium, codeine, laudanum and paregoric. 
Fuck every real and imagined country you fancied yourself princess of. 
Fuck you on feast days and fast days, below and above.
Fuck you sleepless and shaking for nineteen nights running. 
Fuck you ugly and fuck you stunning.
 
Fuck you shipwrecked on the barren island of your bed.   
Fuck you marching in lockstep in the ranks of the dead. 
Fuck you at low and high tide. 
And fuck you astride 
                                anyone who has the bad luck to fuck you, in dank hallways,     
     bathrooms, or kitchens. 
Fuck you in gasps and whispered benedictions.
 
And fuck these curses, however heartfelt and true,
that bind me, till I forgive you, to you.

Andrew Mister - Two Poems

2005-02-28T11:10:00.000-08:00

(1:06 a.m.)

meanwhile in the city known
for shipwrecks, night bleeds
around the cars in the 7-11
parking lot, the snow
stopped falling, though we
can still hear it pouring
out of the cutlass supreme’s
radio. we’ve been in the habit
of counting them dead,
the houses. how dearly,
the night holds the damp.
the twine that holds a thought
suspended above your head
severs the though. the resolve
to sit in that car all night knowing
the next day is dust on your hands.

(Originally published in TYPO)

*

Avec Laudenum

We entered the sky splayed blue

The clouds tattooed around its wrists

I can’t eat them through I’d like to

Follow you anywhere except into that

Present tense I used to conceive of

Summer kept us busy and by early

September lying in the highway around his feet

I began to believe my visions

Only a suitcase away from leaving or

15 boxes of books make a life worth

Living out indefinitely under the lost

Sunset we are only a backdrop for the rain

Clouds begin to dissolve into asphalt

The ghost in the machinations is speaking

Please be quite please we are trying

To sleep beneath creaking floorboards

I told my neighbor at 3:15 a.m. as our dreams

Rose thru the highway around he feet

But a dream is only the stage for what’s dreaming

Beneath the shine of corrugated metal I felt

The obdurate music of stimulus/response

You’ll hear that sound in so many words

It’s like listening to god. He’s got telephones for eyes.

Kenneth Koch

2005-02-27T12:57:00.000-08:00

Alive For An Instant

I have a bird in my head and a pig in my stomach
And a flower in my genitals and a tiger in my genitals
And a lion in my genitals and I am after you but I have a song in my heart
And my song is a dove
I have man in my hands I have a woman in my shoes
I have a landmark decision in my reason
I have a death rattle in my nose I have summer in my brain water
I have dreams in my toes
This is the matter with me and the hammer of my mother and father
Who created me with everything
But I lack clam I lack rose
Though I do not lack extreme delicacy of rose petal
Who is it that I wish to astonish?
In the birdcall I found a reminder of you
But it was thin and brittle and gone in an instant
Has nature set out to be a great entertainer?
Obviously not a great reproducer? A great Nothing?
Well I will leave that up to you
I have a knocking woodpecker in my heart and I think I have three souls
One for love one for poetry and one for acting out my insane self
Not insane but boring but perpendicular but untrue but true
The three rarely sing together take my hand it’s active
The active ingredient in it is a touch
I am Lord Byron I am Percy Shelley I am Ariosto
I eat the bacon I went down the slide I have a thunderstorm in my inside I will never hate you
But how can this maelstrom be appealing? do you like menageries? my god
Most people want a man! So here I am
I have a pheasant in my reminders I have a goshawk in my clouds
Whatever is it which has led all these animals to you?
A resurrection? or maybe an insurrection? an inspiration?
I have a baby in my landscape and I have a wild rat in my secrets from you.

Joseph Ceravolo

2005-02-26T12:15:00.000-08:00

Pregnant, I Come

I come to you
with the semen
and the babies:
ropes of the born.

I rise up as you go up
in your consciousness.
Are you unhappy
in the source?

The clouds sputter
across the ring.
Do the birds sing?

Is the baby singing in you? yet.

Maggie Sullivan

2005-02-25T10:23:00.000-08:00

Thirsty Gulp

being 39 isn’t a good enough reason to feel bad
take Donn for instance
he’s 42 and still works at Borders
and gives a babe like me a boner
he knows you’re supposed to put butter on the popcorn
he knows you’re supposed to put salt on
he knows you’re supposed to read slow
he knows you’re not supposed to know
right now he’s memorizing moves behind the register
from a book about wrestling in the 1800s
I’m dusting the mystery shelves behind him
wishing he’d use one on me

he speaks Old Minnesotan
criminy, he goes way back!
funnier than W.C. Fields and scarier
he knows how to say “That was delicious. Thank you.”
and he can be wrong
he ate a whole anchovy all at once
from my plate in the breakroom yesterday,
and then realized—

he is old-time punk rock music
he knows for a fact it’s possible to break your back in two
and still walk
he’s an expert on lite fare
although it doesn’t help so much
Donn born with two Ns
even in big beige plastic gramma glasses
and corrective shoes
he’s so in style
it breaks me

Kristin Kelly

2005-02-24T11:52:00.000-08:00

Poem Neither about Sex Nor Death

All of it is here that should not be. A
summer motel, coffee, bible, cable,
our set of big books. Lord Byron over
his peony. Then Countess Blessington
on her knees. She hears all of it: not his
want, hers. All the da da da da da and
hectic red, a book she’s bought but never
read because she hates endings as much as
the lute. Shelley is painting his face with
crayolas: a whole box of terror blue.
You draw a boat. It breaks all over your
notebook. Love, we are drowning. Here’s the part
where you wave. This is not about any
thing. It is comfort. I take off my old
high heels. Remember that picture you drew—
the one with the la la’s and the heart and
the ocean. You colored out of the lines.
I will still sleep with you tonight.

