ursamajor | Reading

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Meanwhile the Watermelon Seed
Idra Novey

On Tuesday, new prisoners arrive.

In late fall, when leaves clog the gutters and their last colors go out like stars, new prisoners arrive.

As another plane pitches upward and a red finch drops for landing.

As fleets of schoolchildren go forth in pursuit of green candy.

At three a.m., when dogs shift position on the bed and stir their owners who look out and find it’s snowing.

In the hour when I call my sister and she empties the dishwasher, new prisoners arrive.

In the hour when drivers click on their headlights and flowers close and fireflies get trapped in jars.

On the evening when I see no one, read nothing, and somehow the hours are gone.

In the sweltering city, where a friend brings a watermelon and we spit its seeds onto the roof of the museum next door and the world seems repairable and temporarily right, new prisoners line up outside a pair of doors, enter one at a time.

–

(Check it out: You can now browse a list of every poet ever featured here, linked to their poems. Find old favs and new! Ignore the rumors, I certainly didn’t spend far too long in a satisfying state of hyperfocus making it.)

Today in:

2024: Kinder Than Man, Althea Davis
2023: Dearest,, Jean Valentine
2022: Birth, Louise Erdrich
2021: Cicada, Hosho McCreesh
2020: Future Memories, Mario Meléndez
2019: Little Girl, My Stringbean, My Lovely Woman, Anne Sexton
2018: First Night, D. Nurkse
2017: Einstein’s Happiest Moment, Richard M. Berlin
2016: Yiddishland, Erika Meitner
2015: July, Kazim Ali
2014: This Morning in a Morning Voice, Todd Boss
2013: Paralysis, Peter Boyle
2012: from Mayakovsky, Frank O’Hara
2011: Northern Pike, James Wright
2010: Humpbacks, Mary Oliver
2009: Alone, Jack Gilbert
2008: From Blossoms, Li-Young Lee
2007: For Grace, After A Party, Frank O’Hara
2006: Wild Geese, Mary Oliver
2005: A Brief for the Defense, Jack Gilbert

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An Improvement in Stairs
Mairead Small Staid

Through the oculus of the bus terminal at Boston’s South Station, light falls
for a hundred feet. A shock, a god, a pillar of light, like that of the Pantheon

if the Pantheon had a McDonald’s, a Dunkin’ Donuts, surly young workers
at the Greyhound desk, & an escalator rising to its height—

just like it, that light. A patent for an early escalator called it an improvement
in stairs. An improvement, surely, how I’m standing still & still, somehow,

going up & up & up. My favorite patents are the ones Houdini sought for tricks
never performed: a block of ice he would leave whole, a box within a water-filled box

he would escape from dry. (I should mention: at least one thing in this poem is a lie.)
I can disappear, too: from one place, from another. There’s nothing quite as nice

as leaving, when you’re in the mood. There’s nothing quite as nice as coming back.
Years ago, I stood beneath the Pantheon & thought how beautiful, how sublime,

how like the bus terminal at South Station, if it had a Dunkin’ Donuts.
During the war, Houdini offered to teach soldiers headed to the front

how to escape torpedoed vessels, German handcuffs. As a kid
in Appleton, Wisconsin, he’d dreamed of playing baseball—

the stage of the stadium, the long fly making its escape.
The way there is a place in the game called home

& the goal is to get there
again & again.

–

Also by Mairead Small Staid (hi! <3):
+ In Defense of a Long Engagement
+ Demeter, Midwinter

More poems about Boston and baseball.

Today in:
2024: April Morning, Jonathan Wells
2023: What I Did Wrong, Marie Howe
2022: This Morning, Jay Wright
2021: Kiss of the Sun, Mary Ruefle
2020: Teaching English from an Old Composition Book, Gary Soto
2019: Easter, Jill Alexander Essbaum
2018: Annunciation, Marie Howe
2017: The Promise, Marie Howe
2016: In the Woods, Kathryn Simmonds
2015: Heat, Jane Hirshfield
2014: What Remains, Ellery Akers
2013: 30th Birthday, Alice Notley
2012: Untitled [I closed the book and changed my life], Bruce Smith
2011: The Forties, Franz Wright
2010: Prayer of the Backhanded, Jericho Brown
2009: A Primer, Bob Hicok
2008: Because You Asked about the Line between Prose and Poetry, Howard Nemerov
2007: Open Letter to the Muse, Kristy Bowen
2006: A Sad Child, Margaret Atwood
2005: The Crunch, Charles Bukowski

