Saturday, March 22, 2025

The Reinvention of Happiness by Jack Gilbert

The Reinvention of Happiness

 
I remember how I’d lie on my roof
listening to the fat violinist
below in the sleeping village
play Schubert so badly, so well.



Thursday, March 20, 2025

The Quiet World by Jeffrey McDaniel

The Quiet World

 
In an effort to get people to look
into each other’s eyes more,
and also to appease the mutes,
the government has decided
to allot each person exactly one hundred  
and sixty-seven words, per day.
 
When the phone rings, I put it to my ear  
without saying hello. In the restaurant  
I point at chicken noodle soup.
I am adjusting well to the new way.
 
Late at night, I call my long distance lover,  
proudly say I only used fifty-nine today.  
I saved the rest for you.
 
When she doesn’t respond,
I know she’s used up all her words,  
so I slowly whisper I love you
thirty-two and a third times.
After that, we just sit on the line  
and listen to each other breathe.



Saturday, March 15, 2025

Fishing in the Keep of Silence by Linda Gregg

Fishing in the Keep of Silence

 
There is a hush now while the hills rise up
and God is going to sleep. He trusts the ship
of Heaven to take over and proceed beautifully
as he lies dreaming in the lap of the world.
He knows the owls will guard the sweetness
of the soul in their massive keep of silence,
looking out with eyes open or closed over
the length of Tomales Bay that the egrets
conform to, whitely broad in flight, white
and slim in standing. God, who thinks about
poetry all the time, breathes happily as He
repeats to Himself: there are fish in the net,
lots of fish this time in the net of the heart.



Monday, March 10, 2025

Poem about My Rights by June Jordan

Poem about My Rights

 
Even tonight and I need to take a walk and clear
my head about this poem about why I can’t
go out without changing my clothes my shoes
my body posture my gender identity my age
my status as a woman alone in the evening/
alone on the streets/alone not being the point/
the point being that I can’t do what I want
to do with my own body because I am the wrong
sex the wrong age the wrong skin and
suppose it was not here in the city but down on the beach/
or far into the woods and I wanted to go
there by myself thinking about God/or thinking
about children or thinking about the world/all of it
disclosed by the stars and the silence:
I could not go and I could not think and I could not
stay there
alone
as I need to be
alone because I can’t do what I want to do with my own
body and
who in the hell set things up
like this
and in France they say if the guy penetrates
but does not ejaculate then he did not rape me
and if after stabbing him if after screams if
after begging the bastard and if even after smashing
a hammer to his head if even after that if he
and his buddies fuck me after that
then I consented and there was
no rape because finally you understand finally
they fucked me over because I was wrong I was
wrong again to be me being me where I was/wrong
to be who I am
which is exactly like South Africa
penetrating into Namibia penetrating into
Angola and does that mean I mean how do you know if
Pretoria ejaculates what will the evidence look like the
proof of the monster jackboot ejaculation on Blackland
and if
after Namibia and if after Angola and if after Zimbabwe
and if after all of my kinsmen and women resist even to
self-immolation of the villages and if after that
we lose nevertheless what will the big boys say will they
claim my consent:
Do You Follow Me: We are the wrong people of
the wrong skin on the wrong continent and what
in the hell is everybody being reasonable about
and according to the Times this week
back in 1966 the C.I.A. decided that they had this problem
and the problem was a man named Nkrumah so they
killed him and before that it was Patrice Lumumba
and before that it was my father on the campus
of my Ivy League school and my father afraid
to walk into the cafeteria because he said he
was wrong the wrong age the wrong skin the wrong
gender identity and he was paying my tuition and
before that
it was my father saying I was wrong saying that
I should have been a boy because he wanted one/a
boy and that I should have been lighter skinned and
that I should have had straighter hair and that
I should not be so boy crazy but instead I should
just be one/a boy and before that         
it was my mother pleading plastic surgery for
my nose and braces for my teeth and telling me
to let the books loose to let them loose in other
words
I am very familiar with the problems of the C.I.A.
and the problems of South Africa and the problems
of Exxon Corporation and the problems of white
America in general and the problems of the teachers
and the preachers and the F.B.I. and the social
workers and my particular Mom and Dad/I am very
familiar with the problems because the problems
turn out to be
me
I am the history of rape
I am the history of the rejection of who I am
I am the history of the terrorized incarceration of
myself
I am the history of battery assault and limitless
armies against whatever I want to do with my mind
and my body and my soul and
whether it’s about walking out at night
or whether it’s about the love that I feel or
whether it’s about the sanctity of my vagina or
the sanctity of my national boundaries
or the sanctity of my leaders or the sanctity
of each and every desire
that I know from my personal and idiosyncratic
and indisputably single and singular heart
I have been raped
be-
cause I have been wrong the wrong sex the wrong age
the wrong skin the wrong nose the wrong hair the
wrong need the wrong dream the wrong geographic
the wrong sartorial I
I have been the meaning of rape
I have been the problem everyone seeks to
eliminate by forced
penetration with or without the evidence of slime and/
but let this be unmistakable this poem
is not consent I do not consent
to my mother to my father to the teachers to
the F.B.I. to South Africa to Bedford-Stuy
to Park Avenue to American Airlines to the hardon
idlers on the corners to the sneaky creeps in
cars
I am not wrong: Wrong is not my name
My name is my own my own my own
and I can’t tell you who the hell set things up like this
but I can tell you that from now on my resistance
my simple and daily and nightly self-determination
may very well cost you your life
  


