28 April 2019: "The Meadow" by Kate Knapp Johnson

The Meadow

Half the day lost, staring
at this window. I wanted to know
just one true thing

about the soul, but I left thinking
for thought, and now -
two inches of snow have fallen

over the meadow. Where did I go,
how long was I out looking
for you?, who would never leave me,
my withness, my here.

by Kate Knapp Johnson, Poetry 180 | 118

27 April: "What Would I Do" by Marc Petersen

What I Would Do

If my wife were to have an affair,
I would walk to my toolbox in the garage,
Take from it my 12" flathead screwdriver
And my hickory-handle hammer,
The one that helped me build three redwood fences,
And I would hammer out the pins
In all the door hinges in the house,
And I would pull off all the doors
And I would stack them in the backyard.
And I would empty all the sheets from the linen closet,
And especially the flannels we have slept between for
    nineteen winters;
And I would empty all the towels, too,
The big heavy white towels she bought on Saturdays at
    Target,
And the red bath towels we got for our wedding,
And which we have never used;
And I would unroll the aluminum foil from its box,
And carry all the pots and pans from the cupboards to the
    backyard,
And lay this one long sheet of aluminum foil over all our
    pots and pans;
And I would dump all the silverware from the drawer
Onto the driveway; and I would push my motorcycle over
And let all its gas leak out,
And I would leave my Jeep running at the curb
Until its tank was empty or its motor blew up,
And I would turn the TV up full-blast and open all the
    windows;
And I would turn the stereo up full-blast,
With Beethoven's Ninth Symphony on it,
Schiller's "Ode to Joy," really blasting;
And I would strip our bed;
And I would lie on our stripped bed;
And I would see our maple budding out the window.
I would see our maple budding out our window,
The hummingbird feeder hanging from its lowest bough.
And my cat would jump up to see what was the matter
    with me.
And I would tell her.  Of course, I would tell her.
From her, I hold nothing back.

by Marc Petersen, Poetry 180 | 117

26 April 2019: "Telephone Repairman" by Joseph Millar

Telephone Repairman

All morning in the February light he has been mending cable, splicing the pairs of wires together according to their colors, white-blue to white-blue violet-slate to violet-slate, in the warehouse attic by the river. When he is finished the messages will flow along the line: thank you for the gift, please come to the baptism, the bill is now past due: voices that flicker and gleam back and forth across the tracer-colored wires. We live so much of our lives without telling anyone, going out before dawn, working all day by ourselves, shaking our heads in silence at the news on the radio. He thinks of the many signals flying in the air around him the syllables fluttering, saying please love me, from continent to continent over the curve of the earth.     by Joseph Millar, Poetry 180 | 116

25 April 2019: "Skin" by Lucia Perillo

Skin

Back then it seemed that wherever a girl took off her
     clothes the police would find her-
in the backs of cars or beside the dark night ponds,
     opening like a green leaf across
some boy's knees, the skin so white and taut beneath the
     moor, it was almost too terrible,
too beautiful to look at, a tinderbox, though she did not
     know. But the men who came
beating the night rushes with their flashlights and
     thighs- they knew. About Helen,
about how a body could cause the fall of Troy and the
     death of a perfectly good king.
So they read the boy his rights and shoved him spread-
     legged against the car
while the girl hopped barefoot on the asphalt, cloaked in
     a wood rescue blanket.
Or sometimes girls fled so their fathers wouldn't hit
     them, their white legs flashing as they ran.
And the boys were handcuffed just until their wrists had
     welts and let off half a block from home.

God for how many years did I believe there were truly
     laws against such things,
laws of adulthood: no yelling out of cars in traffic tunnels,
     no walking without shoes,
no singing foolish songs in public places. Or else they
     could lock you in jail
or, as good as condemning you to death, tell both your
     lower- and upper- case Catholic fathers.
And out of all these crimes, unveiling the body was of
     course the worst, as though something
about the skin's phosphorescence, its surface as velvet as
     a deer's new  horn,
could drive not only men but civilization mad, could lead
     us to unspeakable cruelties.
There were elders who from experience understood these
     things much better than we.
And it's true: remembering I had that kind of skin does
     drive me half-crazy with loss.
Skin like the spathe of a broad white lily on the first
     morning it unfurls.


by Lucia Perillo, Poetry 180 | 115

24 April 2019: "Small Comfort" by Katha Pollitt

Small Comfort

Coffee and cigarettes in a clean cafe,
forsythia lit like a damp match against
a thundery sky drunk on its own ozone,

the laundry cool and crisp and folded away
again in the lavender closet-too late to find
comfort enough in such small daily moments

of beauty, renewal, calm, too late to imagine
people would rather be happy than suffering
and inflicting suffering. We're near the end,

but O before the end, as the sparrows wing
each night to their secret nests in the elm's green dome
O let the last bus bring

love to lover, let the starveling
dog turn the corner and lope suddenly
miraculously, down its own street, home.