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Poem in the Shape of the Poet Beating Henry Kissinger to Death with Their Bare Hands
Felix Lecocq

[Text is in the shape of a standing person raising a fist in order to punch someone who is lying on the ground holding up their hands in defense.] The text reads: hooking up with strange men on edibles is fucking awesome until you're lying in his bed afterward and you can't shut up about how much you want to hit henry kissinger over and over until he stops breathing. like, did you know that agent orange is apparently 100,000 times more potent than thalidomide at causing birth defects and to this day vietnamese infants have an elevated incidence of congenital disorders, including heart abnormalities, and like you're not saying that henry kissinger is the reason you were born with a broken heart but wouldn't it be so fucked up if he was and wouldn't you then have every right to press your thumbs into his windpipe until he chokes to death and your hookup is like yeah you're right that would be fucked up i'm sorry but what did you want to get i'm placing the order now and you say two spicy potato soft tacos please and you let him pay for it because he's white and you're too stoned to navigate venmo right now and it's only like $2 but by the time the food arrives you've fallen asleep anyway, hand over your heart monitor, dreaming of kissinger's blood dribbling out his mouth like hot sauce

–

(Today’s poem is shared as an image, and includes a transcription of the poem as alt text. If you’re unable to see it, you can also find it transcribed below.)

US-funded projects addressing the ongoing impact of Agent Orange in Viet Nam (toxin cleanup, support for those with congenital disorders like the poet’s) were disrupted by the abrupt dismantling of US foreign aid programming this year. Along with many others.

Today in:
2024: blessing the boats, Lucille Clifton
2023: Wound is the Origin of Wonder, Maya C. Popa
2022: When the Fox Comes to the City, Patricia Fargnoli
2021: aubade for the whole hood, Nate Marshall
2020: Keeping Things Whole, Mark Strand
2019: New Year’s Day, Kim Addonizio
2018: I Know You Think I’ve Forgotten, Jane Hirshfield
2017: The Writer, Richard Wilbur
2016: from Seven Skins, Adrienne Rich
2015: I Ask Percy How I Should Live My Life, Mary Oliver
2014: In the Park, Maxine Kumin
2013: To A Sad Daughter, Michael Ondaatje
2012: My Dead Friends, Marie Howe
2011: Staying After, Linda Gregg
2010: Dream Song 14, John Berryman
2009: What We Kept, Megan Alpert
2008: Please Take Back the Sparrows, Suzanne Buffam
2007: It Happens Like This, James Tate
2006: Tantalus in May, Reginald Shepherd
2005: September Song, Geoffrey Hill

A transcript of the poem text follows:

Text is in the shape of a standing person raising a fist in order to punch someone who is lying on the ground holding up their hands in defense. It reads:

hooking up with strange men on edibles is fucking awesome until you’re lying in his bed afterward and you can’t shut up about how much you want to hit henry kissinger over and over until he stops breathing. like, did you know that agent orange is apparently 100,000 times more potent than thalidomide at causing birth defects and to this day vietnamese infants have an elevated incidence of congenital disorders, including heart abnormalities, and like you’re not saying that henry kissinger is the reason you were born with a broken heart but wouldn’t it be so fucked up if he was and wouldn’t you then have every right to press your thumbs into his windpipe until he chokes to death and your hookup is like yeah you’re right that would be fucked up i’m sorry but what did you want to get i’m placing the order now and you say two spicy potato soft tacos please and you let him pay for it because he’s white and you’re too stoned to navigate venmo right now and it’s only like $2 but by the time the food arrives you’ve fallen asleep anyway, hand over your heart monitor, dreaming of kissinger’s blood dribbling out his mouth like hot sauce

