the garden of delight
by Lucille Clifton
for some
it is stone
bare smooth
as a buttock
rounding
into the crevasse
of the world
for some
it is extravagant
water mouths wide
washing together
forever for some
it is fire
for some air
and for some
certain only of the syllables
it is the element they
search their lives for
eden
for them
it is a test
Read, listen, share, create, and be on watch.
Tuesday, April 30, 2019
Monday, April 29, 2019
"What Work Is" by Philip Levine
What Work Is
by Philip Levine
We stand in the rain in a long line
waiting at Ford Highland Park. For work.
You know what work is—if you’re
old enough to read this you know what
work is, although you may not do it.
Forget you. This is about waiting,
shifting from one foot to another.
Feeling the light rain falling like mist
into your hair, blurring your vision
until you think you see your own brother
ahead of you, maybe ten places.
You rub your glasses with your fingers,
and of course it’s someone else’s brother,
narrower across the shoulders than
yours but with the same sad slouch, the grin
that does not hide the stubbornness,
the sad refusal to give in to
rain, to the hours of wasted waiting,
to the knowledge that somewhere ahead
a man is waiting who will say, “No,
we’re not hiring today,” for any
reason he wants. You love your brother,
now suddenly you can hardly stand
the love flooding you for your brother,
who’s not beside you or behind or
ahead because he’s home trying to
sleep off a miserable night shift
at Cadillac so he can get up
before noon to study his German.
Works eight hours a night so he can sing
Wagner, the opera you hate most,
the worst music ever invented.
How long has it been since you told him
you loved him, held his wide shoulders,
opened your eyes wide and said those words,
and maybe kissed his cheek? You’ve never
done something so simple, so obvious,
not because you’re too young or too dumb,
not because you’re jealous or even mean
or incapable of crying in
the presence of another man, no,
just because you don’t know what work is.
Read, listen, share, create, and be on watch.
by Philip Levine
We stand in the rain in a long line
waiting at Ford Highland Park. For work.
You know what work is—if you’re
old enough to read this you know what
work is, although you may not do it.
Forget you. This is about waiting,
shifting from one foot to another.
Feeling the light rain falling like mist
into your hair, blurring your vision
until you think you see your own brother
ahead of you, maybe ten places.
You rub your glasses with your fingers,
and of course it’s someone else’s brother,
narrower across the shoulders than
yours but with the same sad slouch, the grin
that does not hide the stubbornness,
the sad refusal to give in to
rain, to the hours of wasted waiting,
to the knowledge that somewhere ahead
a man is waiting who will say, “No,
we’re not hiring today,” for any
reason he wants. You love your brother,
now suddenly you can hardly stand
the love flooding you for your brother,
who’s not beside you or behind or
ahead because he’s home trying to
sleep off a miserable night shift
at Cadillac so he can get up
before noon to study his German.
Works eight hours a night so he can sing
Wagner, the opera you hate most,
the worst music ever invented.
How long has it been since you told him
you loved him, held his wide shoulders,
opened your eyes wide and said those words,
and maybe kissed his cheek? You’ve never
done something so simple, so obvious,
not because you’re too young or too dumb,
not because you’re jealous or even mean
or incapable of crying in
the presence of another man, no,
just because you don’t know what work is.
Read, listen, share, create, and be on watch.
Friday, April 26, 2019
"American Sonnet for My Past and Future Assassin [When James Baldwin & Audre Lorde each lend]" by Terrance Hayes
American Sonnet for My Past and Future Assassin [When James Baldwin & Audre Lorde each lend]
by Terrance Hayes
When James Baldwin & Audre Lorde each lend
Stevie Wonder an eyeball, he immediately contends
With gravity, falling either to his knees or flat on
His luminous face. I’ve heard several versions
Of the story. In this one Audre Lorde dons
Immaculate French loafers, turtlenecked ballgown,
And afro halo. An eye-sized ruby glimmers on
A pinky ring that’s a hair too big for Jimmy Baldwin’s
Pinky. He’s blue with beauty. They’re accustomed
To being followed, but now, the eye-patch twins
Will be especially scary to white people. Looking upon
Them, Wonder’s head purples with plural visions
Of blackness, gavels, grapples, purrs, pens. Ten to one
Odds God also prefers to be referred to as They & Them.
