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What Love Comes ToNew & Selected PoemsFrom"The Dog"
The dog is God.
It knows it is God.
It is God living with God.
Even in the rain,
the esters, the pheromones,
calligraphy of the sacred,
the great head points into the wind,
the blood thrashes in the thick veins.
The language of the feces, urine,
species, rut, offal, decay –
nothing is hidden from the dog,
who keeps its own counsel,
leading you by the leash.
What Love Comes To : New & Selected Poems -
What Love Comes ToNew & Selected PoemsFrom"Topography"
Do I dare to think that I alone am
The sum total of every night hand searching in the
Pounding pounding over the universe of veins, sweat,
Dust in the sheets with noses that got in the way?
Yes, I remember the turning and holding,
The heavy geography; but map me again, Columbus.
What Love Comes To : New & Selected Poems -
What Love Comes ToNew & Selected PoemsFrom"American Milk"
Then the butter we put on our white bread
was colored with butter yellow, a cancerous dye,
and all the fourth grades were taken by streetcar
to the Dunky Company to see milk processed; milk bottles
riding on narrow metal cogs through little doors that flapped.
The sour damp smell of milky-wet cement floors:
we looked through great glass windows at the milk.
Before we were herded back to the streetcar line,
we were each given a half pint of milk in tiny
milk bottles with straws to suck it up. In this way
we gradually learned about our country.
What Love Comes To : New & Selected Poems
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Flying the Red EyePoemsFrom"Flying the Red Eye"
Circling slow and dripping like a fat June bug in the rain,
turbos throbbing in the labored
dark over Chicago, the Electra turned, one wing
pivoted up, like an old dog tilted on three legs,
smelling dank, an old heaviness in him, as though
he were about to tumble over toward those glorious,
snowy lights below. There might have been
freezing sleet as well. In any case, I know
I laughed into a glass half filled with bourbon,
glanced again at the two feathered props
out the window, their cowlings charred and smoky.
But freed all at once from months of killing depression,
elated strangely, almost uplifted.
Flying the Red Eye : Poems -
Flying the Red EyePoemsFrom"Travelers"
In Stockholm that icy day
the rain blew from the north and then
by noon the run broke through; by three
the Swedes were outdoors sunning in thin sleeves,
strolling as though it were Easter,
while you and I, like birds of paradise
lost in Lapland, huddled in doorways, bitten through.
Everyone about us smiled at one another; we fought our way
street by street to our hotel, and buried ourselves
under blankets. And sighed at the lonely
displacement. How little we knew then,
newly married, of the cold that finds
the remotest parts of the body to lodge,
that there’s no defense except by slow degrees
to become acclimatized. And for a cold this deep
it would take years of freezing.
Flying the Red Eye : Poems -
Flying the Red EyePoemsFrom"Stroke"
The last of my father’s brothers, that year
(a year before my father died at fifty-seven)
Jack refused to say goodbye to anyone –
instead he’d laugh and only turn away
as if his departing guests were simply
stepping out a moment into his yard
to listen to nightingales or smell the jacaranda
and sweet magnolia thick as constellations.
The brothers seemed to have a clock inside them,
set at fifty-six or so, Jack said.
And the best of them go out face down in the leaves
at home, and the worst in a drunk tank
in borrowed shows. Lucky, he said, the man
who knows the number of his days. Lucky
twice over if it’s autumn and the red leaves
and yellow rain haven’t given all their kisses away.
Flying the Red Eye : Poems
Selected Works
read more >-
The Selected Poetry of Hayden CarruthFrom"A Leaf from Mr. Dyer’s Woods"
I don’t know why or how
Sometimes in August a maple
Will drop through a leaf burned through
Its tender parts with coral
While the veins keep green –
A rare device of color.
When I found such a one
I acted the despoiler,
Taking it from the woods
To give a friend for a trifle,
But her mind was on good deeds
And I turned shy and fearful.
