2 Jan 2019: "Bestiary for the Fingers of My Right Hand" by Charles Simic

According to a google search on "bestiary"

bes·ti·ar·y (/ˈbesCHēˌerē,ˈbēsCHēˌerē/) noun: bestiary; plural noun: bestiaries

a descriptive or anecdotal treatise on various real or mythical kinds of animals, especially a medieval work with a moralizing tone.

 

 

1.
Thumb, loose tooth of a horse.
Rooster to his hens.
Horn of a devil.  Fat worm
They have attached to my flesh
At the time of my birth.
It takes four to hold him down,
Bend him in half, until the bone
Begins to whimper.

Cut him off.  He can take care
Of himself.  Take root in the earth,
Or go hunting with wolves.

2.
The second points the way.
True way.  The path crosses the earth,
The moon and some stars.
Watch, he points further.
He points to himself.

3.
The middle one has backache.
Stiff, still unaccustomed to this life:

An old man at birth.  It's about something
That he had and lost,
That he looks for within my hand,
The way a dog looks
For fleas
With a sharp tooth.

4.
The fourth is mystery.
Sometimes as my hand
Rests on the table
He jumps by himself
As though someone called his name.

After each bone, finger,
I come to him, troubled.

5.
Something stirs in the fifth
Something perpetually at the point
Of birth.  Weak and submissive,
His touch is gentle.
It weighs a tear.
It takes the mote out of the eye.

1 Jan 2019: "Where I Was" by Dan Brown

I was in Princeton of all
Places. My ninth grade class
Was there on a field trip: the usual
Shephaerding from edifice
To edifice-a lot of gray
Stone-winding up, though,
With something a little out of the way;
The opportunity to view
A classic three-acter
At the U's own theater.

The Play I don;t remember much
About: your basis exercise
In wigs and bodices and such.
The memorable thing was
The curtain call. How the one
Coming out was a grim guy
In tweed and tie. How the lone
Lifting of his palm by
Itself extinguished the applause.
How he had "terrible news"-

But not the news I feared. Not
Where to go. Not how
To get there. Now what
To do when you got there-go
Sit against a wall, put
Your head down, clasp your hands
Behind your head, you might shut
Your eyes in case the world ends-
None of that. Maybe he
Was finding it decidedly.

Hard to get the words out,
But what the words amounted to
Wasn't the worst thing: not
Anything that had to do
With going up in a solar hell,
But rather with the President,
A motorcade, a hospital-
With how the evident extent
Of anybody's sudden death
Was elsewhere and over with.

30 Dec 2019: "The Assassination of John Lennon as Depicted by the Madame Tussaud Wax Museum Niagara Falls, Ontario, 1987" by David Wojahn

Smuggled human hair from Mexico
Falls radiant upon the waxy O

Of her scream. Shades on, leather coat and pants—Yoko
On her knees—like the famous Kent State photo

Where the girl can’t shriek her boyfriend alive, her arms
Windmilling Ohio sky.
                                   A pump in John’s chest heaves

To mimic death-throes. The blood is made of latex.
His glasses: broken on the plastic sidewalk.

A scowling David Chapman, his arms outstretched,
His pistol barrel spiraling fake smoke

In a siren’s red wash, completes the composition,
And somewhere background music plays "Imagine"

Before the tableau darkens. We push a button
To renew the scream.
                                  The chest starts up again.

20 Dec: "When the Devil Leads Us Home and Yells Surprise" By Nikki Wallschlaeger

Is that your house he asked

This used to be my house I said

But those are not your people

So that can’t be your house

But it is my house I said

I had some people maybe a few

Even though those are not your people

Even though they don’t look like you

I had to live somewhere I said

This is the house where I lived

But where are your people he said

My people live in a different house

They don’t care to know about me

If you’re the devil

Why are you asking me questions

The devil said since the house

You had to live in is gone

I thought you’d be happy

It sure is a hot day I said

Of course it is said the devil

Why do you think I work in town

19 Dec: "Tenor" By Luther Hughes

Luther Hughes talked about how the painter Jeam-Michel Basquiat was a muse for him in this poem "Tenor" on The Poetry Magazine Podcast. Below is the painting that inspired the poem.

After  Jean-Michel Basquiat

Crows

               and more crows.

One crow

               with a rat

                              hanging

               from its beak,

sloppy

               and beautiful.

Another crow

               with its wings

                              plucked

               empty.

I wanted

               so much of today

                              to be peaceful

               but the empty crow

untethers

               something in me: a feral

                              yearning for love

               or a love that is so full

of  power,

               of  tenderness,

                              the words

               fall to their knees

begging for mercy

               like tulips

                              in wind.

I don’t wear the crown

               for the times power

                              has tainted

               my body,

but I can tell the difference

               between giving up

                              and giving in.

If  you can’t, ask the crow

               that watches me

                              through the window,

               laughing as I drink

my third bottle of wine.

Ask the sound

               the tree makes

                              when the crow has grown

               disgusted

with my whining.

After years of repression,

               I can come clean.

                              I was a boy

               with a hole

other boys

               stuffed themselves into.

I have wanted

               nothing to do with blackness

                              or laughter

               or my life.

