"The Embankment" by T. E. Hulme

The Embankment
by T. E. Hulme

(The fantasia of a fallen gentleman on a cold, bitter night.)

Once, in finesse of fiddles found I ecstasy, 
In the flash of gold heels on the hard pavement. 
Now see I 
That warmth’s the very stuff of poesy. 
Oh, God, make small 
The old star-eaten blanket of the sky, 
That I may fold it round me and in comfort lie.






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"Winter Love" by Linda Gregg

Winter Love
by Linda Gregg

I would like to decorate this silence,   
but my house grows only cleaner
and more plain. The glass chimes I hung   
over the register ring a little
when the heat goes on.
I waited too long to drink my tea.   
It was not hot. It was only warm.







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"Snowshoe to Otter Creek" by Stacie Cassarino

Snowshoe to Otter Creek
by Stacie Cassarino

love lasts by not lasting
                       —Jack Gilbert


I’m mapping this new year’s vanishings:    
lover, yellow house, the knowledge of surfaces.
This is not a story of return.
There are times I wish I could erase
the mind’s lucidity, the difficulty of Sundays,
my fervor to be touched
by a woman two Februarys gone. What brings the body
back, grieved and cloven, tromping these woods
with nothing to confide in? New snow reassumes
the circleting trees, the bridge above the creek
where I stand like a stranger to my life.
There is no single moment of loss, there is
an amassing. The disbeliever sleeps at an angle
in the bed. The orchard is a graveyard.
Is this the real end? Someone shoveling her way out
with cold intention? Someone naming her missing? 






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"Bird-Understander" by Craig Arnold

Bird-Understander 
by Craig Arnold

Of many reasons I love you here is one

the way you write me from the gate at the airport
so I can tell you everything will be alright

so you can tell me there is a bird
trapped in the terminal      all the people
ignoring it       because they do not know
what to do with it       except to leave it alone
until it scares itself to death

it makes you terribly terribly sad

You wish you could take the bird outside
and set it free or       (failing that)
call a bird-understander
to come help the bird

All you can do is notice the bird
and feel for the bird       and write
to tell me how language feels
impossibly useless

but you are wrong

You are a bird-understander
better than I could ever be
who make so many noises
and call them song

These are your own words
your way of noticing
and saying plainly
of not turning away
from hurt

you have offered them
to me       I am only
giving them back

if only I could show you
how very useless
they are not






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"Ode to Gossips" by Safia Elhillo

Ode to Gossips

by Safia Elhillo

i was mothered by lonely women       some

of  them wives     some of them             with

plumes of  smoke for husbands    all    lonely

smelling of  onions & milk         all mothers

some of them to children some to old names

phantom girls acting out a life        only half

a life away      instead        copper kitchenware

bangles pushed up the arm    fingernails rusted

with henna          kneading raw meat with salt

with coriander                     sweating upper lip

in the steam       weak tea          hair unwound

against the nape         my deities      each one

sandal slapping against stone heel      sandal-

wood & oud                    bright chiffon spun

about each head     coffee in the dowry china

butter biscuits on a painted plate      crumbs

suspended in eggshell demitasse       & they

begin                  i heard       people are saying

i saw it with my own eyes       [      ]’s daughter

a scandal                  she was wearing [      ]

& not wearing [   ]            can you imagine

a shame                                             a shame

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"The Journey" by Mary Oliver

The Journey
by Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew 
what you had to do, and began, 
though the voices around you 
kept shouting 
their bad advice– 
though the whole house 
began to tremble 
and you felt the old tug 
at your ankles. 
"Mend my life!" 
each voice cried. 
But you didn't stop. 
You knew what you had to do, 
though the wind pried 
with its stiff fingers 
at the very foundations, 
though their melancholy 
was terrible. 
It was already late 
enough, and a wild night, 
and the road full of fallen 
branches and stones. 
But little by little, 
as you left their voices behind, 
the stars began to burn 
through the sheets of clouds, 
and there was a new voice 
which you slowly 
recognized as your own, 
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper 
into the world, 
determined to do 
the only thing you could do– 
determined to save 
the only life you could save.