The Selected Poetry of Hayden Carruth -
The Selected Poetry of Hayden CarruthFrom"Ontological Episode of the Asylum"
The boobyhatch’s bars, the guards, the nurses,
The illimitable locks and keys are all arranged
To thwart the hand that continually rehearses
Its ending stroke and raise a barricade
Against destruction-seeking resolution.
Many of us in there would have given all
(But we had nothing) for one small razor blade
Or seventy grains of the comforting amytal.
So I went down in the attitude or prayer,
Yes, to my knees on the cold floor of my cell,
Humped in a corner, a bird with a broken wing,
An asked and asked as fervently and well
As I could guess to do for light in the mists
Of death, until I learned God doesn’t care.
Not only that, he doesn’t care at all,
One way or the other. That is why he exists.
The Selected Poetry of Hayden Carruth -
The Selected Poetry of Hayden CarruthFrom"That I Had Had Courage When Young"
Yet had I not much
who went out – out! – among those
heartless all around, to look
and talk sometimes and touch?
In the big lunatic house
I did not fly apart nor spatter
the walls with myself, not quite.
I sat with madness in my mouth.
But never, it was never enough.
Else how could all these books
I did not write bend down my back
grown now so old and rough?
The Selected Poetry of Hayden Carruth
Selected Works
read more >John Ash
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The Branching StairsPoemsFrom"Funeral Waltz"
You know it too! … The charm of funerals in the rain,
the special effects men with their hoses well aimed,
huge drops exploding on
classically beautiful
black umbrellas.
You know them, -
the houses like fat vegetables
stuffed with old lace, ceramics, silverware, dust –
secure as bank vaults.
Who will inherit?
Vittorio is dining with
that Chinese actress again…
Will the kingdom be divided?
Who will keep
the chandeliers in good repair
and tend the lists of public enemies?
The Branching Stairs : Poems -
The Branching StairsPoemsFrom"Snow: A Romance"
He finds the girl in the snow. Only he has seen her. She is so white, only a shred of bright hair might provide a focus for rifle-sights. In a split second, moving more quickly than a lizard, he has snatched her away. She is icy cold. If she is not to die he must carry her quickly down to the lake.
The Branching Stairs : Poems -
The Branching StairsPoemsFrom"The Weather or The English Requiem"
Yes, the sewers collapse,
we have potholes as in New York
and we love them incontinently.
The street is quiet. No one disturbs
the trees when they let fall
their leaves. This is a dream, I’m afraid
and the pavements (unpaved)
are swimming with darkness.
Hairline cracks appear
even in the beautiful autumn sky
supplied by the American conglomerate.
The Branching Stairs : Poems
Selected Works
read more >-
New and Selected PoemsFrom"Letters From An Institution"
I have a garden in my brain
shaped like a maze
I lose myself
in, it seems. They only look for me
sometimes. I don’t like my dreams.
The nurses quarrel over where I am
hiding. I hear from inside
a bush. One is crisp
and cuts; one pinches. I’d like to push
them each somewhere.
They both think it’s funny
here. The laughter sounds like diesels.
I won’t come out because I’m lazy.
You start to like the needles.
You start to want to crazy.
New and Selected Poems -
New and Selected PoemsFrom"When I Was Conceived"
It was 1945, and it was May.
White crocus bloomed in St. Louis.
The Germans gave in but the war shoved on,
and my father came home from work that evening
tired and washed his hands
not picturing the black-goggled men
with code names fashioning an atomic bomb.
Maybe he loved his wife that evening.
Maybe after eating she smoothed his jawline
in her palm as he stretched out
on the couch with his head in her lap
while Bob Hope spoofed Hirohito on the radio
and they both laughed. My father sold used cars
at the time, and didn’t like it,
so if he complained maybe she held him
an extra moment in her arms,
the heat in the air pressing between them,
so they turned upstairs early that evening,
arm in arm, without saying anything.
New and Selected Poems -
New and Selected PoemsFrom"The Past"
It shows up one summer in a greatcoat,
storms through the house confiscating,
says it must be paid and quickly,
says it must take everything.
