Mary, Queen of the Ordinary, Irene Zimmerman

Litany for the Ordinary

Irene Zimmerman

Mary, Queen of the ordinary, 
queen of spinning wheel and loom
who wove from ordinary stuff
the flawless fabric of
God's humanness;
queen whose pregnancy
put Joseph's other plans aside
and sent his saw singing
into cradlewood;
queen of water jars daily filled,
of swaddling clothes spread outdoors
to dry, of scrubbed floors
and everlastingly sawdusty son;
queen of skinned knees,
splintered fingers,
aching stomach, fevered head,
herbal teas;
queen of fresh-baked bread
whose wheaty power
put flesh on growing boy
and joy at evening meal--
Mary, queen of ordinary time and space,
thank you for your ordinary grace.

Saint Mary's Press book excerpt © 2000 Saint Mary's Press. 

The Gids Among Us, C. Dale Young

The Gods Among Us

BY C. DALE YOUNG

One of them grants you the ability

to forecast the future; another wrenches

your tongue from your mouth, changes you

into a bird precisely because you have been

given this gift. The gods are generous

 

in this way. I learned to avoid danger, avoid fear,

avoid excitement, these the very triggers that prompt

my wings from their resting place deep inside.

And so, I avoided fights, avoided everything really.

In the locker room, I avoided other boys,

 

all the while intently studying that space

between their shoulder blades, patiently looking

for the tell-tale signs, looking to find even

one other boy like me, the wings buried but

there nonetheless. I studied them from a distance.

 

When people challenge a god, the gods curse them

with the label of madness. It is all very convenient.

And meanwhile, a god took the form of a swan

and raped a girl by the school gates. Another

took the shape of an eagle to abduct a boy

 

from the football field. Mad world.

And what about our teachers? Our teachers

expected us to sit and listen. In Theology, there was

a demon inside each of us; in History,

the demons among us. So many demons

 

in this world. Who among us could have spoken up

against the gods, the gods who continued living

among us? They granted wishes and punishments

much the way they always had. Very few noticed them

casually taking the shape of one thing or another.

 

C. Dale Young, "The Gods Among Us" from The Halo. Copyright © 2016 by C. Dale Young

The Birth of Superstition, Lynn Pedersen

 The Birth of Superstition

BY LYNN PEDERSEN

It’s not hard to imagine: my ancestor—a dry season,

               dust like chalk on her tongue—mixes

                              spit with clay,

 

traces a river on rock. Next day: rain.

 

                                                                           Why shouldn’t she believe

               in the power of rock and her own hand?

 

I carry this need for pattern and rule, to see connections

               where there aren’t necessarily any.

 

                                                            After my first miscarriage,

I cut out soda, cold cuts.

 

               After the second, vacuuming and air travel.

 

After the third—it’s chalk and spit again. I circle rocks,

               swim the icy river.

 

                                             And when my son is born, he balances

the chemical equation that is this world.

 

                                                                                          And logic?

 

Logic is my son’s kite, good so long as you have

               wind, string,

                                             something heavier than hope

 

                                                                                          to tether you.

 

Lynn Pedersen, "The Birth of Superstition" from The Nomenclature of Small Things.  Copyright © 2016 by Lynn Pedersen

A Poem For The Cruel Majority, Jerome Rothenberg

 A Poem for the Cruel Majority

BY JEROME ROTHENBERG

The cruel majority emerges! 

Hail to the cruel majority! 

They will punish the poor for being poor. 

They will punish the dead for having died. 

Nothing can make the dark turn into light 

for the cruel majority. 

Nothing can make them feel hunger or terror. 

If the cruel majority would only cup their ears 

the sea would wash over them. 

The sea would help them forget their wayward children. 

It would weave a lullaby for young & old. 

(See the cruel majority with hands cupped to their ears, 

one foot is in the water, one foot is on the clouds.) 

