"Haiku" by Etheridge Knight

Haiku
by Etheridge Knight

1 
Eastern guard tower 
glints in sunset; convicts rest 
like lizards on rocks. 

2 
The piano man 
is stingy, at 3 A.M. 
his songs drop like plum. 

3 
Morning sun slants cell. 
Drunks stagger like cripple flies 
On jailhouse floor. 

4 
To write a blues song 
is to regiment riots 
and pluck gems from graves. 

5 
A bare pecan tree 
slips a pencil shadow down 
a moonlit snow slope. 

6 
The falling snow flakes 
Cannot blunt the hard aches nor 
Match the steel stillness. 

7 
Under moon shadows 
A tall boy flashes knife and 
Slices star bright ice. 

8 
In the August grass 
Struck by the last rays of sun 
The cracked teacup screams. 

9 
Making jazz swing in 
Seventeen syllables AIN’T 
No square poet’s job. 





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"The Burning Tree" bu Ben Ladouceur

The Burning Tree
by Ben Ladouceur

Last time I had stamina and calluses and a bag of chalk.
It hung from my lumbar like a bunny tail.
Last time I was lighter and the ether better-emptied.
Now blood is so close to my surface I slip off the walls.

Tonight is the night of a massacre I do not look at.
Although I have been to that city of bricks and black blooms.
Therein I kissed a grave a million others kissed.
A woman with a cigarette asked me for fire there and I provided it.
I had been asked for light before but never fire.

Tonight I climb three hundred stairs toward the light of my device.
Maybe we’ll be wartime people leading wartime lives.
Skirmishes have sprung from the heads of lesser gods.

This is the light no one reads by we just stare into it.
We wait for the glyphs that mean it is safe.





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"September, 1918" by Amy Lowell

September, 1918
by Amy Lowell

This afternoon was the colour of water falling through sunlight;
The trees glittered with the tumbling of leaves;
The sidewalks shone like alleys of dropped maple leaves,
And the houses ran along them laughing out of square, open windows.
Under a tree in the park,
Two little boys, lying flat on their faces,
Were carefully gathering red berries
To put in a pasteboard box.
Some day there will be no war,
Then I shall take out this afternoon
And turn it in my fingers,
And remark the sweet taste of it upon my palate,
And note the crisp variety of its flights of leaves.
To-day I can only gather it
And put it into my lunch-box,
For I have time for nothing
But the endeavour to balance myself
Upon a broken world.





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"Advice from Rock Creek Park" by Stephanie Burt

Advice from Rock Creek Park
by Stephanie Burt

What will survive us
has already begun

Oak galls
Two termites’ curious
self-perpetuating bodies

Letting the light through the gaps

They lay out their allegiances
under the roots
of an overturned tree

Almost always better
to build than to wreck

You can build in a wreck

Under the roots
of an overturned tree

Consider the martin that hefts
herself over traffic cones

Consider her shadow
misaligned
over parking-lot cement
Saran Wrap scrap in her beak

Nothing lasts
forever not even
the future we want

The President has never
owned the rain





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"… Bee" by Eric Gansworth

… Bee
by Eric Gansworth

I stood in a longhouse
with a woman who may or may not
be Mohawk. Some shift their opinions
about her like meteorologists, as if
her blood were a storm system tracked
in its comings and goings. But the father
of her two sons was, without question, Seneca.
We knew that, in Haudenosaunee country, a father
is to some degree irrelevant, that her own
shifting identity would impact her sons’ lives
like a gene vulnerable to betrayal, causing
certain, terminal conditions. She waited
on an elder she called Steam (warning I was not
to call the elder woman by that name). Steam
(not Steam) would observe the boys, understand
their natures, give them their Creator names defining
their lives during the next ceremony. I confessed
my namelessness, confessed my longhouse- and fluency-
deficient community, and confessed that my clan
mother, three hours away, did not know me well
enough to give me a name, confessed my community followed
a more casual ceremony. You find your name after a social misstep,
a dubious facial feature, a birth defect. Names offer
the name-givers comfort, that your challenge is harder
than theirs, no matter the truth.

Our names are a convoluted toughening of our skins. My name
is not like Steam (no one is forbidden to use it). No one
calls me Batman because of my status, my utility
belt, my impressive batpole, my agility, my muscles,
my profile in spandex, my virtues, but because I wore
the cape to an older age than I should have, and could
continue to wear it now, as that shit is not going away
any time soon. Even kids who only know Christian Bale
or Michael Keaton, lurking in latex and leather hood,
still think Batman is my name.

And this is why I have no memory for when or how you became
the Bumblebee, what it means, beyond the literal.
You soar in gardens, spend days ensuring growth,
and if metaphors are at work here, this one seems true
enough to keep you in amber wings, fuzzy yellow rings,
black lacquer torso, and sensitive antennae.

