The Contrariness of the Mad Farmer by Wendell Berry

The Contrariness of the Mad Farmer

 

I am done with apologies. If contrariness is my

inheritance and destiny, so be it. If it is my mission

to go in at exits and come out at entrances, so be it.

I have planted by the stars in defiance of the experts,

and tilled somewhat by incantation and by singing,

and reaped, as I knew, by luck and Heaven’s favor,

in spite of the best advice. If I have been caught

so often laughing at funerals, that was because

I knew the dead were already slipping away,

preparing a comeback, and can I help it?

And if at weddings I have gritted and gnashed

my teeth, it was because I knew where the bridegroom

had sunk his manhood, and knew it would not

be resurrected by a piece of cake. ‘Dance,’ they told me,

and I stood still, and while they stood

quiet in line at the gate of the Kingdom, I danced.

‘Pray,’ they said, and I laughed, covering myself

in the earth’s brightnesses, and then stole off gray

into the midst of a revel, and prayed like an orphan.

When they said, ‘I know my Redeemer liveth,’

I told them, ‘He’s dead.’ And when they told me

‘God is dead,’ I answered, ‘He goes fishing every day

in the Kentucky River. I see Him often.’

When they asked me would I like to contribute

I said no, and when they had collected

more than they needed, I gave them as much as I had.

When they asked me to join them I wouldn’t,

and then went off by myself and did more

than they would have asked. ‘Well, then,’ they said

‘go and organize the International Brotherhood

of Contraries,’ and I said, ‘Did you finish killing

everybody who was against peace?’ So be it.

Going against men, I have heard at times a deep harmony

thrumming in the mixture, and when they ask me what

I say I don’t know. It is not the only or the easiest

way to come to the truth. It is one way.

Privacy by Ada Limón

Privacy

 

On the black wet branches of the linden,

still clinging to umber leaves of late fall,

two crows land. They say, “Stop,” and still I want

to make them into something they are not.

Odin’s ravens, the bruja’s eyes. What news

are they bringing of our world to the world

of the gods? It can’t be good. More suffering

all around, more stinging nettles and toxic

blades shoved into the scarred parts of us,

the minor ones underneath the trees. Rain

comes while I’m still standing, a trickle of water

from whatever we believe is beyond the sky.

The crows seem enormous but only because

I am watching them too closely. They do not

care to be seen as symbols. A shake of a wing,

and both of them are gone. There was no message

given, no message I was asked to give, only

their great absence and my sad privacy

returning like the bracing, empty wind

on the black wet branches of the linden.

Mountain Dew Commercial Disguised as a Love Poem by Matthew Olzmann

Mountain Dew Commercial Disguised as a Love Poem

 

So here’s what I’ve got, the reasons why our marriage

might work: Because you wear pink but write poems

about bullets and gravestones. Because you yell

at your keys when you lose them, and laugh,

loudly, at your own jokes. Because you can hold a pistol,

gut a pig. Because you memorize songs, even commercials

from thirty years back and sing them when vacuuming.

You have soft hands. Because when we moved, the contents

of what you packed were written inside the boxes.

Because you think swans are overrated and kind of stupid.

Because you drove me to the train station. You drove me

to Minneapolis. You drove me to Providence.

Because you underline everything you read, and circle

the things you think are important, and put stars next

to the things you think I should think are important,

and write notes in the margins about all the people

you’re mad at and my name almost never appears there.

Because you made that pork recipe you found

in the Frida Kahlo Cookbook. Because when you read

that essay about Rilke, you underlined the whole thing

except the part where Rilke says love means to deny the self

and to be consumed in flames. Because when the lights

are off, the curtains drawn, and an additional sheet is nailed

over the windows, you still believe someone outside

can see you. And one day five summers ago,

when you couldn’t put gas in your car, when your fridge

was so empty—not even leftovers or condiments—

there was a single twenty-ounce bottle of Mountain Dew,

which you paid for with your last damn dime

because you once overheard me say that I liked it.