Your children stare into their cornflakes,
your wife whispers only once to stop it,
because she loves you and she sees it
darken the room suddenly like a stain.
What did you do to deserve it,
ruining breakfast on a balmy day?
Kiss your loved ones. Night is coming.
There was no life without it anyway.
New and Selected Poems
Selected Works
read more >-
Barbells of the GodsPoemsFrom"Running My Fingers Through My Beard On Bolton Road"
Child or woman. Memory or need. Today, again, I can see you
in her eyes, today her eyes again pursue the ground, look
for some sign, some path to follow away from her route.
Her sweatshirt is zipped to the throat and I am realizing that
we are both then, somehow ashamed of what has suddenly happened
between us. And I’m slowing down a little, as if to let
the spring sun catch up to these hands on the steering wheel,
to these hands that will not ever stop needing breasts to
make them hands, as if to uncover my mouth
and yell across the lawns to her.
Barbells of the Gods : Poems -
Barbells of the GodsPoemsFrom"Horizontals"
I think I came to understand there’s only one storm,
it just keeps circling the earth till it gets to us again,
and that the pounding I felt even in my hair the first
time you innocently brushed it back
was just two ordinary clouds boiling over that edge
where what we can’t see stops and starts
and slamming into each other
with an inevitability we’d eventually have to imitate.
Barbells of the Gods : Poems -
Barbells of the GodsPoemsFrom"Poem For the Name Mary"
Like smoke in a bottle, like
hunger, sometimes light fits,
wraps itself around a person
or thing and doesn’t let go.
The light becomes a name,
and that name becomes a voice
through which light speaks to us.
Maybe this is what a friend means
when she says there is a pair of lips
in the air, maybe this is desire
and need too. Or maybe
this is just how to love a potato,
how to see what the potato sees,
the childish, white arms that reach out
through its eyes into the dark of our cabinets
to bless them.
Barbells of the Gods : Poems
Selected Works
read more >Sylvia Moss
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Cities in MotionPoemsFrom"Circus"
Often they seem to be falling forward
but I pretend not to notice
how well they use their bodies:
the girl, that tall delicate boy,
even the father in pink satin –
ardent, flashy. Now something scares me
and I turn away.
In the dream
they walk the beach –
my children and their father –
equally exposed, ridiculous suits
in the same ice-cream colors.
Cities in Motion : Poems -
Cities in MotionPoemsFrom"Report From the Village"
Terrible things are happening in slow motion:
a child turns in a low drifting fall,
a man finds cover in a doorway
where inside his shop the pharmacist
slumps over scales on the counter,
and a girl – bright skirt, hair flying –
tries to run, tries to scream.
Then in the street people
are quiet and figures swinging
from the terraces are quiet
and she is trying to open her mouth
as the officer from the mountains explains:
We did not massacre anyone.
We just surrounded the town
and did not let anyone surrender.
Cities in Motion : Poems -
Cities in MotionPoemsFrom"Beggarman"
A cane swings through the street
announcing him. He chooses something bent,
disfiguring – that branch
cut from a blackthorn tree
is polished and well made.
He dares you pity him.
Blackthorn, blackthorn,
have I become someone
who needs a crooked stick?
Cities in Motion : Poems
Selected Works
read more >-
RosePoemsFrom"Dreaming of Hair"
Ivy ties the cellar door
in autumn, in summer morning glory
wraps the ribs of a mouse.
Love binds me to the one
whose hair I’ve found in my mouth,
whose sleeping head I kiss,
wondering is it death?
beauty? this dark
star spreading in every direction from the crown of her head.
My love’s hair is autumn hair, there
the sun ripens.
My fingers harvest the dark
vegetable of her body.
In the morning I remove it
from my tongue and
sleep again.
Rose : Poems -
RosePoemsFrom"Eating Together"
In the steamer is the trout
seasoned with slivers of ginger,
two sprigs of green onion, and sesame oil.