Read, listen, share, create, and be on watch.
by Terrance Hayes
When James Baldwin & Audre Lorde each lend
Stevie Wonder an eyeball, he immediately contends
With gravity, falling either to his knees or flat on
His luminous face. I’ve heard several versions
Of the story. In this one Audre Lorde dons
Immaculate French loafers, turtlenecked ballgown,
And afro halo. An eye-sized ruby glimmers on
A pinky ring that’s a hair too big for Jimmy Baldwin’s
Pinky. He’s blue with beauty. They’re accustomed
To being followed, but now, the eye-patch twins
Will be especially scary to white people. Looking upon
Them, Wonder’s head purples with plural visions
Of blackness, gavels, grapples, purrs, pens. Ten to one
Odds God also prefers to be referred to as They & Them.
Read, listen, share, create, and be on watch.
Thursday, April 25, 2019
"You Fit into Me" by Margaret Atwood
You Fit into Me
by Margaret Atwood
You fit into me
like a hook into an eye
a fish hook
an open eye
Read, listen, share, create, and be on watch.
by Margaret Atwood
You fit into me
like a hook into an eye
a fish hook
an open eye
Read, listen, share, create, and be on watch.
Wednesday, April 24, 2019
"The Oven Bird" by Robert Frost
The Oven Bird
by Robert Frost
There is a singer everyone has heard,
Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,
Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.
He says that leaves are old and that for flowers
Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.
He says the early petal-fall is past
When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers
On sunny days a moment overcast;
And comes that other fall we name the fall.
He says the highway dust is over all.
The bird would cease and be as other birds
But that he knows in singing not to sing.
The question that he frames in all but words
Is what to make of a diminished thing.
by Robert Frost
There is a singer everyone has heard,
Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,
Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.
He says that leaves are old and that for flowers
Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.
He says the early petal-fall is past
When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers
On sunny days a moment overcast;
And comes that other fall we name the fall.
He says the highway dust is over all.
The bird would cease and be as other birds
But that he knows in singing not to sing.
The question that he frames in all but words
Is what to make of a diminished thing.
Read, listen, share, create, and be on watch.
Tuesday, April 23, 2019
"Introduction to Poetry" by Billy Collins
Introduction to Poetry
by Billy Collins
I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide
or press an ear against its hive.
I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,
or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.
I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.
But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.
They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.
Read, listen, share, create, and be on watch.
by Billy Collins
I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide
or press an ear against its hive.
I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,
or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.
I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.
But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.
They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.
Read, listen, share, create, and be on watch.
Wednesday, April 10, 2019
"Solemnity" by Myronn Hardy
Solemnity
by Myronn Hardy
At the mosque’s entrance 3:30 a.m. Syrian
women beg wearing black gloves.
Your father’s grandmother was Syrian
before the country was ash.
Before the government turned
to kill its people.
What incites that internal blaze?
What says it is me I will take
or not me but those whom I claim?
We are claimed after meditation.
We are walking an empty street
after pretending to play drums.
After I recognize the heather in air
after we swim in a pool surrounded by azaleas
after your mother smiles observing us
after we sleep in her house fields
of sunflowers. I’m on a bus
watching them sway. I’m forgetting
the distance the inevitable loss
I will hold warm as snow whitens the green.
What will you hold?
What will you see beyond your hands?
Streets lined with jacarandas
that morph to pines to a self beneath
ice that wolves trample silently?
Someone still begs.
Someone still believes in our
innate generosity.
You are waiting for me but refuse to say it.
You believe in returns.
You believe in the planet’s roundness.
You believe in gravity’s inaudible assurance.
You believe in what I doubt.
Read, listen, share, create, and be on watch.
by Myronn Hardy
At the mosque’s entrance 3:30 a.m. Syrian
women beg wearing black gloves.
