Sometimes My Feet Go Numb by Wayne Corbitt

Sometimes My Feet Go Numb

 

Sometimes my feet go numb

I sleep a lot

Most of my old fag buddies are dead

My doctor treated my lover too

I feel guilty about being alive.

 

Sometimes my feet go numb

In people of color the skin is ashy dry

Coffee and tea don’t go well with my medication

I remember sexual freedom.

 

Sometimes my feet go numb

It takes one or two days to get a prescription filled

   at San Francisco General

I heard two guys making a speed deal at the food bank once

My thumbnails are blue from AZT

Bruises that don’t heal quickly worry me.

 

Sometimes my feet go numb

My sweat smells medicinal, my urine stinks

Television commercials make me cry

The news makes me angry

I’m tired all the time.

 

Sometimes my feet go numb

I take an anti-depressant and other drugs

   to scare my voices away

I hate pity

The very idea of wearing diapers is humiliating

I wonder if the acupuncture is doing any good.

 

Sometimes my feet go numb

And I don’t notice until I try to walk

Then I stumble

   swear

Shake them awake

   and move on. 

Snow on the Desert by Agha Shahid Ali

Snow on the Desert

“Each ray of sunshine is eight minutes old,”

Serge told me in New York one December

night. “So when one looks at the sky, one sees

the past?” “Yes, Yes,” he said, “especially

on a clear day.” On January 19,

1987, as I very

early in the morning drove my sister

to Tucson International, suddenly

on Alvernon and 22nd Street

the sliding doors of the fog were opened,

and the snow, which had fallen all night, now

sun-dazzled, blinded us, the earth whitened

out, as if by cocaine, the desert’s plants,

its mineral-hard colors extinguished,

wine frozen in the veins of the cactus.

The Connoisseuse of Slugs by Sharon Olds

The Connoisseuse of Slugs

When I was a connoisseuse of slugs

I would part the ivy leaves, and look for the

naked jelly of those gold bodies,

translucent strangers glistening along the 

stones, slowly, their gelatinous bodies

at my mercy. Made mostly of water, they would shrivel

to nothing if they were sprinkled with salt, 

but I was not interested in that. What I liked

was to draw aside the ivy, breathe the

odor of the wall, and stand there in silence

until the slug forgot I was there

and sent its antennae up out of its

head, the glimmering umber horns

rising like telescopes, until finally the

sensitive knobs would pop out the ends,

delicate and intimate. Years later,

when I first saw a naked man,

I gasped with pleasure to see that quiet

mystery reenacted, the slow 

elegant being coming out of hiding and

gleaming in the dark air, eager and so

trusting you could weep.

Personal Helicon by Seamus Heaney

Personal Helicon

As a child, they could not keep me from wells 

And old pumps with buckets and windlasses. 

I loved the dark drop, the trapped sky, the smells 

Of waterweed, fungus and dank moss. 

One, in a brickyard, with a rotted board top. 

I savoured the rich crash when a bucket 

Plummeted down at the end of a rope. 

So deep you saw no reflection in it. 

A shallow one under a dry stone ditch 

Fructified like any aquarium. 

When you dragged out long roots from the soft mulch 

A white face hovered over the bottom. 

Others had echoes, gave back your own call 

With a clean new music in it. And one 

Was scaresome, for there, out of ferns and tall 

Foxgloves, a rat slapped across my reflection. 

Now, to pry into roots, to finger slime, 

To stare, big-eyed Narcissus, into some spring 

Is beneath all adult dignity. I rhyme 

To see myself, to set the darkness echoing. 

The Tradition by Jericho Brown

The Tradition

Aster. Nasturtium. Delphinium. We thought

Fingers in dirt meant it was our dirt, learning

Names in heat, in elements classical

Philosophers said could change us. Star Gazer. 

Foxglove. Summer seemed to bloom against the will

Of the sun, which news reports claimed flamed hotter

On this planet than when our dead fathers

Wiped sweat from their necks. Cosmos. Baby’s Breath. 

