poemplace-blog

[poemplace-blog]

"Song" By Adrienne Rich

You're wondering if I'm lonely: OK then, yes, I'm lonely as a plane rides lonely and level on its radio beam, aiming across the Rockies for the blue-strung aisles of an airfield on the ocean. You want to ask, am I lonely? Well, of course, lonely as a woman driving across country day after day, leaving behind mile after mile little towns she might have stopped and lived and died in, lonely If I'm lonely it must be the loneliness of waking first, of breathing dawns' first cold breath on the city of being the one awake in a house wrapped in sleep If I'm lonely it's with the rowboat ice-fast on the shore in the last red light of the year that knows what it is, that knows it's neither ice nor mud nor winter light but wood, with a gift for burning

#Song #Adrienne Rich #poetry

[poemplace-blog]

"This Hour and What Is Dead" By Li-Young Lee

Tonight my brother, in heavy boots, is walking through bare rooms over my head, opening and closing doors. What could he be looking for in an empty house? What could he possibly need there in heaven? Does he remember his earth, his birthplace set to torches? His love for me feels like spilled water running back to its vessel. At this hour, what is dead is restless and what is living is burning. Someone tell him he should sleep now. My father keeps a light on by our bed and readies for our journey. He mends ten holes in the knees of five pairs of boy's pants. His love for me is like his sewing: various colors and too much thread, the stitching uneven. But the needle pierces clean through with each stroke of his hand. At this hour, what is dead is worried and what is living is fugitive. Someone tell him he should sleep now. God, that old furnace, keeps talking with his mouth of teeth, a beard stained at feasts, and his breath of gasoline, airplane, human ash. His love for me feels like fire, feels like doves, feels like river-water. At this hour, what is dead is helpless, kind and helpless. While the Lord lives. Someone tell the Lord the leave me alone. I've had enough of his love that feels like burning and flight and running away.

#This Hour and What Is Dead #poetry #Li-Young Lee

[poemplace-blog]

"Answer" By Carol Duffy

If you were made of stone, your kiss a fossil sealed up in your lips, your eyes a sightless marble to my touch, your grey hands pooling raindrops for the birds, your long legs cold as rivers locked in ice, if you were stone, if you were made of stone, yes, yes. If you were made of fire, your head a wild Medusa hissing flame, your tongue a red-hot poker in your throat, your heart a small coal glowing in your chest, your fingers burning pungent brands on flesh, if you were fire, if you were made of fire, yes, yes. If you were made of water, your voice a roaring, foaming waterfall, your arms a whirlpool spinning me around, your breast a deep, dark lake nursing the drowned, your mouth an ocean, waves torn from your breath, if you were water, if you were made of water, yes, yes. If you were made of air, your face empty and infinite as sky, your words a wind with litter for its nouns, your movements sudden gusts among the clouds, your body only breeze against my dress, if you were air, if you were made of air, yes, yes. If you were made of air, if you were air, if you were made of water, if you were water, if you were made of fire, if you were fire, if you were made of stone, if you were stone, or if you were none of these, but really death, the answer is yes, yes.

#Carol Duffy #Answer #poetry

[poemplace-blog]

"Keeping Things Whole" By Mark Strand

In a field I am the absence of field. This is always the case. Wherever I am I am what is missing. When I walk I part the air and always the air moves in to fill the spaces where my body's been. We all have reasons for moving. I move to keep things whole.

#Keeping Things Whole #Mark Strand #poetry

[poemplace-blog]

"Cardinal Rules" By Nancy Paddock

nourish yourself close to the ground but when you fly redden the sky with bright wings stay close to the cover of dark branches a red alert to danger but not afraid feed peacefully with small chickadees and sparrows content with crumbs the world provides enough when the jay comes hungry and screaming vanish like a flame extinguished in the wind and in the cold in the days of iron frost do not complain but stuff your belly with the seeds of your own burning life and fluff up your feathers to hold in heat even with your thin feet deep in snow sing

#Nancy Paddock #Cardinal Rules #poetry

[poemplace-blog]

"Burning the Water Hyacinth" By Audre Lorde

We flame the river to keep the boat paths open your eyes eat my shadow at the light line touchless completing each other’s need to yearn to settle into hunger faceless a waning moon. Plucking desire from my palms like the firehairs of a cactus I know this appetite the greed of a poet or an empty woman trying to touch what matters

#Audre Lorde #Burning the Water Hyacinth #poetry

[poemplace-blog]

"For Jane" By Charles Bukowski

225 days under grass and you know more than I. they have long taken your blood, you are a dry stick in a basket. is this how it works? in this room the hours of love still make shadows. when you left you took almost everything. I kneel in the nights before tigers that will not let me be. what you were will not happen again. the tigers have found me and I do not care.