https://april-is.tumblr.com/post/781373034087972864

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spring
Safia Elhillo

After Louise Glück

it’s late now, it’s early, no way
to know which season it is
of the total years of my life,
weren’t we only just nineteen,
tonya & i, wasn’t she only just
alive, long-limbed & cross-legged
on my dorm room floor,
wasn’t it springtime of a year
so unlike this one, thirteen
years past, cool nights in line
outside the nuyorican hoping
to make it on the list, wasn’t it
a friday night like this one
& the only people i wanted to love
were poets, earrings swaying
against their necks, dancing
in the dark of the room where we
all knew each other’s secrets, weren’t
we all just at that party, wasn’t i only
just eighteen, pointed northward
on a chinatown bus to that city,
to watch ai elo onstage at the apollo,
wasn’t she only just alive, smoking
with camonghne, asking me my favorite
song, cackling on the apartment floor,
on the air mattress we used as a couch,
how is it that it was long ago, how is it
i am on the other side of it, long ago, how
did i leave that city, that time when we
were all together, everyone alive,
wasn’t the dream to be a poet, wasn’t
the plan to live forever, our powers
newly acquired, newly in love
with what we could do, didn’t we all
belong to each other, to that work,
going after to the pizza shop
to recite what we’d memorized,
weren’t we all just there, wasn’t it warm
outside, wasn’t the road long & clear,
isn’t it early still, isn’t it late, & why
am i still here, did i survive or was i left
behind, & what season is it that we are
no longer together & some of us have gone?

–

Hear the author read this .

Also by Safia Elhillo:
+ For My Friends, in Reply to a Question
+ vocabulary

Today in:

2024: Dear Proofreader, David Hernandez
2023: The Socks, Jane Kenyon
2022: Ode to Friendship, Noor Hindi
2021: Heartbeats, Melvin Dixon
2020: Sunday Night, Raymond Carver
2019: Virginia Street, Jennifer Hayashida
2018: What Seems Like Joy, Kaveh Akbar
2017: Aunties, Kevin Young
2016: For the Union Dead, Robert Lowell
2015: The Cambridge Afternoon Was Gray, Alicia Ostriker
2014: Spirit of the Bat, Peggy Shumaker
2013: Thanks, W. S. Merwin
2012: Sweetness, Stephen Dunn
2011: I Remember, Anne Sexton
2010: Letter, Franz Wright
2009: 23rd Street Runs Into Heaven, Kenneth Patchen
2008: HOUSEHOLD ACTIVITY NO. 26, J.R. Quackenbush
2007: from Briggflatts, Basil Bunting
2006: The Chores, Frannie Lindsay
2005: Direct Address, Joan Larkin

https://april-is.tumblr.com/post/781293065531998208

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I want a president
Zoe Leonard

I want a dyke for president. I want a person with aids for president and I want a fag for vice president and I want someone with no health insurance and I want someone who grew up in a place where the earth is so saturated with toxic waste that they didn’t have a choice about getting leukemia. I want a president that had an abortion at sixteen and I want a candidate who isn’t the lesser of two evils and I want a president who lost their last lover to aids, who still sees that in their eyes every time they lay down to rest, who held their lover in their arms and knew they were dying. I want a president with no airconditioning, a president who has stood on line at the clinic, at the dmv, at the welfare office and has been unemployed and layed off and sexually harassed and gaybashed and deported. I want someone who has spent the night in the tombs and had a cross burned on their lawn and survived rape. I want someone who has been in love and been hurt, who respects sex, who has made mistakes and learned from them. I want a Black woman for president. I want someone with bad teeth ~~and an attitude~~, someone who has eaten ~~that nasty~~ hospital food, someone who crossdresses and has done drugs and been in therapy. I want someone who has committed civil disobedience. And I want to know why this isn’t possible. I want to know why we started learning somewhere down the line that a president is always a clown: always a john and never a hooker. Always a boss and never a worker, always a liar, always a thief and never caught.

Primarily a visual artist, Zoe Leonard wrote this in the early 1990s. You can see the original here and a cool out-of-print book version here.

More prose poems.

