"Affirmation" by Donald Hall

Affirmation
by Donald Hall

 To grow old is to lose everything. 
Aging, everybody knows it. 
Even when we are young, 
we glimpse it sometimes, and nod our heads 
when a grandfather dies.
Then we row for years on the midsummer 
pond, ignorant and content. But a marriage,
that began without harm, scatters 
into debris on the shore, 
and a friend from school drops 
cold on a rocky strand.
If a new love carries us 
past middle age, our wife will die 
at her strongest and most beautiful. 
New women come and go. All go. 
The pretty lover who announces 
that she is temporary
is temporary. The bold woman,
middle-aged against our old age,
sinks under an anxiety she cannot withstand. 
Another friend of decades estranges himself 
in words that pollute thirty years. 
Let us stifle under mud at the pond’s edge 
and affirm that it is fitting
and delicious to lose everything.





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"Salad Days" by Tomás Q. Morín

Salad Days
by Tomás Q. Morín

For Micah Ruelle
We were not green in judgment or cold
in blood like Cleopatra in her youth
who still was ordering chopped radish
in her bowls back then,
the hearts all gone to pieces
next to the winter greens
that in our days we never had use for
so smitten were we with fire
and ovens that I was gravy in judgment,
which might not mean much
unless you’ve taken a spoon
of it and poured it back over a dumpling
shaped like your heart
so that it became even softer,
something you could not have thought possible.
It’s all happening now,
you liked to say, and I agreed,
though it was not the news
from the outside I relished,
but the daily Extra! Extra! the light
of the morning brought to my attention
every time we woke in your house
or my house and my heart
— salty, risen — was warm
again in a way it hadn’t been for years.
Organ of passion, organ of righteousness
that has never had a single flavor cross its lips,
how could you know
how much I would miss the honey of those days,
her drizzle of it on the turkey bacon,
my cracking pepper up and down the pan,
the sweet meat of happiness 
I would no longer let pass between our teeth.





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"These New York City Pigeons" by Jayne Cortez

These New York City Pigeons
by Jayne Cortez

These New York City Pigeons
cooing in the air shaft
are responsible for me
stubbing my toe
spraining my ankle
and getting sick on ammonia fumes

That pigeon roosting on the clothesline
stole my nightgown
Those pigeons on the street lamp
made me feel foolish
while riding in a black car
completely splattered
with their grey & white poo poo

These New York City pigeons
are not calm like pigeons of Oxalá in Brazil
and do not croon like doves of Zimbabwe

New York City pigeons moan
strange    low    mournful    quivering cancer-like moans
mixed with
hungry hyena barks
& gulping loss of the forest cries

New York City pigeons
are not relaxed like
pigeons sunning at
Marcel Duchamp swimming pool in San Francisco

New York City pigeons are not happy like
pigeons standing on head of the woman
selling bananas on a street corner in Johannesburg

New York City pigeons
flap viral leather fungus dust from wings into faces
then sit on steps vocalizing & waiting
for the death of humankind

New York City pigeons
are not friendly like
pigeons eating flaky crescent-shaped rolls at
Hotel du Piémont in Paris

New York City pigeons
are not content
like pigeons
posing for photos on arms
of men in plaza of Caracas

New York City pigeons
will lounge on ledges
& murmur profanity all day
will fight for fucking space in
the mating season
shit on air conditioners
& wipe their asses on windows
while big cockroaches
suck Sucrets in the dark

New York City pigeons
are not alert
like pigeons
sitting quietly on bicycles
in peace memorial park of Hiroshima

New York City pigeons
roll their pearly eyes
inflate their throats
and defecate on the shoulders of pedestrians

New York City pigeons
have no love for crumb-throwing pigeon lovers
& no year of the pigeon is celebrated
at least
not for these New York City Pigeons





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"Ah! Sun-flower" by William Blake

Ah! Sun-flower
by William Blake

Ah Sun-flower! weary of time, 
Who countest the steps of the Sun: 
Seeking after that sweet golden clime 
Where the travellers journey is done. 