#charles bukowski #bukowski #poetry #for jane

[poemplace-blog]

"The Sciences Sing a Lullaby" By Albert Goldbarth

Physics says: go to sleep. Of course you’re tired. Every atom in you has been dancing the shimmy in silver shoes nonstop from mitosis to now. Quit tapping your feet. They’ll dance inside themselves without you. Go to sleep. Geology says: it will be all right. Slow inch by inch America is giving itself to the ocean. Go to sleep. Let darkness lap at your sides. Give darkness an inch. You aren’t alone. All of the continents used to be one body. You aren’t alone. Go to sleep. Astronomy says: the sun will rise tomorrow, Zoology says: on rainbow-fish and lithe gazelle, Psychology says: but first it has to be night, so Biology says: the body-clocks are stopped all over town and History says: here are the blankets, layer on layer, down and down.

#Albert Goldbarth #poetry #The Sciences Sing a Lullaby

[poemplace-blog]

"Rose Poem" By Lyn Lifshin

when it’s behind my knees you’d have to fall to the floor, lower your whole body like horses in a field to smell it. White Rose, Bulgarian rose. I think of sheets I’ve left my scent in as if to stake a claim for someone who could never care for anything alive. This Bulgarian rose, spicy, pungent, rose as my 16th birthday party dress, rose lips, nipples. If you won’t fall to your knees, at least, please, nuzzle like those horses, these roses, somewhere

#rose poem #poetry #lyn lifshin

[poemplace-blog]

"Love Letter" By Melissa Stein

I don’t know when the boys began to walk away with parts of myself in their sticky hands; when loving became a process of subtraction. Or why, having given up what seems so much, I’m willing to lose even more — erasing all this body’s known, relearning it with you.

#love letter #melissa stein #poetry

[poemplace-blog]

"Love Poem for a Non-Believer" By Sandra Cisneros

Because I miss you I run my hand along the flat of my thigh curve of the hip mango of the ass Imagine it your hand across the thrum of ribs arpeggio of breasts collarbones you adore that I don't My neck is thin You could cup it with one hand Yank the life from me if you wanted I've cut my hair You can't tug my hair anymore A jet of black through the fingers now Your hands cool along the jaw skin of the eyelids nape of the neck soft as a mouth And when we open like apple split each other in half and have seen the heart of the heart of the heart that part you don't I don't show anyone the part we want to reel back as soon as it is suddenly unreeled like silk flag or the prayer call of a Mohammed we won't have a word for this except perhaps religion

#sandra cisneros #love poem for a non-believer #poetry

[poemplace-blog]

"Why Things Burn" By Daphne Gottlieb

my fire-eating career came to an end when i could no longer tell when to spit and when to swallow. last night in amsterdam, 1,000 tulips burned to death. i have an alibi. when i walked by your garden, your hand grenades were in bloom. you caught me playing loves me, loves me not, metal pins between my teeth. i forget the difference between seduction and arson, ignition and cognition. i am a girl with incendiary vices and you have a filthy never mind. if you say no, twice, it's a four-letter word. you are so dirty, people have planted flowers on you: heliotropes. sun- flowers. you'll take anything. loves me, loves me not. i want to bend you over and whisper: "potting soil," "fresh cut." when you made the urgent fists of peonies a proposition, i stole a pair of botanists' hands. green. confident. all thumbs. i look sharp in garden shears and it rained spring all night. 1,000 tulips burned to death in amsterdam. we didn't hear the sirens. all night, you held my alibis so softly, like taboos already broken. 

