"the way we live now ::" by Evie Shockley

the way we live now ::
by Evie Shockley

       when the cultivators of corpses are busy seeding
plague across vast acres of the land, choking schools
       and churches in the motley toxins of grief, breeding
virile shoots of violence so soon verdant even fools
       fear to tread in their wake :: when all known tools
of resistance are clutched in the hands of the vile
       like a wilting bouquet, cut from their roots, while

the disempowered slice smiles across their own faces
       and hide the wet knives in writhing thickets of hair
for future use :: when breathing in the ashen traces
       of dreams deferred, the detonator’s ticking a queer
echo that amplifies instead of fading :: when there-
       you-are is where-you-were and the sunset groans
into the atlantic, setting blue fire to dark white bones.






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"Poem Without an End" by Yehuda Amichai (translated by Chana Bloch)

Poem Without an End
by Yehuda Amichai
translated by Chana Bloch

Inside the brand-new museum
there’s an old synagogue.
Inside the synagogue
is me.
Inside me
my heart.
Inside my heart
a museum.
Inside the museum
a synagogue,
inside it
me,
inside me
my heart,
inside my heart
a museum






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"To the States," by Walt Whitman

To the States,
by Walt Whitman

To Identify the 16th, 17th, or 18th Presidentiad.
Why reclining, interrogating? why myself and all drowsing? 
What deepening twilight—scum floating atop of the waters, 
Who are they as bats and night-dogs askant in the capitol? 
What a filthy Presidentiad! (O South, your torrid suns! O North, your arctic freezings!) 
Are those really Congressmen? are those the great Judges? is that the President? 
Then I will sleep awhile yet, for I see that these States sleep, for reasons; 
(With gathering murk, with muttering thunder and lambent shoots we all duly awake, 
South, North, East, West, inland and seaboard, we will surely awake.)






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"The Song of the Ungirt Runners" by Charles Hamilton Sorely

The Song of the Ungirt Runners
by Charles Hamilton Sorely


We swing ungirded hips,
And lightened are our eyes,
The rain is on our lips,
We do not run for prize.
We know not whom we trust
Nor whitherward we fare,
But we run because we must
    Through the great wide air.

The waters of the seas
Are troubled as by storm.
The tempest strips the trees
And does not leave them warm.
Does the tearing tempest pause?
Do the tree-tops ask it why?
So we run without a cause
    'Neath the big bare sky.

The rain is on our lips,
We do not run for prize.
But the storm the water whips
And the wave howls to the skies.
The winds arise and strike it
And scatter it like sand,
And we run because we like it
    Through the broad bright land.

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"Long Marriage" by Gerald Fleming

Long Marriage
by Gerald Fleming

You’re worried, so you wake her 
& you talk into the dark: 
Do you think I have cancer, you 
say, or Were there worms 
in that meat, or Do you think 
our son is OK, and it’s 
wonderful, really—almost 
ceremonial as you feel 
the vessel of your worry pass 
miraculously from you to her— 
Gee, the rain sounds so beautiful, 
you say—I’m going back to sleep.






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"The Goddess Who Created This Passing World" by Alice Notley

The Goddess Who Created This Passing World
by Alice Notley

The Goddess who created this passing world
Said Let there be lightbulbs & liquefaction
Life spilled out onto the street, colors whirled
Cars & the variously shod feet were born
And the past & future & I born too
Light as airmail paper away she flew
To Annapurna or Mt. McKinley
Or both but instantly
Clarified, composed, forever was I
Meant by her to recognize a painting
As beautiful or a movie stunning
And to adore the finitude of words
And understand as surfaces my dreams
Know the eye the organ of affection
And depths to be inflections
Of her voice & wrist & smile





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"Beyond the Red River" by Thomas McGrath

Beyond the Red River
by Thomas McGrath

The birds have flown their summer skies to the south,
And the flower-money is drying in the banks of bent grass
Which the bumble bee has abandoned. We wait for a winter lion,
Body of ice-crystals and sombrero of dead leaves.

A month ago, from the salt engines of the sea,
A machinery of early storms rolled toward the holiday houses
Where summer still dozed in the pool-side chairs, sipping
An aging whiskey of distances and departures.

Now the long freight of autumn goes smoking out of the land.
My possibles are all packed up, but still I do not leave.
I am happy enough here, where Dakota drifts wild in the universe,
Where the prairie is starting to shake in the surf of the winter dark.





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