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"In Memoriam: Martin Luther King, Jr." by June Jordan

In Memoriam: Martin Luther King, Jr.
by June Jordan

1
honey people murder mercy U.S.A.
the milkland turn to monsters teach
to kill to violate pull down destroy
the weakly freedom growing fruit
from being born

America

tomorrow yesterday rip rape
exacerbate despoil disfigure
crazy running threat the
deadly thrall
appall belief dispel
the wildlife burn the breast
the onward tongue
the outward hand
deform the normal rainy
riot sunshine shelter wreck
of darkness derogate
delimit blank
explode deprive
assassinate and batten up
like bullets fatten up
the raving greed
reactivate a springtime
terrorizing

death by men by more
than you or I can
STOP



2
They sleep who know a regulated place
or pulse or tide or changing sky
according to some universal
stage direction obvious
like shorewashed shells

we share an afternoon of mourning
in between no next predictable
except for wild reversal hearse rehearsal
bleach the blacklong lunging
ritual of fright insanity and more
deplorable abortion
more and
more






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"Sometimes" by Mary Oliver

Sometimes
by Mary Oliver

1.

Something came up
out of the dark.
It wasn’t anything I had ever seen before.
It wasn’t an animal
or a flower,
unless it was both.

Something came up out of the water,
a head the size of a cat
but muddy and without ears.
I don’t know what God is.
I don’t know what death is.

But I believe they have between them
some fervent and necessary arrangement.

2.

Sometime
melancholy leaves me breathless…

3.

Water from the heavens! Electricity from the source!
Both of them mad to create something!

The lighting brighter than any flower.
The thunder without a drowsy bone in its body.

4.

Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.

5.
Two or three times in my life I discovered love.
Each time it seemed to solve everything.
Each time it solved a great many things
but not everything.
Yet left me as grateful as if it had indeed, and
thoroughly, solved everything.

6.

God, rest in my heart
and fortify me,
take away my hunger for answers,
let the hours play upon my body

like the hands of my beloved.
Let the cathead appear again-
the smallest of your mysteries,
some wild cousin of my own blood probably-
some cousin of my own wild blood probably,
in the black dinner-bowl of the pond.

7.

Death waits for me, I know it, around
one corner or another.
This doesn’t amuse me.
Neither does it frighten me.

After the rain, I went back into the field of sunflowers.
It was cool, and I was anything but drowsy.
I walked slowly, and listened

to the crazy roots, in the drenched earth, laughing and growing.






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"The City of Sleep" by Rudyard Kipling

The City of Sleep
by Rudyard Kipling

Over the edge of the purple down,
   Where the single lamplight gleams,
Know ye the road to the Merciful Town
   That is hard by the Sea of Dreams – 
Where the poor may lay their wrongs away,
   And the sick may forget to weep?
But we – pity us! Oh, pity us!
   We wakeful; ah, pity us! –
We must go back with Policeman Day – 
   Back from the City of Sleep!

Weary they turn from the scroll and crown,
   Fetter and prayer and plough – 
They that go up to the Merciful Town,
   For her gates are closing now.
It is their right in the Baths of Night
   Body and soul to steep,
But we – pity us! ah, pity us!
   We wakeful; oh, pity us! –
We must go back with Policeman Day –
   Back from the City of Sleep!

Over the edge of the purple down,
   Ere the tender dreams begin,
Look – we may look – at the Merciful Town,
   But we may not enter in!
Outcasts all, from her guarded wall
   Back to our watch we creep:
We – pity us! ah, pity us!
   We wakeful; ah, pity us! –
We that go back with Policeman Day –
   Back from the City of Sleep!






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"Everything" by Jane Wong

Everything
by Jane Wong

I am the type to go to bed with my feet dirty


A man calling from a balcony is not to be trusted


In 1988, the nation sings a song I can’t understand but I sing it 
because everyone looks at me like a thief and no one likes a thief


Algae gather in plastic cups along the Jersey Shore


The dull prongs of a fork still count as a weapon


I gather plastic cups along the shore and shake them out to use for tea, juice, a home for my toothbrush


The pledge of allegiance is a building ledge, an alleged crime, a leg crossed over another leg, a plea gone askew, a glance shared in a room with someone else who looks like you


Hundreds of toxic wild boars are roaming across northern Japan and it would be a mistake to identify with them


In 1960, my grandmother holds no knife in no tall wheat


When washing her feet, my grandmother tells me she spent decades without shoes, wonders if the mud misses her


When we look at each other, we also look away, knowingly


I am a good daughter and I can repeat this indefinitely without 
taking a breath


Often, I call out to myself just to hear an echo, to hear something moving in the walls like a healthy family of rats


My mother has been told, repeatedly: “You cannot walk here”


Here is a white stone, a white fence, a white seagull, a white jug of milk, a white candle, a white duvet, a white patio, a white bar of soap to wash your mouth out


