Poet's Corner

[Liability]

'My Grandmother Told Us Jokes'

"like the one about the man who
walked down the street
& turned into
a drugstore.

There was some secret in the moment
of that turning—when he was one thing,
became another—
that I return to again & again.

The day she stopped being
grandma & turned into
that madwoman.

The day my sister stopped being
& never came back. Perhaps there
was an instant between her sweet sleep

& the moment the fever struck,
from which she could have been plucked.

Do not make that turn, I want to say to the man
who becomes the drugstore; to the woman
who dies insane; to my sister;

to the boy who became an adult
the moment the cell door slammed shut.
I want to freeze-frame each instant of turning,

unfold in slow motion the moment of callous
change. Perhaps the secret’s in the man’s
intention; in the list in his pocket of mundane
nostrums he was sent to fetch home.

Or perhaps I’ve got it wrong,
perhaps there’s a soda fountain where they all sit—
the man, my grandmother, my sister, the boy—

& drink nickel root beer floats, look back
on that fateful turn, and laugh among themselves
at the rest of us, who took it all so seriously."

Richard Beban

Poetry critique:

Poetry means lots of different things to different people.

But the above quoted rambling -- almost free form -- "thought" which got put down into words could have been written with the exact same words in the exact same order, just not put arbitrarily into those little stanzas, and then nobody would have said it was "poetry."

Unless there actually is some special meter to the delivery that isn't apparent on the surface.

 

[midcan5]

"A poem can have an impact, but you can't expect an audience to understand all the nuances." Douglas Dunn

"A true poet does not bother to be poetical. Nor does a nursery gardener scent his roses." Jean Cocteau

Saturday afternoon at the mall

My wife and I sit in a crossway at the mall
playing a game of guessing
the occupations of passersby
we try not to point, items describe,
some are easy, nerds and youth
chino pants neat haircut
business executive
former teacher retired
hippy professor programmer
works in a pet store
faces make it hard
families harder
sometimes we laugh
as I guess cook and she cop
clerk, no, teacher
then as we leave
we point at each other
others wonder why

mc5


"I was reading the dictionary. I thought it was a poem about everything." Steven Wright

"Even when poetry has a meaning, as it usually has, it may be inadvisable to draw it out... Perfect understanding will sometimes almost extinguish pleasure." A. E. Housman

 

[American Horse]

"From their eyelids as they glanced dripped love.”

― The Hesiod

 

[midcan5]

'Family Stories'

"I had a boyfriend who told me stories about his family,
how an argument once ended when his father
seized a lit birthday cake in both hands
and hurled it out a second-story window. That,
I thought, was what a normal family was like: anger
sent out across the sill, landing like a gift
to decorate the sidewalk below. In mine
it was fists and direct hits to the solar plexus,
and nobody ever forgave anyone. But I believed
the people in his stories really loved one another,
even when they yelled and shoved their feet
through cabinet doors, or held a chair like a bottle
of cheap champagne, christening the wall,
rungs exploding from their holes.
I said it sounded harmless, the pomp and fury
of the passionate. He said it was a curse
being born Italian and Catholic and when he
looked from that window what he saw was the moment
rudely crushed. But all I could see was a gorgeous
three-layer cake gliding like a battered ship
down the sidewalk, the smoking candles broken, sunk
deep in the icing, a few still burning."

Dorianne Laux

 

[Wry Catcher]

Imagine there's no heaven, it's easy if you try
No people below us, above it's only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today

Imagine there's no countries, it isn't hard to do
No need to kill or die for and no religions too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one

Imagine no possessions I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger a brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing for the world

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
Take my hand and join us
And the world will live, will live as one

 

[Liability]

'Family Stories'