by Katha Pollitt, Poetry 180 | 114

23 April 2019: "For Mhammed Zeid, Age 15" by Naomi Shihab Nye

For Mohammed Zeid of Gaza, Age 15
 
 There is no stray bullet, sirs.
No bullet like a worried cat
crouching under a bush,
no half-hairless puppy bullet
dodging midnight streets.
The bullet could not be a pecan
plunking the tin roof,
not hardly, no fluff of pollen
on October’s breath,
no humble pebble at our feet.
So don’t gentle it, please.
We live among stray thoughts,
tasks abandoned midstream.
Our fickle hearts are fat
with stray devotions, we feel at home
among bits and pieces,
all the wandering ways of words.
But this bullet had no innocence, did not
wish anyone well, you can’t tell us otherwise
by naming it mildly, this bullet was never the friend
of life, should not be granted immunity
by soft saying—friendly fire, straying death-eye,
why have we given the wrong weight to what we do?
Mohammed, Mohammed, deserves the truth.
This bullet had no secret happy hopes,
it was not singing to itself with eyes closed
under the bridge.


by Naomi Shihab Nye, Poetry 180 | 113

22 April 2019: "Tuesday Morning Loading Pigs" by David Lee

Tuesday Morning, Loading Pigs

The worse goddam job of all
sez John pushing a thick slat
in front of the posts
behind the sow in the loading chute
so when she balked and backed up
she couldn't turn and get away
I never seen a sow or a hog load easy
some boars will
mebbe it's because they got balls
or something I don't know
but I seen them do it
that Brown feller the FFA
he's got this boar he just opens the trailer door
he comes and gets in
course he mebbe knows what
he's being loaded up for

it was this Ivie boy back home
the best I ever seen for loading
he wasn't scared of nothing
he'd get right in and shove them up
he put sixteen top hogs
in the back of a Studebaker pickup
by hisself I seen it

when he was a boy he opened up
the tank on the tractor
smelling gas
made his brains go soft they sed
he failed fifth grade
but it wasn't his fault
he could load up hogs

I always had to at home
cause I was the youngest
I sed then it was two things
I wouldn't do when I grown up
warsh no dishes or load up hogs
by god they can set in the sink
a month before I'll warsh them
a man's got to have a principle
he can live by is what I say
now you grab her ears and pull
I'll push from back here
we'll get that sonabitch in the truck.

by David Lee, Poetry 180-112

20 April 2019: "The Doom" by Game of Thrones

The Doom- Game of Thrones

"They held each other close and turned their backs upon the end.
The hills that split asunder and the black that ate the skies;
The flames that shot so high and hot that even dragons burned;
Would never be the final sights that fell upon their eyes.
A fly upon a wall, the waves the sea wind whipped and churned —
The city of a thousand years, and all that men had learned;
The Doom consumed it all alike, and neither of them turned"

 

―Tyrion Lannister and Jorah Mormont, quoting a poem about the Doom

 

https://gameofthrones.fandom.com/wiki/Doom_of_Valyria

http://www.makinggameofthrones.com/production-diary/poem-doom-of-valyria

19 April 2019: "No. 6" by Charles Bukowski

No. 6

I'll settle for the 6 horse
on a rainy afternoon
a paper cup of coffee
in my hand
a little way to go,
the wind twirling out
small wrens from
the upper grandstand roof,
the jocks coming out
for a middle race
silent
and the easy rain making
everything
at once
almost alike,
the horses at peace with
each other
before the drunken war
and I am under the grandstand
feeling for
cigarettes
settling for coffee,
then the horses walk by
taking their little men
away-
it is funereal and graceful
and glad
like the opening
of flowers.

by Charles Bukowski, Poetry 180

18 April 2019: "Waves" by Robin Robertson

Waves

I have sum too far
out of my depth
and the sun has gone;

the hung weight of my legs
a plumb-line,
my fingers raw, my arms lead;

the currents pull like weed
and I am very tired
and cold, and moving out to sea.

The beach is still bright.
The children I never had
run to the edge

and back to their beautiful mother
who smiles at them, looks up
from her magazine, and waves.

by Robin Robertson, Poetry 180

17 April 2019: "Nuclear Winter" by Edward Nobles

Nuclear Winter

When the sky fell, the earth turned blue.
The trees, the tenements, the cars and buses
soaked up the sky and changed from outside in, in color,
to blue. The children ran frantically in adult directions. My wife,
dressed fashionably in blue, took my hand and, with sadness
in her deep blue eyes, led me behind the house, down the long incline, and into
the woods. We waded in blue snow through blue trees.
An iridescent crow, blue, flew from a branch, and a fox
lay in our tracks, oblivious to our passing. He licked his blue fur
with melancholic eyes. The years pass very quickly with this earth.
In that time, we had two children, the son and daughter
we always dreamt of, and they knelt above us, like two granite stones,
ghostly figures praying, for the love of God, for what he had become:
a family moved by that one clear color, blue, beneath the blue snow.

by Edward Nobles, Poetry 180

Note: this is the original punctuation and line formatting. In Poetry 180 I now see the line breaks they use to shorten the poems to fit the pages.