What metaphor suits the night I left on the Amtrak
for Chicago, past 1:00 a.m., while you stood
on the platform, watching those cars pull out,
the night I wanted to leap from the train, stay?

I cannot invent new names for the ways we slow,
struggle, attempt to maintain the illusion of futures
without measure, defy actuary numbers and because I have
gone closer to the light than you have, the story is
easier to craft and finesse than it should be.

Pollination trails are smaller than those I’m forced
to fly in, and lying in Little Rock, Santa Fe, Manhattan,
Minneapolis, Seattle, hotel rooms, the ellipse of your name
trail winds me home, waiting, dusted in pollen and history.





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"Song of Smoke" by Kevin Young

Song of Smoke
by Kevin Young

To watch you walk
cross the room in your black

corduroys is to see
civilization start—

the wish-
whish-whisk

of your strut is flint
striking rock—the spark

of a length of cord
rubbed till

smoke starts—you stir
me like coal

and for days smoulder.
I am no more

a Boy Scout and, besides,
could never

put you out—you
keep me on

all day like an iron, out
of habit—

you threaten, brick-
house, to burn

all this down. You leave me
only a chimney.

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"Heliocentric" by Keith S. Wilson

Heliocentric
by Keith S. Wilson


If I beg and pray you to set me free, then bind me more tightly still.
— Homer

I’m striving to be a better astronaut,
but consider where I’m coming from,

the exosphere,
a desk where the bluest air

thins to a lip. Impossible
to know the difference

from where I sit and space.
I promise I still dream

of coming back to you, settling
on your yellow for the kitchen.

We won’t fight. Let it not manifest.

Not over the crumpled bodies
of laundry. Let us not row
over the nail polish, its color,

the spilled sun. Inspiration
is the deadliest radiation.
It never completely leaves the bones.

You know.
From here,

there are no obstructions
but the radiant nothingness. An aurora

borealis opens

like a fish. This. To the pyramids, yes,
to a great wall. And there you are,

moving from curtain to curtain. O, to fantasize
of having chosen
some design with you.

But the moons over Jupiter. But
asteroids like gods
deadened by the weight of waiting. I remember

you said pastel

for the cabinet where the spice
rack lives. That I ought’ve picked you

up flowers when I had a chance. Daisy, iris, sun.
Red roses. Ultraviolet,
the color of love
(what else but this startles the air open

like an egg?).
I’m really trying

to be better, to commit
to memory the old songs about the ground,
to better sense your latitudes,

see the corona of your face.
Take your light

as it arrives. Earth is heavenly
too. But know that time is precious
here. How wine waits years and years to peak.

What is there to do: I’ve made love
to satellites in your name.

I’m saying I can’t say
when I’ll return. Remember me, for here are

dragons and the noble songs of sirens.
Stars that sway
elysian. Ships that will not moor, lovers

who are filled with blood and nothing
more. Who could love you
like this? Who else will sew you in the stars?

Who better knows your gravity and goes
otherwise, to catastrophe?

I’ve schemed and promised
to bring you back a ring

from Saturn. But a week passes, or doesn’t

manage. Everything steers impossible
against the boundless curb of light.

Believe I tried
for you. Against space. Time

takes almost everything
away. To you. For you.
A toast to the incredible. I almost wish

I’d never seen the sky
when always there was you. Sincerely,






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"September Tomatoes" by Karina Borowicz

September Tomatoes
by Karina Borowicz

The whiskey stink of rot has settled
in the garden, and a burst of fruit flies rises 
when I touch the dying tomato plants. 

Still, the claws of tiny yellow blossoms
flail in the air as I pull the vines up by the roots 
and toss them in the compost. 

It feels cruel. Something in me isn’t ready
to let go of summer so easily. To destroy
what I’ve carefully cultivated all these months. 
Those pale flowers might still have time to fruit. 

My great-grandmother sang with the girls of her village 
as they pulled the flax. Songs so old
and so tied to the season that the very sound
seemed to turn the weather.





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"For the Chipmunk in My Yard" by Robert Gibb

For the Chipmunk in My Yard
by Robert Gibb

I think he knows I’m alive, having come down 
The three steps of the back porch 
And given me a good once over. All afternoon 
He’s been moving back and forth,
Gathering odd bits of walnut shells and twigs, 
While all about him the great fields tumble 
To the blades of the thresher. He’s lucky 
To be where he is, wild with all that happens. 
He’s lucky he’s not one of the shadows 
Living in the blond heart of the wheat.
This autumn when trees bolt, dark with the fires 
Of starlight, he’ll curl among their roots, 
Wanting nothing but the slow burn of matter 
On which he fastens like a small, brown flame.





