No one worth possessing
Can be quite possessed;
Lay that on your heart,
My young angry dear;
This truth, this hard and precious stone,
Lay it on your hot cheek,
Let it hide your tear.
Hold it like a crystal
When you are alone
And gaze in the depths of the icy stone.
Long, look long and you will be blessed:
No one worth possessing...
Read More
At Thirty, the Party Is Over
Fact is,
the revolutionaries were cooler than the revolution,
the booze was better than the bar,
and that 'O My Comrade' anthem
sucked —
(though I did hum along to those corny love songs).
But what the hell —
the party is over,
the booze has run dry, wallets are emptied and, finally,
even he's left —
but, although...
Read More
Read More
Oda al vino
Vino color de día,
vino color de noche,
vino con pies de púrpura
o sangre de topacio,
vino,
estrellado hijo
de la tierra,
vino, liso
como una espada de oro,
suave
como un desordenado terciopelo,
vino encaracolado
y suspendido,
amoroso,
marino,
nunca has cabido en una copa,
en un canto, en un hombre,
coral, gregario eres,
y cuando menos, mutuo.
A veces...
Read More
samis:
💖💖
Now that the TV is gone and the music
has been hauled away,
it’s just me here, and the muffling silence
a spider wraps around a living morsel.
And at times, often, the unbearable.
I bear it, though, just like you.
Long ago, I bore a suitcase filled with books,
bore it far on city streets. To sell, I guess, at some
used-books place, one...
Read More
[So I’ll talk about it]
Written by Serhiy Zhadan and translated from Ukrainian by John Hennessy and Ostap Kin
So I’ll talk about it:
about the green eye of a demon in the colorful sky.
An eye that watches from the sidelines of a child’s sleep.
The eye of a misfit whose excitement replaces fear.
Everything started with music,
with scars left by songs
heard...
Read More
In the still of night
old fears emerge.
Those closest relatives
you’d found barely
bearable, cornucopias
of family dystopia
spilling into
“amusing anecdotes”
decades later
like a much-thumbed
rosary, or litany
of the dead.
Old vexations,
tics and mannerisms,
wincing at the pinch
of the drunk uncle
(so handsome!—but
died young),
stooping to avoid
the hacking cough
soon to propel
your Hungarian grandfather
to his...
Read More
Hush
By Timothy Donnelly
At night the sea’s surface is the penetrable onyx of deep sleep.
I enter it without fear, as if to lower the input of the eye
reduces risk, and whatever I can’t presently see
exists only in memory, which has been calmed by the water’s
cold hypnosis, and to be here is impersonal. Only the moonlight
interrupts this near-nothingness, the play...
Read More
being
feet swathed in
seaweed sitting at
the edge of
the sea I
shiver in the cold April
wind gazing at stars
they mock me
a singer without
a song a
dancer with
no partner
a soldier
without a weapon
but the sea
sings for me the waves
construct a
fortress round
my feet and in this safe place
I have no need of
a...
Read More
September Tomatoes
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...
Read More
Read More
Ghosts
After Anne Sexton
Some ghosts are my mothers
neither angry nor kind
their hair blooming from silk kerchiefs.
Not queens, but ghosts
who hum down the hall on their curved fins
sad as seahorses.
Not all ghosts are mothers.
I’ve counted them as I walk the beach.
Some are herons wearing the moonrise like lace.
Not lonely, but ghostly.
They stalk the...
Read More
Read More
René Descartes and the Clockwork Girl
Kathryn Nuernberger , 1980
In man, it was written, are found the elements
and their characteristics, for he passes
from cold to hot, moisture to dryness.
He comes into being and passes out of being
like the minerals, nourishes and reproduces
like the plants, has feeling and life
like animals. His figure resembles the terebinth;
his hair, grass; veins,...
Read More
oldernow:
outstanding poetry!
lizablue:
Lovely
A Love Poem
by Richard Schiffman
After aeons of hurtling through space, minding its own business,
there’s suddenly this other heavenly body out there
jerking on an asteroid’s heartstrings. Not that asteroids have hearts.
And that’s the point. It’s not about hearts, it’s about collisions.
Ok, it is about hearts too, dragging their debris-trails of longings
like the tails of comets, sprays of ice and...
Read More