#why things burn #daphne gottlieb #poetry

[poemplace-blog]

"Sad Child" By Margaret Atwood

You're sad because you're sad. It's psychic. It's the age. It's chemical. Go see a shrink or take a pill, or hug your sadness like an eyeless doll you need to sleep. Well, all children are sad but some get over it. Count your blessings. Better than that, buy a hat. Buy a coat or pet. Take up dancing to forget. Forget what? Your sadness, your shadow, whatever it was that was done to you the day of the lawn party when you came inside flushed with the sun, your mouth sulky with sugar, in your new dress with the ribbon and the ice-cream smear, and said to yourself in the bathroom, I am not the favourite child. My darling, when it comes right down to it and the light fails and the fog rolls in and you're trapped in your overturned body under a blanket or burning car, and the red flame is seeping out of you and igniting the tarmac beside your head or else the floor, or else the pillow, none of us is; or else we all are.

#margaret atwood #sad child #poetry

[poemplace-blog]

"Scheherazade" By Richard Siken

Tell me about the dream where we pull the bodies out of the lake and dress them in warm clothes again. How it was late, and no one could sleep, the horses running until they forget that they are horses. It's not like a tree where the roots have to end somewhere, it's more like a song on a policeman's radio, how we rolled up the carpet so we could dance, and the days were bright red, and every time we kissed there was another apple to slice into pieces. Look at the light through the windowpane. That means it's noon, that means we're inconsolable. Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us. These, our bodies, possessed by light. Tell me we'll never get used to it.

#richard siken #scheherazade #poetry

[poemplace-blog]

"Other Lives And Dimensions And Finally A Love Poem" By Bob Hicok

My left hand will live longer than my right. The rivers of my palms tell me so. Never argue with rivers. Never expect your lives to finish at the same time. I think praying, I think clapping is how hands mourn. I think staying up and waiting for paintings to sigh is science. In another dimension this is exactly what's happening, it's what they write grants about: the chromodynamics of mournful Whistlers, the audible sorrow and beta decay of Old Battersea Bridge. I like the idea of different theres and elsewheres, an Idaho known for bluegrass, a Bronx where people talk like violets smell. Perhaps I am somewhere patient, somehow kind, perhaps in the nook of a cousin universe I've never defiled or betrayed anyone. Here I have two hands and they are vanishing, the hollow of your back to rest my cheek against, your voice and little else but my assiduous fear to cherish. My hands are webbed like the wind-torn work of a spider, like they squeezed something in the womb but couldn't hang on. One of those other worlds or a life I felt passing through mine, or the ocean inside my mother's belly she had to scream out. Here, when I say I never want to be without you, somewhere else I am saying I never want to be without you again. And when I touch you in each of the places we meet, in all of the lives we are, it's with hands that are dying and resurrected. When I don't touch you it's a mistake in any life, in each place and forever.

#bob hicok #poetry #other lives and dimensions and finally a love poem

[poemplace-blog]

"Because I Love You" By Marisa de los Santos

I cannot tell you that last night in the exhaust- fume impatience of nearly-stopped traffic through which cars crept, linked with short chains of light, the driver at my front failed for whole minutes to follow closely the blue Buick in front of him, stopped, in fact, entirely, while a thousand engines idled in molasses-sticky Virginia heat. I caught the fine, still cut-out of his face as he leaned a little out the window, looking, so I turned, too, and saw what I had missed in long minutes of waiting: a bank of cloud like descending birds, a great, bright raspberry moon, and I was surprised into loving this man as I have loved others--ancient-eyed boys reading on benches, crossing guards in white gloves, businessmen sleeping on trains--easily, as I have never loved you.

#marisa de los santos #because I love you #poetry

[poemplace-blog]

"Shoulders" By Naomi Shihab Nye

A man crosses the street in rain, stepping gently, looking two times north and south: because his son is asleep on his shoulder. No car must splash him. No car drive too near to his shadow. This man carries the world's most sensitive cargo but he's not marked. Nowhere does his jacket say FRAGILE, HANDLE WITH CARE. His ear fills up with breathing. He hears the hum of a boy's dream deep inside him. We're not going to be able to live in this world if we're not willing to do what he's doing with one another. The road will only ever be wide. The rain will never stop falling.

#shoulders #poetry #naomi shihab nye