Inside, Linda Hogan

 

Inside

 

How something is made flesh
no one can say.  The buffalo soup
becomes a woman
who sings every day to her horses
or summons another to her private body
saying, come, touch, this is how
it begins, the path of a newly born
who, salvaged from other lives and worlds,
will grow to become a woman, a man,
with a heart that never rests,
and the gathered berries,
th wild grapes
enter the body,
human wine
which can love,
where nothing created is wasted;
the swallowed grain takes you through the dreams
of another night,
the deer meat becomes hands
strong enough to work.

 

But I love most
the white-haired creature
eating green leaves;
the sun shines there
swallowed, showing in her face
taking in all the light,

 

and in the end
when the shadow from the ground
enters the body and remains,
in the end, you might say,
This is myself
still unknown, still a mystery.

 

~ Linda Hogan ~

 

(Rounding the Human Corners)

Vespers, Louise Gluck

 Vespers [In your extended absence, you permit me]

BY LOUISE GLÜCK

In your extended absence, you permit me

use of earth, anticipating

some return on investment. I must report

failure in my assignment, principally

regarding the tomato plants.

I think I should not be encouraged to grow

tomatoes. Or, if I am, you should withhold

the heavy rains, the cold nights that come

so often here, while other regions get

twelve weeks of summer. All this

belongs to you: on the other hand,

I planted the seeds, I watched the first shoots

like wings tearing the soil, and it was my heart

broken by the blight, the black spot so quickly

multiplying in the rows. I doubt

you have a heart, in our understanding of

that term. You who do not discriminate

between the dead and the living, who are, in consequence,

immune to foreshadowing, you may not know

how much terror we bear, the spotted leaf,

the red leaves of the maple falling

even in August, in early darkness: I am responsible

for these vines.

Louise Glück, "Vespers" ["In your extended absence, you permit me"] from The Wild Iris. Copyright © 1992 by Louise Glück

What Is There Beyond Kniowing, Mary Oliver

What Is There Beyond Knowing?

 

What is there beyond knowing that keeps

calling to me?  I can't

 

turn in any direction

but it's there.  I don't mean

 

the leaves' grip and shine or even the thrush's

silk song, but the far-off

 

fires, for example,

of the stars, heaven's slowly turning

 

theater of light, or the wind

playful with its breath;

 

or time that's always rushing forward,

or standing still

 

in the same -- what shall I say --

moment.

 

What I know

I could put into a pack

 

as if it were bread and cheese, and carry it

on one shoulder,

 

important and honorable, but so small!

While everything else continues, unexplained

 

and unexplainable.  How wonderful it is

to follow a thought quietly

 

to its logical end.

I have done this a few times.

 

But mostly I just stand in the dark field,

in the middle of the world, breathing

 

in and out.  Life so far doesn't have any other name

but breath and light, wind and rain.

 

If there's a temple, I haven't found it yet.

I simply go on drifting, in the heaven of the grass

and the weeds.

 

~ Mary Oliver ~

 

(New and Selected Poems Volume Two)

Rummage Sake, Jennifer Maier

Rummage Sale

by Jennifer Maier

Forgive me, Aunt Phyllis, for rejecting the cut
glass dishes—the odd set you gathered piece
by piece from thirteen boxes of Lux laundry soap.

Pardon me, eggbeater, for preferring the whisk;
and you, small ship in a bottle, for the diminutive
size of your ocean. Please don't tell my mother,

hideous lamp, that the light you provided
was never enough. Domestic deities, do not be angry
that my counters are not white with flour;

no one is sorrier than I, iron skillet, for the heavy
longing for lightness directing my mortal hand.
And my apologies, to you, above all,

forsaken dresses, that sway from a rod between
ladders behind me, clicking your plastic tongues
at the girl you once made beautiful,

and the woman, with a hard heart and
softening body, who stands in the driveway
making change.

"Rummage Sale" by Jennifer Maier from Now, Now. © University of Pittsburg Press, 2013

I Am Completely Different, Kuroda Saburo

I Am Completely Different

 

I am completely different.
Though I am wearing the same tie as yesterday,
am as poor as yesterday,
as good for nothing as yesterday,
today
I am completely different.
Though I am wearing the same clothes,
am as drunk as yesterday,
living as clumsily as yesterday, nevertheless
today
I am completely different.

 

Ah ...
I patiently close my eyes
on all the grins and smirks
on all the twisted smiles and horse laughs---
and glimpse then, inside me
one beautiful white butterfly
fluttering towards tomorrow.

