Hold me
This is what I meant, for you to bring me
“like the sea” did you think I didn’t mean
for God to hold my cunt in His palm “like”
under miles and a cold snake calls
a hundred thousand years without waiting
where it strikes, “like” mountains were
built to fall on me, “like” mud coils in Heaven
choking on wasted volume in the dark
God abhors a vacuum – too much for you to scream
less prey than rag
then float, His sweet seeped-into
staring as the stars ripple further
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e e cummings: my girl’s tall with hard long eyes
my girl’s tall with hard long eyes
as she stands,with her long hard hands keeping
silence on her dress,good for sleeping
is her long hard body filled with surprise
like a white shocking wire,when she smiles
a hard long smile it sometimes makes
gaily go clean through me tickling aches,
and the weak noise of her eyes easily files
my impatience to an edge—my girl’s tall
and taut,with thin legs just like a vine
that’s spent all of its life on a garden-wall,
and is going to die. When we grimly go to bed
with these legs she begins to heave and twine
about me,and to kiss my face and head.
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Sarah Messer: Spell to Locate the Unreachable
As no assistance could be expected of the ocean, I turned to the trumpeting tunnel of sky and rummaged the tops of plum birch turning their leaves like coins, then to the tumbler sweating on the porch rail. The sky, the color of whale oil. The wind, a box of uncolored letters. And so I was gris-gris with my lichen hair and moonstone wound around my neck, a raccoon stuck under an electric fence, or a photo showing only one wick at a séance. How to unpin this particular corner of sky? I sing an antler song to find you, but there’s no trace of the sky in the sky. I’ll have to collapse the air to find you.
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Alice Notley: The Secret
Nobody knows who one is. Therefore I sought you
to tell you who I was though I didn’t know—I keep trying
to prove my connection to the soil I stand on. I can’t do that,
yet speak to someone of “la ville de mon coeur”
for at that moment I am only the one speaking.
If reality in all its details were but aspects of a voice
it would not be Language, rather, one would be obligated
to define voice. As in the voice of the rose; the voice
of rue des Messageries. The voice of your continuity in the body of M.
The secret is telling me to write by rote—okay I’m doing that—
until it speaks. Somewhere along the line it started to. It knows my course
though I don’t. It would tell me to speak in French if it cared, it
doesn’t give a shit—That’s it talking now.
I am more powerful than a president; I am a charmed and desperate
poet speaking to everyone.
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You reached for the sword and swore you would make His side, and you danced by the beat of your prayers. You took your fury like His and bared your teeth and scratched – to find Him slick with you, the love of His edge hooked through the root of your yearning, now only the need to lose the rest of your life, that chaos pouring from your mouth, leaning numb into the fur of His collar. You’ve stained Him… and a stain is what comes of you where He once hung.
This is when you taste His hand, eyes clenched, cheeks hot, purple swelling in your chest: You fail before Him, the serpent grinning from your belly now the sigh He takes as the last beat of your heart strains and His lips –
Fading to white before you can dodge the grip in your chest stopping your veins to a cool pond. The whisper of air on your skin pulls away and you almost see yourself, almost float alone with a tear before the current, before the current… but withering is heat, where the world is more than you, and God’s breath makes you His own.
Your ghost caws mocking in a wet place, night’s sap dripping from His branches, and naught else fills you.
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let me grow in you, my
want to
eat you in lines drawn
felt-tipped down
your neck, snapped
out of it by a finger
in your mouth, pulling
fear
stained linen
scalpel
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what could you give me? nothing.
nothing, like she got for her mercies,
her tongue never slipping but dancing
round red berries she refused
and for what? so a god fresh-drunk
can explain death to the knowing?
what are you going to do, teach me
mourning from inside
a wolf’s gut? no wonder
you stink like you do, how drunk
have you gotten off
the bitter storm-surge of my pledge
rolling down cold cheeks, lips repeating
into my wounds:
oh god i smell like you
and they know.
it doesn’t matter. i am tired
of explaining the movement of our spiral
instinct, but not the story of it,
who left the words smoking on the mantle
whether drowned girls reek like hanged boys
why we woke up again.
i am paul of tarsus crawling
under st. jeanne’s skin
knife splitting skin outwards,
the tree was gold
and i am nothing. the blind increaser
of a fool’s ignition–
what are you going to offer beyond what you are?
nothing.
nothing but a wolf’s storm-pale eye
with courtesy enough to invent sorrow in it
deft fingers for a necklace tracing
apologies between the sinew
i’m sorry
you know
the language
the taste of never-always-home-
to know the nothing of your whisper,
and more reasons to scream.
i know what i want
and of course
it’s all you’ve got.
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Robert Francis: Summons
Keep me from going to sleep too soon
Or if I go to sleep too soon
Come wake me up. Come any hour
Of night. Come whistling up the road.
Stomp on the porch. Bang on the door.
Make me get out of bed and come
And let you in and light a light.
Tell me the northern lights are on
And make me look. Or tell me clouds
Are doing something to the moon
They never did before, and show me.
