10 Jun: "I'm a Fool to Love You" by Cornelius Eady

Some folks will tell you the blues is a woman,

Some type of supernatural creature.

My mother would tell you, if she could,

About her life with my father,

A strange and sometimes cruel gentleman.

She would tell you about the choices

A young black woman faces.

Is falling in love with some man

A deal with the devil

In blue terms, the tongue we use

When we don't want nuance

To get in the way,

When we need to talk straight.

My mother chooses my father

After choosing a man

Who was, as we sing it,

Of no account.

This man made my father look good,

That's how bad it was.

He made my father seem like an island

In the middle of a stormy sea,

He made my father look like a rock.

And is the blues the moment you realize

You exist in a stacked deck,

You look in a mirror at your young face,

The face my sister carries,

And you know it's the only leverage

You've got.

Does this create a hurt that whispers

How you going to do?

Is the blues the moment

You shrug your shoulders

And agree, a girl without money

Is nothing, dust

To be pushed around by any old breeze.

Compared to this,

My father seems, briefly,

To be a fire escape.

This is the way the blues works

Its sorry wonders,

Makes trouble look like

A feather bed,

Makes the wrong man's kisses

A healing.

9 Jun: "A Poetry Reading At West Point" by William Matthews

A Poetry Reading At West Point

I read to the entire plebe class,
in two batches. Twice the hall filled
with bodies dressed alike, each toting
a copy of my book. What would my
shrink say, if I had one, about
such a dream, if it were a dream?

Question and answer time.
"Sir," a cadet yelled from the balcony,
and gave his name and rank, and then,
closing his parentheses, yelled
"Sir" again. "Why do your poems give
me a headache when I try

to understand them?" he asked. "Do
you want that?" I have a gift for
gentle jokes to defuse tension,
but this was not the time to use it.
"I try to write as well as I can
what it feels like to be human,"

I started, picking my way care-
fully, for he and I were, after
all, pained by the same dumb longings.
"I try to say what I don't know
how to say, but of course I can't
get much of it down at all."

By now I was sweating bullets.
"I don't want my poems to be hard,
unless the truth is, if there is
a truth." Silence hung in the hall
like a heavy fabric. My own
head ached. "Sir," he yelled. "Thank you. Sir." 

8 Jun: "Sidekicks" by Ronald Koertge

Sidekicks

They were never handsome and often came
with a hormone imbalance manifested by corpulence,
a yodel of a voice or ears big as kidneys.

But each was brave. More than once a sidekick
has thrown himself in front of our hero in order
to receive the bullet or blow meant for that
perfect face and body.

Thankfully, heroes never die in movies and leave
the sidekick alone. He would not stand for it.
Gabby or Pat, Pancho or Andy remind us of a part
of ourselves,

the dependent part that can never grow up,
the part that is painfully eager to please,
always wants a hug and never gets enough.

Who could sit in a darkened theatre, listen
to the organ music and watch the best
of ourselves lowered into the ground while
the rest stood up there, tears pouring off
that enormous nose.

7 Jun: "The Book of Hand Shadows" by Marianne Boruch

An eagle and a squirrel. A bull and a sage.
All take two hands, even the sheep
whose mouth is a lever for nothing, neither
grass nor complaint. The black swan’s
mostly one long arm, bent
at the elbow but there’s always feathers
to fool with. Front leaf: a boy
with a candle, leaning curious while
an old man makes
a Shakespeare. The small pointed beard
is a giveaway.
                    I always wanted to, especially
because of the candle part. How the eye is finally
a finger bent to make an emptiness. Or that
a thing thrown up there
is worlds bigger than how it starts. So I liked
the ceiling better than the wall, looking up
where stars roamed and moon sometimes
hovered, were the roof lost,
were we lucky
and forgot ourselves.

6 Jun: “Only One of My Deaths” by Dean Young

Because it seems the only way to save the roses

is to pluck the Japanese beetles out of

their convoluted paradise

and kill them, I think for a moment,

instead of crushing them in the driveway,

of impaling them on the thorns.

Perhaps they'd prefer that.

5 Jun: “Alzheimer's” by Bob Hicok

Chairs move by themselves, and books.

Grandchildren visit, stand

new and nameless, their faces' puzzles

missing pieces. She's like a fish

in deep ocean, its body made of light.