One man of them is large enough to hold a cloud 

between his thumb & middle finger, 

to squeeze a drop of sweat from it before he sleeps. 

He is a little god but not a poet. 

(See how his body heaves.) 

The cruel majority love crowds & picnics. 

The cruel majority fill up their parks with little flags. 

The cruel majority celebrate their birthday. 

Hail to the cruel majority again! 

The cruel majority weep for their unborn children, 

they weep for the children that they will never bear. 

The cruel majority are overwhelmed by sorrow. 

(Then why are the cruel majority always laughing? 

Is it because night has covered up the city's walls? 

Because the poor lie hidden in the darkness? 

The maimed no longer come to show their wounds?) 

Today the cruel majority vote to enlarge the darkness. 

They vote for shadows to take the place of ponds 

Whatever they vote for they can bring to pass. 

The mountains skip like lambs for the cruel majority. 

Hail to the cruel majority! 

Hail! hail! to the cruel majority! 

The mountains skip like lambs, the hills like rams. 

The cruel majority tear up the earth for the cruel majority. 

Then the cruel majority line up to be buried. 

Those who love death will love the cruel majority. 

Those who know themselves will know the fear 

the cruel majority feel when they look in the mirror. 

The cruel majority order the poor to stay poor. 

They order the sun to shine only on weekdays. 

The god of the cruel majority is hanging from a tree. 

Their god's voice is the tree screaming as it bends. 

The tree's voice is as quick as lightning as it streaks across the sky. 

(If the cruel majority go to sleep inside their shadows, 

they will wake to find their beds filled up with glass.) 

Hail to the god of the cruel majority! 

Hail to the eyes in the head of their screaming god! 

Hail to his face in the mirror! 

Hail to their faces as they float around him! 

Hail to their blood & to his! 

Hail to the blood of the poor they need to feed them! 

Hail to their world & their god! 

Hail & farewell! 

Hail & farewell! 

Hail & farewell!

"A Poem for the Cruel Majority" By Jerome Rothenberg, from A Paradise of Poets, copyright © 1991, 1993, 1995, 1998, 1999 by Jerome Rothenberg

Any Morning, William Stafford

Any Morning By William Stafford (1914 - 1993) Just lying on the couch and being happy. Only humming a little, the quiet sound in the head. Trouble is busy elsewhere at the moment, it has so much to do in the world. People who might judge are mostly asleep; they can't monitor you all the time, and sometimes they forget. When dawn flows over the hedge you can get up and act busy. Little corners like this, pieces of Heaven left lying around, can be picked up and saved. People won't even see that you have them, they are so light and easy to hide. Later in the day you can act like the others. You can shake your head. You can frown

The True-Blue American

The True-Blue American

BY DELMORE SCHWARTZ

Jeremiah Dickson was a true-blue American, 

For he was a little boy who understood America, for he felt that he must 

Think about everything; because that’s all there is to think about,   

Knowing immediately the intimacy of truth and comedy,   

Knowing intuitively how a sense of humor was a necessity   

For one and for all who live in America. Thus, natively, and   

Naturally when on an April Sunday in an ice cream parlor Jeremiah   

Was requested to choose between a chocolate sundae and a banana split 

He answered unhesitatingly, having no need to think of it 

Being a true-blue American, determined to continue as he began:   

Rejecting the either-or of Kierkegaard, and many another European;   

Refusing to accept alternatives, refusing to believe the choice of between; 

Rejecting selection; denying dilemma; electing absolute affirmation: knowing 

         in his breast 

                  The infinite and the gold 

                  Of the endless frontier, the deathless West. 

“Both: I will have them both!” declared this true-blue American   

In Cambridge, Massachusetts, on an April Sunday, instructed 

         By the great department stores, by the Five-and-Ten, 

Taught by Christmas, by the circus, by the vulgarity and grandeur of 

         Niagara Falls and the Grand Canyon, 

Tutored by the grandeur, vulgarity, and infinite appetite gratified and   

         Shining in the darkness, of the light 

On Saturdays at the double bills of the moon pictures, 

The consummation of the advertisements of the imagination of the light 

Which is as it was—the infinite belief in infinite hope—of Columbus,   

         Barnum, Edison, and Jeremiah Dickson.

