31 Aug: [A straight rain is rare...] by Lyn Hejinian

A straight rain is rare and doors have suspicions

and I hold that names begin histories

and that the last century was a cruel one. I am pretending

to be a truck in Mexico. I am a woman with a long neck and a good burden

and I waddle efficiently. Activity never sleeps and no tale of crumbling cliffs

can be a short one. I have to shift weight favorably. Happiness

can’t be settled. I brush my left knee twice, my right once,

my left twice again and in that way advance. The alphabet

and the cello can represent horses but I can only pretend

to be a dog slurping pudding. After the 55 minutes it takes to finish

my legs tremble. All is forgiven. Yesterday is going the way of tomorrow

indirectly and the heat of the sun is inadequate at this depth. I see

the moon. The verbs ought and can lack infinity and somewhere

between 1957 when the heat of the dry sun naughtily struck me

and now when my secrets combine in the new order of cold rains

and night winds a lot has happened. Long phrases

are made up of short phrases that bear everything “in vain” or “all

in fun” “for your sake” and “step by step” precisely. I too can spring.

30 Aug: "Race" by Elizabeth Alexander

Sometimes I think about Great-Uncle Paul who left Tuskegee,

Alabama to become a forester in Oregon and in so doing

became fundamentally white for the rest of his life, except

when he traveled without his white wife to visit his siblings—

now in New York, now in Harlem, USA—just as pale-skinned,

as straight-haired, as blue-eyed as Paul, and black. Paul never told anyone

he was white, he just didn’t say that he was black, and who could imagine,

an Oregon forester in 1930 as anything other than white?

The siblings in Harlem each morning ensured

no one confused them for anything other than what they were, black.

They were black! Brown-skinned spouses reduced confusion.

Many others have told, and not told, this tale.

When Paul came East alone he was as they were, their brother.

The poet invents heroic moments where the pale black ancestor stands up

on behalf of the race. The poet imagines Great-Uncle Paul

in cool, sagey groves counting rings in redwood trunks,

imagines pencil markings in a ledger book, classifications,

imagines a sidelong look from an ivory spouse who is learning

her husband’s caesuras. She can see silent spaces

but not what they signify, graphite markings in a forester’s code.

Many others have told, and not told, this tale.

The one time Great-Uncle Paul brought his wife to New York

he asked his siblings not to bring their spouses,

and that is where the story ends: ivory siblings who would not

see their brother without their telltale spouses.

What a strange thing is “race,” and family, stranger still.

Here a poem tells a story, a story about race.

29 Aug: "The End" by Mark Strand

Not every man knows what he shall sing at the end,
Watching the pier as the ship sails away, or what it will seem like
When he’s held by the sea’s roar, motionless, there at the end,
Or what he shall hope for once it is clear that he’ll never go back.
When the time has passed to prune the rose or caress the cat,
When the sunset torching the lawn and the full moon icing it down
No longer appear, not every man knows what he’ll discover instead.
When the weight of the past leans against nothing, and the sky
Is no more than remembered light, and the stories of cirrus
And cumulus come to a close, and all the birds are suspended in flight,
Not every man knows what is waiting for him, or what he shall sing
When the ship he is on slips into darkness, there at the end.

28 Aug: "The Powwow at the End of the World" by Sherman Alexie

I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall   

after an Indian woman puts her shoulder to the Grand Coulee Dam   

and topples it. I am told by many of you that I must forgive   

and so I shall after the floodwaters burst each successive dam   

downriver from the Grand Coulee. I am told by many of you   

that I must forgive and so I shall after the floodwaters find   

their way to the mouth of the Columbia River as it enters the Pacific   

and causes all of it to rise. I am told by many of you that I must forgive   

and so I shall after the first drop of floodwater is swallowed by that salmon   

waiting in the Pacific. I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall   

after that salmon swims upstream, through the mouth of the Columbia   

and then past the flooded cities, broken dams and abandoned reactors   

of Hanford. I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall   

after that salmon swims through the mouth of the Spokane River   

as it meets the Columbia, then upstream, until it arrives   

in the shallows of a secret bay on the reservation where I wait alone.   

I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall after   

that salmon leaps into the night air above the water, throws   

a lightning bolt at the brush near my feet, and starts the fire   

which will lead all of the lost Indians home. I am told   

by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall   

after we Indians have gathered around the fire with that salmon   

who has three stories it must tell before sunrise: one story will teach us   

how to pray; another story will make us laugh for hours;   

the third story will give us reason to dance. I am told by many   

of you that I must forgive and so I shall when I am dancing   

with my tribe during the powwow at the end of the world.

