December 2011
16 posts
1 tag
'Dependants' by Paul Farley →
1 tag
'Reprise' by Deborah Brown →
1 tag
'Becoming Weather, 21' by Chris Martin →
1 tag
'U-District Incident Report' by Heather McHugh →
1 tag
'Forever War' by Nate Pritts →
1 tag
'Confetti Allegiance: Love Letter to Jim Brodey'... →
1 tag
'Architectural Masks' by Thomas Hardy
I There is a house with ivied walls, And mullioned windows worn and old, And the long dwellers in those halls Have souls that know but sordid calls, And dote on gold. II In a blazing brick and plated show Not far away a ‘villa’ gleams, And here a family few may know, With book and pencil, viol and bow, Lead inner lives of dreams. III The philosophic passers say, ...
1 tag
'Their Sex Life' by A. R. Ammons
One failure on Top of another
1 tag
'Continuity' by A. R. Ammons
I’ve pressed so far away from my desire that if you asked me what I want I would, accepting the harmonious completion of the drift, say annihilation, probably.
1 tag
'A Brief Attachment' by Cate Marvin
I regard your affection, find your teeth have left me a bruise necklace. The lipstick marks leech a trail, ear to ear, facsimile your smile. Your 40 ounces of malt beverage, your shrink hate, your eyes dialing 911. The hearts you draw with ballpoint on my cigarette packs when I’ve left the room, penned in your girl’s cursive, look demented, misshapen approximations of what I refuse to...
1 tag
'Confessions: My Father, Hummingbirds, and Franz...
Every effort is made to bring the colonised person to admit the inferiority of his culture… —Franz Fanon And there are days when storms hover Over my house, their brooding just this side of rage, An open hand about to slap a face. You won’t believe me When I tell you it is not personal. It isn’t. It only feels That way because the face is yours. So what if it is the only Face...
1 tag
'Designer Kisses' by Major Jackson
I’m glum about your sportive flesh in the empire of blab, and the latest guy running his trendy tongue like a tantalizing surge over your molars, how droll. Love by a graveyard is redundant, but the skin is an obstacle course like Miami where we are inescapably consigned: tourists keeping the views new. What as yet we desire, our own fonts of adoration. By morning, we’re laid out like...
1 tag
'After Baby After Baby' by Rachel Zucker
When we made love you had the dense body of a Doberman and the square head of a Rottweiler. With my eyes closed I saw: a light green plate with seared scallops and a perfect fillet of salmon on a cedar plank. Now I am safe in the deep V of a weekday wanting to tell you how the world is full of street signs and strollers and pregnant women in spandex. The bed and desk both want me. The...
1 tag
'Heart Condition' by Jericho Brown
I don’t want to hurt a man, but I like to hear one beg. Two people touch twice a month in ten hotels, and We call it long distance. He holds down one coast. I wander the other like any African American, Africa With its condition and America with its condition And black folk born in this nation content to carry Half of each. I shoulder my share. My man flies To touch me. Sky on our side....
4 tags
'Antique' by Arthur Rimbaud
Graceful son of Pan! Around your forehead crowned with small flowers and berries, your eyes, precious spheres, are moving. Spotted with brownish wine lees, your cheeks grow hollow. Your fangs are gleaming. Your chest is like a lyre, jingling sounds circulate between your blond arms. Your heart beats in that belly where the double sex sleeps. Walk at night, gently moving that thigh, that second...
3 tags
'Here' by Wislawa Szymborska
I can’t speak for elsewhere, but here on Earth we’ve got a fair supply of everything. Here we manufacture chairs and sorrows, scissors, tenderness, transistors, violins, teacups, dams, and quips. There may be more of everything elsewhere, but for reasons left unspecified they lack paintings, picture tubes, pierogies, handkerchiefs for tears. Here we have countless places with...