Your father’s grandmother was Syrian
before the country was ash.
Before the government turned
to kill its people.
What incites that internal blaze?
What says it is me I will take
or not me but those whom I claim?
We are claimed after meditation.
We are walking an empty street
after pretending to play drums.
After I recognize the heather in air
after we swim in a pool surrounded by azaleas
after your mother smiles observing us
after we sleep in her house fields
of sunflowers. I’m on a bus
watching them sway. I’m forgetting
the distance the inevitable loss
I will hold warm as snow whitens the green.
What will you hold?
What will you see beyond your hands?
Streets lined with jacarandas
that morph to pines to a self beneath
ice that wolves trample silently?
Someone still begs.
Someone still believes in our
innate generosity.
You are waiting for me but refuse to say it.
You believe in returns.
You believe in the planet’s roundness.
You believe in gravity’s inaudible assurance.
You believe in what I doubt.
Read, listen, share, create, and be on watch.
Tuesday, April 9, 2019
"Holdfast" by Robin Beth Schaer
Holdfast
by Robin Beth Schaer
The dead are for morticians & butchers
to touch. Only a gloved hand. Even my son
will leave a grounded wren or bat alone
like a hot stove. When he spots a monarch
in the driveway he stares. It’s dead,
I say, you can touch it. The opposite rule:
butterflies are too fragile to hold
alive, just the brush of skin could rip
a wing. He skims the orange & black whorls
with only two fingers, the way he learned
to feel the backs of starfish & horseshoe crabs
at the zoo, the way he thinks we touch
all strangers. I was sad to be born, he tells me,
because it means I will die. I once loved someone
I never touched. We played records & drank
coffee from chipped bowls, but didn’t speak
of the days pierced by radiation. A friend
said: Let her pretend. She needs one person
who doesn’t know. If I held her, I would
have left bruises, if I undressed her, I would
have seen scars, so we never touched
& she never had to say she was dying.
We should hold each other more
while we are still alive, even if it hurts.
People really die of loneliness, skin hunger
the doctors call it. In a study on love,
baby monkeys were given a choice
between a wire mother with milk
& a wool mother with none. Like them,
I would choose to starve & hold the soft body.
Read, listen, share, create, and be on watch.
by Robin Beth Schaer
The dead are for morticians & butchers
to touch. Only a gloved hand. Even my son
will leave a grounded wren or bat alone
like a hot stove. When he spots a monarch
in the driveway he stares. It’s dead,
I say, you can touch it. The opposite rule:
butterflies are too fragile to hold
alive, just the brush of skin could rip
a wing. He skims the orange & black whorls
with only two fingers, the way he learned
to feel the backs of starfish & horseshoe crabs
at the zoo, the way he thinks we touch
all strangers. I was sad to be born, he tells me,
because it means I will die. I once loved someone
I never touched. We played records & drank
coffee from chipped bowls, but didn’t speak
of the days pierced by radiation. A friend
said: Let her pretend. She needs one person
who doesn’t know. If I held her, I would
have left bruises, if I undressed her, I would
have seen scars, so we never touched
& she never had to say she was dying.
We should hold each other more
while we are still alive, even if it hurts.
People really die of loneliness, skin hunger
the doctors call it. In a study on love,
baby monkeys were given a choice
between a wire mother with milk
& a wool mother with none. Like them,
I would choose to starve & hold the soft body.
Read, listen, share, create, and be on watch.
Monday, April 8, 2019
"Post Impressions (VI)" by e. e. cummings
Post Impressions (VI)
by E. E. Cummings
into the strenuous briefness
Life:
handorgans and April
darkness,friends
i charge laughing.
Into the hair-thin tints
of yellow dawn,
into the women-coloured twilight
i smilingly
glide. I
into the big vermilion departure
swim,sayingly;
(Do you think?)the
i do,world
is probably made
of roses & hello:
(of solongs and,ashes)
Read, listen, share, create, and be on watch.
by E. E. Cummings
into the strenuous briefness
Life:
handorgans and April
darkness,friends
i charge laughing.