27 Aug: "Grief Calls Us to the Things of This World" by Sherman Alexie

The morning air is all awash with angels—Richard Wilbur, “Love Calls Us to the Things of This World”

The eyes open to a blue telephone

In the bathroom of this five-star hotel.

I wonder whom I should call? A plumber,

Proctologist, urologist, or priest?

Who is blessed among us and most deserves

The first call? I choose my father because

He’s astounded by bathroom telephones.

I dial home. My mother answers. “Hey, Ma,”

I say, “Can I talk to Poppa?” She gasps,

And then I remember that my father

Has been dead for nearly a year. “Shit, Mom,”

I say. “I forgot he’s dead. I’m sorry—

How did I forget?” “It’s okay,” she says.

“I made him a cup of instant coffee

This morning and left it on the table—

Like I have for, what, twenty-seven years—

And I didn’t realize my mistake

Until this afternoon.” My mother laughs

At the angels who wait for us to pause

During the most ordinary of days

And sing our praise to forgetfulness

Before they slap our souls with their cold wings.

Those angels burden and unbalance us.

Those fucking angels ride us piggyback.

Those angels, forever falling, snare us

And haul us, prey and praying, into dust.

26 Aug: "Would I Marry You? In A Heartbeat!" by Denis Martindale

Inner heartbeat getting fonder!
Inner heartbeat getting sweet!
Inner heartbeat makes me ponder:
So how come life's incomplete?
Inner heartbeat moving faster!
Inner heartbeat moving strong!
Inner heartbeat prods its master...
So how come the days seem long?
Inner heartbeat stirring new love!
Inner heartbeat stirring sighs!
Inner heartbeat like a warm glove!
So how come this feels so nice?
Inner heartbeat palpitating!
Inner heartbeat passion-filled!
Inner heartbeat can't stand waiting!
So how come that it's so thrilled?
Inner heartbeat seeks its solace...
Inner heartbeat seeks its treat!
Inner heartbeat seeks your first kiss!
That's true love... in a heartbeat...

25 Aug: From “Bestiary” by Sherman Alexie

My mother sends me a black-and-white

photograph of   her and my father, circa

1968, posing with two Indian men.

“Who are those Indian guys?” I ask her

on the phone.

“I don’t know,” she says.

The next obvious question: “Then why

did you send me this photo?” But I don’t

ask it.

One of those strange Indian men is

pointing up toward the sky.

Above them, a bird shaped like a

question mark.

24 Aug: "Through the Window of the All-Night Restaurant" by Nicholas Christopher

across from the gas station
a bus stopped every ten minutes
under the blue streetlight
and discharged a single passenger
Never more than one.
A one-armed man with a cane.
A girl in red leather.
A security guard carrying his lunch box.
They stepped into the light,
looked left, then right, and disappeared.
Otherwise, the street was empty,
the wind off the river gusting paper and leaves.
Then the pay phone near the bus stop
started ringing; for five minutes it rang,
until another bus pulled in,
and a couple stepped off,
their hats pulled down low
The man walked up the street,
but the woman hesitated,
then answered the phone and stood
frozen with the receiver to her ear.
The man came back for her,
but she waved him away
and at the same moment her hat blew off
and skidded down the street.
The man followed it, holding his own hat,
and the woman began talking into the phone.
And she kept talking,
the wind tossing her hair wildly,
and the man never returned
and no more buses came after that.

23 Aug: "Waiting for Icarus" by Muriel Rukeyser

He said he would be back and we'd drink wine together
He said that everything would be better than before
He said we were on the edge of a new relation
He said he would never again cringe before his father
He said that he was going to invent full-time
He said he loved me that going into me
He said was going into the world and the sky
He said all the buckles were very firm
He said the wax was the best wax
He said Wait for me here on the beach
He said Just don't cry

I remember the gulls and the waves
I remember the islands going dark on the sea
I remember the girls laughing
I remember they said he only wanted to get away from me
I remember mother saying : Inventors are like poets,
                                                                           a trashy lot
I remember she told me those who try out inventions are worse
I remember she added : Women who love such are the worst of all
I have been waiting all day, or perhaps longer.
I would have liked to try those wings myself.
It would have been better than this.

22 Aug: "The Poem as Mask" by Muriel Rukeyser

When I wrote of the women in their dances and wildness, it was a mask,

on their mountain, gold-hunting, singing, in orgy,
it was a mask; when I wrote of the god,
fragmented, exiled from himself, his life, the love gone down with song,
it was myself, split open, unable to speak, in exile from myself.
  
There is no mountain, there is no god, there is memory
of my torn life, myself split open in sleep, the rescued child
beside me among the doctors, and a word
of rescue from the great eyes.