Today in:

2024: Fourteen, Marie Howe
2023: I wanted to be surprised., Jane Hirshfield
2022: Short Talk on Waterproofing, Anne Carson
2021: Cindy Comes To Hear Me Read, Jill McDonough
2020: from This Magic Moment, David Kirby
2019: Poem In Which I Become Wolverine, José Olivarez
2018: In the Beginning God Said Light, Mary Szybist
2017: from Contradictions: Tracking Poems, Adrienne Rich
2016: I Said Yes but I Meant No, Dean Young
2015: Cardinal Cardinal, Stephen Dunn
2014: Ezra Pound’s Proposition, Robert Hass
2013: Wistful sounds like a brand of air freshener, Bob Hicok
2012: Not Getting Closer, Jack Gilbert
2011: Written in Pencil in the Sealed Railway-Car, Dan Pagis
2010: The Moss of His Skin, Anne Sexton
2009: It’s This Way, Nazim Hikmet
2008: The Problem With Skin, Aimee Nezhukumatathil
2007: Serenade, Terrance Hayes
2006: The Old Liberators, Robert Hedin
2005: Morning Song, Sylvia Plath

https://april-is.tumblr.com/post/781201019730378752

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I Have a Time Machine
Brenda Shaughnessy

But unfortunately it can only travel into the future
at a rate of one second per second,

which seems slow to the physicists and to the grant
committees and even to me.

But I manage to get there, time after time, to the next
moment and to the next.

Thing is, I can’t turn it off. I keep zipping ahead—
well not zipping—And if I try

to get out of this time machine, open the latch,
I’ll fall into space, unconscious,

then desiccated! And I’m pretty sure I’m afraid of that.
So I stay inside.

There’s a window, though. It shows the past.
It’s like a television or fish tank.

But it’s never live; it’s always over. The fish swim
in backward circles.

Sometimes it’s like a rearview mirror, another chance
to see what I’m leaving behind,

and sometimes like blackout, all that time
wasted sleeping.

Myself age eight, whole head burnt with embarrassment
at having lost a library book.

Myself lurking in a candled corner expecting
to be found charming.

Me holding a rose though I want to put it down
so I can smoke.

Me exploding at my mother who explodes at me
because the explosion

of some dark star all the way back struck hard
at mother’s mother’s mother.

I turn away from the window, anticipating a blow.
I thought I’d find myself

an old woman by now, traveling so light in time.
But I haven’t gotten far at all.

Strange not to be able to pick up the pace as I’d like;
the past is so horribly fast.

–

Also:
+ When I Say That Loving Me Is Kind Of Like Being A Chicago Bulls Fan, Hanif Abdurraqib
+ Kul, Fatimah Asghar

Today in:

2024: You Belong to the World, Carrie Fountain
2023: Mammogram Call Back with Ultra Sound, Ellen Bass
2022: Catastrophe Is Next to Godliness, Franny Choi
2021: Weather, Claudia Rankine
2020: The Understudy, Bridget Lowe
2019: Against Dying, Kaveh Akbar
2018: Close Out Sale, Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz
2017: Things That Have Changed Since You Died, Laura Kasischke
2016: Percy, Waiting for Ricky, Mary Oliver
2015: My Heart, Kim Addonizio
2014: My Skeleton, Jane Hirshfield
2013: Catch a Body, Oliver Bendorf
2012: No, Mark Doty
2011: from Narrative: Ali, Elizabeth Alexander
2010: Baseball Canto, Lawrence Ferlinghetti
2009: Nothing but winter in my cup, Alice George
2008: Poppies in October, Sylvia Plath
2007: I Imagine The Gods, Jack Gilbert
2006: An Offer Received In This Morning’s Mail, Amy Gerstler
2005: The Last Poem In The World, Hayden Carruth

https://april-is.tumblr.com/post/781119963842985984

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As a Human Being
Jericho Brown

There is the happiness you have
And the happiness you deserve.
They sit apart from one another
The way you and your mother
Sat on opposite ends of the sofa
After an ambulance came to take
Your father away. Some good
Doctor will stitch him up, and
Soon an aunt will arrive to drive
Your mother to the hospital
Where she will settle next to him
Forever, as promised. She holds
The arm of her seat as if she could
Fall, as if it is the only sturdy thing,
And it is since you’ve done what
You always wanted. You fought
Your father and won, marred him.
He’ll have a scar he can see all
Because of you. And your mother,
The only woman you ever cried for,
Must tend to it as a bride tends
To her vows, forsaking all others
No matter how sore the injury.
No matter how sore the injury
Has left you, you sit understanding
Yourself as a human being finally
Free now that nobody’s got to love you.