Saturday, March 8, 2025

Smith’s Supermarket, Taos, New Mexico, at the Fifteen-Items-or-Less Checkout Line by Sandra Cisneros

Smith’s Supermarket, Taos, New Mexico, at the Fifteen-Items-or-Less Checkout Line

 
The baby-faced cholo in front of me
gently drops a divider bar between
what’s his and mine.
 
On my side, a six-outlet surge
protector for my computer,
and a fireproof glass cup
for my Lux Perpetua candle,
a votive so powerful
it self-destructs.
 
On his,
a plastic bottle of store-brand vodka.
It’s noon, but somewhere
it’s happy hour.
 
Baseball cap bad-ass backwards.
Black leather from neck to knees.
One brow and ear stitched with silver.
And on his neck, “Rufina” in wispy
ink I would kiss if I could. Fool,
it takes one to know one.
 
I drive away wondering
if Rufina is helping him
drink his bottle of forget.
Or if it’s she who is regret.
 
I write till the dark descends.
My cell warm tonight.
Candles. Copal.
Outside my window,
mountain without a moon.
Buddha in lotus.
Silent and still.
 
By ten, hot bath, lavender salts.
Flannel buttoned to the neck.
Am certain Rufina is not
as happy as I am tonight,
in bed with my love,
a book.



Wednesday, March 5, 2025

Documentary by Charles Simić

Documentary


Today I saw a city burning on TV.   
Someone distant and ghostlike   
Walked through the rubble,
And then the camera made a sweep
 Of the fiery sky and the clouds.   

Alone, stepping carefully,
His head bowed so low — he didn’t have a head —   
While searching for something
Of no interest to the camera
Which wanted us to admire the sky
With its towers of black smoke,
And the accompanying commentary,
Words about “our tragic age.”
Which I didn’t hear — watching him   
Stop and bend over   
Just as he vanished from view.



Saturday, March 1, 2025

A Quoi Bon Dire? by Charlotte Mew

A Quoi Bon Dire?


Seventeen years ago you said

Something that sounded like Good-bye;

And everybody thinks that you are dead,

But I.


So I, as I grow stiff and cold

To this and that say Good-bye too;

And everybody sees that I am old

But you.


And one fine morning in a sunny lane

Some boy and girl will meet and kiss and swear

That nobody can love their way again

While over there

You will have smiled, I shall have tossed your hair.