When at a Certain Party in NYC, by Erin Belieu

Here's a poem that's kind of funny and wry, and this suburbanite feels it.

When at a Certain Party in NYC

Wherever you’re from sucks,

and wherever you grew up sucks,

and everyone here lives in a converted

chocolate factory or deconsecrated church

without an ugly lamp or souvenir coffee cup

in sight, but only carefully edited objets like

the acanian soap dispenser in the kitchen

that looks like an industrial age dildo, and

when you rifle through the bathroom

looking for a spare tampon, you discover 

that even their toothpaste is somehow more 

desirable than yours. And later you go

with a world famous critic to eat a plate 

of sushi prepared by a world famous chef from 

Sweden and the roll is conceived to look like 

“a strand of pearls around a white throat,” and is 

so confusingly beautiful that it makes itself

impossible to eat. And your friend back home—

who says the pioneers who first settled 

the great asphalt parking lot of our 

middle, were not in fact heroic, but really 

the chubby ones who lacked the imagination 

to go all the way to California — it could be that 

she’s on to something. Because, admit it, 

when you look at the people on these streets, 

the razor-blade women with their strategic bones

and the men wearing Amish pants with

interesting zippers, it’s pretty clear that you

will never cut it anywhere that constitutes 

a where, that even ordering a pint of tuna salad in 

a deli is an illustrative exercise in self-doubt.

So when you see the dogs on the high-rise elevators 

practically tweaking, panting all the way down 

from the 19th floor to the 1st, dying to get on 

with their long-planned business of snuffling 

trash or peeing on something to which all day 

they’ve been looking forward, what you want is 

to be on the fastest Conestoga home, where the other 

losers live and where the tasteless azaleas are, 

as we speak, halfheartedly exploding.

This originally appeared in 32 Poems and was reprinted in 2013 in an anthology of the publication's best poems. 

De donde eres?

The Ruin, Anonymous

A rumination on some crumbling stonework done by "the Giants" (the Romans). Written before 1000 AD, this poem leads to Shakespeare, Hopkins, Dylan Thomas and some current experimentalists -- the most musical of which must be hearing translations of early English in their heads. 

"Wierd" meant death, fate, what happens, what is. It's a shivery word; it makes my heart pound. It's good for October.

The spelling of wierd is correct in this translation. The elipses indicate text that couldn't be found. All of what we have of the poem  is here. 

The Ruin (exerpt)

Well-wrought this wall: Wierds broke it.

The stronghold burst ...

the work of the Giants, the stonesmiths,

mouldereth.

Rime scoureth gatetowers,

snapped rooftrees, towers fallen,

rime on mortar.

Shattered the showershields, roofs ruined,

age under-ate them. And the wielders and wrights?

Earthgrip holds them — gone, long gone,

fast in gravesgrasp while fifty fathers

and sons have passed.

Wall stood,

gray lichen, red stone, kings fell often,

stood under storms, high arch crashed --

stands yet the wallstone, hacked by weapons,

by files grim-ground ...

shone the old skilled work ...

sank to loamcrust.

From The Earliest English Poems, Penguin Books, Third Edition, 1991. Translation by Michael Alexander

Step into the sanctum.

Oak, by Atsuro Riley

This poem is a character study of a child, related by a speaker who gives us only splotches. The voice is strong and pure. The sound and syntax feel sinewy and strange. G.M. Hopkins is here in these made-up compound words. I love the near rhyme at the end. And I wonder, Who's the oak?  

Why is this a poem? Because to say it another way would be: "Tammy thought of her absent father as the big oak tree that all of us hurting, fatherless children used to play on."  

The more I read this, the more beautiful it is.

More of this poet. 

Oak

We were all of us empty of its heft and Tammy could tell.

 

   •

  

Being she herself was (wildling) (loosestrife-weed)

(undaddied) same as us.

  

    •

  

Flung chaff-motes that we were

she saw to tell us time and time that yonder oak its bark and bulk.

  

    •

  

She harped on it; she rendered.   Instilled-

elucidated treeness piece by part.

  

    •

  

Have I said yet (howsoever she'd've told us) it was never it to her but him.

  

    •

  

As in I school myself   I climb the bluff   I followfeel the roots of  him.   They river-

bound They gnarlin' up from mud [black pluff!] He veins the bank.

  

    •

  

Some say.  Word was.

—That her (fleetblooded) actual daddy jacked the toll-thru (humps the trains).

  

    •

  

She dwelled on it; she brooded.   Elaborated-

fleshed for us especially much his arms.

  

    •

  

How one mossy brawn-span she favored

had been scathed (engraved along its length) by lightning.

  

    •

  

How the long-muscled (strict, striated) river-hanging-over one would hold.

  

    •

  

You could loop a rope there Nearabout the bicep

Whap you up a wide horsehead knot to grip.   To ride good Rid fear Let's

not feature no blackflow flowin' down below.