See that I see. Talk to me till
I’m half as wide awake as you
And start to dress wondering why
I ever went to bed at all.
Tell me the walking is superb.
Not only tell me but persuade me.
You know I’m not too hard persuaded.
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Robinson Jeffers: To the Stone-cutters
Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you foredefeated
Challengers of oblivion
Eat cynical earnings, knowing rock splits, records fall down,
The square-limbed Roman letters
Scale in the thaws, wear in the rain. The poet as well
Builds his monument mockingly;
For man will be blotted out, the blithe earth die, the brave sun
Die blind and blacken to the heart:
Yet stones have stood for a thousand years, and pained
thoughts found
The honey of peace in old poems.
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He came to me there then, flayed God, mad God, divinity left bleeding, against the ceiling of the room, against the walls of my own skull, broken and bleeding from the teeth and mouth.
A car crash.
His fractured spine, his limp leg, his missing eye, his broken raven wings in crimson red. My God is dancing along the ridges of the spine. Too much red to be left sane. To much brokenness to be divine.
Rebirth.
My feet screwed on backwards. My feet hanging from the rafters. He speaks in tongues and kisses me all-riddled-up. The Bible flayed open (made sacrifice).
Crack of your spine and the whiplash.
The steering wheel will leave dirty teeth on me. The screaming will leave dirty teeth on me. My gods are made of porcelain.
My God is a promise of fragility.
I welcome the riddling madman, I welcome the soft-spoken sage. My God is an exercise in the vulnerable. Car-crash god, bent-backwards Testarossa. Redhead is your brother in the chitter of darkness. Redhead is the blood from your gouged skull.
Three teeth beneath my ribs, to crack them open.
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David Bromige: The Romance of the Automobile
It's dark. But there's a moon. You're lonely.
You've got me. You can't stay where you are.
You don't give me a thought, & climb inside
turn me on, & off we go,
me all around you, moving you
while you sit still, up & down
the ground I keep you lifted from,
across the distance that your friends call you.
Though I can't see
with these things much like eyes
I let you find the way.
Let you see what you might hit & miss.
Let you feel you're in control.
Let you make me go so fast
you can't control me quite as well,
or maybe not at all.
So I get you where you go.
And if it's where you planned,
I've sheltered you from what came down,
proved useful, helped save a life maybe,
unless someone like you got in our way.
You've felt a strength, obeying me
while free to think of things along the way.
An irritation or anxiety,
if something's wrong with me,
that is, if I need fixing.
And here we are. You can get out,
and stretch, as though to throw me off,
as though I were around you, yet
I'm evidently not. You've turned me off,
locked me up, pocketed the key
and left me in the dark.
You've got me where you want me.
As if I were a car.
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A. E. Stallings: Explaining an Affinity for Bats
That they are only glimpsed in silhouette,
And seem something else at first—a swallow—
And move like new tunes, difficult to follow,
Staggering towards an obstacle they yet
Avoid in a last-minute pirouette,
Somehow telling solid things from hollow,
Sounding out how high a space, or shallow,
Revising into deepening violet.
That they sing—not the way the songbird sings
(Whose song is rote, to ornament, finesse)—
But travel by a sort of song that rings
True not in utterance, but harkenings,
Who find their way by calling into darkness
To hear their voice bounce off the shape of things.
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Melissa Stein: How I
Stupidly. Like a dog,
like drought
flood, like a vole
the hawk lifts screaming
to its first and last
panoramic.
Each want sired
want and I
was drowning in it—
but kept my head
just enough
above the choking
to choke more.
A dog, I said,
or rat pressing
lever unto death.
May we all die wanting
and getting it.
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Wallace Stevens: The Emperor of Ice-Cream
Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month’s newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
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from Stone: 122
Let me be in your service
like the others
mumbling predictions,
mouth dry with jealousy.
Parched tongue
thirsting, not even for the word—
for me the dry air is empty
again without you.
I’m not jealous any more
but I want you.
I carry myself like a victim
to the hangman.
I will not call you
either joy or love.
All my own blood is gone.
Something strange paces there now.
Another moment
and I will tell you:
it’s not joy but torture
you give me.
I’m drawn to you
as to a crime—
to your ragged mouth,
to the soft bitten cherry.
Come back to me,
I’m frightened without you.
Never had you such power
over me as now.
Everything I desire
appears to me.
I’m not jealous any more.
I’m calling you.
Osip Mandelstam
translated by Clarence Brown and W.S. Merwin
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Kay Ryan: Criss Crosses
Even how
the crow
walks is
criss crosses
as though
each step
checked the
last. No one
knows why
he advances
as well as he
does or
could expect
that laughable
croak to work
in so many
circumstances.
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Rae Armantrout: Entanglement
1
"Don't let the car fool you.
My treasure
is in heaven."
2
The material world is made up
entirely
of collisions
between otherwise
indefinite objects.
Then what is a collision?
(Or the physical world
collapses
into place
at the shock of
being seen.)
3
In the shorter version,
tentacled
stomach swallows stomach.
In a long dream,
I'm with Aaron,
visiting his future,
helping him make choices.
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