The Space Heater by Sharon Olds

The Space Heater

 

On the then-below-zero day, it was on,

near the patients' chair, the old heater

kept by the analyst's couch, at the end,

like the infant's headstone that was added near the foot

of my father's grave. And it was hot, with the almost

laughing satire of a fire's heat,

the little coils like hairs in Hell.

And it was making a group of sick noises—

I wanted the doctor to turn it off

but I couldn't seem to ask, so I just

stared, but it did not budge. The doctor

turned his heavy, soft palm

outward, toward me, inviting me to speak, I

said, "If you're cold-are you cold? But if it's on

for me..." He held his palm out toward me,

I tried to ask, but I only muttered,

but he said, "Of course," as if I had asked,

and he stood up and approached the heater, and then

stood on one foot, and threw himself

toward the wall with one hand, and with the other hand

reached down, behind the couch, to pull

the plug out. I looked away,

I had not known he would have to bend

like that. And I was so moved, that he

would act undignified, to help me,

that I cried, not trying to stop, but as if

the moans made sentences which bore

some human message. If he would cast himself toward the

outlet for me, as if bending with me in my old

shame and horror, then I would rest

on his art-and the heater purred, like a creature

or the familiar of a creature, or the child of a familiar,

the father of a child, the spirit of a father,

the healing of a spirit, the vision of healing,

the heat of vision, the power of heat,

the pleasure of power.

Little Spy in My Bedroom by Yusef Komunyakaa

Little Spy in My Bedroom

 

What’s that ticking sound

under the red velvet sofa,

breathing a little click-song

stolen from South Africa,

perched on a windowsill

or lost in a coffin drawer

singing a half-pint of good

luck, aping such big emotion?

Whatever it is, it materialized

up here on the second floor,

as if from my head—the silent

timekeeper’s rasping alarm.

I pace around the room, careful

not to trip on the tiger rug,

to search out the mechanical

night song of a small being.

What good can it bring now

in our highly evolved world

of climate change & hunting

death stars to give the names

of hermit kings & outlaws.

Love, have I always listened

with my whole damn body,

18k. tick of a pocket watch?

I rise, gazing into an inlaid box

of hex signs & cheap rings.

Now I hardly hear the faint

noise, yet know it is here.

I cover my eyes with my left

hand to hear the machine

pulse of a careless heart, &

in a patch of early-morning

sunlight I see a black cricket.

Someone kicks off her shoe

before I can think to say, No,

one of us must show mercy.

 

The Second Slaughter by Lucia Perillo

The Second Slaughter

 

Achilles slays the man who slew his friend, pierces the corpse

behind the heels and drags it

behind his chariot like the cans that trail

a bride and groom. Then he lays out

a banquet for his men, oxen and goats

and pigs and sheep; the soldiers eat

until a greasy moonbeam lights their beards.

 

The first slaughter is for victory, but the second slaughter is for grief—

in the morning more animals must be killed

for burning with the body of the friend. But Achilles finds

no consolation in the hiss and crackle of their fat;

not even heaving four stallions on the pyre

can lift the ballast of his sorrow.

 

And here I turn my back on the epic hero—the one who slits

the throats of his friend’s dogs,

killing what the loved one loved

to reverse the polarity of grief. Let him repent

by vanishing from my concern

after he throws the dogs onto the fire.

The singed fur makes the air too difficult to breathe.

 

When the oil wells of Persia burned I did not weep

until I heard about the birds, the long-legged ones especially

which I imagined to be scarlet, with crests like egrets

and tails like peacocks, covered in tar

weighting the feathers they dragged through black shallows

at the rim of the marsh. But once

 

I told this to a man who said I was inhuman, for giving animals

my first lament. So now I guard

my inhumanity like the jackal

who appears behind the army base at dusk,

come there for scraps with his head lowered

in a posture that looks like appeasement

though it is not.