16 April 2019: "My Life" by Joe Wenderoth

My Life

Somehow it got into my room.
I found it, and it was, naturally, trapped.
It was nothing more than a frightened animal.
Since than I raised it up.
I kept it for myself, kept it in my room,
kept it for its own good.
I named the animal, My Life.
I found food for it and fed it with my bare hands.
I let it into my bed, let it breathe in my sleep.
And the animal, in my love, my constant care,
grew up to be strong, and capable of many clever tricks.
One day, quite recently,
I was running my hand over the animal's side
and I came to understand
that it could very easily kill me.
I realized, further, that it would kill me.
This is why it exists, why I raised it.
Since then I have not known what to do.
I stopped feeding it,
only to find that its growth
has nothing to do with food.
I stopped cleaning it
and found that it cleans itself.
I stopped singing it to sleep
and found that it falls asleep faster without my song.
I don't know what to do.
I no longer make My Life do tricks.
I leave the animal alone
and, for now, it leaves me alone, too.
I have nothing to say, nothing to do.
Between My Life and me,
a silence is coming.
Together, we will not get through this.     

       
by Joe Wenderoth, Poetry 180
           

15 April 2019: "Vegetarian Physics" by David Clewell

Vegetarian Physics
by David Clewell, Poetry 180

The tofu that’s shown up overnight in this house is
frightening
proof of the Law of Conservation: matter that simply
cannot be
created or destroyed. Matter older than Newton,
who knew better than to taste it. Older than Lao-tzu,
who thought about it but finally chose harmonious non-interference.

I’d like to be philosophical too, see it as some kind of pale
inscrutable wisdom among hot dogs, the cold chicken,
the leftover deviled eggs, but I’m talking curdled
soybean milk. And I don’t have that kind of energy.

I’d rather not be part of the precariously metaphorical
wedding of modern physics and the ancient Eastern
mysteries.
But still: whoever stashed the tofu in my Frigidaire
had better come back for it soon. I’m not Einstein
but I’m smart enough to know a bad idea when I see it
taking up space, biding its time.
Like so much that demands our imperfect attention
amid the particle roar of the world: going nowhere, fast.

13b April: 2019: "Message: Bottle #32" by J. Allyn Rosser

Message: Bottle #32

Ignore the last one I sent you.
I'd really rather you didn't
try to find me.

Everything human is perfect here, round,
worn smooth. These green bottles
and the bones beside them.

They clink and shift in the wind.
I take in lame snakes.
Sometimes I sing

and the birds sit up on their branches.
Time is the boomerang of sun.
At night the dark shapes

of island surround me; I remember myself
stupid among you, freeing prisoners
in love with their chains,

always taking, as was the custom, parts
for the whole- the body's cavities for what
they wanted: pupils

for the black opacities they saw through.
The mouth
for what it watered to surround.


by J. Allyn Rosser, Poetry 180

13a April 2019: "Getting There" by Sylvia Plath

Getting There

by Sylvia Plath, Ariel

How far is it?

How far is it now?

The gigantic gorilla interior

Of the wheels move, they appall me ——

The terrible brains

Of Krupp, black muzzles

Revolving, the sound

Punching out Absence! Like cannon.

It is Russia I have to get across, it is some was or other.

I am dragging my body

Quietly through the straw of the boxcars.

Now is the time for bribery.

What do wheels eat, these wheels

Fixed to their arcs like gods,

The silver leash of the will ——

Inexorable. And their pride!

All the gods know destinations.

I am a letter in this slot!

I fly to a name, two eyes.

Will there be fire, will there be bread?

Here there is such mud.

It is a trainstop, the nurses

Undergoing the faucet water, its veils, veils in a nunnery,

Touching their wounded,

The men the blood still pumps forward,

Legs, arms piled outside

The tent of unending cries ——

A hospital of dolls.

And the men, what is left of the men

Pumped ahead by these pistons, this blood

Into the next mile,

The next hour ——

Dynasty of broken arrows!

 

How far is it?

There is mud on my feet,

Thick, red and slipping. It is Adam’s side,

This earth I rise from, and I in agony.

I cannot undo myself, and the train is steaming.

Steaming and breathing, its teeth

Ready to roll, like a devil’s.

There is a minute at the end of it

A minute, a dewdrop.

How far is it?

It is so small

The place I am getting to, why are there these obstacles ——

The body of this woman,

Charred skirts and deathmask

Mourned by religious figures, by garlanded children.

And now detonations ——

Thunder and guns.

The fire’s between us.

Is there no place

Turning and turning in the middle air,

Untouchable and untouchable.

The train is dragging itself, it is screaming ——

An animal

Insane for the destination,

The bloodspot,

The face at the end of the flare.

I shall bury the wounded like pupas,

I shall count and bury the dead.

Let their souls writhe in like dew,

Incense in my track.

The carriages rock, they are cradles.

And I, stepping from this skin

Of old bandages, boredoms, old faces

 

Step up to you from the black car of Lethe,

Pure as a baby.