Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
Original poetry, translations and videopoems by the authors of this blog. (See Poets and poetry for criticism, etc.)
By the open window
clogged sinuses
eyes rimmed in red
after wind pollination
the female flower develops into
a prickly ovoid burr
one arrowhead-shaped seed.
__________
In response to the very last Poetry Thursday prompt, “an open window.” Italicized lines lifted from the Wikipedia entry. Yes, “Ambrosia” really is the scientific name for ragweed.
They made a desolation and called it peace.
–Tacitus
In a urine-soaked military bedroll under the bridge
the wino lapses into an uneasy slumber,
twitching & curling up
like a caterpillar in its final instar
when the wasp’s hungry children
start in at last on the nerve centers, having made
a desolation of the rest,
& that warm feeling one had taken for love
turns out to have been nothing but the fires of corrosion —
the wrong kind of digestion in the gut
or the wrong kind of metamorphosis, in which
the very cells are changed, yes,
but no chrysalis will ever be spun
& the light spreads like a chemical spill
above the river,
blotting out the stars.
after the waterboarding
When a promise broke me
I was ready to confess
to the darkest thoughts
just to clear my head
I was ready to be lifted
by my own explosive charges
simply for the rush
of air back into my lungs
I was ready to hang
by my own rope
if only to feel the steadying
pull of the earth again
& I confess
their promise was nothing other
than that the atrocious weather
would change
& it did
I have been changed
into something
I do not know
__________
[Poetry Thursday – dead link]
The challenge this week was to begin a poem with the last line of another poem. I used the last line from today’s poem at Poetry Daily, Promise, by Judson Mitcham.
Our barefoot summer
ended at the edge
of a mowed field
in August: goldenrod stubs
like freshly sharpened pencils,
hay salted with thistle barbs
& the odd nest of baby
meadow voles orphaned
by the mower’s blade,
pink as erasers.
We learned the hard way:
one quick dash across
the stubble left holes
in our horn-tough feet.
They bled just a little,
but sprouted taproots of pain
under every step
that lasted into September,
when buses the color
of goldenrod bore us
back into waxed hallways
& the squeak of rubber.
in the style of the classical Tamil
Like a knot
of yellownecked caterpillars
on the underside of a witch hazel leaf
responding to the approach of danger
by arching their soft bodies
& freezing into a clump
of sudden thorns,
hoping to ward off the caress
of a wasp’s antennae:
that’s what happens
to me whenever
she smiles.
[Poetry Thursday – dead link]
For background on Tamil love poetry of the Sangam period, see the Wikipedia. Unfortunately, none of the late, great A. K. Ramanujan‘s translations seem to be online, but some earlier, public-domain translations are available at the Humanistic Texts site.
UPDATE: I’m wrong. Nancy at under the fire star – a Tamil Nadu-based blog – has shared a few of Ramanujan’s translations, and was kind enough to include the links in a comment below. See especially the poems at her last link.
The trail is a straight tunnel
through dripping woods.
In last night’s dream, I’d been
ready to cross a mountain
where roads & trails
hadn’t yet been thought of,
not even by the animals.
On the far side, my brothers
had found another hollow
parallel to this one, where
riotous growth pressed
against the windowpanes
& light-starved houseplants
rotted in their pots.
But this morning,
the trail ends as always
at the crest of a ridge a-bristle
with dying laurel bushes
& brown & yellow bracken.
The valley full of fog
glows in the weak sunlight
like the belly of a carp.
The woods are silent
except for the patter of urine
where a deer grazes,
her pelt already quivering
under the feet of her daily flies.
The camera around my neck
travels the length of the trail
in both directions, far heavier
than its credit card-sized
counterpart in the dream,
& just as empty.
[Poetry Thursday – dead link]
Sing scrapple: buckwheat-
& cornmeal mush-stuffed
relative of head cheese,
the hog’s gray matter.
Plus every part
that couldn’t be cured
into ham or crammed
into sausage casings —
some good foot meat, perhaps,
a corkscrew piece of tail —
up to & including
the oleaginous grunt.
Always the butt of jokes
for the ignorant mass
of weiner-eaters who prefer
their pig scraps pink
& prefitted for the throat.
This is a square meal
the color of earth.
It’s what’s for supper
when you haven’t eaten
since breakfast, & want
something you can
slap in the hot
fat of a griddle & fry
until it grows a thick
brown skin. Then
serve with Grade-A
maple syrup, go hog-
wild, wallow in the gray
& gritty mush.
The house spider
was on the inside
& didn’t budge
when the phoebe flew up
& clung to the window screen,
jabbing fruitlessly
at a meal turned to metal —
or rather, subdivided
into orderly
impenetrable holes,
as in a physics
textbook account
of the structure of matter.
Chalk lines on a blackboard,
rows of blank faces
at their desks.
But it was right there —
the spider,
the phoebe,
the rattle of wings.
The busy ones
the fast breeder reactors
always amaze me:
the ermine’s
slick white rope-
trick of a body
vanishing into the snow
a hummingbird threading
the hundred eyes of a woodlot
without slowing down
the manic shrew
like a heat-
seeking missile
& yes
the quick brown fox
ah I am nothing but
a speed bump
on a log
a lazy dog
but I figure
someone has to sit
at the center
of the maze
they make.
Foggy morning porch.
Two blowflies are fucking
on my knee.
*
Foggy July morning:
I can’t focus on anything
but that one red branch.
*
Foggy morning, late July.
I count the bird songs to see
which ones are missing.
*
Sun through fog:
the trees’ shadows stretch
half-way to the ground.