We shall eat it with rice for lunch,
brothers, sister, my mother who will
taste the sweetest meat of the head,
holding it between her fingers
deftly, the way my father did
weeks ago. Then he lay down
to sleep like a snow-covered road
winding through pines older than him,
without any travelers, and lonely for no one.
Rose : Poems -
RosePoemsFrom"I Ask My Mother To Sing"
She begins, and my grandmother joins her.
Mother and daughter sing like young girls.
If my father were alive, he would play
his accordion and sway like a boat.
I’ve never been in Peking, or the Summer Palace,
nor stood on the great Stone Boat to watch
the rain begin on Kuen Ming Lake, the picnickers
running away in the grass.
But I love to hear it sung;
how the waterlilies fill with rain until
they overturn, spilling water into water,
then rock back, and fill with more.
Both women have begun to cry.
But neither stops her song.
Rose : Poems
Selected Works
read more >Michael Burkard
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Fictions from the SelfPoemsFrom"When the Sun Rises"
I do not know how I need the air,
or if it needs me. The lost air,
the air which is smashed, like a red hat.
When the sun rises the amnesty
of the unused animals – the goat, the burrow,
the maroon horses - when the sun rises
the amnesty of these flies its flag: an orchard
with a thumb on top.
Fictions from the Self : Poems -
Fictions from the SelfPoemsFrom"Like a Receipt"
Went walking with a few others
in the guarded sunlight of hilly
streets, saw a man through the door,
beyond another man, assumed owned,
bequeathed to the street for only
a moment: saw the fat man sitting
there in black, like a receipt,
a fat black receipt waiting and waiting:
o deliver love and no other word,
deliver flawless feeling to the house,
the feeling that comes once in a lifetime,
then, when least looking, once again.
Fictions from the Self : Poems -
Fictions from the SelfPoemsFrom"My Cobbler"
It was told I could pull
the wagon of death
as long as I chose to pull.
My shoes didn’t tell me,
my cobbler told me.
My cobbler tells me a lot of things.
I turned you into a widow,
I was that tough on myself,
the two of us effaced
like stones you might erase
the miles from, the journeys
of the names and other stars
and evenings.
Fictions from the Self : Poems
Selected Works
read more >-
Steal AwayNew and Selected PoemsFrom"Petition for Replenishment"
We do not mean to complain. We know how it is.
In older, even sadder cultures the worst possible sorts
have been playing hot and cold with people’s lives
for much longer. Like Perrow says,
We’ll all have baboon hearts one of these days.
We wintered with ample fuel and real tomatoes.
We were allowed to roam, sniffing and chewing
at the tufted crust. We were let to breathe.
That is, we respirated. Now the soft clocks
have gorged themselves on our time. Yet
as our hair blanches and comes out
in hanks, we can tell it is nearly spring –
the students shed their black coats
on the green; we begin to see shade.
Lo, this is the breastbone’s embraceable light.
We are here. Still breathing and constellated.
Steal Away : New and Selected Poems -
Steal AwayNew and Selected PoemsFrom"Old Man With a Dog"
climbing the hill
in a heavy coat
to Sunset Manor
to comb his wife’s
white clumps of hair,
muttering,
72 years,
what you cannot
end up with
in 72 years.
Eating at the stovein his heavy coat.
Watching TV
with the dog.
72 years
on the heel of this
Christbitten hill.
72 years
he wonders aloud,
What will I do?How will I live?
Steal Away : New and Selected Poems -
Steal AwayNew and Selected PoemsFrom"Just Whistle: A Valentine"
DUSTY APPLES IN A DUSTY KITCHEN. Ferns brushing their
fronds. Sound of water. Sloshing. Body atop an ice-cream parlor
chair. Finger tracing salt on the table. The body on its hinges.
Midafternoon hysterics. What does the body want. For God’s
sake? What a lousy situation. A good whipping. A night or two
in the pokey wouldn’t hurt. To meet another body coming
through the halm. Swinging its plums freely. Awhistling.
Steal Away : New and Selected Poems