Red-throated hummingbirds spar above
the magnolia. Upwind, something grilled.
The dogs are still alive, yap at whitetail in
the cornfield. The rooster hasn’t chased us
down the driveway, so no one got fed up,
loaded the shotgun. Father’s heart doesn’t
yet float on a pillow of fat. The miscarriage
is years off. Summers, we bleach hair with
lemon, are warm as gold on skin, haven’t
glimpsed the shapes we’ll be hammered in.
Category: Poetry
a total stranger one black day by E. E. Cummings
a total stranger one black day
knocked living the hell out of me–
who found forgiveness hard because
my(as it happened)self he was
-but now that fiend and i are such
immortal friends the other’s each
Three Questions by Lang Leav
What was it like to love him? Asked Gratitude.
It was like being exhumed, I answered. And
brought to life in a flesh of brilliance.
What was it like to be loved in return? Asked Joy.
It was like being seen after a perpetual darkness, I
replied. To be heared after a lifetime of silence.
What was it like to lose him? Asked Grief.
There was a long pause before I responded:
It was like hearing every goodbye ever said to
me – said all at once.
Soul Mates by Lang Leav
I don’t know how you are so
familiar to me—or why it feels less
like I am getting to know you and
more as though I am remembering who
you are. How every smile, every
whisper brings me closer to the
impossible conclusion that I have
known you before, I have loved you
before—in another time, a different
place, some other existence
Words of old age by Marie Madeleine
I cannot sleep
at night.
When my tired eyes
have barely closed,
her youth appears to me in dreams.
A naked girl,
fair and slim,
wild lust bright in her eyes:
Her body blossoms like springtime,
her breasts bud like flowers.
She leans over me
with a high laugh,
I hear her laughter echo;
so sweet and so full of scorn,
thrilling all the hollow silence.
Oh, how wildly
she mocks me!
Her body blossoms so like springtime,
a young, young, young girl.
I cannot sleep at night, I cannot.
Life Is…. by Mother Teresa
Life is an opportunity, benefit from it.
Life is beauty, admire it.
Life is a dream, realize it.
Life is a challenge, meet it.
Life is a duty, complete it.
Life is a game, play it.
Life is a promise, fulfill it.
Life is sorrow, overcome it.
Life is a song, sing it.
Life is a struggle, accept it.
Life is a tragedy, confront it.
Life is an adventure, dare it.
Life is luck, make it.
Life is too precious, do not destroy it.
Life is life, fight for it.
Passive Voice by Laura Da’
I use a trick to teach students
how to avoid passive voice.
Circle the verbs.
Imagine inserting “by zombies”
after each one.
Have the words been claimed
by the flesh-hungry undead?
If so, passive voice.
I wonder if these
sixth graders will recollect,
on summer vacation,
as they stretch their legs
on the way home
from Yellowstone or Yosemite
and the byway’s historical marker
beckons them to the
site of an Indian village—
Where trouble was brewing.
Where, after further hostilities, the army was directed to enter.
Where the village was razed after the skirmish occurred.
Where most were women and children.
Riveted bramble of passive verbs
etched in wood—
stripped hands
breaking up from the dry ground
to pinch the meat
of their young red tongues.
Interpretation of a Poem by Frost by Thylias Moss
A young black girl stopped by the woods,
so young she knew only one man: Jim Crow
but she wasn’t allowed to call him Mister.
The woods were his and she respected his boundaries
even in the absence of fence.
Of course she delighted in the filling up
of his woods, she so accustomed to emptiness,
to being taken at face value.
This face, her face eternally the brown
of declining autumn, watches snow inter the grass,
cling to bark making it seem indecisive
about race preference, a fast-to-melt idealism.
With the grass covered, black and white are the only options,
polarity is the only reality; corners aren’t neutral
but are on edge.
She shakes off snow, defiance wasted
on the limited audience of horse.
The snow does not hypnotize her as it wants to,
as the blond sun does in making too many prefer daylight.
She has promises to keep,
the promise that she bear Jim no bastards,
the promise that she ride the horse only as long
as it is willing to accept riders,
the promise that she bear Jim no bastards,
the promise to her face that it not be mistaken as shadow,
and miles to go, more than the distance from Africa to Andover,
more than the distance from black to white
before she sleeps with Jim.
conflict with a god by María Luisa Arroyo
for Lucie Brock-Broido
I find it
in the cupboard
above the stove
it sits behind
the gluey
jug of syrup
it hides behind
the yogurt container
of congealed lard
the apple welded
to the saucer
resists my pull
the apple sticks with honey,
its slightly puckered skin
still intact
—a healthy shrunken head—
the sliced top tied
with a red satin ribbon
I untie,
lift to look
and see pennies
strong hands
jerk me off the chair
“¡Dejaste salir a los espíritus malos!”
pero, mami,
there are no such things
as bad spirits,
are there?
Affirmation by Donald Hall
To grow old is to lose everything.
Aging, everybody knows it.
Even when we are young,
we glimpse it sometimes, and nod our heads
when a grandfather dies.
Then we row for years on the midsummer
pond, ignorant and content. But a marriage,
that began without harm, scatters
into debris on the shore,
and a friend from school drops
cold on a rocky strand.
If a new love carries us
past middle age, our wife will die
at her strongest and most beautiful.
New women come and go. All go.
The pretty lover who announces
that she is temporary
is temporary. The bold woman,
middle-aged against our old age,
sinks under an anxiety she cannot withstand.
Another friend of decades estranges himself
in words that pollute thirty years.
Let us stifle under mud at the pond’s edge
and affirm that it is fitting
and delicious to lose everything.
Compassion Camp 