"I had a boyfriend who told me stories about his family,
how an argument once ended when his father
seized a lit birthday cake in both hands
and hurled it out a second-story window. That,
I thought, was what a normal family was like: anger
sent out across the sill, landing like a gift
to decorate the sidewalk below. In mine
it was fists and direct hits to the solar plexus,
and nobody ever forgave anyone. But I believed
the people in his stories really loved one another,
even when they yelled and shoved their feet
through cabinet doors, or held a chair like a bottle
of cheap champagne, christening the wall,
rungs exploding from their holes.
I said it sounded harmless, the pomp and fury
of the passionate. He said it was a curse
being born Italian and Catholic and when he
looked from that window what he saw was the moment
rudely crushed. But all I could see was a gorgeous
three-layer cake gliding like a battered ship
down the sidewalk, the smoking candles broken, sunk
deep in the icing, a few still burning."

Dorianne Laux

Yes indeed. Another compelling example of "poetry" that could be just some poor schmoe sitting in an analyst's chair venting about some shit or other in his or her life.

Hey! Wait.

Read that first paragraph again.

Poetry!

 

[midcan5]

Yes indeed. Another compelling example of "poetry" that could be just some poor schmoe sitting in an analyst's chair venting about some shit or other in his or her life.

I had no idea fans of John Belushi were poetry critics? But I'm confused, John's humor was drunk or drugged nonsense so I'm surprised that makes you an expert. But thanks for the insight, watch those drugs you know what happened to John.

========

'Halfies in Philadelphia and the Ritual of Desire'

"Twenty years later I find half a tennis ball
in the woods and return for a while
to that cramped geography at the other
end of my life, empty mills and El tracks
casting shadows we did not yet feel on our backs.
Our fingers curled around halfies‚ ruined edges,
mop handle bats twitched within the fists of friends
now gone to drugs or crime or some other darkness,
a shot to the first floor a single, to the second, a double,
the third, a triple, the roof an elusive home run,
no bases to trot around, home plate a chalked square.
Radio pounding, tire hiss, acrid smell of smoke
from coal cars clacking past our dead neighborhood
on the way to somewhere far from Perlstein Glass
and the rank back alley of our failures. Our fathers
worked hard for nothing wages, came home to beer,
a hot shower, a hot meal. They did not talk much,
nor did we those afternoons we tested each other
with trick pitches—flying saucers, German helmets—
tapping aside what we did not like until we strode
into one with a vicious uppercut, trying
to lift it above our little lives into the air
where no birds flew, where the wind could catch it
and pull it onto the roof, evanescent and free."

Daniel Donaghy


To this day I cannot pick up a rounded stick and not get a sense for how it would work in our summer school yard games. When the pimple ball lost too much air we cut it in half and played half ball. I wonder if any still rest on high roofs.

 

[midcan5]

'Telling Time'

"My son and I walk away
from his sister’s day-old grave.
Our backs to the sun,
the forward pitch of our shadows
tells us the time.
By sweetest accident
he inclines
his shadow,
touching mine."

Jo McDougall

 

[Liability]

'Telling Time'

"My son and I walk away
from his sister’s day-old grave.
Our backs to the sun,
the forward pitch of our shadows
tells us the time.
By sweetest accident
he inclines
his shadow,
touching mine."

Jo McDougall

Well, THAT was certainly uplifting.

 

[midcan5]

'August Morning'

"It’s ripe, the melon
by our sink. Yellow,
bee-bitten, soft, it perfumes
the house too sweetly.
At five I wake, the air
mournful in its quiet.
My wife’s eyes swim calmly
under their lids, her mouth and jaw
relaxed, different.
What is happening in the silence
of this house? Curtains
hang heavily from their rods.
Ficus leaves tremble
at my footsteps. Yet
the colors outside are perfect—
orange geranium, blue lobelia.
I wander from room to room
like a man in a museum:
wife, children, books, flowers,
melon. Such still air. Soon
the mid-morning breeze will float in
like tepid water, then hot.
How do I start this day,
I who am unsure
of how my life has happened
or how to proceed
amid this warm and steady sweetness?"