Delmore Schwartz, “The True-Blue American” from Selected Poems (1938-1958): Summer Knowledge. Copyright © 1967 by Delmore Schwartz

Perhaps The World Ends Here, Joy Harjo

Perhaps the World Ends Here

BY JOY HARJO

The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live. 

The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on. 

We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it. 

It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women. 

At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers. 

Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table. 

This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun. 

Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory. 

We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here. 

At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks. 

Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.

"Perhaps the World Ends Here" from The Woman Who Fell From the Sky by Joy Harjo. Copyright © 1994 by Joy Harjo

The Garden, Helen Hoyt

The Garden   Helen Hoyt

Do not fear. The garden is yours And it is yours to gather the fruits And every flower of every kind, And to set the high wall about it And the closed gates. The gates of your wall no hand shall open, No feet shall pass, Through all the days until your return. Do not fear. But soon, Soon let it be, your coming! For the pathways will grow desolate waiting, The flowers say, “Our loveliness has no eyes to behold it!” The leaves murmur all day with longing, All night the boughs of the trees sway themselves with longing… O Master of the Garden, O my sun and rain and dew, Come quickly

Door of Being, Octavio Paz

door of being, dawn and wake me,

allow me to see the face of this day,

allow me to see the face of this night,

all communicates, all is transformed,

arch of blood, bridge of the pulse,

take me to the other side of this night,

where I am you, we are us,

the kingdom where pronouns are intertwined,

 

door of being: open your being

and wake, learn to be ....

 

~ Octavio Paz ~

 

 

( Sunstone/Piedra de Sol, translated by Eliot Winberger)

Mrs. Cavendish and the Dancer

Mrs. Cavendish and the Dancer

by Stephen Dunn

 

 

Mrs. Cavendish desired the man in the fedora
who danced the tarantella without regard
for who might care.  All her life she had
a weakness for abandon, and, if the music
stopped, for anyone who could turn
a phrase. The problem was
Mrs. Cavendish wanted it all
to mean something in a world crazed
and splattered with the gook
of apparent significance, and meaning 
had an affinity for being elsewhere.
The dancer studied philosophy, she told me,
knew the difference between a sophist
and a sophomore, despite my insistence
that hardly any existed. It seemed everyone
but she knew that sadness awaits the needy.
Mr. Cavendish, too, when he was alive,
was equally naïve, might invite a wolf
in man's clothing to spend a night
at their house. This was how the missus
mythologized her husband--a man of what
she called honor, no sense of marital danger,
scrupled  beyond all scrupulosity.
The tarantella man was gorgeous and oily, 
and, let's forgive her, Mrs. Cavendish
was lonely. His hair slicked back, he didn't
resemble her deceased in the slightest,
which in the half-light of memory's belittered
passageways made her ga-ga. And I, as ever,
would cajole and warn, hoping history
and friendship might be on my side.
Mrs. Cavendish, I'd implore, lie down
with this liar if it feels good, but, please,
when he smells most of sweetness, get a grip,
develop a gripe, try to breathe your own air.

 

Still, David Romtvedt

Still by David Romtvedt The children are sleeping and the cows and chickens are sleeping, and the grass itself is sleeping. The machines are off and the neighbor’s lights, a half mile away, are out, and the moon is hanging like a powdered face in a darkened room, and the snow is shining under stars the way we are shining here in our cold skins under warm quilts. We pull our shirts over our heads and toss them to the floor and the only thing grotesque is the space through which we stumble each night. I roll to you and put my hand on your skin. You shiver and smile, “Cold. But not too cold. Some cold I like.” And draw my hand closer. I pull it away and jam it in my armpit, and while I wait for the blood I look at you, admire your face, your neck and breasts, your belly and thighs, the shadowy double of you thrown by candlelight to the wall- There is no season, no grass gone brown, no cold, and no one to say we are anything but beautiful, swimming together across the wide channel of night.