The Little Box by Vasko Popa

The Little Box

 

The little box gets her first teeth

And her little length

Little width little emptiness

And all the rest she has

 

The little box continues growing

The cupboard that she was inside

Is now inside her

 

And she grows bigger bigger bigger

Now the room is inside her

And the house and the city and the earth

And the world she was in before

 

The little box remembers her childhood

And by a great longing

She becomes a little box again

 

Now in the little box

You have the whole world in miniature

You can easily put in a pocket

Easily steal it lose it

 

Take care of the little box

 

(translated by Charles Simić)

Visiting San Francisco by Vijay Seshadri

Visiting San Francisco

I wanted to curl up
in the comfortable cosmic melancholy of my past,
in the sadness of my past being passed.
I wanted to tour the museum of my antiquities
and look at the sarcophagi there.
I wanted to wallow like a water buffalo in the cool,
sagacious mud of my past,
so I wrote you and said I’d be in town and could we meet.
But you think my past is your present.
You wouldn’t relent, you wouldn’t agree
to dinner or a cup of coffee or even a bag of peanuts
on a bench in North Beach.
You didn’t want to curl up or tour or wallow with me.
You’re still mad, long after the days
have turned into decades, about the ways I let you down.
The four hundred thousand ways.
Maybe I would be, too.
But people have done worse to me.
I don’t think I’m being grotesque when I tell you
I’ve been flayed and slayed and force-fed anguish.
I’ve been a human cataract
plunging through a noose and going to pieces on the rocks.
I’ve been a seagull tethered to Alcatraz.
What can I say, what more can I say, how much more
vulnerable can I be, to persuade you
now that I’ve persuaded myself?
Why can’t you just let it go?
Well, at least I’m in San Francisco.
San Francisco, where the homeless are most at home—
crouching over their tucker bags under your pollarded trees—
because your beauty is as free to them
as to the domiciled in their
dead-bolt domiciles, your beauty is as free to
the innocent as to the guilty.
The fog has burned off.
In a cheap and windy room on Russian Hill
a man on the run unwraps the bandages
swaddling his new face, his reconstructed face,
and looks in the mirror and sees
the face of Humphrey Bogart. Only here
could such a thing happen.
It was really always you, San Francisco,
time won’t ever darken my love for you,
San Francisco.

Skeletons by Deborah Landau

Skeletons

 

So whatever’s the opposite of a Buddhist that’s what I am.

 

Kindhearted, yes, but knee deep in existential gloom,

 

except when the fog smokes the bridges like this—

 

like, instead of being afraid we might juice ourselves up,

 

eh, like, might get kissed again? Dwelling in bones I go straight

 

through life, a sublime abundance—cherries, dog’s breath, the sun, then

 

(ouch) & all of us snuffed out. Dear one, what is waiting for us tonight,

 

nostalgia? the homes of childhood? oblivion? How we hate to go—

 

--

 

Sundays I spend feeling sorry for myself I’ve got a

 

knack for it I’m morbid, make the worst of any season

 

exclamation point       yet levity’s a liquor of sorts,

 

lowers us through life toward the terminus soon

 

extinguished       darling, the comfort is slight,

 

tucked in bed we search each other for some alternative—

 

oh let’s marvel at the world, the stroke and colors of it

 

now, while breathing.

How to be a son by Omar Sakr

How to be a son

 

My father was for the longest time

a plastic smile locked under the bed.

Before that, he was whatever came

out of my mother’s mouth. He was I’ll tell you

when you’re older. He was winding smoke,

a secret name. That fucking Turk.

He was foreign word, distant country.

I gave myself up to her hands which also

fathered; they shaped me into flinch.

Into hesitant crouch, expectant bruise.

Into locked door, CIA black site—

my body unknown and denied to any

but the basest men. I said beat my father

into me please, but he couldn’t be found.

And when he was, I wished he remained

lost. He blamed himself for the men I want.

A father can negate any need he thinks

they are the sum of all desires he thinks

absence has a gender. Listen.

You can’t backdate love, it destroys

history, which is all that I have & so

like any man, want to abandon.

In the absence of time I will invent

roses, a lineage beyond geography,

then all manner of gorgeous people

who rove in desert and olive grove,

in wet kingdoms, on the hunt for villages

where a boy can love a boy & still be

called son

Curl by Diane Seuss

Curl

 

No longer at home in the world

and I imagine

never again at home in the world.