–

Also by Jericho Brown:
+ Say Thank You Say I’m Sorry
+ Track 5: Summertime - as performed by Janis Joplin
+ Prayer of the Backhanded

Today in:

2024: Love Comes Quietly, Robert Creeley
2023: After Touching You, I Think of Narcissus Drowning, Leila Chatti
2022: Will You?, Carrie Fountain
2021: After Graduate School, Valencia Robin
2020: in lieu of a poem, i’d like to say, Danez Smith
2019: from The Invention of Streetlights
2018: Returning, Tami Haaland
2017: An Ordinary Composure, James L. White
2016: Verge, Mark Doty
2015: Reasons to Survive November, Tony Hoagland
2014: Unhappy Hour, Richard Siken
2013: Just Once, Anne Sexton
2012: Talk, Noelle Kocot
2011: Why They Went, Elizabeth Bradfield
2010: Anxiety, Frank O’Hara
2009: The Continuous Life, Mark Strand
2008: An old story, Bob Hicok
2007: you can’t be a star in the sky without holy fire, Frank X. Gaspar
2006: For the Sisters of the Hotel Dieu, A.M. Klein
2005: Other Lives And Dimensions And Finally A Love Poem, Bob Hicok

https://april-is.tumblr.com/post/781025664283377664

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Tree
Jane Hirshfield

It is foolish
to let a young redwood
grow next to a house.

Even in this
one lifetime,
you will have to choose.

That great calm being,
this clutter of soup pots and books—

Already the first branch-tips brush at the window.
Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life.

–

Also by Jane Hirshfield:
+ My Life Was the Size of My Life
+ Day Beginning with Seeing the International Space Station And a Full Moon Over the Gulf of Mexico and All its Invisible Fishes
+ A Small-Sized Mystery

Today in:

2024: Abecedarian Requiring Further Examination of Anglikan Seraphym Subjugation of a Wild Indian Rezervation, Natalie Diaz
2023: Dutch Elm Disease, Valencia Robin
2022: More Bang for Your Buck Running Scared, Brennan Bestwick
2021: Rain, Peter Everwine
2020: Things to Do in the Belly of the Whale, Dan Albergotti
2019: Prayer, Galway Kinnell
2018: Egg, C.G. Hanzlicek
2017: Well Water, Randall Jarrell
2016: For Desire, Kim Addonizio
2015: The Coming of Light, Mark Strand
2014: Flying Low, Stephen Dunn
2013: The Envoy, Jane Hirshfield
2012: Red Wand, Sandra Simonds
2011: Trying to Raise the Dead, Dorianne Laux
2010: Asking for Directions, Linda Gregg
2009: A Blessing, James Wright
2008: New York, New York, David Berman
2007: Waste Land Limericks, Wendy Cope
2006: There Are Two Worlds, Larry Levis
2005: America, Allen Ginsberg

https://april-is.tumblr.com/post/780949511760658432

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Sorrows
Lucille Clifton

who would believe them winged
who would believe they could be

beautiful who would believe
they could fall so in love with mortals

that they would attach themselves
as scars attach and ride the skin

sometimes we hear them in our dreams
rattling their skulls clicking their bony fingers

envying our crackling hair
our spice filled flesh

they have heard me beseeching
as I whispered into my own

cupped hands enough not me again
enough but who can distinguish

one human voice
amid such choruses of desire

More Lucille Clifton:
blessing the boats | Jackie Robinson | wishes for sons

Today in:

2024: The Wordsworth Effect, Joyce Sutphen
2023: Spring Poem, Colleen O’Connor
2022: Red, Mary Ruefle
2021: Bathing, Allison Seay
2020: A Small Moment, Cornelius Eady
2019: You Meet Someone and Later You Meet Their Dancing and You Have to Start Again, David Welch
2018: Henry Clay’s Mouth, Thomas Lux
2017: When Your Small Form Tumbled into Me, Tracy K. Smith
2016: Eve Recollecting the Garden, Grace Bauer
2015: from I Love A Broad Margin To My Life, Maxine Hong Kingston
2014: Gift, Czeslaw Milosz
2013: This Be The Verse, Philip Larkin
2012: We Did Not Make Ourselves, Michael Dickman
2011: Happiness (3), Jean Valentine
2010: When I Think, Jeanne Marie Beaumont
2009: The Poem, Franz Wright
2008: Morning Poem, Robin Becker
2007: Supple Cord, Naomi Shihab Nye
2006: Wish For a Young Wife, Theodore Roethke
2005: The Benjamin Franklin of Monogamy, Jeffrey McDaniel

https://april-is.tumblr.com/post/780843848460091393

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Book of Zippers
Luci Arbus-Scandiffio