Into the hair-thin tints
of yellow dawn,
into the women-coloured twilight
i smilingly
glide. I
into the big vermilion departure
swim,sayingly;
(Do you think?)the
i do,world
is probably made
of roses & hello:
(of solongs and,ashes)
Read, listen, share, create, and be on watch.
Friday, April 5, 2019
"Lifted" by Craig Morgan Teicher
Lifted
by Craig Morgan Teicher
Well, I guess no one can have everything.
I must learn to celebrate when I fail.
Inner growth and fortitude follow the sting,
right? Won’t I rise with holy wind in my sails?
Yet they always seem to get what I want,
door after door flung open. Why are
the keepers of doors, who haunt
the hopeful halls of fate and desire
so partial to them, but not to me?
Yes, I do feel sorry for myself—don’t, brother,
pretend the bitter blanket of self-pity,
hasn’t warmed your bones. It’s not lovers
or fame I crave, nor even happiness, particularly.
Only to be lifted, just once, above all others.
Read, listen, share, create, and be on watch.
by Craig Morgan Teicher
Well, I guess no one can have everything.
I must learn to celebrate when I fail.
Inner growth and fortitude follow the sting,
right? Won’t I rise with holy wind in my sails?
Yet they always seem to get what I want,
door after door flung open. Why are
the keepers of doors, who haunt
the hopeful halls of fate and desire
so partial to them, but not to me?
Yes, I do feel sorry for myself—don’t, brother,
pretend the bitter blanket of self-pity,
hasn’t warmed your bones. It’s not lovers
or fame I crave, nor even happiness, particularly.
Only to be lifted, just once, above all others.
Read, listen, share, create, and be on watch.
Thursday, April 4, 2019
"I used to be a roller coaster girl" by jessica Care moore
I used to be a roller coaster girl
by jessica Care moore
(for Ntozake Shange)
I used to be a roller coaster girl
7 times in a row
No vertigo in these skinny legs
My lipstick bubblegum pink
As my panther 10 speed.
never kissed
Nappy pigtails, no-brand gym shoes
White lined yellow short-shorts
Scratched up legs pedaling past borders of
humus and baba ganoush
Masjids and liquor stores
City chicken, pepperoni bread
and superman ice cream
Cones.
Yellow black blending with bits of Arabic
Islam and Catholicism.
My daddy was Jesus
My mother was quiet
Jayne Kennedy was worshipped
by my brother Mark
I don’t remember having my own bed before 12.
Me and my sister Lisa shared.
Sometimes all three Moore girls slept in the Queen.
You grow up so close
never close enough.
I used to be a roller coaster girl
Wild child full of flowers and ideas
Useless crushes on polish boys
in a school full of white girls.
Future black swan singing
Zeppelin, U2 and Rick Springfield
Hoping to be Jessie’s Girl
I could outrun my brothers and
Everybody else to that
reoccurring line
I used to be a roller coaster girl
Till you told me I was moving too fast
Said my rush made your head spin
My laughter hurt your ears
A scream of happiness
A whisper of freedom
Pouring out my armpits
Sweating up my neck
You were always the scared one
I kept my eyes open for the entire trip
Right before the drop I would brace myself
And let that force push my head back into
That hard iron seat
My arms nearly fell off a few times
Still, I kept running back to the line
When I was done
Same way I kept running back to you
I used to be a roller coaster girl
I wasn’t scared of mountains or falling
Hell, I looked forward to flying and dropping
Off this earth and coming back to life
every once in a while
I found some peace in being out of control
allowing my blood to race
through my veins for 180 seconds
I earned my sometime nicotine pull
I buy my own damn drinks & the ocean
Still calls my name when it feels my toes
Near its shore.
I still love roller coasters
& you grew up to be
Afraid
of all girls who cld
ride
Fearlessly
like
me.
