"Nothing misleads people like the truth."

Self-Help by Michael Ryan

What kind of delusion are you under?

The life he hid just knocked you flat.

You see the lightning but not the thunder.

What God hath joined let no man put asunder.

Did God know you’d marry a rat?

What kind of delusion are you under?

His online persona simply stunned her

as it did you when you started to chat.

You see the lightning but not the thunder.

To the victors go the plunder:

you should crown them with a baseball bat.

What kind of delusion are you under?

The kind that causes blunder after blunder.

Is there any other kind than that?

You see the lightning but not the thunder,

and for one second the world’s a wonder.

Just keep it thrilling under your hat.

What kind of delusion are you under?

You see the lightning but not the thunder.

Stressed Out (but not today!)

Such as thou art, sometime I was.

Such as I am, such shalt thou be. 

To You Again by Mary Szybist

Again this morning my eyes woke up too close 

to your eyes,

their almost green orbs

too heavy-lidded to really look back.

To wake up next to you

is ordinary. I do not even need to look at you

to see you.

But I do look. So when you come to me

in your opulent sadness, I see 

you do not want me

to unbutton you

so I cannot do the one thing

I can do.

Now it is almost one a.m. I am still at my desk

and you are upstairs at your desk a staircase 

away from me. Already it is years

of you a staircase

away from me. To be near you

and not near you 

is ordinary.

You

are ordinary.

Still, how many afternoons have I spent 

peeling blue paint from

our porch steps, peering above 

hedgerows, the few parked cars for the first

glimpse of you. How many hours under 

the overgrown, pink Camillas, thinking

the color was wrong for you, thinking 

you'd appear

after my next 

blink.

Soon you'll come down the stairs 

to tell me something. And I'll say,

okay. Okay. I'll say it 

like that, say it just like

that, I'll go on being 

your never-enough.

It's not the best in you

I long for. It's when you're noteless,

numb at the ends of my fingers, all is 

all. I say it is. 

Her Politeness by Kay Ryan

It's her politeness
one loathes: how she
isn't insistent, how
she won't impose, how
nothing's so urgent
it won't wait. Like
a meek guest you tolerate
she goes her way- the muse
you'd have leap at your throat,
you'd spring to obey.

Your Other Heart by Natalie Shapero

Mossy and thumping, bare of logic, red:

             why do they say your other head

                          and not your other heart? 

The snack cakes of Smut Wonderland

turn Alice smaller than her dress. She stirs,

nude in the folds of so much baby blue. 

             To think, they called this lesser art.

I ate mostly orders then, and you—

you were thinking with your other heart. 

I took in a dog the way some might take in

             a dress (I had become just skin).

                          It coughed. I cried for it

to stop, I fed it meat, its malady

recurrent and untreatable. I had 

to give it up, like some bum body part 

             whose incidental benefit

the human form has out-evolved. Don’t start.

That dog: I called it Help, and I cried for it.

You told me you couldn't see

a better day coming

so I gave you my eyes

Jim Harrison

Ted Kooser

The Secret by Robert Nichols

Suddenly with a shy, sad grace
She turns to me her lighted face,
And I, who hear some idle phrase,
    Watch how her wry lips move
And guess that the poor words they frame
Mean naught for they would speak the same
Message I read in the dark flame
    Within her eyes, which say, “I love.”
        But I can only turn away.

I, that have heard the deep voice break
Into a sing-song, sobbing shake,
Whose flutter made my being quake,
    What ears have I for women's cries?
I, that have seen the turquoise glaze
Fixed in the blue and quivering gaze
Of one whom cocaine cannot daze,
    How can I yield to women's eyes?
        I, who can only turn away.

I, that have held strong hands which palter,
Borne the full weight of limbs that falter,
Bound live flesh on the surgeon's altar,
    What need have I of women's hand?
I, that have felt the dead's embrace?
I, whose arms were his resting-place?
I, that have kissed a dead man's face?
    Ah, but how should you understand?
        Now I can only turn away.