When I was a child
I was always touching something
the crease in the wall
the crease in the man’s face
a button to the umbrella
which I broke by pressing
thirty times in a single day.
Allegedly, I was unintelligible—
like a foghorn I bleated
and filled my chest with air.
I lived like a raisin
stuck in someone else’s pocket—
was happiest in winter
til my birthmark turned red.
Blood red! And slightly blue
on the edge. In the children’s wing
they froze it off—I slept like a number
between 1 and 10. The girl next to me
was getting her ulna reset.
She was hidden by geraniums
which were planted between our beds.
I assumed “reset” was a button
the nurse would press—
the sound was like a scissor
slicing open a vinyl chair.
Then I felt my own arm unzipping,
the butterfly escaping,
a hundred white stars falling out.

More dispatches from childhood:
+ Paralysis, Peter Boyle
+ from Seven Skins, Adrienne Rich
+ Late Confession, Gary Soto

Today in:

2024: Broken Periodic, Maya C. Popa
2023: Speech to the Young: Speech to the Progress-Toward (Among them Nora and Henry III), Gwendolyn Brooks
2022: We Lived Happily During the War, Ilya Kaminsky
2021: Hurry, Marie Howe
2020: Oh, Robert Creeley
2019: It Was Summer Now and the Colored People Came Out Into the Sunshine, Morgan Parker
2018: In Two Seconds, Mark Doty
2017: Aubade, Louis MacNeice
2016: Before, Ada Limón
2015: Sign for My Father, Who Stressed the Bunt, David Bottoms
2014: Ullapool Bike Ride, Chris Powici
2013: Clothespins, Stuart Dybek
2012: Ghost Story, Matthew Dickman
2011: Graves We Filled Before the Fire, Gabrielle Calvocoressi
2010: On Being Asked To Write A Poem Against The War In Vietnam, Hayden Carruth
2009: The Bear-Boy of Lithuania, Amy Gerstler
2008: Today’s News, David Tucker
2007: All There is to Know About Adolph Eichmann, Leonard Cohen
2006: Gamin, Frank O’Hara
2005: [this is what you love: more people. you remember], D.A. Powell

https://april-is.tumblr.com/post/780770307607838721

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Instead of Depression
Andrea Gibson

try calling it hibernation.
Imagine the darkness is a cave
in which you will be nurtured
by doing absolutely nothing.
Hibernating animals don’t even dream.
It’s okay if you can’t imagine
Spring. Sleep through the alarm
of the world. Name your hopelessness
a quiet hollow, a place you go
to heal, a den you dug,
Sweetheart, instead
of a grave.

Also:
+ Bathing, Allison Seay
+ To Myself, Franz Wright

Today in:

2024: A Small Psalm, Catherine Wing
2023: How to Do Absolutely Nothing, Barbara Kingsolver
2022: Miss you. Would like to take a walk with you., Gabrielle Calvocoressi
2021: I saw Emmett Till this week at the grocery store, Eve L. Ewing
2020: Day Beginning with Seeing the International Space Station And a Full Moon Over the Gulf of Mexico and All its Invisible Fishes, Jane Hirshfield
2019: Flores Woman, Tracy K. Smith
2018: The Universe as Primal Scream, Tracy K. Smith
2017: Soul, David Ferry
2016: Turkeys, Galway Kinnell
2015: He Said Turn Here, Dean Young
2014: I Don’t Miss It, Tracy K. Smith
2013: Hotel Orpheus, Jason Myers
2012: Emily Dickinson’s To-Do List, Andrea Carlisle
2011: Now That I Am in Madrid and Can Think, Frank O’Hara
2010: The Impossible Marriage, Donald Hall
2009: The Rider, Naomi Shihab Nye
2008: from Homage to Mistress Bradstreet, John Berryman
2007: This Heavy Craft, P.K. Page
2006: Late Ripeness, Czeslaw Milosz
2005: A Martian Sends A Postcard Home, Craig Raine

https://april-is.tumblr.com/post/780679104284459008

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Conversation with Mary
Gabrielle Bates

