Standing in front of a mirror, my mother tells me she is ugly
says the medication is making her fat. I laugh & walk her
back to the bed. My mother tells me she is ugly in the same voice
she used to say no woman could love you & I watch her
pull at her body & it is mine. My heavy breast.
My disappointing shape. She asks for a bowl of plain broth
& it becomes the cup of vinegar she would pour down my throat.
Everyday after school, I would kneel before her.
I would remove my clothes & ask her to mark the progress.
It’s important that I mention, I truly wanted to be beautiful
for her. In my dreams I am thin & if not thin, something better.
I tell my mother she is still beautiful & she laughs. The room fills
with flies. They gather in the shape of a small boy. They lead her
back to the mirror, but my reflection is still there.
[The grass is beneath my head] by F. S. Flint
The grass is beneath my head;
and I gaze
at the thronging stars
in the night.
They fall… they fall…
I am overwhelmed,
and afraid.
Each leaf of the aspen
is caressed by the wind,
and each is crying.
And the perfume
of invisible roses
deepens the anguish.
Let a strong mesh of roots
feed the crimson of roses
upon my heart;
and then fold over the hollow
where all the pain was.
Elegy by D. H. Lawrence
The sun immense and rosy
Must have sunk and become extinct
The night you closed your eyes for ever against me.
Grey days, and wan, dree dawnings
Since then, with fritter of flowers –
Day wearies me with its ostentation and fawnings.
Still, you left me the nights,
The great dark glittery window,
The bubble hemming this empty existence with lights.
Still in the vast hollow
Like a breath in a bubble spinning
Brushing the stars, goes my soul, that skims the bounds like a swallow?
I can look through
The film of the bubble night, to where you are.
Through the film I can almost touch you.
My Heart and I by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
I.
ENOUGH ! we’re tired, my heart and I.
We sit beside the headstone thus,
And wish that name were carved for us.
The moss reprints more tenderly
The hard types of the mason’s knife,
As heaven’s sweet life renews earth’s life
With which we’re tired, my heart and I.
II.
You see we’re tired, my heart and I.
We dealt with books, we trusted men,
And in our own blood drenched the pen,
As if such colours could not fly.
We walked too straight for fortune’s end,
We loved too true to keep a friend ;
At last we’re tired, my heart and I.
III.
How tired we feel, my heart and I !
We seem of no use in the world ;
Our fancies hang grey and uncurled
About men’s eyes indifferently ;
Our voice which thrilled you so, will let
You sleep; our tears are only wet :
What do we here, my heart and I ?
IV.
So tired, so tired, my heart and I !
It was not thus in that old time
When Ralph sat with me ‘neath the lime
To watch the sunset from the sky.
Dear love, you’re looking tired,’ he said;
I, smiling at him, shook my head :
‘Tis now we’re tired, my heart and I.
V.
So tired, so tired, my heart and I !
Though now none takes me on his arm
To fold me close and kiss me warm
Till each quick breath end in a sigh
Of happy languor. Now, alone,
We lean upon this graveyard stone,
Uncheered, unkissed, my heart and I.
VI.
Tired out we are, my heart and I.
Suppose the world brought diadems
To tempt us, crusted with loose gems
Of powers and pleasures ? Let it try.
We scarcely care to look at even
A pretty child, or God’s blue heaven,
We feel so tired, my heart and I.
VII.
Yet who complains ? My heart and I ?
In this abundant earth no doubt
Is little room for things worn out :
Disdain them, break them, throw them by
And if before the days grew rough
We once were loved, used, — well enough,
I think, we’ve fared, my heart and I.
Heart by Sally Bliumis-Dunn
She has painted her lips
hibiscus pink.
The upper lip dips
perfectly in the center
like a Valentine heart.
It makes sense to me—
that the lips, the open
ah of the mouth
is shaped more like a heart
than the actual human heart.
I remember the first time I saw it—
veined and shiny
as the ooze of a snail—
if this were what
we had been taught to draw
how differently we might have
learned to love.
So Much Happiness by Naomi Shihab Nye
It is difficult to know what to do with so much happiness.
With sadness there is something to rub against,
a wound to tend with lotion and cloth.
When the world falls in around you, you have pieces to pick up,
something to hold in your hands, like ticket stubs or change.
But happiness floats.
It doesn’t need you to hold it down.
It doesn’t need anything.
Happiness lands on the roof of the next house, singing,
and disappears when it wants to.
You are happy either way.
Even the fact that you once lived in a peaceful tree house
and now live over a quarry of noise and dust
cannot make you unhappy.
