[love is more thicker than forget] by E. E. Cummings

[love is more thicker than forget]
by E. E. Cummings

love is more thicker than forget
more thinner than recall
more seldom than a wave is wet
more frequent than to fail

it is most mad and moonly
and less it shall unbe
than all the sea which only
is deeper than the sea

love is less always than to win
less never than alive
less bigger than the least begin
less littler than forgive

it is most sane and sunly
and more it cannot die
than all the sky which only
is higher than the sky





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"Say Grace" by Emily Jungmin Yoon

Say Grace
by Emily Jungmin Yoon

In my country our shamans were women
and our gods multiple until white people brought
an ecstasy of rosaries and our cities today
glow with crosses like graveyards. As a child
in Sunday school I was told I’d go to hell
if I didn’t believe in God. Our teacher was a woman
whose daughters wanted to be nuns and I asked
What about babies and what about Buddha, and she said
They’re in hell too and so I memorized prayers
and recited them in front of women
I did not believe in. Deliver us from evil.
O sweet Virgin Mary, amen. O sweet. O sweet.
In this country, which calls itself Christian,
what is sweeter than hearing Have mercy
on us. From those who serve different gods. O
clement, O loving, O God, O God, amidst ruins,
amidst waters, fleeing, fleeing. Deliver us from evil.
O sweet, O sweet. In this country,
point at the moon, at the stars, point at the way the lake lies,
with a hand full of feathers,
and they will look at the feathers. And kill you for it.
If a word for religion they don’t believe in is magic
so be it, let us have magic. Let us have
our own mothers and scarves, our spirits,
our shamans and our sacred books. Let us keep
our stars to ourselves and we shall pray
to no one. Let us eat
what makes us holy.





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"And Standing before Those Canvases, He Said, I Would Feel This Tingling" by Carla Panciera

And Standing before Those Canvases, He Said, I Would Feel This Tingling
by Carla Panciera

Some things no one says aloud.
But he was there if he says he was.

Bleaching fields and buttermilk.
The stench of breweries and lye.

Two-thirds of his life before this one? Sky.

His current city rises off a river not Lek,
though here in the gallery, a train ride away:

The impossible familiar. The somehow known.

The curator has written:
On the crowded ferry, cows attempt to drink. 

But anyone can see that one scratches her neck,
a good-sailor cow, sickle-hocked, not parched.

Cows like that. Yes. He remembers.

Also that, downriver, float the fishmongers’ baskets
of haddock and crab.

On the way home, this will be also his view,
the river running toward its source, a reverse birthing.

But now, he sees that Rembrandt has wired coils of light
into the shipbuilder’s ruff.

He remembers shipbuilders, the horizon
upon which sailed their fluyts, and above which: homesick.

That was what we call a long time ago
because it has to be called something.

And now? The guard warns him back from one world.

Rose hip. Willow. Sea salt.       The infinite clouds.





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"Bureau of" by Joyelle McSweeney

Bureau of
by Joyelle McSweeney

This is the body of,
waiting to turn on.

graced with a little tremor,
a little-known form, a fibrous hook,
a flimsy lever that makes the jar work

a lever and a clasp

:voila. The pathetic filofax
unfurls, the owl describes;
on air; makes an apse; lopes left

off the phonepole, woodenly.
we rise above the wind park,
commemorially.

our whorled fossil, pinned open.
our emergency kit
holds aspirin. digitalis. adrenalin-in-in.





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[I have become wealthy in a foreign land] by Johannes Göransson

[I have become wealthy in a foreign land]
by Johannes Göransson

I have become wealthy in a foreign land
gravity makes me sick in
my slippery throat the devil makes me lousy
with summer like I'm buried in the sun
in its sounds
with my mother
there's something about having
a heart beat like traffic
like wind I did it afterall: I had a sweaty
body in Berlin it was all right
I'm taking some time out
from being alive with daughters
It's OK I'm impersonating a kiss
of lilacs a murder of crows
are settling over my corpse the dust
covers my photographs I only
ever write about childhood
because that was before I died
and now the devil has brought me
back to Berlin in summer
in Stockholm I'm starting to make sense
of my body which is becoming
buried in pop music and now ooh-ooh
I have to rebuild the wall
an erotics based on occupation
I write you a letter ett brev
about my body as if it were
split between foreign words
whispered by stringy angels
and soldiers who march in
through the eye of a needle
I write my body with the eye
of a needle with nålen I write
when I'm sick with gravity
in summer in summer
I'm sick in light summer light
musical light from hell and you
dare call it heaven
my body you dare to call it heaven