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"My Lemonade Stand" by Rebecca Kai Dotlich

My Lemonade Stand
by Rebecca Kai Dotlich

Cookies for sale!
And cake! One dime!
That's what it says
on my cardboard sign.
I pile cookies on a plate.
I eat just one
and then, I wait . . . 
I taste the cake
(one tiny slice)
I squeeze the lemons
and stir the ice;
I count and stack
the paper cups . . . 
fresh lemonade
is coming up!
I count the bruises
on my knee . . .
won't somebody buy something,
please?





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"My Husband, Lost in the Wild" by Jayme Ringleb

My Husband, Lost in the Wild
by Jayme Ringleb

He said he buried
his right eye in South Georgia — 

on a dare, he said,
when he was little, beneath

one green ash of two
that mark the end of a road

whose name he’s
by now forgotten: Lonesome

something, maybe Dog
or Cricket. He said

he couldn’t love me, not
really, not without

his old right eye,
and anyway he’d left

his tongue as a tip
slid under a mug

at a small North Florida diner,
would collect it too

along the way, seeing
as he’d asked the server

to save it, and she had kindly
agreed. Three of his ribs

were further gone — one in Wisconsin,
where he’d planted it like a tree

though he believed even then
nothing would bloom on it.

Another he pawned in Manitoba
for a silver bracelet,

which he wore only
when he was very sad,

and his last rib
he’d been keeping

in a safe deposit box
in a credit union

on the alien Oregon coast
where he’d visit sometimes,

stopping often at vantages
to take in expanses of pines

covered in moss
and something else, like brine,

and the pines were tall,
tall and uncommunicating,

as if they had been designed
only to listen. His ears

he’d left with me,
I told them

everything — words
I had invented for the color

of new moons, city names
I had given to four slender

ant colonies that had since
emerged on the lawn.

I told the ears Come back to me,
but they were unable to

relay these types of things,
and anyway there was nothing

else to do. I took all
my littlest veins

and pitched them
as a woven tightrope

out of the kitchen window
and hooked, with

a makeshift grapple, the cheek
of the visible moon, which

carried me away, and I was sorry
to have wounded it like that

and I was sorry to be carried
by what I had wounded.





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"Passive Voice" by Laura Da'

Passive Voice
by Laura Da'

I use a trick to teach students
how to avoid passive voice.

Circle the verbs.
Imagine inserting “by zombies”
after each one.

Have the words been claimed
by the flesh-hungry undead?
If so, passive voice.

I wonder if these
sixth graders will recollect,
on summer vacation,
as they stretch their legs
on the way home
from Yellowstone or Yosemite
and the byway’s historical marker
beckons them to the
site of an Indian village—

Where trouble was brewing.
Where, after further hostilities, the army was directed to enter. 
Where the village was razed after the skirmish occurred.
Where most were women and children.

Riveted bramble of passive verbs
etched in wood—
stripped hands
breaking up from the dry ground
to pinch the meat
of their young red tongues.





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"Trees" by Joyce Kilmer

Trees
by Joyce Kilmer

I think that I shall never see 
A poem lovely as a tree. 

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest 
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast; 

A tree that looks at God all day, 
And lifts her leafy arms to pray; 

A tree that may in Summer wear 
A nest of robins in her hair; 

Upon whose bosom snow has lain; 
Who intimately lives with rain. 

Poems are made by fools like me, 
But only God can make a tree.





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"They Sit Together on the Porch" by Wendell Berry

They Sit Together on the Porch
by Wendell Berry

They sit together on the porch, the dark 
Almost fallen, the house behind them dark. 
Their supper done with, they have washed and dried 
The dishes–only two plates now, two glasses, 
Two knives, two forks, two spoons–small work for two. 
She sits with her hands folded in her lap, 
At rest. He smokes his pipe. They do not speak, 
And when they speak at last it is to say 
What each one knows the other knows. They have 
One mind between them, now, that finally 
For all its knowing will not exactly know 
Which one goes first through the dark doorway, bidding 
Goodnight, and which sits on a while alone.





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[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in] by e.e. cummings

[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]
by e. e. cummings

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
                                                      i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)





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"be careful" by Ed Roberson

be careful
by Ed Roberson

i must be careful about such things as these.
the thin-grained oak.    the quiet grizzlies scared
into the hills by the constant tracks squeezing
in behind them closer in the snow.    the snared
rigidity of the winter lake.    deer after deer
crossing on the spines of fish who look up and stare
with their eyes pressed to the ice.   in a sleep.  hearing
the thin taps leading away to collapse like the bear
in the high quiet.   i must be careful not to shake
anything in too wild an elation.    not to jar
the fragile mountains against the paper far-
ness.   nor avalanche the fog or the eagle from the air.
of the gentle wilderness i must set the precarious
words.   like rocks.   without one snowcapped mistake.