Anthem, Melissa Stein

Anthem   Melissa Stein

We were all in love but didn’t know it. We were all in love continually. Bless our little hearts, smoking and drinking and wrecking things. Bless our shameless shame. We were loud, invincible. We were tough as rails. We stole street signs and knocked over bins. Ripped the boards off boarded-up stuff. Slept in towers filled with pigeon shit and fluff. We kicked beer bottles down cobbled lanes. Tires and chains. Chains and wheels and skin. The world was always ending and we the inventors of everything.

Poetics, A.R. Ammons

Poetics
By A. R. Ammons
(1926 - 2001)

I look for the way
things will turn
out spiraling from a center,
the shape
things will take to come forth in

so that the birch tree white
touched black at branches
will stand out
wind-glittering
totally its apparent self:

I look for the forms
things want to come as

from what black wells of possibility,
how a thing will
unfold:

not the shape on paper -- though
that, too -- but the
uninterfering means on paper:

not so much looking for the shape
as being available
to any shape that may be
summoning itself
through me
from the self not mine but ours

What Work Is, Philip Levine

What Work Is
by Philip Levine


We stand in the rain in a long line
waiting at Ford Highland Park. For work.
You know what work is—if you’re
old enough to read this you know what
work is, although you may not do it.
Forget you. This is about waiting,
shifting from one foot to another.
Feeling the light rain falling like mist
into your hair, blurring your vision
until you think you see your own brother
ahead of you, maybe ten places.
You rub your glasses with your fingers,
and of course it’s someone else’s brother,
narrower across the shoulders than
yours but with the same sad slouch, the grin
that does not hide the stubbornness,
the sad refusal to give in to
rain, to the hours wasted waiting,
to the knowledge that somewhere ahead
a man is waiting who will say, ‘No,
we’re not hiring today,’ for any
reason he wants. You love your brother,
now suddenly you can hardly stand
the love flooding you for your brother,
who’s not beside you or behind or
ahead because he’s home trying to
sleep off a miserable night shift
at Cadillac so he can get up
before noon to study his German.
Works eight hours a night so he can sing
Wagner, the opera you hate most,
the worst music ever invented.
How long has it been since you told him
you loved him, held his wide shoulders,
opened your eyes wide and said those words,
and maybe kissed his cheek? You’ve never
done something so simple, so obvious,
not because you’re too young or too dumb,
not because you’re jealous or even mean
or incapable of crying in
the presence of another man, no,
just because you don’t know what work is.

"What Work Is" by Philip Levine from What Work Is. © Alfred A. Knopf, 1992

poem I wrote sitting across the table from you, Kevin Varrone

poem I wrote sitting across the table from you

by Kevin Varrone

 

 

if I had two nickels to rub together
I would rub them together

like a kid rubs sticks together
until friction made combustion

and they burned
a hole in my pocket

into which I would put my hand
and then my arm

and eventually my whole self--
I would fold myself

into the hole in my pocket and disappear
into the pocket of myself, or at least my pants

but before I did
like some ancient star

I'd grab your hand 

 

Variation On A Theme By Rilke, Denise Leverton

Variation On A Theme By Rilke

 

(The Book of Hours, Book I, Poem 1, Stanza 1)

 

A certain day became a presence to me;

there it was, confronting me -- a sky, air, light:

a being. And before it started to descend

from the height of noon, it leaned over

and struck my shoulder as if with

the flat of a sword, granting me

honor and a task. The day's blow

rang out, metallic -- or it was I, a bell awakened,

and what I heard was my whole self

saying and singing what it knew: I can.

 

~ Denise Levertov ~

 

(Breathing the Water)