Sonnet VI: Dearest, I never knew such loving by Hayden Carruth

Dearest, I never knew such loving. There
in that glass tower in the alien city, alone,
we found what somewhere I had always known
exists and must exist, this fervent care,
this lust of tenderness. Two were aware
how in hot seizure, bone pressed to bone
and liquid flesh to flesh, each separate moan
was pleasure, yes, but most in each other’s share.
Companions and discoverers, equal and free,
so deep in love we adventured and so far
that we became perhaps more than we are,
and now being home is hardship. Therefore are we
diminished? No. We are of the world again
but still augmented, more than we’ve ever been.

My Cup by Robert Friend

They tell me I am going to die.
Why don't I seem to care?
My cup is full. Let it spill.

A Dialogue of Watching by Kenneth Rexroth

Let me celebrate you. I
Have never known anyone
More beautiful than you. I
Walking beside you, watching
You move beside me, watching
That still grace of hand and thigh,
Watching your face change with words
You do not say, watching your
Solemn eyes as they turn to me,
Or turn inward, full of knowing,
Slow or quick, watching your full
Lips part and smile or turn grave,
Watching your narrow waist, your
Proud buttocks in their grace, like
A sailing swan, an animal,
Free, your own, and never
To be subjugated, but
Abandoned, as I am to you,
Overhearing your perfect
Speech of motion, of love and
Trust and security as
You feed or play with our children.
I have never known any
One more beautiful than you.

"So I know I am right not to settle, but it doesn't make me feel better as my friends pair off and I stay home and make myself an extravagant meal and tell myself, This is perfect, as if I'm the one dating me. As I go to endless rounds of parties and bar nights, perfumed and sprayed and hopeful, rotating myself around the room like some dubious dessert. I go on dates with men who are nice and good-looking and smart-perfect on paper men who make me feel I'm in a foreign land, trying to explain myself, trying to make myself known. Because isn't that the point of every relationship: to be known by someone else, to be understood? He gets me. She gets me. Isn't that the simple magic phrase?"

Ne’ilah by Marge Piercy

The hinge of the year
the great gates opening
and then slowly slowly
closing on us.
I always imagine those gates
hanging over the ocean
fiery over the stone grey
waters of evening.
We cast what we must
change about ourselves
onto the waters flowing
to the sea. The sins,
errors, bad habits, whatever
you call them, dissolve.
When I was little I cried
out I! I! I! I want, I want.
Older, I feel less important,
a worker bee in the hive
of history, miles of hard
labor to make my sweetness.
The gates are closing
The light is failing
I kneel before what I love
imploring that it may live.
So much breaks, wears
down, fails in us. We must
forgive our broken promises—
their sharp shards in our hands.

MURDERER

"That's the thing about pain. It demands to be felt."

"Because every time I look at it, I am reminded of the way I treated _____ and about the way she treated me, of about how I threatened her and all that came of it, how I was just another guy. How that killed me once I really thought about it. A gimme-gimme asshole. Maybe I was. Still, after I thought about it for a long time- in fact, all my life- I wanted to be something better."

Redemption Song by Kevin Young

  Finally fall.

At last the mist,
heat's haze, we woke
these past weeks with

has lifted. We find
ourselves chill, a briskness
we hug ourselves in.
Frost greying the ground.

Grief might be easy
if there wasn't still
such beauty — would be far
simpler if the silver

maple didn't thrust
it's leaves into flame,
trusting that spring
will find it again.

All this might be easier if
there wasn't a song
still lifting us above it,
if wind didn't trouble

my mind like water.
I half expect to see you
fill the autumn air
like breath — 

At night I sleep
on clenched fists.
Days I'm like the child
who on the playground

falls, crying
not so much from pain
as surprise.
I'm tired of tide

taking you away,
then back again —
what's worse, the forgetting
or the thing

you can't forget.
Neither yet —
last summer's
choir of crickets

grown quiet.