 

~ Kuroda Saburo ~

 

 

(translated by James Kirkup, Burning Girraffes: Modern and Contemporary Japanese Poetry)

The Gaffe, C.K. Williams

The Gaffe

BY C. K. WILLIAMS

1.

If that someone who's me yet not me yet who judges me is always with me,   

as he is, shouldn't he have been there when I said so long ago that thing I said?   

If he who rakes me with such not trivial shame for minor sins now were there then,   

shouldn't he have warned me he'd even now devastate me for my unpardonable affront?   

I'm a child then, yet already I've composed this conscience-beast, who harries me:   

is there anything else I can say with certainty about who I was, except that I, that he,   

could already draw from infinitesimal transgressions complex chords of remorse,   

and orchestrate ever undiminishing retribution from the hapless rest of myself?   

2

The son of some friends of my parents has died, and my parents, paying their call,   

take me along, and I'm sent out with the dead boy's brother and some others to play.   

We're joking around, and some words come to my mind, which to my amazement are said.   

How do you know when you can laugh when somebody dies, your brother dies?

is what's said, and the others go quiet, the backyard goes quiet, everyone stares,   

and I want to know now why that someone in me who's me yet not me let me say it.   

Shouldn't he have told me the contrition cycle would from then be ever upon me,   

it didn't matter that I'd really only wanted to know how grief ends, and when?   

3

I could hear the boy's mother sobbing inside, then stopping, sobbing then stopping.   

Was the end of her grief already there? Had her someone in her told her it would end?   

Was her someone in her kinder to her, not tearing at her, as mine did, still does, me,   

for guessing grief someday ends? Is that why her sobbing stopped sometimes?   

She didn't laugh, though, or I never heard her. How do you know when you can laugh?

Why couldn't someone have been there in me not just to accuse me, but to explain?   

The kids were playing again, I was playing, I didn't hear anything more from inside.   

The way now sometimes what's in me is silent, too, and sometimes, though never really, forgets.

"The Gaffe" from The Singing by C.K. Willams. © 2003 by C.K. Williams. 

First Love, Jeanie Greensfelder

First Love by Jeanie Greensfelder My first boyfriend was my second choice: Beth got Gerry Jenson so I got Billy James whose jaw hung, his tongue showing. I looked down on Billy: girls were taller in seventh grade. I wore his ID bracelet and a motorcycle cap with his initials. When we hugged, he smelled like Ivory soap, his cheek smooth and soft—a Norman Rockwell boy. Walking me home from school he carried my books, and looked forward to a kiss at my door. I knew he was trustworthy and true, reliably mine, but Billy didn't know me: I'd met a tall guy who drove a Ford. His cheeks were sandpaper rough and he French kissed. And on this day on my front porch, when Billy handed me my books, I handed him his ID bracelet and watched his face redden, his eyes tear, hurt bursting his seams. We both cried soap-opera style, and Billy ran home. In my room, I draped myself over my bed, like an actress far away from home, pained and in love with drama. "First Love" by Jeanie Greensfelder from Biting the Apple. © Penciled In Press, 2012

The Ball Poem, John Berryman

The Ball Poem BY JOHN BERRYMAN What is the boy now, who has lost his ball. What, what is he to do? I saw it go Merrily bouncing, down the street, and then Merrily over—there it is in the water! No use to say 'O there are other balls': An ultimate shaking grief fixes the boy As he stands rigid, trembling, staring down All his young days into the harbour where His ball went. I would not intrude on him, A dime, another ball, is worthless. Now He senses first responsibility In a world of possessions. People will take balls, Balls will be lost always, little boy, And no one buys a ball back. Money is external. He is learning, well behind his desperate eyes, The epistemology of loss, how to stand up Knowing what every man must one day know And most know many days, how to stand up And gradually light returns to the street, A whistle blows, the ball is out of sight. Soon part of me will explore the deep and dark Floor of the harbour . . I am everywhere, I suffer and move, my mind and my heart move With all that move me, under the water Or whistling, I am not a little boy.

Self Portrait, Cynthia Cruz

Self Portrait

BY CYNTHIA CRUZ

I did not want my body

Spackled in the world's

Black beads and broke

Diamonds. What the world

Wanted, I did not. Of the things

It wanted. The body of Sunday

Morning, the warm wine and

The blood. The dripping fox

Furs dragged through the black New

York snow—the parked car, the pearls,

To the first pew—the funders,

The trustees, the bloat, the red weight of

The world. Their faces. I wanted not

That. I wanted Saint Francis, the love of

His animals. The wolf, broken and bleeding—

That was me.