  

    •

  

Cling strong till your hands numb till your blood goes.

Swing low.   You could bellow you could holler while you're at it (Bending with you

not to break) You could set yourself swayin' till kingdom come Till he hears you till

  

    •

  

he weighs you.  You could ring rightful like the tongue of a bell.

From Poetry Daily
Sept. 25, 2021
From the book Heard-Hoard by Atsuro Riley, published by the University of Chicago Press.





Swing on over.

On Beauty and Being Just, by Jane Zwart

Here the poet explores what she sees as her own plainness compared with the beauty of the natural world. I like this poem's sly way of sliding into traditional metaphor. The moth, for example, is phosphorescent like eyeshadow. That sounds right. I wore shiny, blue moths on my eyelids in the seventh grade.

On Beauty and Being Just

It is possible that I have been unfair

to them, the flamboyants:

to opals, to abalones, to moths

more phosphorescent than any eyeshadow I’ve worn—

because who knows?

Maybe the painted bunting

would willingly trade

his layered, paint-by-number capes

for the robin’s rusty apron. Maybe

the hibiscus is not a satellite dish

tilting on its stem to overhear

the praise of passers-by

but an umbrella mortified

that day has left it open

in a narrow place to dry. Maybe

the Northern Lights’ magic

is static, escaped photons

from the cupped palm of a modest

earth, smoothing her skirt.

. . .

But there, too, I have been unjust,

asking the bird to disavow

his jaunty beauty, rose mallow to flower

rue. Wanting to be fair—

let me trade it for plain

delight. Let me quit shaming

the flame-like things

or, at least, let the wind 

unwinding its argon sarong

not mind the likes of me.

Published in 32 Poems magazine
Spring/Summer 2020




Do mind me.

Gestational Size-Equivalency Chart, by Catherine Pierce

Looking through my phone recently, I found this small miracle of a baby poem. The comparisons in this are all over the place, just like the wonder of carrying a baby and of the baby itself. I like it that a moment -- say, of seeing a whale shark or of hearing a great song kick in -- can have a size. At the end, the heaving of the red vinyl panels of the Gravitron call up the act of childbirth. So, so happy to have found this.

Gestational Size-Equivalency Chart

Your baby is the size of a sweet pea.
Your baby is the size of a cherry.
Your baby is the size of a single red leaf
in early September. Your baby is the size
of What if. The size of Please Lord.
The size of a young lynx stretching.
Heat lightning. A lava lamp.
Your baby is the size of every dream
you've ever had about being onstage
and not knowing your lines. Your baby
is the size of a can of Miller Lite.
Apple-picking. Google. All of Google.
Your baby is also the size of a googol,
and also the size of the iridescence
at a hummingbird's throat. Your baby
is the size of a bulletproof nap mat.
Cassiopeia on a cold night. The size
of the 1.5-degree rise in ocean temps
between 1901 and 2015. Your baby
is the size of the lie you told your mother
the night before Senior Skip Day, and
also the size of the first time you saw
a whale shark glide by, its gray heft
filling the tank's window, and also
the size of just the very best acorn.
Your baby is the size of the Mona Lisa.
The size of the Louvre. The size
of that moment in "Levon" when
the strings first kick in. Your baby
is the size of a baby-sized pumpkin.
A bright hibiscus. A door. Your baby
is the size of the Gravitron, and your fear
the first time you rode it that your heart
might drop right through your body,
and then your elation when it didn't,
when the red vinyl panels rose and fell
and you rose and fell with them.

From Danger Days: Poems by Catherine Pierce
Saturnalia Books, October 2020

What say you?

Galileo, by Paul Tran

This poem really builds for me. I like the references to the word face throughout and especially the reappearance at the very end. The playfulness with words and line breaks contrasts with despair, for those who know despair. 

Galileo

I thought I could stop
time by taking apart
the clock. Minute hand. Hour hand.
Nothing can keep. Nothing
is kept. Only kept track of. I felt
passing seconds
accumulate like dead calves
in a thunderstorm
of the mind no longer a mind
but a page torn
from the dictionary with the definition of self
effaced. I couldn’t face it: the world moving
on as if nothing happened.
Everyone I knew got up. Got dressed.
Went to work. Went home.
There were parties. Ecstasy.
Hennessy. Dancing
around each other. Bluntness. Blunts
rolled to keep
thought after thought
from roiling
like wind across water—
coercing shapelessness into shape.
I put on my best face.
I was glamour. I was grammar.
Yet my best couldn’t best my beast.
I, too, had been taken apart.
I didn’t want to be
fixed. I wanted everything dismantled and useless
like me. Case. Wheel. Hands. Dial. Face.

Copyright © 2020 by Paul Tran. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on March 9, 2020 by the Academy of American Poets.


