Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
they must love the milk
that makes them so bad-tasting
milkweed bugs
memorial bench
all the young trees
it shelters now
the fog still lingers
in a funnel spider’s web
deertongue grass
the “creep” in “creeper”
battened to a locust trunk
by a thousand tentacles
~ after Marcelo Hernandez Castillo
They can tell you that you need
to dismantle what they’ve just
watched you build. One by one,
every last beam and board.
The square of concrete laid
on the earth. And after you’ve
done what they want, they can still
slap another fine on top of that.
History is a long record of the same
words stacked from a common playlist.
Farmers in bean and garlic fields, men
sorting fish in canneries. You’re told
nothing hums in the desert though you’ve
coaxed green to life with your brown hands.
Nothing blinks in the sky, not even the god
of water— so you dig your own wells
even in the throes of death. But first
the heel of a spade is a spoon is a one-
way ticket to some part of the world
you’re allowed to shine with your spit.
Up, and saw and admired my wife’s picture of our Saviour, now finished, which is very pretty. So by water to Greenwich, where with Creed and Lord Rutherford, and there my Lord told me that he would give me 100l. for my pains, which pleased me well, though Creed, like a cunning rogue, hath got a promise of half of it from me. We to the King’s Head, the great musique house, the first time I was ever there, and had a good breakfast, and thence parted, I being much troubled to hear from Creed, that he was told at Salsbury that I am come to be a great swearer and drinker, though I know the contrary; but, Lord! to see how my late little drinking of wine is taken notice of by envious men to my disadvantage. I thence to Captain Cocke’s, [and] (he not yet come from town) to Mr. Evelyn’s, where much company; and thence in his coach with him to the Duke of Albemarle by Lambeth, who was in a mighty pleasant humour; there the Duke tells us that the Dutch do stay abroad, and our fleet must go out again, or to be ready to do so. Here we got several things ordered as we desired for the relief of the prisoners, and sick and wounded men. Here I saw this week’s Bill of Mortality, wherein, blessed be God! there is above 1800 decrease, being the first considerable decrease we have had.
Back again the same way and had most excellent discourse of Mr. Evelyn touching all manner of learning; wherein I find him a very fine gentleman, and particularly of paynting, in which he tells me the beautifull Mrs. Middleton is rare, and his own wife do brave things. He brought me to the office, whither comes unexpectedly Captain Cocke, who hath brought one parcel of our goods by waggons, and at first resolved to have lodged them at our office; but then the thoughts of its being the King’s house altered our resolution, and so put them at his friend’s, Mr. Glanvill’s, and there they are safe. Would the rest of them were so too! In discourse, we come to mention my profit, and he offers me 500l. clear, and I demand 600l. for my certain profit. We part to-night, and I lie there at Mr. Glanvill’s house, there being none there but a maydeservant and a young man; being in some pain, partly from not knowing what to do in this business, having a mind to be at a certainty in my profit, and partly through his having Jacke sicke still, and his blackemore now also fallen sicke. So he being gone, I to bed.
no creed
pleased me like music
though my own road
is a wound
I saw mortality touching all things
but the night
not knowing is an art—
a black one
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Wednesday 27 September 1665.
ark ark
so many ways of saying here
in Raven
the aging spruces
still stand where we planted them
their insurgent roots
rings of mushrooms
between the lines of trees
one woodfern waving
shaggy manes
imagine the sweet release
of autodigestion
in the purple-stemmed
jungle of pokeweed
last year’s skeletons
goldenrod meadow
forty acres and a wren
the somewhere else
that is also here
ridge after ridge
too big to hide
the spider draws in her legs
and turns to gemstone
Look at us, she said. We are all of us in this room
still waiting to be transformed.
Is
the lake a lake, the bird a bird, or but a fake
shadow, a half-thing?
face stamped
into a coin, what’s left of the body
in the belly of a bird
We lay on rugs on spongy moss
huddled for warmth
Soil
blooded to rustfruit, eyebright
I have a poem in which the universe is like a vocal cord
There was
no deeper meaning.