Everything has a life of its own,
it too could wake up filled with possibilities
of coffee cake and ripe peaches,
and love even the floor which needs to be swept,
the soiled linens and scratched records . . .
Since there is no place large enough
to contain so much happiness,
you shrug, you raise your hands, and it flows out of you
into everything you touch. You are not responsible.
You take no credit, as the night sky takes no credit
for the moon, but continues to hold it, and share it,
and in that way, be known.
cutting greens by Lucille Clifton
curling them around
i hold their bodies in obscene embrace
thinking of everything but kinship.
collards and kale
strain against each strange other
away from my kissmaking hand and
the iron bedpot.
the pot is black.
the cutting board is black,
my hand,
and just for a minute
the greens roll black under the knife,
and the kitchen twists dark on its spine
and i taste in my natural appetite
the bond of live things everywhere.
Self Portrait as so much potential by Chen Chen
Dreaming of one day being as fearless as a mango.
As friendly as a tomato. Merciless to chin & shirtfront.
Realizing I hate the word “sip.”
But that’s all I do.
I drink. So slowly.
& say I’m tasting it. When I’m just bad at taking in liquid.
I’m no mango or tomato. I’m a rusty yawn in a rumored year. I’m an arctic attic.
Come able & ampersand in the slippery polar clutter.
I am not the heterosexual neat freak my mother raised me to be.
I am a gay sipper, & my mother has placed what’s left of her hope on my brothers.
She wants them to gulp up the world, spit out solid degrees, responsible grandchildren ready to gobble.
They will be better than mangoes, my brothers.
Though I have trouble imagining what that could be.
Flying mangoes, perhaps. Flying mango-tomato hybrids. Beautiful sons.
One Hundred Love Sonnets: XVII by Pablo Neruda translated by Mark Eisner
I don’t love you as if you were a rose of salt, topaz,
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as one loves certain obscure things,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.
I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom but carries
the light of those flowers, hidden, within itself,
and thanks to your love the tight aroma that arose
from the earth lives dimly in my body.
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you directly without problems or pride:
I love you like this because I don’t know any other way to love,
except in this form in which I am not nor are you,
so close that your hand upon my chest is mine,
so close that your eyes close with my dreams.
Thanksgiving in the Anthropocene by Craig Santos Perez
Thank you, instant mashed potatoes, your bland taste
makes me feel like an average American. Thank you,
incarcerated Americans, for filling the labor shortage
and packing potatoes in Idaho. Thank you, canned
cranberry sauce, for your gelatinous curves. Thank you,
Ojibwe tribe in Wisconsin, your lake is now polluted
with phosphate-laden discharge from nearby cranberry
bogs. Thank you, crisp green beans, you are my excuse
for eating apple pie à la mode later. Thank you, indigenous
migrant workers, for picking the beans in Mexico’s farm belt,
may your children survive the season. Thank you, NAFTA,
for making life dirt cheap. Thank you, Butterball Turkey,
for the word, butterball, which I repeat all day butterball,
butterball, butterball because it helps me swallow the bones
of genocide. Thank you, dark meat, for being so juicy
(no offense, dry and fragile white meat, you matter too).
Thank you, 90 million factory-farmed turkeys, for giving
your lives during the holidays. Thank you, factory-farm
workers, for clipping turkey toes and beaks so they don’t scratch
and peck each other in overcrowded, dark sheds. Thank you,
genetic engineering and antibiotics, for accelerating
their growth. Thank you, stunning tank, for immobilizing
most of the turkeys hanging upside down by crippled legs.
Thank you, stainless steel knives, for your sharpened
edge and thirst for throat. Thank you, de-feathering
tank, for your scalding-hot water, for finally killing the last
still-conscious turkeys. Thank you, turkey tails, for feeding
Pacific Islanders all year round. Thank you, empire of
slaughter, for never wasting your fatty leftovers. Thank you,
tryptophan, for the promise of an afternoon nap;
I really need it. Thank you, store-bought stuffing,
for your ambiguously ethnic flavor, you remind me
that I’m not an average American. Thank you, gravy,
for being hot-off-the-boat and the most beautiful
brown. Thank you, dear readers, for joining me at the table
of this poem. Please join hands, bow your heads, and repeat
after me: “Let us bless the hands that harvest and butcher
our food, bless the hands that drive delivery trucks
and stock grocery shelves, bless the hands that cooked
and paid for this meal, bless the hands that bind
our hands and force-feed our endless mouth.
May we forgive each other and be forgiven.”
Compassion Camp 