Where the Youth pined away with desire, 
And the pale Virgin shrouded in snow: 
Arise from their graves and aspire, 
Where my Sun-flower wishes to go.





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"The Quiet Hour" by Jonathan David

The Quiet Hour
by Jonathan David

When the hour is hushed and you lie still,
So quiet is the room about me
It seems perhaps that you are gone,
Sunken to a marble sleep.

I hear no sound; my quiet will,
Passive as the lambs at rest,
Stirs not the quaint forgetfulness
But only murmurs, “Sleep is strange!”

The low moon at the lattice going
Rests no more quietly than you at peace.
Hushed is the candle; the hour is late,
And I, poor witness of extreme change,

I think perhaps then heaven opens
Like the unfolding of your hand in sleep—
Your cold white hand—to close again—
While I sit staring at the marble gate.





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"Love, I'm Done with You" by Ross Gay

Love, I'm Done with You
by Ross Gay

You ever wake up with your footie PJs warming
your neck like a noose? Ever upchuck
after a home-cooked meal? Or notice
how the blood on the bottoms of your feet
just won’t seem to go away? Love, it used to be
you could retire your toothbrush for like two or three days and still
I’d push my downy face into your neck. Used to be
I hung on your every word. (Sing! you’d say: and I was a bird.
Freedom! you’d say: and I never really knew what that meant,
but liked the way it rang like a rusty bell.) Used to be. But now
I can tell you your breath stinks and you’re full of shit.
You have more lies about yourself than bodies
beneath your bed. Rooting
for the underdog. Team player. Hook,
line and sinker. Love, you helped design the brick
that built the walls around the castle
in the basement of which is a vault
inside of which is another vault
inside of which . . . you get my point. Your tongue
is made of honey but flicks like a snake’s. Voice
like a bird but everyone’s ears are bleeding.
From the inside your house shines
and shines, but from outside you can see
it’s built from bones. From out here it looks
like a graveyard, and the garden’s
all ash. And besides,
your breath stinks. We’re through.





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"The Time I’ve Lost in Wooing" by Thomas Moore

The Time I’ve Lost in Wooing
by Thomas Moore

The time I’ve lost in wooing, 
In watching and pursuing 
The light, that lies 
In woman’s eyes, 
Has been my heart’s undoing. 
Though Wisdom oft has sought me, 
I scorn’d the lore she brought me, 
My only books 
Were woman’s looks, 
And folly’s all they’ve taught me. 

Her smile when Beauty granted, 
I hung with gaze enchanted, 
Like him the Sprite, 
Whom maids by night 
Oft meet in glen that’s haunted. 
Like him, too, Beauty won me, 
But while her eyes were on me, 
If once their ray 
Was turn’d away, 
Oh! winds could not outrun me. 

And are those follies going? 
And is my proud heart growing 
Too cold or wise 
For brilliant eyes 
Again to set it glowing? 
No, vain, alas! th’ endeavour 
From bonds so sweet to sever; 
Poor Wisdom’s chance 
Against a glance 
Is now as weak as ever.





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"If It Is The Summer Of 2009" by Hanif Abdurraqib

