"the garden of delight" by Lucille Clifton

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






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"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.






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"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.






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"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







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"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.

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"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.






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"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.





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