Many thanks to the wonderful staff of SPACES Lit Mag for publishing my poem; I’m pleased to share the publication with Al Maginnes and several other talented artists!
Please enjoy this piece, and everyone else’s work in the new edition! :)
-AH
You are the divine reflection of this earth /
She does not belong to you /
No, there is no need for your correction /
All rivers run in the same direction /
She does not belong to you /
No, there is no need for your correction /
All rivers run in the same direction /
| — | Saul Williams | ”Tao For Now” | Amethyst Rock Star (2001) |
Harvey Shapiro, poet and editor, died on Monday at eighty-eight. The following ran in The Paris Review No. 84, Summer 1982. Photograph by Susan Levine.
On A Sunday
When you write something
you want it to live—
you have that obligation, to give it
a start in life.
Virginia Woolf, pockets full of stones,
sinks into the sad river
that surrounds us daily. Everything
about London amazed her, the shapes
and sight, the conversations on a bus.
At the end of her life, she said
London is my patriotism.
I feel that about New York.
Would Frank O’Hara say Virginia Woolf,
get up? No, but images from her novels
stay in my head—the old poet
(Swinburne, I suppose) sits on the lawn
of the countryhouse, mumbling
into the sun. Pleased with the images,
I won’t let the chaos of my life
overwhelm me. There is the City,
and the sun blazes on Central Park
in September. These people on a Sunday
are beautiful, various. And the poor
among them make me think
the experience I knew will be relived again,
so that my sentences will keep hold
of reality, for a while at least.
It was a long winter.
But the bees were mostly awake
in their perfect house,
the workers whirling their wings
to make heat.
Then the bear woke,
too hungry not to remember
where the orchard was,
and the hives.
He was not a picklock.
He was a sledge that leaned
into their front wall and came out
the other side.
What could the bees do?
Their stings were as nothing.
They had planned everything
sufficiently
except for this: catastrophe.
They slumped under the bear’s breath.
They vanished into the curl of his tongue.
Some had just enough time
to think of how it might have been –
the cold easing,
the smell of leaves and flowers
floating in,
then the scouts going out,
then their coming back, and their dancing –
nothing different
but what happens in our own village.
What pity for the tiny souls
who are so hopeful, and work so diligently
until time brings, as it does, the slap and the claw.
Someday, of course, the bear himself
will become a bee, a honey bee, in the general mixing.
Nature, under her long green hair,
has such unbendable rules,
and a bee is not a powerful thing, even
when there are many,
as people, in a town or a village.
And what, moreover, is catastrophe?
Is it the sharp sword of God,
or just some other wild body, loving its life?
Not caring a whit, black bear
blinks his horrible, beautiful eyes,
slicks his teeth with his fat and happy tongue,
and saunters on.
| — | “Black Bear in the Orchard,” Mary Oliver (via talkativolive) |
(via ishhara)
“I WANT YOU TO TELL ME ABOUT EVERY PERSON YOU’VE EVER BEEN IN LOVE WITH. TELL ME WHY YOU LOVED THEM, THEN TELL ME WHY THEY LOVED YOU. TELL ME ABOUT A DAY IN YOUR LIFE YOU DIDN’T THINK YOU’D LIVE THROUGH. TELL ME WHAT THE WORD “HOME” MEANS TO YOU AND TELL ME IN A WAY THAT I’LL KNOW YOUR MOTHER’S NAME JUST BY THE WAY YOU DESCRIBE YOUR BED ROOM WHEN YOU WERE 8. SEE, I WANNA KNOW THE FIRST TIME YOU FELT THE WEIGHT OF HATE AND IF THAT DAY STILL TREMBLES BENEATH YOUR BONES. DO YOU PREFER TO PLAY IN PUDDLES OF RAIN OR BOUNCE IN THE BELLIES OF SNOW? AND IF YOU WERE TO BUILD A SNOWMAN, WOULD YOU RIP TWO BRANCHES FROM A TREE TO BUILD YOUR SNOWMAN ARMS? OR WOULD YOU LEAVE THE SNOWMAN ARMLESS FOR THE SAKE OF BEING HARMLESS TO THE TREE? AND IF YOU WOULD, WOULD YOU NOTICE HOW THAT TREE WEEPS FOR YOU BECAUSE YOUR SNOWMAN HAS NO ARMS TO HUG YOU EVERY TIME YOU KISS HIM ON THE CHEEK? DO YOU KISS YOUR FRIENDS ON THE CHEEK? DO YOU SLEEP BESIDE THEM WHEN THEY’RE SAD, EVEN IF IT MAKES YOUR LOVER MAD? DO YOU THINK THAT ANGER IS A SINCERE EMOTION OR JUST THE TIMID MOTION OF A FRAGILE HEART TRYING TO BEAT AWAY ITS PAIN? SEE, I WANNA KNOW WHAT YOU THINK OF YOUR FIRST NAME. AND IF YOU OFTEN LIE AWAKE AT NIGHT AND IMAGINE YOUR MOTHER’S JOY WHEN SHE SPOKE IT FOR THE VERY FIRST TIME. I WANT YOU TELL ME ALL THE WAYS YOU’VE BEEN UNKIND. TELL ME ALL THE WAYS YOU’VE BEEN CRUEL. SEE, I WANNA KNOW MORE THAN WHAT YOU DO FOR A LIVING. I WANNA KNOW HOW MUCH OF YOUR LIFE YOU SPEND JUST GIVING. AND IF YOU LOVE YOURSELF ENOUGH TO ALSO RECEIVE SOMETIMES. I WANNA KNOW IF YOU BLEED SOMETIMES THROUGH OTHER PEOPLE’S WOUNDS.”