Men like me and my brothers filmed what we

Planted for proof we existed before

Too late, sped the video to see blossoms

Brought in seconds, colors you expect in poems

Where the world ends, everything cut down.

John Crawford. Eric Garner. Mike Brown.

Zebra by C. K. Williams

Zebra

Kids once carried tin soldiers in their pockets as charms   

against being afraid, but how trust soldiers these days   

not to load up, aim, blast the pants off your legs?

I have a key-chain zebra I bought at the Thanksgiving fair.

How do I know she won't kick, or bite at my crotch?

Because she's been murdered, machine-gunned: she's dead.

Also, she's a she: even so crudely carved, you can tell   

by the sway of her belly a foal's inside her.

Even murdered mothers don't hurt people, do they?   

And how know she's murdered? Isn't everything murdered?

Some dictator's thugs, some rebels, some poachers;

some drought, world-drought, world-rot, pollution, extinction.

Everything's murdered, but still, not good, a dead thing   

in with your ID and change. I fling her away, but the death   

of her clings, the death of her death, her murder, her slaughter.

The best part of Thanksgiving Day, though—the parade!

Mickey Mouse, Snoopy, Kermit the Frog, enormous as clouds!

And the marching bands, majorettes, anthems and drums!

When the great bass stomped its galloping boom out

to the crowd, my heart swelled with valor and pride.

I remembered when we saluted, when we took off our hat.

Poetry by Marianne Moore

Poetry

I, too, dislike it.

Reading it, however, with a perfect

  contempt for it, one discovers in

it, after all, a place for the genuine.

Five Men by Zbigniew Herbert

Five Men

1

They take them out in the morning

to the stone courtyard

and put them against the wall

five men

two of them very young

the others middle-aged

nothing more

can be said about them

2

when the platoon

level their guns

everything suddenly appears

in the garish light

of obviousness

the yellow wall

the cold blue

the black wire on the wall

instead of a horizon

that is the moment

when the five senses rebel

they would gladly escape

like rats from a sinking ship

before the bullet reaches its destination

the eye will perceive the flight of the projectile

the ear record a steely rustle

the nostrils will be filled with biting smoke

a petal of blood will brush the palate

the touch will shrink and then slacken

now they lie on the ground

covered up to their eyes with shadow

the platoon walks away

their buttons straps

and steel helmets

are more alive

than those lying beside the wall

3

I did not learn this today

I knew it before yesterday

so why have I been writing

unimportant poems on flowers

what did the five talk of

the night before the execution

of prophetic dreams

of an escapade in a brothel

of automobile parts

of a sea voyage

of how when he had spades

he ought not to have opened

of how vodka is best

after wine you get a headache

of girls

of fruit

of life

thus one can use in poetry

names of Greek shepherds

one can attempt to catch the color of morning sky

write of love

and also

once again

in dead earnest

offer to the betrayed world

a rose

(Translated by Alissa Valles)

On the Sadness of Wedding Dresses by James Galvin

On the Sadness of Wedding Dresses

On starless, windless nights like this

I imagine

I can hear the wedding dresses

Weeping in their closets,

Luminescent with hopeless longing,

Like hollow angels.

They know they will never be worn again.

Who wants them now,

After their one heroic day in the limelight?

Yet they glow with desire

In the darkness of closets.

A few lucky wedding dresses

Get worn by daughters—just once more,

Then back to the closet.

Most turn yellow over time,

Yellow from praying

For the moths to come

And carry them into the sky.

Where is your mother’s wedding dress,

What closet?

Where is your grandmother’s wedding dress?

What, gone?

Eventually they all disappear,

Who knows where.

Imagine a dump with a wedding dress on it.

I saw one wedding dress, hopeful at Goodwill.

But what sad story brought it there,

And what sad story will take it away?

Somewhere a closet is waiting for it.

The luckiest wedding dresses

Are those of wives

Betrayed by their husbands

A week after the wedding.

They are flung outside the double-wide, 

Or the condo in Telluride,

And doused with gasoline.