But about love,

               who owns the right,

                              really? Who owns

               the crow

who loves fresh meat

               or the crow who loves

                              the vibration

               of its own throat?

Everything around me

               is black for its own good,

                              I suppose.

               The widow,

the picture of the boy

               crying on the wall,

                              the mirror

               with its taunting,

the crows

               that belong

                              to their scripture.

Can you imagine

               being so tied to blackness

                              that even your wings

               cannot help you escape?

About my life,

               every needle,

                              a small prayer.

               Every pill, a funeral

hymn.

I wanted the end

               several times

                              but thought,

               Who owns this body, really?

God?

               Dirt?

                              The silly insects

               that will feast

on my decay?

Is it the boy

               who entered first

                              or the boy

               who wanted everything

to last?

18 Dec: "Reflection" by Ezra Pound

I know that what Nietzsche said is true,
And yet
I saw the face of a little child in the street,
And it was beautiful.

16 Dec: "Kubla Khan" By Samuel Taylor Coleridge

 

Or, a vision in a dream. A Fragment.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure-dome decree:

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man

   Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground

With walls and towers were girdled round;

And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,

Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;

And here were forests ancient as the hills,

Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted

Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!

A savage place! as holy and enchanted

As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted

By woman wailing for her demon-lover!

And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,

As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,

A mighty fountain momently was forced:

Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst

Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,

Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail:

And mid these dancing rocks at once and ever

It flung up momently the sacred river.

Five miles meandering with a mazy motion

Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,

Then reached the caverns measureless to man,

And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean;

And ’mid this tumult Kubla heard from far

Ancestral voices prophesying war!

   The shadow of the dome of pleasure

   Floated midway on the waves;

   Where was heard the mingled measure

   From the fountain and the caves.

It was a miracle of rare device,

A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

   A damsel with a dulcimer

   In a vision once I saw:

   It was an Abyssinian maid

   And on her dulcimer she played,

   Singing of Mount Abora.

   Could I revive within me

   Her symphony and song,

   To such a deep delight ’twould win me,

That with music loud and long,

I would build that dome in air,

That sunny dome! those caves of ice!

And all who heard should see them there,

And all should cry, Beware! Beware!

His flashing eyes, his floating hair!

Weave a circle round him thrice,

And close your eyes with holy dread

For he on honey-dew hath fed,

And drunk the milk of Paradise.

3 Dec 2018: "Numbers" by Mary Cornish

I like the generosity of numbers.
The way, for example,
they are willing to count
anything or anyone:
two pickles, one door to the room,
eight dancers dressed as swans.

I like the domesticity of addition--
add two cups of milk and stir--
the sense of plenty: six plums
on the ground, three more
falling from the tree.

And multiplication's school
of fish times fish,
whose silver bodies breed
beneath the shadow
of a boat.

Even subtraction is never loss,
just addition somewhere else:
five sparrows take away two,
the two in someone else's
garden now.

There's an amplitude to long division,
as it opens Chinese take-out
box by paper box,
inside every folded cookie
a new fortune.

And I never fail to be surprised
by the gift of an odd remainder,
footloose at the end:
forty-seven divided by eleven equals four,
with three remaining.

Three boys beyond their mothers' call,
two Italians off to the sea,
one sock that isn't anywhere you look.

2 Dec 2018: "Bringing My Son to the Police Station to be Fingerprinted" by Shoshauna Shy

My lemon-colored
whisper-weight blouse
with keyhole closure
and sweetheart neckline is tucked
into a pastel silhouette skirt
with side-slit vents
and triplicate pleats
when I realize in the sunlight
through the windshield
that the cool yellow of this blouse clashes
with the buttermilk heather in my skirt
which makes me slightly queasy
however

the periwinkle in the pattern on the sash
is sufficiently echoed by the twill uppers
of my buckle-snug sandals
while the accents on my purse
pick up the pink
in the button stitches

and then as we pass
through Weapons Check
it's reassuring to note
how the yellows momentarily mesh
and make an overall pleasing
composite

1 Dec 2018: "The Cord" by Leanne O’Sullivan

I used to lie on the floor for hours after
school with the phone cradled between
my shoulder and my ear, a plate of cold
rice to my left, my school books to my right.
Twirling the cord between my fingers
I spoke to friends who recognized the
language of our realm. Throats and lungs
swollen, we talked into the heart of the night,
toying with the idea of hair dye and suicide,
about the boys who didn’t love us, 
who we loved too much, the pang
of the nights. Each sentence was
new territory, like a door someone was
rushing into, the glass shattering
with delirium, with knowledge and fear.
My Mother never complained about the phone bill,
what it cost for her daughter to disappear
behind a door, watching the cord
stretching its muscle away from her.
Perhaps she thought it was the only way
she could reach me, sending me away
to speak in the underworld.
As long as I was speaking
she could put my ear to the tenuous earth
and allow me to listen, to decipher.
And these were the elements of my Mother,
the earthed wire, the burning cable,
as if she flowed into the room with
me to somehow say, Stay where I can reach you,
the dim room, the dark earth. Speak of this
and when you feel removed from it
I will pull the cord and take you
back towards me.