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"Out of the rolling ocean the crowd" by Walt Whitman

"Out of the rolling ocean the crowd"
by Walt Whitman

Out of the rolling ocean the crowd came a drop gently to me, 
Whispering, I love you, before long I die, 
I have travell’d a long way merely to look on you to touch you, 
For I could not die till I once look’d on you, 
For I fear’d I might afterward lose you. 

Now we have met, we have look’d, we are safe, 
Return in peace to the ocean my love, 
I too am part of that ocean, my love, we are not so much separated, 
Behold the great rondure, the cohesion of all, how perfect! 
But as for me, for you, the irresistible sea is to separate us, 
As for an hour carrying us diverse, yet cannot carry us diverse forever; 
Be not impatient – a little space – know you I salute the air, the ocean and the land, 
Every day at sundown for your dear sake, my love. 





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"Ode to Autocorrect" by Martha Silano

Ode to Autocorrect
by Martha Silano

Because it changes O’Hare to o hate,
o hate, o hate — over and over, no matter
how many times I retype it. O hate, like

an American tune, an American fable
where, yo, you can enter an o hate
bathroom, take a selfie in the mirror

cuz your sister wants to see the pockets
of your Great American Rhinestone Jeans.
Because, on a street called Viewpoint,

I get home becomes I get guns, off a road
on a mission to kill every squirrel-ish
pedestrian. Because he was packing,

concealed, threatening to use it, use
his hands or feet. My feet, iamb
of a son of a birch, of a brick chatting

with the devil, with God, with a listener
not listening. Because he’d gone bonnets,
his garden bounty a faded wine, his wife’s

linguine a longing for a golden ear,
so I took her to the botanical gardens
in my getaway car, to a fruit on a vine,

but the limes went lemur, the night to nonfat,
the clear to catastrophic. Because driving away
from the frog man croaking hypocrite,

heavenly went down like a melting hedge,
a gal gone hog-tied, a fish crying, a tiger-
tiger togetherness, flight or fucked,

a heart, stroked, racing to its vicarious
carousel, a fungus lashed to a beam gone
beleaguered. Because he will kill her,

that’s his plan: to kill us all. Can’t commit
or commute, can’t debone his breath,
can’t take his acute paranoia, chalk it up

to cute. Because this here’s a Josie
madhouse, a bedroom bedrock-locked.
Because Blvd morphed to Bled, spirit

summoned with a Ouija board. Because
soap holder went love hen, though love
had flown the Calycanthus

like the grilled portobellos messing
with his vowels. Please please, I pleaded
to the pleading day. Because prayer

is like a bread line, a penny for your
exploded mind. Because lots of logs
to you, ma, because so sorry went poem.




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"Are Loyal" by Alice Notley

Are Loyal
by Alice Notley

Okay part of it’s
here. See it,

I want you to see my brother, dead smiling
in a red short-sleeved shirt, 
You look so much better

I got through.
  How does time work for you?

I can see where — when — I felt bad.
Goes past. I’m not in it any more
But this change hasn’t happened in time — a kind of
before and after but no ... continuum.
You look brilliant! I
never let you down — he says — did I?
It wasn’t possible,          Why not?
Sisters and brothers are loyal,

we are the primal particles.
I saw how we connected to make a shape
in the eyes of the beholder who chose it: But we
are not that. What I see is free to change its outline.
My story: the shadow of one. Why did I
shrink into a story? It’s easier to talk
as a person, but why? I guess we decided to, talking.
Coyote throws the stars up into the sky.





