The Head of the Cottonmouth by Roger Reeves

The Head of the Cottonmouth 

Why would I abandon the hunger-suffering 

Vulture, spread-winged in the middle of the road 

Eating a rabbit while it snows? Wouldn’t you 

Want to touch, watch his comrades close down the sky 

And, in a black circle, eat red on the white Earth? 

And when the hiss of something slithers in— 

Panic un-paused—wouldn’t you watch the circle 

Break into black leaves pulled from the earth and flung 

Into the falling sky? Wouldn’t you want to be 

A servant of this paradise, not a God 

In front of a screen, naked, lonely, asking— 

No more a God than the crown of vultures 

Frightened by a hiss that was a tire deflating? 

Why would you trade Paradise for an argument 

About Paradise?

Time After Time by Adam Fitzgerald

Time After Time 

    After Cyndi Lauper

 

I’m in the barricade hearing the clock thickening you.

    Autumn encircles a confusion that’s nothing new.

Flash back to warring eyes almost letting me drown.

 

Out of which, a picture of me walking in a foreign head.

     I can’t hear what you said. Then you say: Cold room,

the second that life unwinds. A tinctured vase returns

 

to grass. Secrets doled out deep inside a drum beat out

     of time. Whatever you said was ghostly slow like

a second hand unwinding by match light. Lying back

 

to the wheel, I shirked confusion. You already knew.

     Suitcases surround me. You picture me too far ahead.

Yet I can’t hear what you’ve said. You say: Doldrums,

 

some secondhand wine. Love, you knew my precincts.

     The stone house turned out black, the scenic tunics

were deep inside. Who said home? Oh, I fall behind.

 

That very secret height blinds. Lying like a diamond,

     the cock-thickening of you: hunchbacked arms, eyes

left behind. You’ll picture me walking far, far ahead.

 

I hear what you’ve done. You said: Go slow. I feebly

     bleed out. Matthew’s sermon turned out to be glass.

I wander in windows soft as Sour Patch. No rewind.

 

But something is out of touch and you, you’re Sinbad.

     That second date totally mine. Lying in a vacuum,

the thickening plot thinks of you. The future’s not new.

 

touchdown. Lights. All those celebrity behinds.

     A suitcase full of weeds. You picture me coming to.

You: too close to me to hear what you’ve already said.

 

Then you say: The second wind unwinds. Doves whistle,

     halving their dovely backs, watching out windows to see

if I’m okay. See it, the dulcet moment? I’m like thicket

 

tinkering for you. Fusion nothing you knew. Flash back

     to seagull-beguiled eyes. Sometimes talking to a barren

lad. Such music so unbearably droll. The hand is mine.

 

Random picture frames off the darkness. A Turing machine?

     Scotch-taping through windows, stolen from deep inside

rum-beaded thyme. You say also: Behind sequins & hinds . . .

 

And I’m in the barricade hearing the clock thickening you.

     Clematis enclosures, walking with news, pollinated by a 

secondary grief, while something reminds you of our love.

Palestinian Painter by Mosab Abu Toha

Palestinian Painter

 

Two birds

leave their nest,

singing a song, perhaps

for the artist working

in what used to be

a well-kept old garden.

 

He’s painting a new house,

even a new garden.

Without shrapnel,

without twisted metal beams,

without broken bricks and loose electrical wires.

 

But then I see him hesitate,

looking at a headless doll

lying in the rubble.

I’m wondering if he’ll paint it

as part of the new house and the resurrected garden.

It might destroy

its harmony.

It might disturb

visitors from abroad.

The Lightkeeper by Carolyn Forché

The Lightkeeper

A night without ships. Foghorns called into walled cloud, and you

still alive, drawn to the light as if it were a fire kept by monks,

darkness once crusted with stars, but now death-dark as you sail inward.

Through wild gorse and sea wrack, through heather and torn wool

you ran, pulling me by the hand, so I might see this for once in my life:

the spin and spin of light, the whirring of it, light in search of the lost,

there since the era of fire, era of candles and hollow-wick lamps,

whale oil and solid wick, colza and lard, kerosene and carbide,

the signal fires lighted on this perilous coast in the Tower of Hook.

You say to me stay awake, be like the lensmaker who died with his

lungs full of glass, be the yew in blossom when bees swarm, be

their amber cathedral and even the ghosts of Cistercians will be kind to you.

In a certain light as after rain, in pearled clouds or the water beyond,

seen or sensed water, sea or lake, you would stop still and gaze out

for a long time. Also when fireflies opened and closed in the pines,

and a star appeared, our only heaven. You taught me to live like this.

That after death it would be as it was before we were born. Nothing

to be afraid. Nothing but happiness as unbearable as the dread

from which it comes. Go toward the light always, be without ships.

Heavy Summer Rain by Jane Kenyon

Heavy Summer Rain

 

The grasses in the field have toppled,

and in places it seems that a large, now

absent, animal must have passed the night.

The hay will right itself if the day

 

turns dry. I miss you steadily, painfully.

None of your blustering entrances

or exits, doors swinging wildly

on their hinges, or your huge unconscious

sighs when you read something sad,

like Henry Adams’s letters from Japan,

where he traveled after Clover died.

 

Everything blooming bows down in the rain:

white irises, red peonies; and the poppies

with their black and secret centers

lie shattered on the lawn.

Casabianca by Elizabeth Bishop

Casabianca

 

Love's the boy stood on the burning deck

trying to recite "The boy stood on

the burning deck." Love's the son

     stood stammering elocution

     while the poor ship in flames went down.

 

Love's the obstinate boy, the ship,

even the swimming sailors, who

would like a schoolroom platform, too,

     or an excuse to stay

     on deck. And love's the burning boy. 

Vertigo, Or A Contemplation of Things That Come To An End by Alejandra Pizarnik

Vertigo, Or A Contemplation of Things That Come To An End

This Lilac unleaves.

It falls from itself

and hides its ancient shadow.

I will die of such things.

 

(Translated by Yvette Siegert)