Read, listen, share, create, and be on watch.
by jessica Care moore
(for Ntozake Shange)
I used to be a roller coaster girl
7 times in a row
No vertigo in these skinny legs
My lipstick bubblegum pink
As my panther 10 speed.
never kissed
Nappy pigtails, no-brand gym shoes
White lined yellow short-shorts
Scratched up legs pedaling past borders of
humus and baba ganoush
Masjids and liquor stores
City chicken, pepperoni bread
and superman ice cream
Cones.
Yellow black blending with bits of Arabic
Islam and Catholicism.
My daddy was Jesus
My mother was quiet
Jayne Kennedy was worshipped
by my brother Mark
I don’t remember having my own bed before 12.
Me and my sister Lisa shared.
Sometimes all three Moore girls slept in the Queen.
You grow up so close
never close enough.
I used to be a roller coaster girl
Wild child full of flowers and ideas
Useless crushes on polish boys
in a school full of white girls.
Future black swan singing
Zeppelin, U2 and Rick Springfield
Hoping to be Jessie’s Girl
I could outrun my brothers and
Everybody else to that
reoccurring line
I used to be a roller coaster girl
Till you told me I was moving too fast
Said my rush made your head spin
My laughter hurt your ears
A scream of happiness
A whisper of freedom
Pouring out my armpits
Sweating up my neck
You were always the scared one
I kept my eyes open for the entire trip
Right before the drop I would brace myself
And let that force push my head back into
That hard iron seat
My arms nearly fell off a few times
Still, I kept running back to the line
When I was done
Same way I kept running back to you
I used to be a roller coaster girl
I wasn’t scared of mountains or falling
Hell, I looked forward to flying and dropping
Off this earth and coming back to life
every once in a while
I found some peace in being out of control
allowing my blood to race
through my veins for 180 seconds
I earned my sometime nicotine pull
I buy my own damn drinks & the ocean
Still calls my name when it feels my toes
Near its shore.
I still love roller coasters
& you grew up to be
Afraid
of all girls who cld
ride
Fearlessly
like
me.
Read, listen, share, create, and be on watch.
Wednesday, April 3, 2019
"Dor" by Nathalie Handal
Dor
by Nathalie Handal
We walk through clouds
wrapped in ancient symbols
We descend the hill
wearing water
Maybe we are dead
and don’t know it
Maybe we are violet flowers
and those we long for
love only
our unmade hearts
On attends, on attends
Wait for Duras and Eminescu
to tell us in French then Romanian
light has wounds
slow down—
memory is misgivings
Wait until the nails
get rusty
in the houses of our past.
Read, listen, share, create, and be on watch.
by Nathalie Handal
We walk through clouds
wrapped in ancient symbols
We descend the hill
wearing water
Maybe we are dead
and don’t know it
Maybe we are violet flowers
and those we long for
love only
our unmade hearts
On attends, on attends
Wait for Duras and Eminescu
to tell us in French then Romanian
light has wounds
slow down—
memory is misgivings
Wait until the nails
get rusty
in the houses of our past.
Read, listen, share, create, and be on watch.
Tuesday, April 2, 2019
"Hunger" by Ama Codjoe
Hunger
by Ama Codjoe
When I rose into the cradle
of my mother’s mind, she was but
a girl, fighting her sisters
over a flimsy doll. It’s easy
to forget how noiseless I could be
spying from behind my mother’s eyes
as her mother, bulging with a baby,
a real-life Tiny Tears, eclipsed
the doorway with a moon. We all
fell silent. My mother soothed the torn
rag against her chest and caressed
its stringy hair. Even before the divergence
of girl from woman, woman from mother,
I was there: quiet as a vein, quick
as hot, brimming tears. In the decades
before my birthday, years before
my mother’s first blood, I was already
prized. Hers was a hunger
that mattered, though sometimes
she forgot and I dreamed the dream
of orange trees then startled awake
days or hours later. I could’ve been
almost anyone. Before I was a daughter,
I was a son, honeycomb clenching
the O of my mouth. I was a mother—
my own—nursing a beginning.
