May 2011
27 posts
The Four Elements Leslie Harrison
I. Pasiphaë
Wife: word and vow. Invisible. Bound— as heat is to flame. No god did this, no pretty, facile cow. A kingdom of men, blinded. And me—burning to be seen. Burning for him. I chose, did not haggle over price. At last, in the ashes, after, you see me.
I made sure his whores spewed only monsters. And I am one of them.
II. Daedalus
Falling, all...
“If someone told me that I could live my life again free of depression provided I...”
– David N. Elkins
1 tag
A Poem from the Edge of America There are ways of finding things, like stumbling on them. Or knowing what you’re looking for. A miss is as good as a mile. There are ways to put the mind at ease, like dying, But first you have to find a place to lie down.
Once, in another life, I was a boy in Wyoming. I called freedom home. I had walked a long time into a high valley. A river cut through it....
XXVII. Husband: I Am
a sad man and overshadowed. In the painful process of my self-discovery I want now to go deeper. No one can help me. Only I can do this. Enter the drinkable thread of life. Not since I skinned rabbits with my grandfather in the old stained sink behind the shed have I felt my perceptions so strong. Satiny red entrails. Clear splashes of blood on white porcelain. Once we found unborn young just...
Three Poems by Jane Wong
(WHALE HEART)
Men of science say it is miraculous: cut the heart open and it will shine out like a ruby. Left overnight, it becomes a hive, a city, a moon to sleep in. They say to tunnel through the arteries we would need a map. We would need to spread the ribs open like a fan, even if it’s winter. Once, when a whale washed ashore, we buried the heart in a crater. We...
The biggest stars look at me with your eyes.
Here I love you
Here I love you. In the dark pines the wind disentangles itself. The moon glows like phosphorous on the vagrant waters. Days, all one kind, go chasing each other. The snow unfurls in dancing figures. A silver gull slips down from the west. Sometimes a sail. High, high stars. Oh the black cross of a ship. Alone. Sometimes I get up early and even my soul is wet. Far away...
MICHIKO NOGAMI (1946 – 1982)
Is she more apparent because she is not anymore forever? Is her whiteness more white because she was the color of pale honey? A smokestack making the sky more visible. A dead woman filling the whole world. Michiko said, “The roses you gave me kept me awake with the sound of their petals falling.”
Jack Gilbert
Memphis Skyline - Rufus Wainwright
I love him whose soul is deep, even in being wounded, and who can perish of a small experience: thus he goes gladly over the bridge. I love him whose soul is overfull so that he forgets himself, and all things are in him: thus all things spell his going under. I love him who has a free spirit and a free heart: thus his head is only the entrails of his heart, but his heart drives him to go...
“What are poets for in such an age?
What is the use of poetry?
Words can save...”
– –Excerpted from Poetry as an Insurgent Art by Lawrence Ferlinghetti (via ahuntersheart)