She floats through rooms, through

my eyes, an old woman bereft

of chronicle, the parable of her life.

And though she's almost a child

there's still blood between us:

I passed through her to arrive.

So I protect her from knives,

stairs, from the street that calls

as rivers do, a summons to walk away,

to follow. And dress her,

demonstrate how buttons work,

when she sometimes looks up

and says my name, the sound arriving

like the trill of a bird so rare

it's rumored no longer to exist.

4 Jun: “Fat Is Not a Fairy Tale” by Jane Yolen

“Fat Is Not a Fairy Tale” by Jane Yolen

I am thinking of a fairy tale,

Cinder Elephant,

Sleeping Tubby,

Snow Weight,

where the princess is not

anorexic, wasp-waisted,

flinging herself down the stairs.

I am thinking of a fairy tale,

Hansel and Great,

Repoundsel,

Bounty and the Beast,where the beauty

has a pillowed breast,

and fingers plump as sausage.

I am thinking of a fairy tale

that is not yet written,

for a teller not yet born,

for a listener not yet conceived,

for a world not yet won,

where everything round is good:

the sun, wheels, cookies, and the princess.

Tell Me I'm Fat is an interesting talk on the same issue.

3 Jun: "The Oldest Living Thing in L.A." by Larry Lewis

The Oldest Living Thing in L.A.

Related Poem Content Details

BY LARRY LEVIS

At Wilshire & Santa Monica I saw an opossum 

Trying to cross the street. It was late, the street 

Was brightly lit, the opossum would take 

A few steps forward, then back away from the breath 

Of moving traffic. People coming out of the bars 

Would approach, as if to help it somehow. 

It would lift its black lips & show them 

The reddened gums, the long rows of incisors, 

Teeth that went all the way back beyond 

The flames of Troy & Carthage, beyond sheep 

Grazing rock-strewn hills, fragments of ruins 

In the grass at San Vitale. It would back away 

Delicately & smoothly, stepping carefully 

As it always had. It could mangle someone’s hand 

In twenty seconds. Mangle it for good. It could 

Sever it completely from the wrist in forty. 

There was nothing to be done for it. Someone 

Or other probably called the LAPD, who then 

Called Animal Control, who woke a driver, who 

Then dressed in mailed gloves, the kind of thing 

Small knights once wore into battle, who gathered 

Together his pole with a noose on the end, 

A light steel net to snare it with, someone who hoped 

The thing would have vanished by the time he got there. 

2 Jun: "Mrs Midas" by Carol Ann Duffy

Background: King Midas wished to turn everything he touched into gold. When his wish was granted, he realized it was a curse.  

It was late September. I’d just poured a glass of wine, begun
to unwind, while the vegetables cooked. The kitchen
filled with the smell of itself, relaxed, its steamy breath
gently blanching the windows. So I opened one,
then with my fingers wiped the other’s glass like a brow.
He was standing under the pear tree snapping a twig.

Now the garden was long and the visibility poor, the way
the dark of the ground seems to drink the light of the sky,
but that twig in his hand was gold. And then he plucked
a pear from a branch. – we grew Fondante d’Automne – 
and it sat in his palm, like a lightbulb. On.
I thought to myself, Is he putting fairy lights in the tree?

He came into the house. The doorknobs gleamed.
He drew the blinds. You know the mind; I thought of
the Field of the Cloth of Gold and of Miss Macready.
He sat in that chair like a king on a burnished throne. 
The look on his face was strange, wild, vain. I said,
What in the name of God is going on? He started to laugh.

I served up the meal. For starters, corn on the cob.
Within seconds he was spitting out the teeth of the rich.
He toyed with his spoon, then mine, then with the knives, the forks.
He asked where was the wine. I poured with a shaking hand,
a fragrant, bone-dry white from Italy, then watched
as he picked up the glass, goblet, golden chalice, drank. 

It was then that I started to scream. He sank to his knees.
After we’d both calmed down, I finished the wine
on my own, hearing him out. I made him sit
on the other side of the room and keep his hands to himself.
I locked the cat in the cellar. I moved the phone.
The toilet I didn’t mind. I couldn’t believe my ears:

how he’d had a wish. Look, we all have wishes; granted.
But who has wishes granted? Him. Do you know about gold?
It feeds no one; aurum, soft, untarnishable; slakes
no thirst. He tried to light a cigarette; I gazed, entranced,
as the blue flame played on its luteous stem. At least,
I said, you’ll be able to give up smoking for good.