Read, listen, share, create, and be on watch.
by Ama Codjoe
When I rose into the cradle
of my mother’s mind, she was but
a girl, fighting her sisters
over a flimsy doll. It’s easy
to forget how noiseless I could be
spying from behind my mother’s eyes
as her mother, bulging with a baby,
a real-life Tiny Tears, eclipsed
the doorway with a moon. We all
fell silent. My mother soothed the torn
rag against her chest and caressed
its stringy hair. Even before the divergence
of girl from woman, woman from mother,
I was there: quiet as a vein, quick
as hot, brimming tears. In the decades
before my birthday, years before
my mother’s first blood, I was already
prized. Hers was a hunger
that mattered, though sometimes
she forgot and I dreamed the dream
of orange trees then startled awake
days or hours later. I could’ve been
almost anyone. Before I was a daughter,
I was a son, honeycomb clenching
the O of my mouth. I was a mother—
my own—nursing a beginning.
Read, listen, share, create, and be on watch.
Monday, April 1, 2019
"The Body Remembers" by Yusef Komunyakaa
The Body Remembers
by Yusef Komunyakaa
I stood on one foot for three minutes & didn’t tilt
the scales. Do you remember how quickly
we scrambled up an oak leaning out over the creek,
how easy to trust the water to break
our glorious leaps? The body remembers
every wish one lives for or doesn’t, or even horror.
Our dance was a rally in sunny leaves, then quick
as anything, Johnny Dickson was up opening
his arms wide in the tallest oak, waving
to the sky, & in the flick of an eye
he was a buffalo fish gigged, pleading
for help, voiceless. Bigger & stronger,
he knew every turn in the creek past his back door,
but now he was cooing like a brown dove
in a trap of twigs. A water-honed spear
of kindling jutted up, as if it were the point
of our folly & humbug on a Sunday afternoon, right?
Five of us carried him home through the thicket,
our feet cutting a new path, running in sleep
years later. We were young as condom-balloons
flowering crabapple trees in double bloom
& had a world of baleful hope & breath.
Does Johnny run fingers over the thick welt
on his belly, days we were still invincible?
Sometimes I spend half a day feeling for bones
in my body, humming a half-forgotten
ballad on a park bench a long ways from home.
The body remembers the berry bushes
heavy with sweetness shivering in a lonely woods,
but I doubt it knows words live longer
than clay & spit of flesh, as rock-bottom love.
Is it easier to remember pleasure
or does hurt ease truest hunger?
That summer, rocking back & forth, uprooting
what’s to come, the shadow of the tree
weighed as much as a man.
Read, listen, share, create, and be on watch.
by Yusef Komunyakaa
I stood on one foot for three minutes & didn’t tilt
the scales. Do you remember how quickly
we scrambled up an oak leaning out over the creek,
how easy to trust the water to break
our glorious leaps? The body remembers
every wish one lives for or doesn’t, or even horror.
Our dance was a rally in sunny leaves, then quick
as anything, Johnny Dickson was up opening
his arms wide in the tallest oak, waving
to the sky, & in the flick of an eye
he was a buffalo fish gigged, pleading
for help, voiceless. Bigger & stronger,
he knew every turn in the creek past his back door,
but now he was cooing like a brown dove
in a trap of twigs. A water-honed spear
of kindling jutted up, as if it were the point
of our folly & humbug on a Sunday afternoon, right?
Five of us carried him home through the thicket,
our feet cutting a new path, running in sleep
years later. We were young as condom-balloons
flowering crabapple trees in double bloom
& had a world of baleful hope & breath.
Does Johnny run fingers over the thick welt
on his belly, days we were still invincible?
Sometimes I spend half a day feeling for bones
in my body, humming a half-forgotten
ballad on a park bench a long ways from home.
The body remembers the berry bushes
heavy with sweetness shivering in a lonely woods,
but I doubt it knows words live longer
than clay & spit of flesh, as rock-bottom love.
Is it easier to remember pleasure
or does hurt ease truest hunger?
That summer, rocking back & forth, uprooting
what’s to come, the shadow of the tree
weighed as much as a man.
Read, listen, share, create, and be on watch.
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