Safe Sex
If he and she do not know each other, and feel confident
they will not meet again; if he avoids affectionate words;
if she has grown insensible skin under skin; if they desire
only the tribute of another’s cry; if they employ each other
as revenge on old lovers or families of entitlement and steel—
then there will be [...]
Archive for June, 2009
Poem of the day, June 28 2009
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Poem of the day, June 27 2009
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Making a Fist
For the first time, on the road north of Tampico,
I felt the life sliding out of me,
a drum in the desert, harder and harder to hear.
I was seven, I lay in the car
watching palm trees swirl a sickening pattern past the glass.
My stomach was a melon split wide inside my skin.
“How do you [...]
Poem of the day, June 26 2009
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Howl
For Carl Solomon
[...]
Poem of the day, June 25 2009
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Nelson, My Dog
Like the cat he scratches the flea camping in fur.
Unlike the cat he delights in water up to his ears.
He frolics. He catches a crooked stick –
On his back he naps with legs straight up in the air.
Nelson shudders awake. He responds to love
From head to tail. In happiness
His front legs march in [...]
Poem of the day, June 24 2009
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Messieur Degas Teaches Art and Science at Durfee Intermediate School — Detroit, 1942
He made a line on the blackboard,
one bold stroke from right to left
diagonally downward and stood back
to ask, looking as always at no one
in particular, “what have I done?”
From the back of the room Freddie
shouted, “you’ve broken a piece
of chalk.” Messieur Degas [...]
Quilts
Posted in Poem of the day on 23 June 2009 | Leave a Comment »
(for Sally Sellers)
Like a fading piece of cloth
I am a failure
No longer do I cover tables filled with food and laughter
My seams are frayed my hems falling my strength no longer able
To hold the hot and cold
I wish for those first days
When just woven I could keep water
From seeping through
Repelled stains with the tightness of [...]
Poem of the day, June 23 2009
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I’m Nobody! Who are you? (260)
I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there’s a pair of us?
Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know!
How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one’s name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!
………………………..
(Emily Dickinson, 1830-1886)
Poem of the day, June 22 2009
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Let Evening Come
Let the light of late afternoon
shine through chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.
Let the cricket take up chafing
as a woman takes up her needles
and her yarn. Let evening come.
Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned
in long grass. Let the stars appear
and the [...]
Poem of the day, June 21 2009
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The Violet
Down in a green and shady bed
A modest violet grew;
Its stalk was bent, it hung its head,
As if to hide from view.
And yet it was a lovely flower,
Its colors bright and fair;
It might have graced a rosy bower,
Instead of hiding there.
Yet there it was content to bloom,
In modest tints arrayed;
And there diffused a sweet [...]
Poem of the day, June 20 2009
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That Evening at Dinner
By the last few times we saw her it was clear
That things were different. When you tried to help her
Get out of the car or get from the car to the door
Or across the apartment house hall to the elevator
There was a new sense of heaviness
Or of inertia in the body. It [...]