Fill this faceless space.

The Lover Remembereth Such as He Sometime Enjoyed and Showeth How He Would Like to Enjoy Her Again

I found this poem in the 1980s and neglected to write down who wrote it. Its title paraphrases that of a poem by the 16th-century writer Thomas Wyatt, though this poem turns out wistful rather than sardonic like Wyatt's. It's a sonnet of dive bars and lost love in contemporary language that's easy to understand. The next-to-last line hits me in the heart.

The Lover Remembereth ... 

Luck is something I do not understand:
There were a lot of things I almost did
Last night. I almost went to hear a band
Down at the Swinging Door. I, almost, hid

Out in my room all night and read a book,
The Sot-Weed Factor, that I'd read before.
Almost, I drank a pint of Sunny Brook
I'd bought at the Dickson Street Liquor Store.

Instead I went to the Restaurant-on-the-Corner
And tried to write, and did drink a beer or two.
Then coming back from getting rid of the beer
I suddenly found I was looking straight at  you.

Five months, my love, since I last touched your hand.
Luck is something I do not understand.

Cheers.

Prayer, by Natalia Toledo

A proffering about the value of being present for the smallest of particulars of one's particular life. It's a quiet and content poem that's not self-consciously a poem.

Prayer

For my grandmother’s wheelchair,

for my friend Candida’s green mangoes.

For houses made of brick,

their damp vermillion.

For the gray slats of my cradle,

for spiny cacti

growing on the walls.

For the jicalpextles my mother

got from other people’s weddings.

For those days when the sun burnished my hair

and my smile was the blinding bright of a salt crust.

For the photographs stuck to a piece of cardboard,

their swift migration to our family altar.

For the petate and its map of urine stains,

for the twisted trees upon the rippled water.

For all that I made into a life.

I sing.

2019

Translation from the Zapotec and Spanish by Irma Pineda and Clare Sullivan

A Gate

By Donna Masini

Such good use of sound. This one comes to life through alliteration, consonance and assonance. Just listen to nerve, grieved  fear, frayed, love, nave, rain, drone, dirge, rage. The sounds kept leading me on -- to that last phrase, which I think packs a wallop. 

I have oared and grieved,

grieved and oared,

treading a religion of fear. 

A frayed nerve. 

A train wreck tied to the train

of an old idea.

Now, Lord, reeling in violent

times, I drag these tidal

griefs to this gate.

I am tired. Deliver

me, whatever you are.

Help me, you who are never

near, hold what I love

and grieve, reveal this green

evening, myself, rain,

drone, evil, greed,

as temporary. Granted

then gone. Let me rail,

revolt, edge out, glove

to the grate. I am done

waiting like some invalid

begging in the nave.

Help me divine

myself, beside me no Virgil

urging me to shift gear,

change lane, sing my dirge

for the rent, torn world, and love

your silence without veering

into rage.

From 4:40 Movie

W.W. Norton, 2018


Knock knock.

from "Dame," by Caroline Bergvall

Some exerpts. Alisoun was an unrepentant tart of sorts from The Canterbury Tales, and this is a retelling or expansion of her story and others'. I think these redos are really funny. 

There are some weird spellings here, and things are anachronistically askew. It's as if Carolyn Bergvall said, "Well, I'll just grab this spelling from this century, and that syntax from that century, and a little bit of lingo from right now." It has an off-kilter, hip feel. I mean, what's a bad tatt doing here?

 

                                                                                                      Greetings

Hi you all, I'm Alisoun. Some people call me Al. Am many things to many a few thyinge to some & nothing but an irritant to socialites and othere glossing troglodytes. I dig a good chat banter aboute. Sbeen a long time, some & six hundred times have circled round the solar sun, everything were diffrent yet pretty much the same, sunsets were reddier, godabov ruled all & the franks the rest. Womenfolk were owned trafeckt regulated petted tightlye impossible to run ones own afferes let alone ones mynd nat publicly nat privatly, & so were most workfolk enserfed, owned never free, working working day 'n niht. Sunsets redder, legs a little shorter.

I've done well, sey so meselfe. Have traded textiles and vows fashioned millinery birdnestings as fine as Philip Treacy, halo creations brighte proude than Frangelico. Standing tall kept me upright saved me from oblivion, will get back to hats. Many a fine frockery have I cut & worn some even with buttons running all the way doun & upround again. Nodout for sure ma style wer too loud for sum, have been called any fin from scarecrow to fake cnight, what fakery? what knihtery? I play it large and bold, travel the distance forshure, nat grene as Gawain, the citys ma domayn, I'm Dame Alisoun Alys Ali Alyson. As for dress I take all ma Qs from Getalife, will get back to what.