If It Is The Summer Of 2009
by Hanif Abdurraqib

And you are in a car with more bodies
inside than the number of doors outside and “Party In The U.S.A.”
comes on the radio, everyone sings along. We do not discuss this. It just happens
even when the a/c doesn’t work and the sun rummages through
your skin searching for something to claim and split
open, or even when inside of this wet and rusting machine,
carried through your family like a sickness,
your hand brushes up against the hand you were too
shy to pull onto the dance floor while some band squeezed one
more encore out of the night, singing along to “Party In The U.S.A.”
with the windows down is some non-negotiable shit.
Even if you have to hit the cruise control on an empty highway
to close your eyes and throw your head back on a high note,
these are the sacrifices a generation like ours must make.
No one pretends that they do not know the words
like this song, this sweet and heavy meal did not arrive
 in the stomachs of kids like us, pleading for a heaving escape
into some night we will bookmark for when we are holding babies and craving nostalgia.
Everybody sings every word, even Jason who is so punk rock he bleeds
on everything
so punk rock he is almost always playing dead
 a trick he learned when we were boys and the bar
down on Livingston cut his father off way before last call
and there were no more things for a man to break
in his own home except for the bones of something
that reminded him of himself.
We all sing, though the singing cannot forgive our youth
for being a storm cloud,
cannot conjure the shell of any home where our mothers are still
breathing and slow dancing with the breeze in the family room.
Sing because it is good to own something in this country
it is good to let something pass through your mouth
and blend with other voices that maybe know the kind of loss
you carry or at least they will by the time we get to the second chorus
or the end of the song altogether
or however long it takes for the sun to have its fill of us
and leave town
 everything in its wake a puddle we revel in long enough to forget
that we are black in our 20’s which is to say that we are too old
for this shit
and by this shit I of course mean living
I of course mean that we have carried the lifeless bodies of enough younger brothers to never forget that we should be dead by now
we should have the decency to unburden America
by our dying on the side of a cracked road
and maybe this explains the silence that grows ripe in a car
pulled over on I-71 at 2 a.m. with no one in
sight but us and four police officers who took
our lane-swerving joy for inebriation or worse and
the knowing of what we may leave behind when we step out
 of a car,
how there are so many ways to demand
raised hands even after the party ends,
when screams cut into a night now so gutted it can only be
a casket where
even wrecked by our trembling, we know to
 oblige everything
after all
They’re playing our song.






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"Waiting For a Poem" by Luljeta Lleshanaku

Waiting For a Poem
by Luljeta Lleshanaku
translated by Henry Israeli and Shpresa Qatipi

I’m waiting for a poem,
something rough, not elaborate or out of control,
something undisturbed by curses, a white raven
released from darkness.

Words that come naturally, without aiming at anything,
a bullet without a target,
warning shots to the sky
in newly occupied lands.

A poem that will well up in my chest

and until it arrives
I will listen to my children fighting in the next room
and cast my gaze down at the table
at an empty glass of milk
with a trace of white along its rim
my throat wrapped in silver
a napkin in a napkin ring
waiting for late guests to arrive. . . .





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"The Sound of Trees" by Robert Frost

The Sound of Trees
by Robert Frost

I wonder about the trees.
Why do we wish to bear
Forever the noise of these
More than another noise
So close to our dwelling place?
We suffer them by the day
Till we lose all measure of pace,
And fixity in our joys,
And acquire a listening air.
They are that that talks of going
But never gets away;
And that talks no less for knowing,
As it grows wiser and older,
That now it means to stay.
My feet tug at the floor
And my head sways to my shoulder
Sometimes when I watch trees sway,
From the window or the door.
I shall set forth for somewhere,
I shall make the reckless choice
Some day when they are in voice
And tossing so as to scare
The white clouds over them on.
I shall have less to say,
But I shall be gone.




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"Revolution" by Anne Waldman

Revolution
by Anne Waldman

Spooky summer on the horizon I’m gazing at
from my window into the streets
That’s where it’s going to be where everyone is
walking around, looking around out in the open
suspecting each other’s heart to open fire
all over the streets
                              like streets you read about every day
who are the network we travel through on the way to the center
which is energy filling life
and bursting with joy all over the screen
                                                             I can’t sit still any longer!

I want to go where I’m not feeling so bad
Get off this little island before the bridges break
(my heart is a sore thing too)
No I want to sit in the middle watching movies
then go to bed in my head
Someone is banging on it with a heavy stick like the enemy
who is he going to be turns into a face you can’t recognize
then vanishes behind a window behind a gun
Like the lonely hero stalking the main street
cries out Where are you? I just want to know
all the angles of death possible under the American sky!

