Here by Kim Addonizio

Here

After it ended badly it got so much better

which took a while of course but still

he grew so tender & I so grateful

which maybe tells you something about how it was

I’m trying to tell you I know you

have staggered wept spiraled through a long room

banging your head against it holding crushed

bird skulls in your hands your many hearts unstrung

unable to play a note their wood still beautiful

& carved so elaborately maybe a collector would want them

stupid collectors always preserving & never breaking open

the jars so everyone starves while admiring the view

you don’t own anyone everything will be taken from you

go ahead & eat this poem please it will help

Debris of Life and Mind by Wallace Stevens

Debris of Life and Mind 

 

There is so little that is close and warm. 

It is as if we were never children. 

 

Sit in the room. It is true in the moonlight

That it is as if we had never been young. 

 

We ought not to be awake. It is from this 

That a bright red woman will be rising

 

And, standing in violent golds, will brush her hair. 

She will speak thoughtfully the words of a line. 

 

She will think about them not quite able to sing.

Besides, when the sky is so blue, things sing themselves, 

 

Even for her, already for her. She will listen 

And feel that her color is a meditation, 

 

The most gay and yet not so gay as it was.

Stay here. Speak of familiar things a while.

Some Things I Said by David Ferry

Some Things I Said

writings on the wall
 

*

I was the one who said
the ditch in the backyard was maybe a river
that had flowed from somewhere else and was flowing to
somewhere else
 

*

I was the one who said where are you now?
 

*

I was the one who told about the one whose photograph in
the book of Eakins’s photographs was of
a guy the perfection of his body was his doom, and
Shakespeare said so too
 

*

Right there before my eyes was the one who said
where are you now? Where
are you Anne? I was the one
 

*

Who saw how Aeneas lay there in the darkness watching the
light, the little motions of light moving around the ceiling
and telling him something
 

*

I was the one whose mother’s voice called out of the urn
beseeching
 

*

I was the one who said how the day light knocks at the lid in
vain
 

*

I said be keep to your self be close be wall all dark
 

*

I said good people are punished, like all the rest
 

*

I said the boats on the river are taking it easy
 

*

I said the brain in your head whispers
 

*

I said death lives in our words
 

*

I said how beautiful is the past, how few the implements,
and how carefully made
 

*

I was the one who said
her body witness is, so also is her voice
 

*

I said better not know too much too soon all about it
 

*

where rhymes with beware, I said
 

*

I said it is the body breathing,
the crib of knowing
 

*

I wish I could recall now the lines written across my dream is what
I said
 

*

I said the horse’s hooves know all about it, the sky’s statement of
oncoming darkness
 

*

The fumes on the roof are visible and drifting away like
martyred souls, I said
 

*

I said the knees of the committee touch each other under the
table, furtive in pleasure
 

*

I said
Eurydice, My Father
 

*

I said we huddle over the ice,
the two of us
 

*

To squeeze from a stone its juice is her art’s happiness is
what I said
 

*

I am the one who said,
I hum to myself myself in a humming dream
 

*

And how we’re caught, I said,
In language: in being, in feeling, in acting. I said, it’s
exacting
 

*

I said the sea upheld us, would not let us go nor drown us,
and we looked down say a million years, and there were the
fish
 

*

See, the dead bloom in the dark, I said
 

*

The nightjar feeds while flying softly, smiling, smiling, I said
 

*

I said revenant whitefaced Death is walking not knowing
whether
 

*

I said the formula on the blackboard said who are you
 

*

I said Utnapishtim said to Gilgamesh blink of an eye
 

*

I said where are you now    Where are you Anne
 

*

Stanza my stone my father poet said
 

*

vwx    stones and sticks
 

*

The day doesn’t know what day it is, I said
 

*

What’s in the way the sun shines down, I said
 

*

I cried in my mute heart,
What is my name and nature