Barbara Ras

2005-02-23T11:16:00.000-08:00

Letter to the Front, 2

When it is still, I listen for your voice.
It has a life of its own, without you.
On bad days, just words, strength,
gardenias, repent.
On good days, stories, like children coming out
after rain. The one about being put out of the car
by the side of the road, how small your parents looked
driving away and how big the dandelions near you
little shoes. The one about the baby teeth
you kept in a miniature silver trunk
until one Saturday you laid them out in the sun
and a bird ate them.

Before the war, I thought I knew
where we stood, the ground
solid and the big blue earth
held up by a turtle and below that
turtles all the way down.

The mail is slow. I wait
for your letters, for the one that says,
“If I survive the enemy and the fire
we will live in the country and raise sheep
and in the lambing season
when the new grass is fragile enough
I will go down
on all fours, I will feast and weep.”

I watched a man touch his wife
on the cheek with the rounded back
of his hand. Just once, his half-fist
brushed the invisibly fine fur of her face,
just once, like a comb, like salt, like a line
their bodies would never cross.

Some days I can’t eat. By night
I am hollow with caves, your absence painting
my walls with giraffes, swans,
a black rabbit whose eyes are vermilion.
No one knows about the animals.
No one knows about the speechlessness they keep.

When we danced and our bodies curled
to each other, I couldn’t imagine collisions.
It was the sea I wanted to feel under us.
Now there are windows.
This one to see if there’s fire.
This one to see if there’s bigger fire.
This one for the bomb
the size of a Volkswagen shot twenty miles.
This one for you. This one for you.

Andy Carter

2005-02-22T02:31:00.000-08:00

Severed from the possible world

I have hope for the lemon, as mediator of contact, magic item, and mortal. I trust only that it removes itself, gradually, without harm or anger, for another.
I have seen the limit and it radiates a false yellow light.
I have doubled back. I have awoke in places that insist my body must have traveled why I was asleep.
I have bathed in amber light and my lungs fill with glue. I have been attached to machines that must be plugged in. I have taken your hand and invited you in. How an ordinary day.
I have come home every day. I have walked through the front door to find myself sleeping.
I have hey wife and I have where is my wife; I have no possessions.
I have doubted the quality of magic, a dollar and a pen in every pocket.
I have been frank with the outside. I have not been thanked for listening.
I have wondered aloud whether we can all be tragic.

Ted Berrigan

2005-02-21T11:35:00.000-08:00

Words for Love
for Sandy

Winter crisp and the brittleness of snow
as like make me tired as not. I go my
myriad way blundering, bombastic, dragged
by a self that can never be still, pushed
by my surging blood, my reasoning mind.

I am in love with poetry. Every way I turn
this, my weakness, smites me. A glass
of chocolate milk, head of lettuce, dark-
ness of clouds at one o’clock obsess me.
I weep for all of these or laugh.

By day I sleep, an obscurantist, lost
in dreams of lists, compiled by my self
for reassurance. Jackson Pollock René
Rilke Benedict Arnold I watch
my psyche, smile, dream wet dreams, and sigh.

At night, awake, high on poems, or pills
or simple awe that loveliness exists, my lists
flow differently. Of words bright red
and black, and blue. Bosky. Oubliette. Dis-
severed. And O, alas

Time disturbs me. Always minute detail
fills me up. It is 12:10 in New York. In Houston
it is 2 p.m. It is time to steal books. It’s
time to go mad. It is the day of the apocalypse
the year of parrot fever! What am I saying?

Only this. My poems do contain
wilde beestes. I write for my Lady
of the Lake. My god is immense, and lonely
but uncowed. I trust my sanity, and I am proud. If
I sometimes grow weary, and seem still, nevertheless

my heart still loves, will break.

Shanna Compton

2005-02-20T15:35:00.000-08:00

Contraposto

To my dear & loving head wound,
There is no beautiful mountain
anywhere near where you were born.
But let's just say there were,
instead of swamp & highway
instead of woods & marsh gas
instead of dualie pickup trucks
with slingshot gangs and make-up
camouflage there were a pretty mountain.
You would have climbed it first of all.
I would have too, to meet you.

Welcome to Poetry Dailier

2005-02-20T15:32:00.000-08:00

This blog will, each day, feature a poem that I like better than whatever's up over at Poetry Daily that day. Yes, I will shamelessly post the poems of my friends and lovers. I will scour my shelves for better poems. I will not post any poems by Jorie Graham or Billy Collins.

Enjoy.