I can hardly see for all the buildings polluting the sky
until it changes into a barrage of bottles
then clears up for a second while you breathe
and you realize you’e still as alive as ever and want to be
but would like to be somewhere else perhaps Africa
Start all over again as the race gets darker and darker
and the world goes on the way I always thought it would
For the winner is someone we recognize out of our collective past
which is turning over again in the grave

                                    It is so important when one dies you replace her
                                    and never waste a minute





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"Sun and Moon" by Jane Kenyon

Sun and Moon
by Jane Kenyon

For Donald Clark
Drugged and drowsy but not asleep
I heard my blind roommate's daughter   
helping her with her meal:
“What's that? Squash?”
“No. It's spinach.”

Back from a brain-scan, she dozed   
to the sound of the Soaps: adultery,   
amnesia, shady business deals,   
and long, white hospital halls....   
No separation between life and art.

I heard two nurses whispering:
Mr. Malcomson had died.
An hour later one of them came to say   
that a private room was free.

A chill spring breeze
perturbed the plastic drape.   
I lay back on the new bed,   
and had a vision of souls
stacked up like pelts
under my soul, which was ill—
so heavy with grief
it kept the others from rising.

No varicolored tubes
serpentined beneath the covers;   
I had the vital signs of a healthy,   
early-middle-aged woman.
There was nothing to cut or dress,   
remove or replace.

A week of stupor. Sun and moon
rose and set over the small enclosed   
court, the trees....
The doctor’s face appeared
and disappeared
over the foot of the bed. By slow degrees   
the outlandish sadness waned.

Restored to my living room
I looked at the tables, chairs, and pictures   
with something like delight,   
only pale, faint—as from a great height.
I let the phone ring; the mail   
accrued unopened
on the table in the hall.





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"A Dream" by Edgar Allan Poe

A Dream
by Edgar Allan Poe

In visions of the dark night 
I have dreamed of joy departed— 
But a waking dream of life and light 
Hath left me broken-hearted. 

Ah! what is not a dream by day 
To him whose eyes are cast 
On things around him with a ray 
Turned back upon the past? 

That holy dream—that holy dream, 
While all the world were chiding, 
Hath cheered me as a lovely beam 
A lonely spirit guiding. 

What though that light, thro' storm and night, 
So trembled from afar— 
What could there be more purely bright 
In Truth's day-star? 





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"Remember The Mountain Bed" by Woody Guthrie

Remember The Mountain Bed
by Woody Guthrie (performed by Billy Bragg and Wilco. Listen here.)

Do you still sing of the mountain bed we made of limbs and leaves? 
Do you still sigh there near the sky where the holly berry bleeds? 
You laughed as I covered you over with leaves 
Face, breast, hips, and thighs 
You smiled when I said the leaves were just the color of your eyes 

Rosin smells and turpentine smells from eucalyptus and pine 
Bitter tastes of twigs we chewed where tangled wood vines twine 
Trees held us in on all four sides so thick we could not see 
I could not see any wrong in you, and you saw none in me 

Your arm was brown against the ground, your cheeks part of the sky 
Your fingers played with grassy moss, as limber you did lie 
Your stomach moved beneath your shirt and your knees were in the air 
Your feet played games with mountain roots as you lay thinking there 

Below us the trees grew clumps of trees, raised families of trees, and they 
As proud as we tossed their heads in the wind and flung good seeds away 
The sun was hot and the sun was bright down in the valley below 
Where people starved and hungry for life so empty come and go 

There in the shade and hid from the sun we freed our minds and learned 
Our greatest reason for being here, our bodies moved and burned 
There on our mountain bed of leaves we learned life's reason why 
The people laugh and love and dream, they fight, they hate to die 

The smell of your hair I know is still there, if most of our leaves are blown 
Our words still ring in the brush and the trees where singing seeds are sown 
Your shape and form is dim but plain, there on our mountain bed 
I see my life was brightest where you laughed and laid your head... 