Albert Garcia

 

[midcan5]

'Snapshot'

"My mother sends the baby pictures she promised—
egg hunting in Shelby Park, wooden blocks
and Thumbelina tossed on the rug, knotty pine
walls in a house lost to memory. I separate out
the early ones, studying my navel or crumbs
on the tray, taken before my awareness
of Sylvania Superflash. Here I am sitting
on the dinette table, the near birthday cake
striking me dumb. Two places of wedding china,
two glasses of milk, posed for the marvelous
moment: the child squishes the fluted rosettes,
mother claps her hands, father snaps the picture
in the face of time. When the sticky sweet
is washed off the page, we are pasted in an album
of blessed amnesia. The father leaves the pine house
and sees the child on weekends, the mother
stores the china on the top shelf until it’s dull and crazed,
the saucer-eyed girl grips her curved spoon
like there’s no tomorrow."

Linda Parsons Marion

 

[Anne745]

I Love this poem...

Who will cry for the little boy?

Who will cry for the little boy?
Lost and all alone.
Who will cry for the little boy?
Abandoned without his own?

Who will cry for the little boy?
He cried himself to sleep.
Who will cry for the little boy?
He never had for keeps.

Who will cry for the little boy?
He walked the burning sand.
Who will cry for the little boy?
The boy inside the man.

Who will cry for the little boy?
Who knows well hurt and pain.
Who will cry for the little boy?
He died again and again.

Who will cry for the little boy?
A good boy he tried to be.
Who will cry for the little boy?
Who cries inside of me?

by Antwone Q Fisher.

 

[Anne745]

Junior Year in High School had to memorize this .. did not Appreciate until now....

The Charge Of The Light Brigade
by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Half a league half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred:
'Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns' he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

'Forward, the Light Brigade!'
Was there a man dismay'd ?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Some one had blunder'd:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do & die,
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley'd & thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.

Flash'd all their sabres bare,
Flash'd as they turn'd in air
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army while
All the world wonder'd:
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro' the line they broke;
Cossack & Russian
Reel'd from the sabre-stroke,
Shatter'd & sunder'd.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
While horse & hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro' the jaws of Death,
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.

When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wonder'd.
Honour the charge they made!
Honour the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred!

Memorializing Events in the Battle of Balaclava, October 25, 1854
Written 1854

 

[midcan5]

'Epitaph On An Army of Mercenaries'

"These, in the day when heaven was falling,
The hour when earth's foundations fled,
Followed their mercenary calling
And took their wages and are dead.

Their shoulders held the sky suspended;
They stood, and earth's foundations stay;
What God abandoned, these defended,
And saved the sum of things for pay."

Alfred Edward Housman

 

[midcan5]

'Fallen Apples'

"Wasps at work in the soft
flesh of rotting apples.
Food of the gods,
all day they mine it in busy
hushed movements.

I pick up a mushy corpse
one cold morning.
Carefully turn it over.
Its congregation tumbles
into the cupped
bowl of my hand.

Dazed, drunk, still
chilled from overnight cold,
they blunder like sleepwalkers
feeling around for the light.
Tiny antennae test my skin
in search of something
now gone.

Warmed by my hand,
warmed by the sun,
they stagger and fall into flight.
They scribble orbits
the air erases
and whine at last out of sight."

Tom Hansen

 

[midcan5]

'Kindness Of Strangers'

"Millions of people
I don’t know
Love and care for me.
I can’t turn my computer on
Without being reminded
Of their concerns.
A big shot in Nigeria
Picks me from over 200 million
Americans to share his
Uncle’s fortune and I win
The UK and European lotteries
On the same day.
There are a few details.
Many people are concerned
About the size of my penis.
My inadequacy seems to be
All over cyberspace. I get
The taunting:
“Did nature give you a big dick?”
Along with promises to
“Grow my man sausage by
Three to five inches.”
I only need to send them money.
Speaking of money, there are
A thousand plans to help
Me become a millionaire
Effortlessly, sitting in my pajamas
Drinking coffee or on the deck
Of my new tropical home
Sipping rum and fruit juice.
I don’t have to do a thing.
Sign a check and look in
The mail box once a day.
And I can meet a Russian bride
Or a Christian single,
Someone who will be happy to hook up
With a millionaire with a large member
With nothing to do but
Drink all day
And count his money."