No more masks! No more mythologies!

Now, for the first time, the god lifts his hand,
the fragments join in me with their own music.

21 Aug: "Fire Island" by May Swenson

20 Aug: "I, Too" by Langston Hughes

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.

They send me to eat in the kitchen

When company comes,

But I laugh,

And eat well,

And grow strong.

Tomorrow,

I’ll be at the table

When company comes.

Nobody’ll dare

Say to me,

“Eat in the kitchen,”

Then.

Besides,

They’ll see how beautiful I am

And be ashamed—

I, too, am America.

19 Aug: "Harlem" by Langston Hughes

What happens to a dream deferred?

      Does it dry up

      like a raisin in the sun?

      Or fester like a sore—

      And then run?

      Does it stink like rotten meat?

      Or crust and sugar over—

      like a syrupy sweet?

      Maybe it just sags

      like a heavy load.

      Or does it explode?

18 Aug: exceprt from the last part of "Lambda" by Melvin B. Tolson

Satchmo was Louis Armstrong's nickname.


King Oliver of New Orleans
has kicked the bucket, but he left behind
old Satchmo with his red-hot horn
to syncopate the heart and mind.
The honky-tonks in Storyville
have tuned to ashes, have turned to dust,
but old Satchmo is still around
like uncle Sam’s IN GOD WE TRUST

Where, oh, where is Bessie Smith
with her heart as big a the blues of truth?
Where, oh. where is Mister Jelly Roll
with his Cadillac and diamond tooth?
Where, oh, where is Papa Handy
with his blue notes a-dragging from bar to bar? 
Where, oh, where is bulletproof Leadbelly
with his tall tales and 12-string guitar?

Old Hip Cats,
when you sang and played the blues
the night Satchmo was born,
did you know hypodermic needles in Rome
couldn’t hoodoo him away from his horn?
Wyatt Earp’s legend, John Henry’s, too,
is a dare and a bet to old Satchmo
when his groovy blues put headlines in the news
from the Gold Coast to cold Moscow.

Old Satchmo’s
gravelly voice and tapping foot and crazy notes
set my soul on fire.
If I climbed
the seventy-seven steps of the Seventh
Heaven, Satchmo’s high C would carry me higher!
Are you hip to this, Harlem? Are you hip?
On Judgement Day, Gabriel will say
after he blows his horn:
“I’d be the greatest trumpeter in the Universe,
if old Satchmo had never been born!”

17 Aug: "One Perfect Rose" by Dorothy Parker

A single flow'r he sent me, since we met.
    All tenderly his messenger he chose;
Deep-hearted, pure, with scented dew still wet -
    One perfect rose.

I knew the language of the floweret;
    'My fragile leaves,' it said, 'his heart enclose.'
Love long has taken for his amulet
    One perfect rose.

Why is it no one ever sent me yet
    One perfect limousine, do you suppose?
Ah no, it's always just my luck to get
    One perfect rose.

16 Aug: "Resume" by Dorothy Parker

Razors pain you;

Rivers are damp;

Acids stain you;

And drugs cause cramp.

Guns aren’t lawful;

Nooses give;

Gas smells awful;

You might as well live.

15 Aug: "Love Is Not All" by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain; 
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink 
And rise and sink and rise and sink again; 
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath, 
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone; 
Yet many a man is making friends with death 
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone. 
It well may be that in a difficult hour, 
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release, 
Or nagged by want past resolution’s power, 
I might be driven to sell your love for peace, 
Or trade the memory of this night for food. 
It well may be. I do not think I would. 

14 Aug: "Garden" by H. D.

I

You are clear

O rose, cut in rock,

ha

rd as the descent of hail.

I could scrape the colour   

from the petals

like spilt dye from a rock.

If I could break you   

I could break a tree.

If I could stir

I could break a tree—

I could break you.

II

O wind, rend open the heat,   

cut apart the heat,   

rend it to tatters.

Fruit cannot drop   

through this thick air—

fruit cannot fall into heat

that presses up and blunts

the points of pears   

and rounds the grapes.

Cut the heat—

plough through it,

turning it on either side   

of your path.

13 Aug: "Oread" by H. D.

Whirl up, sea—

whirl your pointed pines,

splash your great pines

on our rocks,

hurl your green over us,

cover us with your pools of fir.

12 Aug: "Helen" by H.D.

All Greece hates  

the still eyes in the white face,   

the lustre as of olives   

where she stands,   

and the white hands.   

All Greece reviles   

the wan face when she smiles,   

hating it deeper still   

when it grows wan and white,   

remembering past enchantments   

and past ills.   