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"Workshop" by Billy Collins

Workshop
by Billy Collins

I might as well begin by saying how much I like the title.
It gets me right away because I’m in a workshop now
so immediately the poem has my attention,
like the Ancient Mariner grabbing me by the sleeve.

And I like the first couple of stanzas,
the way they establish this mode of self-pointing
that runs through the whole poem
and tells us that words are food thrown down
on the ground for other words to eat.
I can almost taste the tail of the snake
in its own mouth,
if you know what I mean.

But what I’m not sure about is the voice,
which sounds in places very casual, very blue jeans,
but other times seems standoffish,
professorial in the worst sense of the word
like the poem is blowing pipe smoke in my face.
But maybe that’s just what it wants to do.

What I did find engaging were the middle stanzas,
especially the fourth one.
I like the image of clouds flying like lozenges
which gives me a very clear picture.
And I really like how this drawbridge operator
just appears out of the blue
with his feet up on the iron railing
and his fishing pole jigging—I like jigging—
a hook in the slow industrial canal below.
I love slow industrial canal below. All those l’s.

Maybe it’s just me,
but the next stanza is where I start to have a problem.
I mean how can the evening bump into the stars?
And what’s an obbligato of snow?
Also, I roam the decaffeinated streets.
At that point I’m lost. I need help.

The other thing that throws me off,
and maybe this is just me,
is the way the scene keeps shifting around.
First, we’re in this big aerodrome
and the speaker is inspecting a row of dirigibles,
which makes me think this could be a dream.
Then he takes us into his garden,
the part with the dahlias and the coiling hose,
though that’s nice, the coiling hose,
but then I’m not sure where we’re supposed to be.
The rain and the mint green light,
that makes it feel outdoors, but what about this wallpaper?
Or is it a kind of indoor cemetery?
There’s something about death going on here.

In fact, I start to wonder if what we have here
is really two poems, or three, or four,
or possibly none.

But then there’s that last stanza, my favorite.
This is where the poem wins me back,
especially the lines spoken in the voice of the mouse.
I mean we’ve all seen these images in cartoons before,
but I still love the details he uses
when he’s describing where he lives.
The perfect little arch of an entrance in the baseboard,
the bed made out of a curled-back sardine can,
the spool of thread for a table.
I start thinking about how hard the mouse had to work
night after night collecting all these things
while the people in the house were fast asleep,
and that gives me a very strong feeling,
a very powerful sense of something.
But I don’t know if anyone else was feeling that.
Maybe that was just me.
Maybe that’s just the way I read it.






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"Morningside Heights, July" by William Matthews

Morningside Heights, July
by William Matthews

Haze. Three student violists boarding
a bus. A clatter of jackhammers.
Granular light. A film of sweat for primer
and the heat for a coat of paint.
A man and a woman on a bench:
she tells him he must be psychic,
for how else could he sense, even before she knew,
that she’d need to call it off? A bicyclist
fumes by with a coach’s whistle clamped
hard between his teeth, shrilling like a teakettle
on the boil. I never meant, she says.
But I thought, he replies. Two cabs almost
collide; someone yells fuck in Farsi.
I’m sorry, she says. The comforts
of loneliness fall in like a bad platoon.
The sky blurs—there’s a storm coming
up or down. A lank cat slinks liquidly
around a corner. How familiar
it feels to feel strange, hollower
than a bassoon. A rill of chill air
in the leaves. A car alarm. Hail.





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"Flores Woman" by Tracy K. Smith

Flores Woman
by Tracy K. Smith

A species of tiny human has been discovered, which lived on the remote Indonesian island of Flores just 18,000 years ago. . . . Researchers have so far unearthed remains from eight individuals who were just one metre tall, with grapefruit-sized skulls. These astonishing little people . . . made tools, hunted tiny elephants and lived at the same time as modern humans who were colonizing the area.

—Nature, October 2004

Light: lifted, I stretch my brief body.
Color: blaze of day behind blank eyes.

Sound: birds stab greedy beaks
Into trunk and seed, spill husk

Onto the heap where my dreaming
And my loving live.

Every day I wake to this.

Tracks follow the heavy beasts
Back to where they huddle, herd.

Hunt: a dance against hunger.
Music: feast and fear.

This island becomes us.

Trees cap our sky. It rustles with delight
In a voice green as lust. Reptiles

Drag night from their tails,
Live by the dark. A rage of waves

Protects the horizon, which we would devour.
One day I want to dive in and drift,

Legs and arms wracked with danger.
Like a dark star. I want to last.







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