I learned the reason why man must work and how to dream big dreams 
To conquer time and space and fight the rivers and the seas 
I stand here filled with my emptiness now and look at city and land 
And I know why farms and cities are built by hot, warm, nervous hands 

I crossed many states just to stand here now, my face all hot with tears 
I crossed city, and valley, desert, and stream, to bring my body here 
My history and future blaze bright in me and all my joy and pain 
Go through my head on our mountain bed where I smell your hair again. 

All this day long I linger here and on in through the night 
My greeds, desires, my cravings, hopes, my dreams inside me fight: 
My loneliness healed, my emptiness filled, I walk above all pain 
Back to the breast of my woman and child to scatter my seeds again

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"The Alien" by Greg Delanty

The Alien
by Greg Delanty

I’m back again scrutinizing the Milky Way           
    of your ultrasound, scanning the dark                                                                 
        matter, the nothingness, that now the heads say           
   is chockablock with quarks and squarks,
gravitons and gravatini, photons and photinos. Our sprout,   

who art there inside the spacecraft                
    of your Ma, the time capsule of this printout,                
        hurling and whirling towards us, it’s all daft           
   on this earth. Our alien who art in the heavens,
our Martian, our little green man, we’re anxious     

to make contact, to ask divers questions           
     about the heavendom you hail from, to discuss                     
         the whole shebang of the beginning and end,           
    the pre-big bang untime before you forget the why
and lie of thy first place. And, our friend, 

to say Welcome, that we mean no harm, we’d die              
    for you even, that we pray you’re not here                     
       to subdue us, that we’d put away           
   our ray guns, missiles, attitude and share
our world with you, little big head, if only you stay.

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"Apricot Lament" by Tacey M. Atsitty

Apricot Lament
by Tacey M. Atsitty

Just when he thought to loom the backyard for bud &
Just when he came to admire, or thought to dote over
Already he rues stick-thin arms, whose petals brave the late
Whose middles freeze; we’ve gone without
All ramose till now, empty skirts anxious to round back for
It’s the fourth year lips have gone without any such
Already hips full of leaves and none
Else, years by last, the lone — it splat behind
My back, it came to ache as the rake clawed at
We’ve gone into partial burn, without even
No matter for bloom, the seasons no longer allow
The trouble with doting over blossoms is
In a swollen tub of ruth, wanting nothing but his





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"Will" by Trevino L. Brings Plenty

Will
by Trevino L. Brings Plenty

Small red tin box sealed in shrink-wrap, cut open
with pocketknife, pried apart, its goods aerate the
office. I pluck white sliced chalky cylinders; let them
simmer in my mouth. I exhale peppermint scent
through my nose. Cut open the official letter. A map
in letters on a white page. My teeth grind mints.
Photocopies slightly off alignment, I blur lines.
Equations disperse family through land documents,
position each generation. I am only fourth in line.
Some plots are gumbo after winter thaw. Sections
stitched together with extended relatives. This ritual,
personal death papers drafted. I am partial to this
grassland; the place of deer marks and porcupine
quills, ledger extrapolates history. I refold estate
document, place it back into its envelope.

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"What Kind of Times Are These" by Adrienne Rich

What Kind of Times Are These
by Adrienne Rich

There's a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill
and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows
near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted
who disappeared into those shadows.

I've walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don't be fooled
this isn't a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here,
our country moving closer to its own truth and dread,
its own ways of making people disappear.

I won't tell you where the place is, the dark mesh of the woods
meeting the unmarked strip of light—
ghost-ridden crossroads, leafmold paradise:
I know already who wants to buy it, sell it, make it disappear.

And I won't tell you where it is, so why do I tell you
anything? Because you still listen, because in times like these
to have you listen at all, it's necessary
to talk about trees.





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"Constantly Risking Absurdity (#15)" by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

[Font has changed to maintain form of poem.]