Greece sees unmoved,   

God’s daughter, born of love,   

the beauty of cool feet   

and slenderest knees,   

could love indeed the maid,   

only if she were laid,   

white ash amid funereal cypresses.

11 Aug: "Super Orphan" by Fatimah Asghar

Today, I donned my cape like a birth
certificate & jumped, arms wide into the sky.

–

I know—once there was a man.
Or maybe a woman.
Let’s try again: once, there was a family.
What came first?

–

What to do then, when the only history
you have is collage?

–

Woke up, parents still
dead. Outside, the leaves yawn,
re-christen themselves as spring.

–

Lets try again. Once there was a village
on a pale day, unaware of the greatness
at its gate.

–

Today, I woke:
Batman, a king over Gotham.
The city sinning at my feet
begging to be saved.

–

The same dream again:
police running after my faceless
family with guns
my uncle leaps into a tulip
filled field, arms turning to wings
as bullets greet him.

–

Today, I woke, slop-lipped
and drunk, cards in my hand,
Joker in my chest. Today I woke
angry at the world for its hurt
wanting to make more like me.

–

Are all refugees superheroes?
Do all survivors carry villain inside them?

–

Today, I donned my cape like a birth
certificate & jumped, arms wide into the sky.

–

How else to say I am here?

10 Aug: "My Love for Nature" by Fatimah Asghar

Play at 12 minutes to hear Fatimah Asghar read her poem "My Love for Naure."

All this tall grass has ruined my gold

acrylic nails & I know something’s dead

just beyond my window. I grew up

with rats running my floorboards

& know the smell straining from a body

once caught in a trap. In the city

what little I have of an ass

is always out, a simple wind blow

from Marilyn Monroe-ing the street.

Here, in all this nature, there is nobody

but me & my 5 friends for a week

& I promised myself I’d be naked

but the first day I found a tick

clinging to my arm hair for dear

life & decided no way I’m exposing

my pussy to the elements. My love

for nature is like my love for most things:

fickle & theoretical.

Too many bugs & I want a divorce.

Last week, before I was here

my uncle drove me from our city

to the suburbs & sang “Project Chick”

in the car. When we parked

he asked me to take off my shoes

& there we walked, silent, barefoot

circling the lake, trying to not step

in goose shit.

He walked in front & I trailed behind

both our hands clasped behind our backs.

    When you were my daughter,

    those were the happiest days of my life.

    I wish you would come home.

My love for the past is like my love

for most things. I only feel it when

I’m gone. Best to stay gone

so I’m always in love. If I look

at something too long it forgets

its joy. All the floorboards carry

death. My gold nails are fake

& chipped. My bare feet skirt the shit.

9 Aug: "La Bestia or The Beast" by Juan Delgado

¿Cómo es posible que me llamen extranjero?*

A large plastic bag will keep you dry

during the heavy rain storms.

In Tapachula, you have a safe place to rest; ** 

it might be your last chance to call home.

You know there are killers and thieves

who are setting their traps along the way,

and when you are riding on top of it,

watch for the wasps living in the trees.

Don’t fall asleep inside it—you might disappear.

If you are exhausted, jump off and rest.

Follow its tracks until you feel it returning.

The faster it advances, the stronger its pull is.

Don't be fooled—at first it will lure you in

with its steady prowess, but it can slit

a leg off or two, so don't be fooled by its hum.

If you jump off, don't just stand there.

And don't run beside its belly either—

No, run away from the pounding. Run like

a ceiling is falling, like people are falling on you.

As for routes, go through Matamoros

for getting into Texas, and for California,

get to Tijuana, but if you cross Nogales

into Arizona, be very careful. You will find

discarded shoes and gutted suitcases in fields.

There are graveyards without names.

No one carries an ID. For others and you,

we give offerings to our clandestino priest

who was killed during the Cristero War. ***                                 

  

Always watch out for the white vans—they

are full of policemen. They drive very slow.

It takes up to six days to cross the desert.

Always carry plenty of water. Ranchers carry guns.

Everything has thorns. At first sight, think twice

before trusting even a good omen.

8 Aug: "I Wanna Be Ur Lover 1979" by Douglas Kearney

o Farrah pharaoh:

the feather up and off

your shoulder—

an absence of pressure.

but the weight

of the guitar and the bass,

the synth and kit—

the all that was all you

ever wanted to do.  the disco

video grain like a leopard skin

or baby powder

tossed at an afro.