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"[in Just-] by E. E. Cummings

Happy Spring Equinox! Here is a poem to celebrate this season.

[in Just-]
by E. E. Cummings

in Just- 
spring          when the world is mud- 
luscious the little 
lame balloonman 

whistles          far          and wee 

and eddieandbill come 
running from marbles and 
piracies and it's 
spring 

when the world is puddle-wonderful 

the queer 
old balloonman whistles 
far          and             wee 
and bettyandisbel come dancing 

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and 

it's 
spring 
and 

         the 

                  goat-footed 

balloonMan          whistles 
far 
and 
wee





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"You Have Harnessed Yourself Ridiculously to This World" by Lucie Brock-Broido

You Have Harnessed Yourself Ridiculously to This World
by Lucie Brock-Broido

Tell the truth I told me                                When I couldn’t speak.

Sorrow’s a barbaric art, crude as a Viking ship                Or a child

Who rode a spotted pony to the lake away from summer

In the 1930s                                       Toward the iron lung of polio.

According to the census I am unmarried                And unchurched.

                                    The woman in the field dressed only in the sun.

Too far gone to halt the Arctic Cap’s catastrophe, big beautiful

Blubbery white bears each clinging to his one last hunk of  ice.

I am obliged, now, to refrain from dying, for as long as it is possible.

For whom left am I first?

                                                          We have come to terms with our Self

Like a marmoset getting out of  her Great Ape suit.





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"Back Up Quick They're Hippies" by Lani O'Hanlon

Back Up Quick They’re Hippies
by Lani O'Hanlon

That was the year we drove
into the commune in Cornwall.
“Jesus Jim,” mam said,
“back up quick they’re hippies.”

Through the car window,
tents, row after row, flaps open,
long-haired men and women
curled around each other like babies

and the babies themselves
wandered naked across the grass.

I reached for the handle, ready, almost,
to open the door, drop out and away
from my sister’s aggressive thighs,
Daddy’s slapping hands.

Back home in the Dandelion Market
I unlearnt the steps my mother taught,
bought a headband, an afghan coat,
a fringed skirt — leather skin.

Barefoot on common grass I lay down with kin.




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"The Cap and Bells" by William Butler Yeats

Happy St. Patrick's Day! Enjoy this poem by Irish poet William Butler Yeats.

The Cap and Bells
by William Butler Yeats

The jester walked in the garden: 
The garden had fallen still; 
He bade his soul rise upward 
And stand on her window-sill. 

It rose in a straight blue garment, 
When owls began to call: 
It had grown wise-tongued by thinking 
Of a quiet and light footfall; 

But the young queen would not listen; 
She rose in her pale night-gown; 
She drew in the heavy casement 
And pushed the latches down. 

He bade his heart go to her, 
When the owls called out no more; 
In a red and quivering garment 
It sang to her through the door. 

It had grown sweet-tongued by dreaming 
Of a flutter of flower-like hair; 
But she took up her fan from the table 
And waved it off on the air. 

'I have cap and bells,’ he pondered, 
'I will send them to her and die’; 
And when the morning whitened 
He left them where she went by. 

She laid them upon her bosom, 
Under a cloud of her hair, 
And her red lips sang them a love-song 
Till stars grew out of the air. 

She opened her door and her window, 
And the heart and the soul came through, 
To her right hand came the red one, 
To her left hand came the blue. 

They set up a noise like crickets, 
A chattering wise and sweet, 
And her hair was a folded flower 
And the quiet of love in her feet. 





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"drift" by Kerrin P. Sharpe

drift
by Kerrin P. Sharpe

in his white light dreams
at Discovery Hut
Herbert Ponting meets
the Siberian ponies
he’d once photographed
on the Terra Nova

the ponies no longer flexible
refuse to wear
equine pajamas
or trap their hooves
in bamboo snowshoes
for his Royal Collection

inside the stomach of ice
the ponies more still
than life soften
the silver shadows
of Scott and his team
and turn from Herbert’s bromide

into the drift
and whiff of themselves





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"Collectable Blacks" by Adrian Matejka

Today Poets Watch is featuring Indiana's poet laureate, Adrian Matekja. Currently he is a professor of creative writing at Indiana University.

