Friday, December 16, 2016

Testimonial by Rita Dove


Back when the earth was new
and heaven just a whisper,
back when the names of things
hadn't had time to stick;

back when the smallest breezes
melted summer into autumn,
when all the poplars quivered
sweetly in rank and file . . .

the world called, and I answered.
Each glance ignited to a gaze.
I caught my breath and called that life,
swooned between spoonfuls of lemon sorbet.

I was pirouette and flourish,
I was filigree and flame.
How could I count my blessings
when I didn't know their names?

Back when everything was still to come,
luck leaked out everywhere.
I gave my promise to the world,
and the world followed me here.

Wednesday, December 14, 2016

Wait, for now.
Distrust everything, if you have to.
But trust the hours. Haven’t they
carried you everywhere, up to now?
Personal events will become interesting again.
Hair will become interesting.
Pain will become interesting.
Buds that open out of season will become lovely again.
Second-hand gloves will become lovely again,
their memories are what give them
the need for other hands. And the desolation
of lovers is the same: that enormous emptiness
carved out of such tiny beings as we are
asks to be filled; the need
for the new love is faithfulness to the old.

Wait.
Don’t go too early.
You’re tired. But everyone’s tired.
But no one is tired enough.
Only wait a while and listen.
Music of hair,
Music of pain,
music of looms weaving all our loves again.
Be there to hear it, it will be the only time,
most of all to hear,
the flute of your whole existence,
rehearsed by the sorrows, play itself into total exhaustion.

Saturday, December 10, 2016

Speculations about "I" by Toi Derricotte

A certain doubleness, by which I can stand as remote from myself as from another.
— Henry David Thoreau


i
I didn’t choose the word — 
it came pouring out of my throat
like the water inside a drowned man.
I didn’t even push on my stomach.
I just lay there, dead (like he told me)

& “I” came out.
(I’m sorry, Father.
“I” wasn’t my fault.)

 
ii
(How did “I” feel?)

Felt almost alive
when I’d get in, like the Trojan horse.

I’d sit on the bench
(I didn’t look out of the eyeholes
so I wouldn’t see the carnage).

 
iii
(Is “I” speaking another language?)

I said, “I” is dangerous.
But at the time I couldn’t tell
which one of us was speaking.

 
iv
(Why “I”?)

“I” was the closest I could get to the
one I loved (who I believe was
smothered in her playpen).

Perhaps she gave birth
to “I” before she died.

 
v
I deny “I,”
& the closer
I get, the more
“I” keeps receding.

 
vi
I found “I”
in the bulrushes
raised by a dirtiness
beyond imagination.

I loved “I” like a stinky bed.

While I hid in a sentence
with a bunch of other words.

 
vii
(What is “I”?)

A transmission through space?
A dismemberment of the spirit?

More like opening the chest &
throwing the heart out with the gizzards.

 
viii
(Translation)

Years later “I” came back
wanting to be known.

Like the unspeakable
name of God, I tried

my 2 letters, leaving
the “O” for breath,

like in the Bible,
missing.

 
ix
I am not the “I”
in my poems. “I”
is the net I try to pull me in with.

 
x
I try to talk
with “I,” but “I” doesn’t trust
me. “I” says I am
slippery by nature.

 
xi
I made “I” do
what I wasn’t supposed to do,
what I didn’t want to do — 
defend me,
stand as an example,
stand in for what I was hiding.

I treated “I” as if
“I” wasn’t human.

 
xii
They say that what I write
belongs to me, that it is my true
experience. They think it validates
my endurance.
But why pretend?
“I” is a kind of terminal survival.

 
xiii
I didn’t promise
“I” anything & in that way
“I” is the one I was most
true to.

Act by Leon Salvatierra

I’m going to say what love signifies
My grandfather said it was the desire of  the I for another I
And since then I began to search for you

My father said the number of  love was seven
Because creation lasted seven days
Seven days making love to its seven nights

I looked for you in each seven that ciphered my life
And I found you slipping away to other numbers

One confuses oneself with one’s other self
When two bodies intertwine in bed, three loves
have been in my life, four it will be when you have left
five days that I cannot stand you, six kisses in La Paz Centro
seven years of not finding you, love, show me
from one to a thousand your nights

What is your philosophy of love
you ask me in bed: and I respond
It’s not a flower but maybe it is a number. Here, I gift it to you
Hide it between your legs. At the count of two
Make sure that it does not fall: One
Open Sesame. Two
Loves have stepped into your kingdom.
  

Little Father by Li-Young Lee

I buried my father 
in the sky. 
Since then, the birds 
clean and comb him every morning   
and pull the blanket up to his chin   
every night. 

I buried my father underground.   
Since then, my ladders 
only climb down, 
and all the earth has become a house   
whose rooms are the hours, whose doors   
stand open at evening, receiving   
guest after guest. 
Sometimes I see past them 
to the tables spread for a wedding feast. 

I buried my father in my heart. 
Now he grows in me, my strange son,   
my little root who won’t drink milk,   
little pale foot sunk in unheard-of night,   
little clock spring newly wet 
in the fire, little grape, parent to the future   
wine, a son the fruit of his own son,   
little father I ransom with my life.

Thursday, December 8, 2016

Blackout

When life seems gray
And short of fizz
It seems that way
Because it is.

Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall by Margaret Fishback

Sometimes I wish that I were dead
    As dead can be, but then again
At times when I've been nicely fed
    On caviar or guinea hen
And I am wearing something new
    And reassuring, I decide
It might be better to eschew
    My tendency to cyanide.