Michael Shorb

 

[midcan5]

'On Reading A Poem By Phillis Levin'

"I laughed out loud this morning.
I was reading a poem called The Buzzard
and it took me through ice storms,
evacuation routes, terrible winds—
an ominous landscape.
But where is the buzzard, I wondered,
and how is he going to navigate
toward breakfast in this gale?
I got to the end where a neighbor’s shovel
scraping the walk made you reconsider
the meaning of your life,
and still no bird had shown up.
Not even a canary.
Did I miss something?
I turned back the page to read it again
and saw it was called The Blizzard.
How interesting life can be
when you mistake one thing for another."

Marilyn Robertson

 

[midcan5]

'In Memory Of His Memory'

"It was good for the alphabet, for the facts of arithmetic,
and the capitals of states. They froze into place somewhere
behind a piece of his mind. In speech class and debate
his mind’s eye reproduced whole streams of words
that had rattled out of the mouths of orators,
but not exactly by heart. That was for poems.

He could memorize any lyrics, no matter how bad,
with the ease of a quick study shaking backstage
and later could remember the names of the faces
of students arranged in rows of rows and call them
back to be recognized or counted absent.

He could think, even think and think and then rename
and remember what it was he should have done
when he hadn’t done anything in forgettable moments
like this one now. We are gathered here to pay
our last respects to an absentee, whose name
you can find somewhere in your programs. He had something
to do and apparently did it or we wouldn’t be here.

I’m speaking now to some memorable purpose
or other, and you, on yours, are sitting there."

David Wagoner

 

[midcan5]

'The American Dream'

"It would have to be something dark,
glazed as in a painting. A corridor
leading back to a forgotten neighborhood
where a ball is bounced from street
to street, and we hear from a far corner
the vendor’s cry in a city light.

It would have to be dusk, long after
sunlight has failed. A shrouded figure
at the prow of a ship, staring
and pointing—as if one might see
into that new land still unventured,
and beyond it, coal dust and gaslight,
vapors of an impenetrable distance.

Too many heroes, perhaps: a MacArthur
striding the Philippine shallows; a sports
celebrity smeared with a period color.
A voice in the air: a Roman orator
declaiming to an absentee Forum
the mood of their falling republic.

It would have to be night. No theater
lights, a dated performance shut down.
And in one’s fretful mind a ghost
in a rented toga pacing the stage,
reciting to himself a history:

“Here were the elected Elders, chaired
and bewigged. And placed before them
the Charter: they read it aloud,
pass it with reverence from hand to hand.

“Back there in the curtained shadows
the people’s chorus waited, shifting
and uncertain; but sometimes among them
a gesture, a murmur of unrest.
"And somewhere here, mislaid, almost
forgotten, the meaning of our play,
its theme and blunted purpose . . .""

John Haines

 

[midcan5]

'My Mother Goes to Vote'

"We walked five blocks
to the elementary school,
my mother’s high heels
crunching through playground gravel.
We entered through a side door.

Down the long corridor,
decorated with Halloween masks,
health department safety posters—
we followed the arrows
to the third grade classroom.

My mother stepped alone
into the booth, pulling the curtain behind her.
I could see only the backs of her
calves in crinkled nylons.

A partial vanishing, then reappearing
pocketbook crooked on her elbow,
our mayor’s button pinned to her lapel.
Even then I could see—to choose
is to follow what has already
been decided.

We marched back out
finding a new way back down streets
named for flowers
and accomplished men.
I said their names out loud, as we found

our way home, to the cramped house,
the devoted porch light left on,
the customary meatloaf.
I remember, in the classroom converted
into a voting place—
there were two mothers, conversing,
squeezed into the children’s desk chairs."

Judith Harris