They ride the candolescent flames,

Just smoke now,

Into a sky full of congratulations.

Anecdote of the Jar by Wallace Stevens

Anecdote of the Jar

I placed a jar in Tennessee, 

And round it was, upon a hill. 

It made the slovenly wilderness 

Surround that hill.

The wilderness rose up to it, 

And sprawled around, no longer wild. 

The jar was round upon the ground 

And tall and of a port in air.

It took dominion every where. 

The jar was gray and bare. 

It did not give of bird or bush, 

Like nothing else in Tennessee.

what they did yesterday afternoon by Warsan Shire

what they did yesterday afternoon

they set my aunts house on fire
i cried the way women on tv do
folding at the middle
like a five pound note.
i called the boy who used to love me
tried to ‘okay’ my voice
i said hello
he said warsan, what’s wrong, what’s happened?

i’ve been praying,
and these are what my prayers look like;
dear god
i come from two countries
one is thirsty
the other is on fire
both need water.

later that night
i held an atlas in my lap
ran my fingers across the whole world
and whispered
where does it hurt?

it answered
everywhere
everywhere
everywhere.

When My Brother Was An Aztec by Natalie Diaz

When My Brother Was An Aztec

he lived in our basement and sacrificed my parents 

every morning. It was awful. Unforgivable. But they kept coming 

back for more. They loved him, was all they could say.

It started with him stumbling along la Avenida de los Muertos,

my parents walking behind like effigies in a procession

he might burn to the ground at any moment. They didn't know

what else to do except be there to pick him up when he died.

They forgot who was dying, who was already dead. My brother

quit wearing shirts when a carnival of dirty-breasted women

made him their leader, following him up and down the stairs—

They were acrobats, moving, twitching like snakes—They fed him

crushed diamonds and fire. He gobbled the gifts. My parents

begged him to pluck their eyes out. He thought he was 

Huitzilopchtli, a god, half-man, half-hummingbird. My parents

at his feet, wrecked honeysuckles, he lowered his sword-like mouth,

gorged on them, draining color until their eyebrows whitened.

My brother shattered and quartered them before his basement festivals—

waved their shaking hearts in his fists,

while flea-ridden dogs ran up and down the steps, 

licking their asses,

turning tricks. Neighbors were amazed my parents' hearts kept

growing back—It said a lot about my parents, or parents' hearts.

My brother flung them into cenotes, dropped them from cliffs, 

punched holes into their skulls like useless jars or vases, 

broke them to pieces and fed them to gods ruling

the ratty crotches of street fair whores with pocked faces 

spreading their thighs in flophouses with no electricity. 

He slept in filthy clothes smelling of rotten peaches and matches, 

fell in love

with sparkling spoonfuls the carnival dog-women fed him. 

My parents lost their appetites for food, for sons. 

Like all bad kings, my brother 

wore a crown, a green baseball cap turned backwards

with a Mexican flag embroidered on it. When he wore it 

in the front yard, which he treated like his personal zócalo, 

all his realm knew he had the power that day, had all the jewels

a king could eat or smoke or shoot. The slave girls came 

to the fence and ate out of his hands. He fed them maíz 

through the chain links. My parents watched from the window,

crying over their house turned zoo, their son who was 

now a rusted cage. The Aztec held court in a salt cedar grove 

across the street where peacocks lived. My parents crossed fingers

so he'd never come back, lit novena candles 

so he would. He always came home with turquoise and jade

feathers and stinking of peacock shit. My parents gathered

what he'd left of their bodies, trying to stand without legs,

trying to defend his blows with missing arms, 

searching for their fingers to pray, to climb out of whatever 

dark belly my brother, the Aztec, 

their son, had fed them to.

Hawk Roosting by Ted Hughes

Hawk Roosting

I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed.

Inaction, no falsifying dream

Between my hooked head and hooked feet:

Or in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat.

The convenience of the high trees!

The air's buoyancy and the sun's ray

Are of advantage to me;

And the earth's face upward for my inspection.