Collectable Blacks
by Adrian Matejka

This is the g-dropping vernacular
     I am stuck in. This is the polyphone
where my head is an agrarian gang
     sign pointing like a percussion mallet
to a corn maze in one of the smaller
     Indiana suburbs where there aren’t
supposed to be black folks. Be cool & try
     to grin it off. Be cool & try to lean
it off. Find a kind of black & bet on it.
     I’m grinning to this vernacular
like the big drum laugh tracks a patriotic
     marching band. Be cool & try to ride
the beat the same way me, Pryor,
     & Ra did driving across the 30th Street
Bridge, laughing at these two dudes
     with big afros like it’s 1981 peeing into
the water & looking at the stars. Right
     before Officer Friendly hit his lights.
Face the car, fingers locked behind
     your heads. Right after the fireworks
started popping off. Do I need to call 
     the drug dog? Right after the rattling
windows, mosquitoes as busy in my ears
     as 4th of July traffic cops. Right before
the thrill of real planets & pretend planets
     spun high into the sky, Ra throwing up
three West Side fingers, each ringed
     by pyrotechnic glory & the misnomer
of the three of us grinning at the cop’s club
     down swinging at almost the exact same
time Pryor says, Cops put a hurting on your
     ass, man. & fireworks light up in the same
colors as angry knuckles if you don’t
     duck on the double. Especially on the West
Side—more carnivorous than almost any
     other part of Earth Voyager saw when
it snapped a blue picture on its way out
     of this violently Technicolor heliosphere.





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"Lemon Pie" by Edgar Albert Guet

Happy Pi Day! Here's an upbeat poem about pie by English-American author Edgar Albert Guest to celebrate.

Lemon Pie
by Edgar Albert Guest

The world is full of gladness,
    There are joys of many kinds,
There's a cure for every sadness,
    That each troubled mortal finds.
And my little cares grow lighter
    And I cease to fret and sigh,
And my eyes with joy grow brighter
    When she makes a lemon pie.

When the bronze is on the filling
    That's one mass of shining gold,
And its molten joy is spilling
    On the plate, my heart grows bold
And the kids and I in chorus
    Raise one glad exultant cry
And we cheer the treat before us
    Which is mother's lemon pie.

Then the little troubles vanish,
    And the sorrows disappear,
Then we find the grit to banish
    All the cares that hovered near,
And we smack our lips in pleasure
    O'er a joy no coin can buy,
And we down the golden treasure
    Which is known as lemon pie.





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"[I Saw Myself]" by Lew Welch

[I Saw Myself]
by Lew Welch

I saw myself
a ring of bone
in the clear stream
of all of it

and vowed,
always to be open to it
that all of it
might flow through

and then heard
“ring of bone” where
ring is what a

bell does





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"Legacies" by Nikki Giovanni

Legacies
by Nikki Giovanni

her grandmother called her from the playground   
       “yes, ma’am”
       “i want chu to learn how to make rolls” said the old   
woman proudly
but the little girl didn’t want
to learn how because she knew
even if she couldn’t say it that
that would mean when the old one died she would be less   
dependent on her spirit so
she said
       “i don’t want to know how to make no rolls”
with her lips poked out
and the old woman wiped her hands on
her apron saying “lord
       these children”
and neither of them ever
said what they meant
and i guess nobody ever does





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"Anticipated Stranger," by John Ashbery

Anticipated Stranger,
by John Ashbery

the bruise will stop by later.
For now, the pain pauses in its round,
notes the time of day, the patient’s temperature,
leaves a memo for the surrogate: What the hell
did you think you were doing? I mean . . .
Oh well, less said the better, they all say.
I’ll post this at the desk.

God will find the pattern and break it.





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"O Captain! My Captain!" by Walt Whitman

O Captain! My Captain!
by Walt Whitman

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done, 
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won, 
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting, 
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring; 
                         But O heart! heart! heart! 
                            O the bleeding drops of red, 
                               Where on the deck my Captain lies, 
                                  Fallen cold and dead. 