Sometimes I dream in Cantonese and I have no idea what is being said


You grow to love what you create, pouring out of your mouth


In 1988, my father sees his reflection in the rearview mirror and identifies with the blood moon lighting his way to Atlantic City


From a balcony, a man yells at me: “You need some white dick” and I turn into a boar


我 在 广 东 做 梦


My father disappears for weeks and my mother keeps weeding the garden, pulling cigarettes from the splintering tomatoes I will devour


I study asymptotes for months and dream in curves — almost but never touching


My mother writes in her English diary for night school: “I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I” and her ESL teacher only gives her a check, so I give her a check plus


To be a good daughter means to carry everything with you at all times, the luggage of the past lifted to the mouth


When we look at each other, my mother laughs like an overripe tomato on a windowsill


In 1989, I spent months assembling a puzzle map of the United States of America and the teacher said, “Good job, Jane” and then louder and slower like a drowning sloth: “Gooooood jooooob, Jane” and I did not touch a single piece


Bloody drunk and a blood moon, my father fights with another gambler and jabs at his arm with a dull fork and they both laugh celestially


你 是 一 只 美 丽 的 野 猪


During elementary school, I did not say a single word, not even when called on, and thus the teachers and administrators 
decided I could not speak English because they looked at me


Mao Zedong explains math: “In geometry, I just drew a picture of an egg — that was enough geometry for me”


My grandfather was jailed by the Red Army sometime between 1966 and 1976 and my mother says: “I saw him cry when I tried to visit. He wanted to eat the bao I made for him”


Algae gather, gleaming like jewels, on the head of my 5th grade betta fish


Counterrevolutionaries during the Cultural Revolution are likened to “finding a bone inside an egg”


I was born, healthy, in the year of the rat


The man on the balcony invests in a foldable set of two chairs and one table in eggshell white — mold resistant, perfect for outdoor use


你 不 敢 看 我


I was ten when I willed a rock to fall off a ledge, just by staring at it long enough






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"Effort at Speech Between Two People" by Muriel Rukeyser

Effort at Speech Between Two People
by Muriel Rukeyser


:  Speak to me.          Take my hand.            What are you now?
   I will tell you all.          I will conceal nothing.
   When I was three, a little child read a story about a rabbit
   who died, in the story, and I crawled under a chair    :
   a pink rabbit    :    it was my birthday, and a candle
   burnt a sore spot on my finger, and I was told to be happy.

:  Oh, grow to know me.        I am not happy.        I will be open:
   Now I am thinking of white sails against a sky like music,
   like glad horns blowing, and birds tilting, and an arm about me.
   There was one I loved, who wanted to live, sailing.

:  Speak to me.        Take my hand.        What are you now?
   When I was nine, I was fruitily sentimental,
   fluid    :    and my widowed aunt played Chopin,
   and I bent my head on the painted woodwork, and wept.
   I want now to be close to you.        I would
   link the minutes of my days close, somehow, to your days.

:  I am not happy.          I will be open.
   I have liked lamps in evening corners, and quiet poems.
   There has been fear in my life.          Sometimes I speculate
   On what a tragedy his life was, really.

:  Take my hand.          Fist my mind in your hand.          What are you now?
   When I was fourteen, I had dreams of suicide,
   and I stood at a steep window, at sunset, hoping toward death   :
   if the light had not melted clouds and plains to beauty,
   if light had not transformed that day, I would have leapt.
   I am unhappy.          I am lonely.          Speak to me.

:  I will be open.          I think he never loved me:
   He loved the bright beaches, the little lips of foam
   that ride small waves, he loved the veer of gulls:
   he said with a gay mouth: I love you.          Grow to know me.

:  What are you now?          If we could touch one another,
   if these our separate entities could come to grips,
   clenched like a Chinese puzzle . . . yesterday
   I stood in a crowded street that was live with people,
   and no one spoke a word, and the morning shone.
   Everyone silent, moving. . . . Take my hand.          Speak to me.






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"Wash of Cold River" by H. D.

Wash of Cold River
By H. D.

Wash of cold river
in a glacial land,
Ionian water,
chill, snow-ribbed sand,
drift of rare flowers,
clear, with delicate shell-
like leaf enclosing
frozen lily-leaf,
camellia texture,
colder than a rose;

wind-flower
that keeps the breath
of the north-wind—
these and none other;

intimate thoughts and kind
reach out to share
the treasure of my mind,
intimate hands and dear
drawn garden-ward and sea-ward
all the sheer rapture
that I would take
to mould a clear
and frigid statue;

rare, of pure texture,
beautiful space and line,
marble to grace
your inaccessible shrine.