*
Source Texts:
Louise Gluck, “An Endless Story”
Michael Farrell, “Verlaine in the Lake”
Sam Sax, “Bury”
James Harpur, “The Perseids”
Nam Le, “Aubade”
Alice Notley, “Why Are You Writing These”
Sandra Lim, “Chanson Douce”
Up by five o’clock and got post horses and so set out for Greenwich, calling and drinking at Dartford. Being come to Greenwich and shifting myself I to the office, from whence by and by my Lord Bruncker and Sir J. Minnes set out toward Erith to take charge of the two East India shipps, which I had a hand in contriving for the King’s service and may do myself a good office too thereby. I to dinner with Mr. Wright to his father-in-law in Greenwich, one of the most silly, harmless, prating old men that ever I heard in my life. Creed dined with me, and among other discourses got of me a promise of half that he could get my Lord Rutherford to give me upon clearing his business, which should not be less, he says, than 50l. for my half, which is a good thing, though cunningly got of him. By and by Luellin comes, and I hope to get something of Deering shortly. They being gone, Mr. Wright and I went into the garden to discourse with much trouble for fear of losing all the profit and principal of what we have laid out in buying of prize goods, and therefore puts me upon thoughts of flinging up my interest, but yet I shall take good advice first. Thence to the office, and after some letters down to Woolwich, where I have not lain with my wife these eight days I think, or more. After supper, and telling her my mind in my trouble in what I have done as to buying of these goods, we to bed.
green ink at the office
life should not be less
than half hope
deer in the garden
a letter to my wife
telling her my mind
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 26 September 1665.
Found ourselves come to the fleete, and so aboard the Prince; and there, after a good while in discourse, we did agree a bargain of 5,000l. with Sir Roger Cuttance for my Lord Sandwich for silk, cinnamon, nutmeggs, and indigo. And I was near signing to an undertaking for the payment of the whole sum; but I did by chance escape it; having since, upon second thoughts, great cause to be glad of it, reflecting upon the craft and not good condition, it may be, of Captain Cocke.
I could get no trifles for my wife. Anon to dinner and thence in great haste to make a short visit to Sir W. Pen, where I found them and his lady and daughter and many commanders at dinner. Among others Sir G. Askue, of whom whatever the matter is, the world is silent altogether. But a very pretty dinner there was, and after dinner Sir W. Pen made a bargain with Cocke for ten bales of silke, at 16s. per lb., which, as Cocke says, will be a good pennyworth, and so away to the Prince and presently comes my Lord on board from Greenwich, with whom, after a little discourse about his trusting of Cocke, we parted and to our yacht; but it being calme, we to make haste, took our wherry toward Chatham; but, it growing darke, we were put to great difficultys, our simple, yet confident waterman, not knowing a step of the way; and we found ourselves to go backward and forward, which, in the darke night and a wild place, did vex us mightily. At last we got a fisher boy by chance, and took him into the boat, and being an odde kind of boy, did vex us too; for he would not answer us aloud when we spoke to him, but did carry us safe thither, though with a mistake or two; but I wonder they were not more. In our way I was [surprised] and so were we all, at the strange nature of the sea-water in a darke night, that it seemed like fire upon every stroke of the oare, and, they say, is a sign of winde. We went to the Crowne Inne, at Rochester, and there to supper, and made ourselves merry with our poor fisher-boy, who told us he had not been in a bed in the whole seven years since he came to ‘prentice, and hath two or three more years to serve. After eating something, we in our clothes to bed.
found ourselves in eggs
silent together
we were simple
not knowing the way
found ourselves to go backward and forward
wild as the sea
it seemed like fire
upon every stroke
the crow made us
whole
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 25 September 1665.
glossy orange
to mark the hatchet-cut scars
property line
beyond the line trees
the same old view
chestnut oak seedling
“leave no trace”
only my footprints now
where spring beauties bloomed
black locust grove
the leaf miners have laid bare
a rich vein of sky
Who cleans the windowpane with her breath and stirs
the fire of the afternoon
scented with gardenias?
I’ve walked carefully through the colors of copper.
No possession accompanies us
when night drifts along streets of the city.
Not all windows open: that is the truth.
Now each of us is
a witness stand:
You should know that human limbs burn
like branches and branches like human limbs.
Who said that my country was green?
It took a long time to cover my body —
little boats grab onto them and row and row
*
Source texts:
Olga Orozco, “Ballad of Forgotten Places”
Jaime Manrique, “The Sky Over My Mother’s House”
Oscar Gonzalez, “Central America in My Heart”
Francisca Aguirre, “Penelope Unravels”
Amy Lowell, “Solitare”
Sara Borjas, “Lies I Tell”
Ilya Kaminsky, “Town Watches Them Take Alfonso”
Nicole Sealey, “In Defense of ‘Candelabra with Heads’”
Claribel Alegria, “Flowers from the Volcano”
Hafizah Geter, “Testimony”
Victoria Chang, “Dear P.”