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells; 
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills, 
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding, 
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning; 
                         Here Captain! dear father! 
                            This arm beneath your head! 
                               It is some dream that on the deck, 
                                 You’ve fallen cold and dead. 

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still, 
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will, 
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done, 
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won; 
                         Exult O shores, and ring O bells! 
                            But I with mournful tread, 
                               Walk the deck my Captain lies, 
                                  Fallen cold and dead.

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"Movie" by Eileen Myles

Movie
by Eileen Myles

You’re like
a little fruit
you’re like
a moon I want
to hold
I said lemon slope
about your
hip
because it’s one
of my words
about you
I whispered
in bed
this smoothing
the fruit &
then alone
with my book
but writing
in it the pages
wagging
against my knuckles
in the
light like a
sail.

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"How to Write a Poem in a Time of War" by Joy Harjo

Happy International Women's Day! Today I am using a different font to maintain the structure of Joy Harjo's poem.

Born in Oklahoma, Harjo is a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. She earned her BA from the University of New Mexico and her MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Along with being a critically acclaimed poet, Harjo is a vocalist, saxophonist, and teacher.

How to Write a Poem in a Time of War
by Joy Harjo

You can’t begin just anywhere. It’s a wreck.

                                                                                       Shrapnel and the eye

Of a house, a row of houses. There’s a rat scrambling

From light with fleshy trash in its mouth. A baby strapped to its mother’s back

Cut loose.                                                                     Soldiers crawl the city,


The river, the town, the village,

                                      The bedroom, our kitchen. They eat everything.
Or burn it.

They kill what they cannot take. They rape. What they cannot kill they take.

Rumors fall like rain.

                                     Like bombs.

                 Like mother and father tears swallowed for restless peace.


                                     Like sunset slanting toward a moonless midnight.

Like a train blown free of its destination.         Like a seed fallen where

There is no chance of trees                 or anyplace       for birds to live.


No, start here.                           Deer peer from the edge of the woods.

                                                                        We used to see woodpeckers

The size of the sun, redbirds, and were greeted

                                          By chickadees with their good morning songs.

We’d started to cook outside slippery with dew and laughter, ah those smoky sweet sunrises.

We tried to pretend war wasn’t going to happen.

Though they began building their houses all around us and demanding 
more.

They started teaching our children their god’s story,

                                                               A story in which we’d always be slaves.

No. Not here.

You can’t begin here.

This is memory shredded because it is impossible to hold by words, even poetry.


These memories were left here with the trees:

The torn pocket of your daughter’s hand-sewn dress,

The sash, the lace.

The baby’s delicately beaded moccasin still connected to the foot,

A young man’s note of promise to his beloved —


                                                                              No! This is not the best place to begin.


Everyone was asleep, despite the distant bombs. Terror had become the familiar stranger.

Our beloved twin girls curled up in their nightgowns, next to their father and me.



If we begin here, none of us will make it to the end

                                                                                                               Of the poem.


Someone has to make it out alive, sang a grandfather to his grandson,

His granddaughter, as he blew his most powerful song into the hearts of the children.

There it would be hidden from the soldiers,

Who would take them miles, rivers, mountains from the navel cord place

Of the origin story.

He knew one day, far day, the grandchildren would return, 
generations later

Over slick highways                             constructed over old trails

Through walls of laws meant to hamper or destroy, over the 
libraries of

The ancestors in the winds, born in stones.


His song brings us to his home place in these smoky hills.


Begin here.





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"Planetarium" by Adrienne Rich

Planetarium
by Adrienne Rich

Thinking of Caroline Herschel (1750—1848)
astronomer, sister of William; and others.