                                 someone

blowing in your face gently—

maybe the 80s you were coursing.

you keep changing parts—

this one that,

mother and sister, too.

was it you wanted as easy as making

something not you speak you

you spoke it —you say—maybe first:

if you love

you get loved.

the spangle in the air shine

before the light shine it.

the tips of your hair

coming back with they own air.

7 Aug: "Real Complex Key Shifts" by Amanda Nadelberg

Toward summer or its dependence

On demarcations in the sandy vial

Some tree spelling astronaut onto a

Planet’s arm, it stopped making sense.

I am not an apothecary or a wave

Or a dog by the 15^th hole, I am not

A light sparking a whole country’s demise.

I will never be a towel holding someone’s

Sunscreen while they wash it off in foreign

Seas. My hair goes up and down, it’s true

As it is I am not a bag of tea nor will I ever

Be exceptionally happy. Let the director

Know I was distressed by the construction

Noise, that I had no known allergies that

My parents convinced me I was wanted

And why wouldn’t you believe them.

If the earth when it opened dragged away

Our sense of faith, doubt was an

Invention I preferred to ignore in the

Manner of solicitations by mail.

6 Aug: "Memorial Day" by Sunnylyn Thibodeaux

All that's left is the shroud

                                  the back wings. Roaches

scurrying in the kitchen. There’s no

greater threat than this time at hand.

      Drunken cackles from the street. Still damp

                                                         from 4 AM rain.

I missed the instructions for this part. The trap.

The deflate of dream. Utopia was always

supposed to be right at hand. Right and left.

Any which way we’d make of it.

                                                    Marine layer

won’t budge for the rumble under our feet. Sky

tears open in the north. Sirens

on high. A small pool forms

in the buckle of asphalt.

In its gentle tremble

the reflection of the grey

white mass overhead

with a perfect seam of blue.

The rift where

the dead speak

how-tos.

5 Aug: "Ambition Over Adversity" by Tupac Shakur

Take one's adversity
Learn from their misfortune
Learn from their pain
Believe in something
Believe in yourself
Turn adversity into ambition
Now blossom into wealth

4 Aug: "Love Like Salt" by Lisel Mueller

It lies in our hands in crystals 

too intricate to decipher 

It goes into the skillet 

without being given a second thought 

It spills on the floor so fine 

we step all over it 

We carry a pinch behind each eyeball 

It breaks out on our foreheads 

We store it inside our bodies 

in secret wineskins 

At supper, we pass it around the table 

talking of holidays and the sea.

3 Aug: "The Sonogram" by Paul Muldoon

Only a few weeks ago, the sonogram of Jean’s womb
resembled nothing so much
as a satellite map of Ireland:

now the image
is so well-defined we can make out not only a hand
but a thumb;

on the road to Spiddal, a woman hitching a ride;
a gladiator in his net, passing judgement on the crowd.

2 Aug: "In the Well" by 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

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.

1 Aug: "1-800-HOT-RIBS" by Catherine Bowman

My brother sent me ribs for my birthday.
He sent me two six-pound, heavily scented,
slow-smoked slabs, Federal Express,
in a customized cardboard box, no bigger
than a baby coffin or a bulrush ark.

Swaddled tight in sheaves of foam and dry ice,
those ribs rested in the hold of some jetliner
and were carried high, over the Yellowhammer State
and the Magnolia State and the Brown Thrasher State,
over Kentucky coffee trees and Sitka spruce

and live oak and wild oak and lowland plains
and deep-water harbors, over catfish farms
and single-crib banrs and Holiness sects
and strip malls and mill towns and lumber
towns and coal camps and chemical plants,

to my table on this island on a cold night
with no moon where I eat those ribs and am made
full from what must have been a young animal,
small-boned and tender, having just
the right ratio of meat to fat.

Tonight outside, men and woman enrobed
in blankets fare forth from shipping crates.
A bloodhound lunges against its choke
to sniff the corpse of a big rat and heaps
of drippings and ground that steam

outside the dinner as an ashen woman deep
in a doorway presses a finger to her lips.
A matter teddy bear impaled on a spike
looms over a vacant lot where a line of men
wreathe in fellowship around a blazing garbage can.

Tonight in a dream they gather
all night to labor over the unadorned
beds they have dug into the ground and filled
with the hardwood coals that glow like remote stars.
Their faces molten and ignited in the damp,

they know to turn the meat infrequently,
they know to keep the flame slow and the fire
cool. From a vat of spirits subacid and brackish,
they know to baste only occasionally. So that
by sunrise vapor will continue to collect, as usual,

forming, as it should, three types of clouds,
that the rainfall from the clouds, it is certain,
will not exceed the capacity of the river,
that the river will still flow, as always,
sweet brother, on course.