My feet are locked upon the rough bark.

It took the whole of Creation

To produce my foot, my each feather:

Now I hold Creation in my foot

Or fly up, and revolve it all slowly -

I kill where I please because it is all mine.

There is no sophistry in my body:

My manners are tearing off heads -

The allotment of death.

For the one path of my flight is direct

Through the bones of the living.

No arguments assert my right:

The sun is behind me.

Nothing has changed since I began.

My eye has permitted no change.

I am going to keep things like this.

That Little Beast by Mary Oliver

That Little Beast

That pretty little beast, a poem,

     has a mind of its own.

Sometimes I want it to crave apples

     but it wants red meat.

Sometimes I want to walk peacefully

     on the shore

and it wants to take off all its clothes

     and dive in.

Sometimes I want to use small words

     and make them important

and it starts shouting the dictionary,

     the opportunities.

Sometimes I want to sum up and give thanks,

     putting things in order

and it starts dancing around the room

     on its four furry legs, laughing

     and calling me outrageous.

But sometimes, when I’m thinking about you,

     and no doubt smiling,

it sits down quietly, one paw under its chin,

     and just listens.

Tomorrow by Mark Strand

Tomorrow

Your best friend is gone,

your other friend, too.

Now the dream that used to turn in your sleep,

like a diamond, sails into the year's coldest night.

What did you say?

Or was it something you did?

It makes no difference -- the house of breath collapsing

around your voice, your voice burning, are nothing to worry about.

Tomorrow your friends will come back;

your moist open mouth will bloom in the glass of storefronts.

Yes. Yes. Tomorrow they will come back and you

will invent an ending that comes out right.

In the Museum of Lost Objects by Rebecca Lindenberg

In the Museum of Lost Objects

What thou lov’st well shall not be reft from thee; 

What thou lov’st well is thy true heritage. 

Ezra Pound

You’ll find labels describing what is gone:

an empress’s bones, a stolen painting

of a man in a feathered helmet

holding a flag-draped spear.

A vellum gospel, hidden somewhere long ago

forgotten, would have sat on that pedestal;

this glass cabinet could have kept the first

salts carried back from the Levant.

To help us comprehend the magnitude

of absence, huge rooms

lie empty of their wonders—the Colossus,

Babylon’s Hanging Gardens and

in this gallery, empty shelves enough to hold

all the scrolls of Alexandria.

My love, I’ve petitioned the curator

who has acquired an empty chest

representing all the poems you will

now never write. It will be kept with others

in the poet’s gallery. Next door,

a vacant room echoes with the spill

of jewels buried by a pirate who died

before disclosing their whereabouts.

I hope you don’t mind, but I have kept

a few of your pieces

for my private collection. I think

you know the ones I mean.

You've Got to Start Somewhere by Deborah Landau

You've Got to Start Somewhere

I had the idea of sitting still

while others rushed by.

I had the thought of a shop

that still sells records.

A letter in the mailbox.

The way that book felt in my hands.

I was always elsewhere.

How is it is to have a body today,

to walk in this city, to run?

I wanted to eat an apple so precisely

the tree would make another

exactly like it, then lie

down uninterrupted

in the gadgetless grass.

I kept texting the precipice,

which kept not answering,

my phone auto-making

everything incorrect.

I had the idea. Put down the phone.

Earth, leaves, storm, water, vine.

The gorgeous art of breathing.

I had the idea — the hope

of friending you without electricity.

Of what could be made among the lampposts

with only our voices and hands.

 

Confession of Heresy by Alan Dugan

Confession of Heresy

Once I demanded annihilation and frenzy.

I applauded the smiles of thieves and had

a passion for debris. Lost in the traffic

of argument, I appraised skilled assassins

and preached the slaughter of the pure,

but now I’m scared and only critical

of what I once proposed to wreck: I see

vandals at the monuments I hoped to save,

experts, who exceed in self my strong words,

and call themselves the business or the state.