A woman in the shape of a monster   
a monster in the shape of a woman   
the skies are full of them

a woman      ‘in the snow
among the Clocks and instruments   
or measuring the ground with poles’

in her 98 years to discover   
8 comets

she whom the moon ruled   
like us
levitating into the night sky   
riding the polished lenses

Galaxies of women, there
doing penance for impetuousness   
ribs chilled   
in those spaces    of the mind

An eye,

          ‘virile, precise and absolutely certain’
          from the mad webs of Uranusborg

                                                            encountering the NOVA   

every impulse of light exploding

from the core
as life flies out of us

             Tycho whispering at last
             ‘Let me not seem to have lived in vain’

What we see, we see   
and seeing is changing

the light that shrivels a mountain   
and leaves a man alive

Heartbeat of the pulsar
heart sweating through my body

The radio impulse   
pouring in from Taurus

         I am bombarded yet         I stand

I have been standing all my life in the   
direct path of a battery of signals
the most accurately transmitted most   
untranslatable language in the universe
I am a galactic cloud so deep      so invo-
luted that a light wave could take 15   
years to travel through me       And has   
taken      I am an instrument in the shape   
of a woman trying to translate pulsations   
into images    for the relief of the body   
and the reconstruction of the mind.





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"Forfeiting My Mystique" by Kaveh Akbar

Forfeiting My Mystique
by Kaveh Akbar

It is pretty to be sweet
and full of pardon like
a flower perfuming the
hands that shred it, but
all piety leads to a single
point: the same paradise
where dead lab rats go.

If you live small you’ll
be resurrected with the
small, a whole planet
of minor gods simpering
in the weeds. I don’t know
anyone who would kill
anyone for me. As boys

my brother and I
would play love, me
drawing stars on
the soles of his feet,
him tickling my back.
Then we’d play harm,
him cataloging my sins

to the air, me throwing
him into furniture.
The algorithms for living
have always been
delicious and hollow,
like a beetle husk in a
spider’s paw. Hafez said

fear is the cheapest room
in a house, that we ought
to live in better
conditions. I would
happily trade all my
knowing for plusher
carpet, higher ceilings.

Some nights I force
my brain to dream me
Persian by listening
to old home movies
as I fall asleep. In the
mornings I open my eyes
and spoil the séance. Am I

forfeiting my mystique?
All bodies become sicker
bodies. This is a kind of object
permanence, a curse bent
around our scalps resembling
grace only at the tattered
edges. It’s so unsettling

to feel anything but good.
I wish I was only as cruel as
the first time I noticed
I was cruel, waving my tiny
shadow over a pond to scare
the copper minnows.
Rockabye, now I lay me

down, et cetera. The world
is what accumulates — 
the mouth full of meat,
the earth full of meat.
My grandfather
taught his parrot
the ninety-nine holy

names of God. Al-Muzil:
The Humiliator. Al-Waarith:
The Heir. Once, after
my grandfather had been
dead for a year, I woke
from a dream (I was a
sultan guzzling flies

from a crystal boot) with
his walking cane deep
in my mouth. I kept sucking
until I fell back asleep.
There are only two bones
in the throat, and that’s if you
count the clavicle. This

seems unsafe, overdelicate,
like I ought to ask for
a third. As if anyone
living would offer.
Corporeal friends are
spiritual enemies, said
Blake, probably gardening

in the nude. Today I’m trying
to scowl more, mismatch
my lingerie. Nobody
seems bothered enough.
Some saints spent their
whole childhoods biting
their teachers’ hands and

sprinkling salt into spider-
webs, only to be redeemed
by a fluke shock
of grace just before
death. May I feather
into such a swan soon.
The Book of Things

Not to Touch gets longer
every day: on one
page, the handsome puppy
bred only for service. On
the next, my mother’s
face. It’s not even enough
to keep my hands to myself — 

there’s a whole chapter
about the parts of me
that could get me
into trouble. In Farsi,
we say jaya shomah khallee
when a beloved is absent
from our table — literally:

your place is empty.
I don’t know why I waste
my time with the imprecision
of saying anything else,
like using a hacksaw
to slice a strawberry when
I have a razor in my

pocket. To the extent I am
necessary at all, I am
necessary like a roadside deer — 
a thing to drive past, to catch
the white of, something
to make a person pause,
say, look, a deer.





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