Constantly Risking Absurdity (#15)
by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Constantly risking absurdity
                                             and death
            whenever he performs
                                        above the heads
                                                            of his audience
   the poet like an acrobat
                                 climbs on rime
                                          to a high wire of his own making
and balancing on eyebeams
                                     above a sea of faces
             paces his way
                               to the other side of day
    performing entrechats
                               and sleight-of-foot tricks
and other high theatrics
                               and all without mistaking
                     any thing
                               for what it may not be

       For he's the super realist
                                     who must perforce perceive
                   taut truth
                                 before the taking of each stance or step
in his supposed advance
                                  toward that still higher perch
where Beauty stands and waits
                                     with gravity
                                                to start her death-defying leap

      And he
             a little charleychaplin man
                                           who may or may not catch
               her fair eternal form
                                     spreadeagled in the empty air
                  of existence





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"The Hundred Languages" by Loris Malaguzzi

The Hundred Languages
by Loris Malaguzzi (translated by Lella Gandini)

No way. The hundred is there.

The child
is made of one hundred.
The child has
a hundred languages
a hundred hands
a hundred thoughts
a hundred ways of thinking
of playing, of speaking.

A hundred always a hundred
ways of listening
of marveling, of loving
a hundred joys
for singing and understanding
a hundred worlds
to discover
a hundred worlds
to invent
a hundred worlds
to dream.

The child has
a hundred languages
(and a hundred hundred hundred more)
but they steal ninety-nine.
The school and the culture
separate the head from the body.
They tell the child:
to think without hands
to do without head
to listen and not to speak
to understand without joy
to love and to marvel
only at Easter and at Christmas.

They tell the child:
to discover the world already there
and of the hundred
they steal ninety-nine.

They tell the child:
that work and play
reality and fantasy
science and imagination
sky and earth
reason and dream
are things
that do not belong together.

And thus they tell the child
that the hundred is not there.
The child says:
No way. The hundred is there.





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"Rain" by Edward Thomas

Rain
by Edward Thomas

Rain, midnight rain, nothing but the wild rain 
On this bleak hut, and solitude, and me 
Remembering again that I shall die 
And neither hear the rain nor give it thanks 
For washing me cleaner than I have been 
Since I was born into solitude. 
Blessed are the dead that the rain rains upon: 
But here I pray that none whom once I loved 
Is dying tonight or lying still awake 
Solitary, listening to the rain, 
Either in pain or thus in sympathy 
Helpless among the living and the dead, 
Like a cold water among broken reeds, 
Myriads of broken reeds all still and stiff, 
Like me who have no love which this wild rain 
Has not dissolved except the love of death, 
If love it be towards what is perfect and 
Cannot, the tempest tells me, disappoint. 





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"There’s a certain Slant of light" by Emily Dickinson

There’s a certain Slant of light (258)
by Emily Dickinson

 There’s a certain Slant of light,
Winter Afternoons – 
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes – 

Heavenly Hurt, it gives us – 
We can find no scar,
But internal difference,
Where the Meanings, are – 

None may teach it – Any – 
‘Tis the Seal Despair – 
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the Air – 

When it comes, the Landscape listens – 
Shadows – hold their breath – 
When it goes, ‘tis like the Distance
On the look of Death – 




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"First Thought" by Lorna Dee Cervantes

Thank you for your patience while The Poet's Watch was on vacation. Now, back to poetry.


First Thought
by Lorna Dee Cervantes

best thought, you had taught
me — a river runs through it,
the foot of the soul standing
stubbornly in the freeze, all
the shards of ice crumpling up
the banks, what survives
in the ignorance. Play it away.
Be ceremony. Be a lit candle
to what blows you. Outside,
the sun gives a favorite present,
mountain nests in ironic meadows,
otter takes off her shoes, the small
hands of her feet reaching, reaching; still,
far away people are dying. Crisp
one dollar bills fold another life.
You taught me to care in the moment,
carve day into light, or something,
moving in the west that doesn't destroy
us. Look again, in the coming summer,
the cruelest month alive still eats up
the hours. Regret is an uneven hand,
a rough palm at the cheek — tender
and calloused. I drink another glass
of water, turn on the tap
for what grows, for you,
for what lasts, for the last
and the first found thought of you.





Read, listen, share, create, and be on watch.