Love, Im Done with You by Ross Gay

 

You ever wake up with your footie PJs warming

your neck like a noose? Ever upchuck

after a home-cooked meal? Or notice

how the blood on the bottoms of your feet

just won’t seem to go away? Love, it used to be

you could retire your toothbrush for like two or three days and still

I’d push my downy face into your neck. Used to be

I hung on your every word. (Sing! you’d say: and I was a bird.

Freedom! you’d say: and I never really knew what that meant,

but liked the way it rang like a rusty bell.) Used to be. But now

I can tell you your breath stinks and you’re full of shit.

You have more lies about yourself than bodies

beneath your bed. Rooting

for the underdog. Team player. Hook,

line and sinker. Love, you helped design the brick

that built the walls around the castle

in the basement of which is a vault

inside of which is another vault

inside of which . . . you get my point. Your tongue

is made of honey but flicks like a snake’s. Voice

like a bird but everyone’s ears are bleeding.

From the inside your house shines

and shines, but from outside you can see

it’s built from bones. From out here it looks

like a graveyard, and the garden’s

all ash. And besides,

your breath stinks. We’re through.

The Darker Sooner by Catherine Wing

 

Then came the darker sooner,

came the later lower.

We were no longer a sweeter-here

happily-ever-after. We were after ever.

We were farther and further.

More was the word we used for harder.

Lost was our standard-bearer.

Our gods were fallen faster,

and fallen larger.

The day was duller, duller

was disaster. Our charge was error.

Instead of leader we had louder,

instead of lover, never. And over this river

broke the winter’s black weather.

A Ritual to Read to Each Other by William Stafford

 

If you don't know the kind of person I am

and I don't know the kind of person you are

a pattern that others made may prevail in the world

and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,

a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break

sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood

storming out to play through the broken dike.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,

but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,

I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty

to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,

a remote important region in all who talk:

though we could fool each other, we should consider—

lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,

or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;

the signals we give — yes or no, or maybe —

should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

Today by Billy Collins

 

If ever there were a spring day so perfect,

so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze

that it made you want to throw

open all the windows in the house

and unlatch the door to the canary's cage,

indeed, rip the little door from its jamb,

a day when the cool brick paths

and the garden bursting with peonies

seemed so etched in sunlight

that you felt like taking

a hammer to the glass paperweight

on the living room end table,

releasing the inhabitants

from their snow-covered cottage

so they could walk out,

holding hands and squinting

into this larger dome of blue and white,

well, today is just that kind of day.

The Mower by Philip Larkin

 

The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found   

A hedgehog jammed up against the blades,   

Killed. It had been in the long grass.

I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.   

Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world   

Unmendably. Burial was no help:

Next morning I got up and it did not.

The first day after a death, the new absence   

Is always the same; we should be careful

Of each other, we should be kind   

While there is still time.

Prayer for the Mutilated World by Sam Sax

 

what will be left after the last fidget

spinner’s spun its last spin

after the billboards accrue their thick

layer of grit masking advertisements

for teeth paste & tanqueray gin

after the highways are overtaken

by invasive forests

after the ministers give up their gods

& the rabbis their congregations

for drink

after new men rise to lead us sheep

toward our shearing, to make bed

sheets from our hair

after the high towers have no airplanes

to warn away & instead blink purely

toward heaven like children

with one red eye

after phone lines do nothing

but cut the sky into sheet music

& our phones are just expensive

bricks of metal & glass

after our cloud of photographs collapses

& all memories retreat back

into their privatized skulls

after the water taps gasp out their final

blessing

what then?

when even the local militias run

out of ammunitions

when the blast radii have been

chalked & the missiles do all they were

built to

when us jews have given up our state

for that much older country of walking

& then that even older religion of dirt

when all have succumbed to illness

inside the church of our gutted pharmacies

when the seas eat their cities

when the ground splits like a dress

when the trash continent in the mid-atlantic

at last opens its mouth to spit

what will be left after we’ve left

i dare not consider it

instead dance with me a moment

late in this last extinction

that you are reading this

must be enough