Separate beds. in fact, I put a chair against my door,
near petrified. He was below, turning the spare room
into the tomb of Tutankhamun. You see, we were passionate then,
in those halcyon days; unwrapping each other, rapidly,
like presents, fast food. But now I feared his honeyed embrace,
the kiss that would turn my lips to a work of art.

And who, when it comes to the crunch, can live
with a heart of gold? That night, I dreamt I bore
his child, its perfect ore limbs, its little tongue
like a precious latch, its amber eyes
holding their pupils like flies. My dream milk
burned in my breasts. I woke to the streaming sun. 

So he had to move out. We’d a caravan
in the wilds, in a glade of its own. I drove him up
under the cover of dark. He sat in the back.
And then I came home, the woman who married the fool
who wished for gold. At first, I visited, odd times,
parking the car a good way off, then walking.

You knew you were getting close. Golden trout
on the grass. One day, a hare hung from a larch,
a beautiful lemon mistake.  And then his footprints,
glistening next to the river’s path. He was thin,
delirious; hearing, he said, the music of Pan
from the woods. Listen. That was the last straw.

What gets me now is not the idiocy or greed
but lack of thought for me. Pure selfishness. I sold
the contents of the house and came down here.
I think of him in certain lights, dawn, late afternoon,
and once a bowl of apples stopped me dead. I miss most,
even now, his hands, his warm hands on my skin, his touch.

1 Jun: "Moderation Kills (Excusez-Moi, Je Suis Sick As A Dog)" by David Kirby

I’m tackling this particularly chewy piece of sushi and
            recalling the only Japanese words I know,
“Fugu wa kuitashii, inochi wa oshishii,” meaning,
            “I would like to eat fugu–but live!”
which, I’ve read, is something Japanese executives say
            when contemplating a particularly risky

course of action, because whereas the testes of the fugu
            or blowfish are harmless
yet highly prized as a virility builder, the liver,
            which is almost identical
in appearance to the testes, is toxic, so that
            a less-cautious individual,

a fisherman, say, who thinks himself as skillful
            as the chef who has actually been
educated and licensed in the preparation of fugu,
            might eat the wrong organ and die,
face-down in his rice bowl, chopsticks nipping
            spasmodically at the air.

Coming in from the vegetable patch, the fisherman’s wife
            sees him cooling in the remains
of his meal and shrieks, and I don’t know
            the Japanese for this,
“You have eaten fugu–and died!” True, though
            for anyone other than the new widow,

why should his death be exclaimed upon as though
            it were a failure or defeat,
since the fisherman had finished a good day of work
            and was not only enjoying his tasty snack
but also looking forward to the enhancement
            of his powers of generation,
this being therefore a fine moment in which to expire
            and certainly preferable to
countless moments of life as a fumbling drooler
            (since fugu liver can paralyze
as well), a burden to his loved ones as well as
            the object of their contempt.

Then someone across the table from me says he’s heard
            of a state of mind called boredom
but never actually experienced it, and I wonder,
            Can a mind that never sinks
into the cold gray waters of boredom ever rise to
            the blue-and-gold heavens of ecstasy?

Then someone else shouts, “Excusez-moi, je suis sick
            as a dog!” and disappears
laughing, but that’s okay because “ecstacy”=
            “ex stasis”= “get off the dime”=
“fish or cut bait” = “lead, follow, or get out
            of the way,” does it not?

Besides, who’s to say the fisherman didn’t hate
            his wife, couldn’t stand her?
And had to eat fugu testes in order to be able
            to countenance her and
therefore is better off dead and unknowing than
            alive and fully sentient of such misery?

Or hated himself and therefore is better off dead, etc.?
            And therefore who is
more admirable, the executive who fears death
            or the fisherman who actually dies?
Does the former feel brave merely because
            he has talked of taking a risk?

Would the doughty fisherman have said “Fugu wa kuitashii,
            inochi was oshishii” and taken pride
in his temperance? Certainly not–
            offered the same challenge under identical
circumstances, he’s have said, and I don’t know
            the Japanese for this either, “Moderation kills.”