What language did the angel speak

My most private language

Was the angel fluent

Nuances were lost

Where did the angel come from

The ground

Did you consider yourself a woman or a child before this

Yes

And after

Yes

What was the tenor of your joy then

Choiceless

Did it hurt

Forever

Did you feel rewarded

I hallelujah I assented

How did it feel

Cold blood on the cock of God

Whose blood

My blood

–

Also: Annunciation, Marie Howe

Today in:

2024: The Coffin Maker Speaks, Lisa Suhair Majaj
2023: Running Orders, Lena Khalaf Tuffaha
2022: April, Alex Dimitrov
2021: Dust, Dorianne Laux
2020: VI. Wisdom: The Voice of God, Mary Karr
2019: What I Didn’t Know Before, Ada Limón
2018: History, Jennifer Michael Hecht
2017: from Correspondences, Anne Michaels
2016: Mesilla, Carrie Fountain
2015: Dolores Park, Keetje Kuipers
2014: Finally April and the Birds Are Falling Out of the Air with Joy, Anne Carson
2013: The Flames, Kate Llewellyn
2012: To See My Mother, Sharon Olds
2011: Across a Great Wilderness without You, Keetje Kuipers
2010: Poem About Morning, William Meredith
2009: Death, The Last Visit, Marie Howe
2008: Animals, Frank O’Hara
2007: Johnny Cash in the Afterlife, Bronwen Densmore
2006: Anne Hathaway, Carol Ann Duffy
2005: Sleep Positions, Lola Haskins

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Tin Bucket
Jenny George

The world is not simple.
Anyone will tell you.
But have you ever washed a person’s hair
over a tin bucket,
gently twisting the rope of it
to wring the water out?
At the end of everything,
dancers just use air as their material.
A voice keeps singing even
without an instrument.
You make your fingers into a comb.

Also:
+ After Work, Richard Jones
+ A Metaphor, J. Estanislao Lopez

Today in:

2024: The Winter Palace, Philip Larkin
2023: On Keeping Pluto a Planet, Greg Beatty
2022: The Terrible Beauty of the Reserve, Billy-Ray Belcourt
2021: Puerto Rico Goes Dark, Juan J. Morales
2020: Winter Psalm, Richard Hoffman
2019: King Kreations, Angel Nafis
2018: Letter to Larry Levis, Matthew Olzmann
2017: Only she who has breast-fed, Vera Pavlova
2016: First Love, Jan Owen
2015: At Navajo Monument Valley Tribal School, Sherman Alexie
2014: Boogaloo, Kevin Young
2013: The Fist, Derek Walcott
2012: Turning, W.S. Merwin
2011: Consolation for Tamar, A.E. Stallings
2010: Frida Kahlo to Marty McConnell, Marty McConnell
2009: Bike Ride with Older Boys, Laura Kasischke
2008: Let’s Move All Things (September), Denver Butson
2007: The Day Flies Off Without Me, John Stammers
2006: A Supermarket in California, Allen Ginsberg
2005: Tortures, Wisława Szymborska

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kami/kaze : a correspondence
Ng Yi-Sheng

An astronaut and a samurai fall in love.
        They write each other
                haiku and billet-doux
        via time capsule.

SO MUCH HAS HAPPENED he says THEY HAVE TAKEN PHOTOGRAPHS
OF OUR FOOTPRINTS IN THE DUST
        have you seen the moon she has stopped at my window
        to sniff the cherry blossom
WE MUST KEEP THE RUSSIANS AT BAY
        the shogun would have us ride against the ronin
WE MUST BEAT THEM
        AT THIS MAD GAME THEY FIRST BEGAN
i don’t know
        WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO?
do you hear the taiko drums
        HOLD ON LET ME RAISE THE ANTENNA
what is antenna?
        if you listen hard you will hear my breath
LIKE AN ARECIBO TRANSMISSION like divine wind
        INSIDE THERE IS OXYGEN
yes beyond there are knives and chaos
        and under our armor
I WILL BELIEVE we have the same skin.