The Quiet World [Jeffrey McDaniel]

In an effort to get people to look
into each other's eyes more,
and also to appease the mutes,
the government has decided
to allot each person exactly a hundred
and sixty-seven words, per day.

When the phone rings, I put it to my ear
without saying hello. In the restaurant
I point at chicken noodle soup.
I am adjusting well to the new way.

Late at night, I call my long distance lover,
proudly say I only used fifty-nine today.
I saved the rest for you.

When she doesn't respond,
I know she's used up all her words,
so I slowly whisper I love you
thirty-two and a third times.
After that, we just sit on the line
and listen to each other breathe.

In absence of starlight [james fowler]

when small,
mysterious lights form
from around the lake
to break against
the many drops of rain
and stay the darkness
in
a glimmer cast
over an off-white beach's
cold and clinging sands
forgetting a
few hidden leaves
tangled in the breeze
scraping, scurrying lightly
to somewhere maybe
across the fragile shore
as cars curve
around still
stand and stand
of trees revealing
only heavy fog,
chance glances
of you and
of me

but you and your skirt,
when the city sky line hides
in a horizon of
indifferent clouds,
sit
and stay the darkness
f o r a w h i l e

VOWELS [christian bok]

loveless vessels

we vow
solo love

we see
love solve loss

else we see
love sow woe

selves we woo
we lose

losses we levee
we owe

we sell
loose vows

so we love
less well

so low
so level

wolves evolve

You Can't Get The Facts Until You Get The Fiction [Richard Jackson]

The fact is that the Death I put on in the morning is
the same Love I take off each night. The fact is
that my life slips out the back door just as I arrive.
Just now, just as I tell you this, while I am looking
for a little dignity under the open wound of the sky,
I am putting down the story of the two lovers killed
on a bridge outside Mostar. And the fact is love is
as extinct as those animals painted on cave walls
in Spain. The fact is, there is not a place on earth
that needs us. All our immortal themes are sitting
on the porch with woolen blankets over their knees.
But who wants to believe this? Instead, I am looking
for the right words as if they were hidden under
my doormat like keys. I would like to be able to report
that the 9 year old Rwandan girl did not hide under
her dead mother for hours. There are so many things
too horrible to say. And I would like to tell you
the eyes of the soldiers are sad, that despite all
this madness I can still kiss your soul, and yes,
you might say I was angry if it were not for the plain fact,
the indisputable fact, that I am filled with so much love,
so much irrational, foolish love, that I will not take
the pills or step off the bridge because of the single
fact of what you are about to say, some small act
of kindness from our wars, some simple gesture that fools me
into thinking we can still fall, in times like this, in love.

The Secret [Jeffrey McDaniel]

When you were sleeping on the sofa
I put my ear to your ear and listened
to the echo of your dreams.

That is the ocean I want to dive in,
merge with the bright fish,
plankton and pirate ships.

I walk up to people on the street that kind of look like you
and ask them the questions I would ask you.

Can we sit on a rooftop and watch stars dissolve into smoke
rising from a chimney?
Can I swing like Tarzan in the jungle of your breathing?

I don't wish I was in your arms,
I just wish I was pedaling a bicycle
toward your arms.

Dear Birds [Mark Yakich]

Much is made of the size of your heart.
Or the way some of you pull an earthworm
To death. Compare for example, this portrait
Of my husband, the artist, three cocktails in:

Fish in the morning, fellatio in the afternoon,
Philosophizing after dinner. Sucking on
A hazelnut in haze and hard rain, he pulls off
It all: pain, politeness, and unemployment.

I admit, it does please me to think of him
Mourning my death. Tissue by tissue, he'll paint
The orange groves and narrow bridle paths.
He'll arrange colors like music that coats the ear.

So is heartache really a mistake? The question is
Realer than any answer can be: One comes upon
The hills and then the pills. But not everyone,
My little sugar skulls, can eat their mistakes.

When Death Comes [Mary Oliver]

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measles-pox;

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth
tending as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When its over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it is over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

a friend recently returned this volume of poetry - i'm embarrassed to say that i had almost forgottten how much this poem speaks to me (along with so many of her poems).

again, sunday dinner: best start to any week.

also,
let's combine beautiful metalwork with woodgrain - can you say love?

Y Dios me hizó mujer [Giaconda Belli]

Y Dios me hizó mujer,
de pelo largo,
ojos,
nariz y boca de mujer.
Con curvas
y pliegues
y suaves hondonadas
y me cavó por dentro,
me hizó un taller de seres humanos.
Tejió delicádamente mis nervios
y balanceó con cuidado
el número de mis hormonas.
Compuso mi sangre
y me inyectó con ella
para que arrigara
todo mi cuerpo;
nacieron así las ideas,
los sueños,
el instinto.
Todo lo que creó suavamente
a martillazos de soplidos
y taladrazos de amor,
las mil y una cosas que me hacen mujer todos los días
por las que me levanto orgullosa
todas las mañanas
y bendigo mi sexo.

Sweetness [Stephen Dunn]

Just when it has seemed I couldn't bear
one more friend
waking with a tumor, one more maniac

with a perfect reason, often a sweetness
has come
and changed nothing in the world

except the way I stumbled through it,
for a while lost
in the ignorance of loving

someone or something, the world shrunk
to mouth-size,
hand-size, and never seeming small.

I acknowledge there is no sweetness
that doesn't leave a stain,
no sweetness that's ever sufficiently sweet ....

Tonight a friend called to say his lover
was killed in a car
he was driving. His voice was low

and guttural, he repeated what he needed
to repeat, and I repeated
the one or two words we have for such grief

until we were speaking only in tones.
Often a sweetness comes
as if on loan, stays just long enough

to make sense of what it means to be alive,
then returns to its dark
source. As for me, I don't care

where it's been, or what bitter road
it's traveled
to come so far, to taste so good.

October Arriving [Charles Simic]

I only have a measly ant
To think with today.
Others have pictures of saints,
Others have clouds in the sky.

The winter might be at the door,
For he’s all alone
And in a hurry to hide.
Nevertheless, unable to decide

He retraces his steps
Several times and finds himself
On a huge blank wall
That has no window.

Dark masses of trees
Cast their mazes before him,
Only to erase them next
With a sly, sea-surging sound.

after the rain talk [spencer silby]

After rain talk
the street is dry

In the act you smile
as obvious as dominance
crushing backbone
tracing jawline vertigo

So help me dear
I don't know why

(the view is rough
on standards lost
to mass appeal)

I thought I did but
power failed and
specialists left town
with nothing special

On the way back
I told a story
and caught you
staring into space

Absent where you
shouldn't be
Tired when it only
gets symbolic and
produces more of the same

I can't verbalize
what you don't allow
I can't answer what you
suffered long ago

I was thinking
you look good
in a raincoat made of
fabric that's invisible

I was thinking
the weather is bad
with no meaning equal to
a cloud we can't
escape from

I was thinking
words are falling and
we're lucky to survive