 

Not in cemeteries of bogs

churning with bullfrogs.

Or outside the old pickle shop.

I once make myself

at home on that street,

 

and the street after that,

and the boulevard. The avenue.

I don’t need to explain it to you.

 

It seems wrong

to curl now within the confines

of a poem. You can’t hide f

rom what you made

inside what you made

 

or so I’m told.

 

us by Tory Dent

us

 

in your arms

it was incredibly often

enough to be 

in your arms

careful as we had to be at times

about the I.V. catheter

in my hand,

or my wrist,

or my forearm

which we placed, consciously,

like a Gamboni vase,

the center of attention,

placed, frail identity

as if our someday-newborn

on your chest—

to be secluded, washed over

in your arms

often enough, it was

in that stillness, the only stillness

amidst the fears which wildly collided

and the complexities

of the illness, all the work

we had yet to do, had just done,

the hope, ridiculous amounts of it

we had to pump

from nothing, really,

short-lived consensus

possibility & experiment

to access

from our pinched and tiny minds

just the idea of hope

make it from scratch, air and water

like manufactured snow

a colossal fatigue

the severe concentration

of that, the repetition of that

lifted for a moment

just above your arms

inevitable, pressuring

it weighed down

but remained above

like a cathedral ceiling,

strangely sheltering

while I held tightly 

while there I could

in your arms

only there, the only stillness

remember the will,

allow the pull, tow against inevitable ebb—

you don't need reasons to live

one reason, blinking in the fog,

organically sweet in muddy dark

incredibly often enough

it is, it was

in your arms

 

Jack Johnson Does the Eagle Rock by Cornelius Eady

 Jack Johnson Does the Eagle Rock

 

Perhaps he left the newspaper stand that morning

dazed, a few pennies lighter.

The illustration of the crippled ocean liner

with the berth he had the money

But not the skin to buy

Engraving itself

On that portion of the mind reserved for

lucky breaks.

Perhaps the newsboy, a figure too small to

bring back,

Actually heard his laugh,

As the S.S. Titanic, sans one prize fighter,

Goes down again all over New York,

Watched his body dance

As his arms lift the ship, now a simple millimeter thick,

above his head

In the bustling air, lift it up

As though it was meant to happen.

 

Isn’t There Something by Jean Valentine

Isn’t There Something 

 

Isn’t there something in me

like the dogs I’ve heard at home

who bark all night from hunger? Something

in me like trains leaving,

 

isn’t there something in me

like a gun? I wanted to be

loud squirrels, around the trees’ feet,

bees, coming back & back

 

to the wooden porch,

wanting something—and wooden planks,

wanting something. To go back into

a tree?

 

               I want to go back to you,

who when you were dying said

“There are one or two people you don’t want to

let go of.” Here too, where I don’t let go of you. 

Depressed by a Book of Bad Poetry, I Walk Toward an Unused Pasture and Invite the Insects to Join Me by James Wright

Depressed by a Book of Bad Poetry, I Walk Toward an Unused Pasture and Invite the Insects to Join Me

Relieved, I let the book fall behind a stone.

I climb a slight rise of grass.

I do not want to disturb the ants

Who are walking single file up the fence post,

Carrying small white petals,

Casting shadows so frail that I can see through them.

I close my eyes for a moment and listen.

The old grasshoppers

Are tired, they leap heavily now,

Their thighs are burdened.

I want to hear them, they have clear sounds to make.

Then lovely, far off, a dark cricket begins

In the maple trees. 

little prayer by Danez Smith

little prayer

 

let ruin end here

 

let him find honey

where there was once a slaughter

 

let him enter the lion’s cage

& find a field of lilacs

 

let this be the healing

& if not     let it be

Wait by Adrienne Rich

Wait

 

In paradise every

the desert wind is rising

third thought

in hell there are no thoughts

is of earth

sand screams against your government

issued tent      hell's noise

in your nostrils      crawl

into your ear-shell

wrap yourself in no-thought

wait     no place for the little lyric

wedding-ring glint the reason why

on earth

they never told you