Likeso have steered ma life a stourdy mount, life-partnered once, lit that match, and a few more. Eeasier sayd thane doon but ne will have lovemakes plow ma jarden wivout cheking out t instrumnts & the mental state of their flowering. In ma team I made ma bed reel bizzy a stretch a streowen for many leien in, yoohoo we did! bountyful booties ov all kinds & kins entwined revling ydizzied, in nightly prospectings we made liht of the derke.

Say-so maself sbeen good, spite a beating, or two.


                                                                                                              Vita

Ther comes a time in everyones lief whan 'tis gode think on ones condition & look ahead by looking in. Make sure this last stretch ylived in the most fulleste bestest manner prior to the grand Datsit. Call in the cards ones delt, shake ones tree for unwelcome guests gustes ghosts, and if possible empart the few purls one has managed to pluck from ones great sea of expedience. Nodout turning thrittitwenti is good timing. A time to speech ma minding 'n let some wisdam yrise. Call on a friendly assembly for fair share & witnessing, and there let ones hair down! Open ones mutt & shower the worlde until hoarse with wonder & insult! The artist Marina screamed until no voice & screamed some mo until the earth joined in. Ah the wonder! ah the insults!


                                                                                                              Copyist

Do allocate someone to copy exchanges in your partee or you'll find that ne can make heads nor tales of whatswhat after awhile can lead all kinds of misreadings & typos oons th' ink has dried. And what with inattention, coffee stains, drippings and the likes, unfortunates pellings get tuff to hiden or changen, like bad tatts covering bad tatts, as chaucer the aufeur famously bemoaned.

From Alisoun Sings
Carolyn Bergvall

Nightboat Books

Speech yoor minding heer:

Soleil & Sons, by Robert Cording

Addressed to God, this poem of thanks begins in awe of the ordinary: the strawberries, the tea, the toast, the baker. Then it goes on to bigger, possibly Biblical, things: loaves, sons, the good news.

The softer sounds -- strawberries, cinnamon, sun, Soleil -- create a quietly comfortable homage to the devotional poems of English priest George Herbert, in themselves little miracles.

Soleil & Sons

I have been reading your better servantGeorge Herbert again, and I’m trying to turnmy day into prayer, praying as the toast riseswith the toaster’s tinny bell and the tea leavesturn water into English Breakfast tea,and praying as I slice strawberries and addtheir redness to a bowl of granola.I’m grateful this morning for this cinnamon toastand for the local baker who made it, and forthe French word for sun and the punning nameof the bakery, and for the sun that arrivedthis morning without my asking.Soleil and Sons, Soleil and Sons, Soleil and Sons,why not add those words to my prayer,the glass of my watch making a small sunof the actual sun that forks and dartsalong the walls and across the ceiling, multiplyinglike those five loaves, like sun and sons.Maybe this is how Herbert’s prayer became an elixirthat carried the whole, given ordinary dayinside it, his entire body feelingas if it could break into applause for nothingmore than the floor he swept clean for thy sake,nothing explaining the way love took holdon its own. And maybe I’m beginningto get it, this keeping you nearwith my words, and maybe the good news isjust saying the words over and over,a prayer that somehow keeps gratitudein mind even when it doesn’t.
Published in SalamanderFall/Winter 2017-18

Respond. I'll be grateful.

Good Bones, by Maggie Smith

Raising children in a world at least 50 percent bad. It's not rich language here but sentiment and the churning way the sentiment is said. Wow.

Good Bones

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.

From The Poetry Foundation

Chirp, chirp. 

Posting one of my own. For my son when he was a baby.

Tucked In

Moon head,
you pearl the world.
You opalize,
you sheen with green
the now I tend.
You are my prize.
Jewel,
I would polish you,
engrave a plaque
and label you
my son,
my perpetuity,
my eon.

But you're not rock.
You're mouth,
you're breath
unfailing,
soft as footsteps on a rug.
And you are clear eye
wide as love
that guards me as I move
from door
to shelf,
from shelf
to drawer,
to you.

And you are
many-splendored lobe,
vellum nub I tug
between my teeth
and you are nape
and nose
and springy cheek,
warm enough to bite,
boy-sweet bun face.

Some distant night from now
the lack of you
will lope into this room.
And you'll be gone.
But I'll know how
I stroked the first white swirls
upon your head,
too fine for working hands,
so I touched them
with my lips
instead.

Love, by Czeslaw Milosz

The same person who wrote the political and psychological Captive Mind also wrote simple, straightforward poems, like this. Milosz, who defected from the Soviet realm,  won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1980.

For the broken-hearted.



Love


Love means to learn to look at yourself

The way one looks at distant things

For you are only one thing among many.

And whoever sees that way heals his heart,

Without knowing it, from various ills—

A bird and a tree say to him: Friend.



Then he wants to use himself and things

So that they stand in the glow of ripeness.

It doesn’t matter whether he knows what he serves:

Who serves best doesn’t always understand.