They grow up in the rubble of our wreck,

kill with a purist’s hatred of the strange,

and feed on death, until a liberal man

must blush like a rose for holding on to one,

turn grey, and learn to shout the slogans:

“Annihilation!”, “Frenzy!”, just to run

the gantlets of their streets in safety

from himself, them, or other enemies.

Last Day by May Swenson

Last Day

I’m having a sunbath on the rug

alone in a large house facing south.

A tall window admits a golden trough

the length of a coffin in which I lie

in December, the last day of the year.

Sky in the window perfectly empty.

Naked tree limbs without wind.

No sounds reach my ears except their

ringing, and heart’s thud hollow and

slow. Uncomplicated peace. Scarcely

a motion. Except a shadow that un-

detected creeps. On the table a clay pot,

a clump of narcissus lengthens its stems.

Blue buds sip the sun. Works of the clock

circle their ratchets. There is nothing

to wish for. Nothing to will.

What if this day is endless? No new

year to follow. Alteration done with.

A golden moment frozen, clenched.

Cruising by Derrick Austin

Cruising

It’s a question of inertia: shifting gravel

behind a large beech, catcalls and headlights from the party

still perceivable where you stumble

as he wrestles you into gray bark. You yield

like the braids of a wrought iron fence.

It’s a question of bones: his muscle-car-wide-receiver hands

knead your spine, your narrow back, exposed

bone no amount of flesh can cover.

It’s a question of overindulgence.

He doesn’t let you kiss him. It is law.

He grunts, then purrs, flecks of spit cooling

on your neck. It’s a question of violence

as if you could accuse the water

of drowning or the gate of excessive force.

Quick sex ends with the curt chime of a belt buckle,

high beams block his rugged face.

It’s not violence if it’s meant tenderly,

a belief you think will keep a man,

a belief that lashes boys to fences,

even the butch ones who smell like malt liquor.

Diving into the Wreck by Adrienne Rich

Diving into the Wreck

First having read the book of myths,

and loaded the camera,

and checked the edge of the knife-blade,

I put on

the body-armor of black rubber

the absurd flippers

the grave and awkward mask.

I am having to do this

not like Cousteau with his

assiduous team

aboard the sun-flooded schooner

but here alone. 

There is a ladder.

The ladder is always there

hanging innocently

close to the side of the schooner.

We know what it is for,

we who have used it.

Otherwise

it is a piece of maritime floss

some sundry equipment. 

I go down.

Rung after rung and still

the oxygen immerses me

the blue light

the clear atoms

of our human air.

I go down.

My flippers cripple me,

I crawl like an insect down the ladder

and there is no one

to tell me when the ocean

will begin. 

First the air is blue and then

it is bluer and then green and then

black I am blacking out and yet

my mask is powerful

it pumps my blood with power

the sea is another story

the sea is not a question of power

I have to learn alone

to turn my body without force

in the deep element. 

And now: it is easy to forget

what I came for

among so many who have always

lived here

swaying their crenellated fans

between the reefs

and besides

you breathe differently down here. 

I came to explore the wreck.

The words are purposes.

The words are maps.

I came to see the damage that was done

and the treasures that prevail.

I stroke the beam of my lamp

slowly along the flank

of something more permanent

than fish or weed 

the thing I came for:

the wreck and not the story of the wreck

the thing itself and not the myth

the drowned face always staring

toward the sun

the evidence of damage

worn by salt and sway into this threadbare beauty

the ribs of the disaster

curving their assertion

among the tentative haunters. 

This is the place.

And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair

streams black, the merman in his armored body.

We circle silently

about the wreck

we dive into the hold.

I am she: I am he 

whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes

whose breasts still bear the stress

whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies

obscurely inside barrels

half-wedged and left to rot

we are the half-destroyed instruments

that once held to a course

the water-eaten log

the fouled compass 

We are, I am, you are

by cowardice or courage

the one who find our way

back to this scene

carrying a knife, a camera

a book of myths

in which

our names do not appear.