The butterflies are fine,
lovely to see a flash of orange
wobbling through the air
(jesus doesn’t anyone else see
how awkward they are in their new bodies)
or maybe blue, some summers
but I much prefer the moths,
plain and powdered, glowing
gently and hanging around my porch light
like it’s their savior - who knows
what promises it speaks to them
in its low humming - so I turn it off
and watch them scatter
and I feel like some great liberator
unmasking a prophet of false light
setting loose these women with unmade faces,
watching them find themselves in the dark.
Shadow: a dark area that light cannot reach
| — | A 2nd grader of mine’s science review packet… (via acuriousworld) |
Tired
by Langston Hughes
I am so tired of waiting,
Aren’t you,
For the world to become good
And beautiful and kind?
Let us take a knife
And cut the world in two—
And see what worms are eating
At the rind.
Wild Geese by Mary Oliver
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting-
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
“The Hurricane” | William Carlos Williams
The tree lay down
on the garage roof
and stretched, You
have your heaven,
it said, go to it.
submitting more poetry, you guys.
got some new pieces out to:
- Callaloo
- American Poetry Review
- Cincinnati Review
- Poetry Foundation
looking to get one postmarked this week for:
- Crab Orchard Review
- Tar River Poetry
Jump ‘em in like jump rope, double dutch /
Then turn on the mic with a thumb stroke, subtle touch /
Cuddle clutch, is this thing on? /
Dear book,
do you have
the time? Are
you divine or
grey? Marvellous
or a shipyard?Stuart was in town this weekend for the McFadden/Bowering event at Concordia and a reading at Argo. We spent Saturday afternoon together in a café, catching up and collaborating. Here’s his latest collection of poetry, You Exist. Details Follow., published by Anvil Press.
I wanted to be daylight,
but it rained.
A part-time Campfire Girl
was a dictionary,
alone and suffering.
The wind romped
right over her.
Our Completion: Oil on Wood: Tino Rodríguez: 1999
Before nourishment there must be obedience.
In his hands I was a cup overflowing with thirst.
Eighth ruler of my days, ninth lord of my nights:
he thrashed above me, like branches. Once,
after weeks of rain, he sliced a potato in half
to remind me of the moon. The dark slept in the small
of his back. The back of his knees: pale music.
We’d crumble the Eucharist & feed it to the pigeons.
Sin vergüenza. Escuintle. He Who Makes Things Sprout.
In the margins in a book of poems by Emily Dickinson
he scribbled: she had a pocketful of horses/ Trojan/
& some of them used. Often I mistook him for a storyteller
when he stood in the rain. A su izquierda, huesos.
A su derecha, mapas de cuero. When I’d yawn,
he’d pluck black petals out of my mouth.—Eduardo C. Corral
From Slow Lightning, Yale University Press, 2012. Eduardo Corral will read in the Brooklyn Poets Reading Series on Friday, September 21, at 7 PM at Studio 10 in Bushwick with Ariana Reines and Timothy Donnelly.
Two or three times in my life I discovered love.
Each time it seemed to solve everything.
Each time it solved a great many things
but not everything.
Yet left me as grateful as if it had indeed, and
thoroughly, solved everything.—Mary Oliver, section 5 of “Sometimes” in Red Bird (Beacon Press, 2008)