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"Spring in Belfast" by Derek Mahon

Spring in Belfast
by Derek Mahon

Walking among my own this windy morning
In a tide of sunlight between shower and shower,
I resume my old conspiracy with the wet
Stone and the unwieldy images of the squinting heart.
Once more, as before, I remember not to forget.

There is a perverse pride in being on the side
Of the fallen angels and refusing to get up.
We could all be saved by keeping an eye on the hill
At the top of every street, for there it is,
Eternally, if irrelevantly, visible —

But yield instead to the humorous formulae,
The spurious mystery in the knowing nod;
Or we keep sullen silence in light and shade,
Rehearsing our astute salvations under
The cold gaze of a sanctimonious God.

One part of my mind must learn to know its place.
The things that happen in the kitchen houses
And echoing back streets of this desperate city
Should engage more than my casual interest,
Exact more interest than my casual pity.






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"Earth's Answer" by William Blake

Earth's Answer
by William Blake

Earth rais'd up her head, 
From the darkness dread & drear. 
Her light fled: 
Stony dread! 
And her locks cover'd with grey despair. 

Prison'd on watry shore 
Starry Jealousy does keep my den 
Cold and hoar 
Weeping o'er 
I hear the Father of the ancient men 

Selfish father of men 
Cruel, jealous, selfish fear 
Can delight 
Chain'd in night 
The virgins of youth and morning bear. 

Does spring hide its joy 
When buds and blossoms grow? 
Does the sower? 
Sow by night? 
Or the plowman in darkness plow? 

Break this heavy chain, 
That does freeze my bones around 
Selfish! vain! 
Eternal bane! 
That free Love with bondage bound. 

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"A Map to the Next World" by Joy Harjo

A Map to the Next World
by Joy Harjo

for Desiray Kierra Chee

In the last days of the fourth world I wished to make a map for
those who would climb through the hole in the sky.

My only tools were the desires of humans as they emerged
from the killing fields, from the bedrooms and the kitchens.

For the soul is a wanderer with many hands and feet.

The map must be of sand and can’t be read by ordinary light. It
must carry fire to the next tribal town, for renewal of spirit.

In the legend are instructions on the language of the land, how it
was we forgot to acknowledge the gift, as if we were not in it or of it.

Take note of the proliferation of supermarkets and malls, the
altars of money. They best describe the detour from grace.

Keep track of the errors of our forgetfulness; the fog steals our
children while we sleep.

Flowers of rage spring up in the depression. Monsters are born
there of nuclear anger.

Trees of ashes wave good-bye to good-bye and the map appears to
disappear.

We no longer know the names of the birds here, how to speak to
them by their personal names.

Once we knew everything in this lush promise.

What I am telling you is real and is printed in a warning on the
map. Our forgetfulness stalks us, walks the earth behind us, leav-
ing a trail of paper diapers, needles, and wasted blood.

An imperfect map will have to do, little one.

The place of entry is the sea of your mother’s blood, your father’s
small death as he longs to know himself in another.

There is no exit.

The map can be interpreted through the wall of the intestine—a
spiral on the road of knowledge.

You will travel through the membrane of death, smell cooking
from the encampment where our relatives make a feast of fresh
deer meat and corn soup, in the Milky Way.

They have never left us; we abandoned them for science.

And when you take your next breath as we enter the fifth world
there will be no X, no guidebook with words you can carry.

You will have to navigate by your mother’s voice, renew the song
she is singing.

Fresh courage glimmers from planets.

And lights the map printed with the blood of history, a map you
will have to know by your intention, by the language of suns.

When you emerge note the tracks of the monster slayers where they
entered the cities of artificial light and killed what was killing us.

You will see red cliffs. They are the heart, contain the ladder.

A white deer will greet you when the last human climbs from the
destruction.

Remember the hole of shame marking the act of abandoning our
tribal grounds.

We were never perfect.

Yet, the journey we make together is perfect on this earth who was
once a star and made the same mistakes as humans.

We might make them again, she said.

Crucial to finding the way is this: there is no beginning or end.

You must make your own map.

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"Our Nature" by Rae Armantrout

Our Nature
by Rae Armantrout

The very flatness 
of portraits
makes for nostalgia
in the connoisseur.

Here’s the latest
little lip of wave
to flatten
and spread thin.

Let’s say
it shows our recklessness,

our fast gun,

our self-consciousness
which was really

our infatuation
with our own fame,

our escapes,

the easy way
we’d blend in

with the peasantry,

our loyalty
to our old gang

from among whom
it was our nature

to be singled out






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