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Today's Poem
In Memory of the Rock Band Breaking Circus
--Stephanie Burt
You were whiny and socially unacceptable even
to loud young men whose first criterion
for rock and roll was that it strike someone else
as awful and repulsive and you told
grim stories about such obscure affairs
as a man-killing Zamboni and a grudge-
laden marathon runner from Zanzibar
who knifed a man after finishing sixteenth
Each tale sped from you at such anxious rate
sarcastic showtunes abject similes
feel like a piece of burnt black toast
for example threaded on a rusty wire followed
up by spitting too much time to think
by fusillades from rivetguns by cold
and awkward bronze reverberant church bells
percussive monotones 4/4 all for
the five or six consumers who enjoyed
both the impatience of youth
and the pissiness of middle age
as if you knew you had to get across
your warnings against all our lives as fast
as practicable before roommate or friend
could get up from a couch to turn them off
We barely remember you in Minnesota we love
our affable Replacements who modeled a more
acceptable form of rage who thought of girls
and cities boys and beds and homes and cars
as flawed but fixable with the right drink
right mates and right guitar strings whereas you
did not and nothing in your songs resolved
except in a certain technical sense as a drill
resolves contests between drywall and screw
Your second bassist took the stage name Flour
your second drummer copied a machine
Somebody else in your hometown took credit
for every sound you taught them how to use
I write about you now since nobody else
is likely to and since even appalled
too-serious flat compliments like these
are better than nothing and because to annoy
perseverate and get under everyone's skin
beats the hell out of the real worst thing in the world
which is to fade into silence entirely which
will never happen to The Ice Machine
to "Driving the Dynamite Truck" to The Very Long Fuse
to Smoker's Paradise such hard sticks thrown
in the eyes of any audience that is
I should say not until it happens to me
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Today's Poem
The Man Who Is Ready
--Charles Rafferty
I’m on the brink of daffodils.
The backyard snow is full of urine
blooms, the mud underneath is ready
to be itself. It won’t be long
before the planet tilts and the birds
roll north like marbles, the sap
crawls out of the bedrock. The meadow's
sublimation makes me feel
like a piece of sky — ready to plummet,
ready to rain. Up on the mountain
the snowcap wishes toward water —
a wildness that doesn't lose pace,
no matter the stones crowding its path,
no matter the roots of everything. Down here
I'm waiting for the ants to arrive
with their shifting script, their message
from below. I'm ready for this page,
this square of softening dirt,
for this garden of almost daffodils
to bang all my air to bells.
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Today's Poem
The Festival of Almost Getting There
--Renée Ashley
At the festival of almost getting there
Zeno pokes his head out halfway, asks
directions, half-heartedly, to the train,
admits he’s been riding on the tortoise,
been running after arrows to watch them
stand still. He understands course, path,
way, even relative position (dichotomize,
divide) but motion’s still a figment:
distance halved and halved (split infinity,
twin trajectory) the long, long way, and all
that longing (two-fold, doubled) (moments,
instants, continuous or discrete) for some
unfamiliar end—such unforgiving progress,
portioned, yes, bisected. A half-assed effort?
No, he’s as good as got it. So much struggle
and amends. Sure, we’re goddamned tired of
this much waiting, but look! He’s halfway there.
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Today's Poem
Fairy Tale with Laryngitis and Resignation Letter
--Jehanne Dubrow
You remember the mermaid makes a deal,
her tongue evicted from her throat,
and moving is a knife-cut with every step.
This is what escape from water means.
Dear Colleagues, you write, for weeks
I’ve been typing this letter in the bright
kingdom of my imagination. Your body
is a ship of pain. Pleasure is when you climb
the rocks and watch the moonlight
touching everywhere you want to go,
a silver world called faraway. Dear Colleagues,
you write, this place is a few sentences
contained by the cursor’s rippling barrier—
what happened here is only beaks
and brackets, the serif’s liquid stroke.
The old story has witches, a prince in love
with the surging silence of women,
a knife that turns the water red. You write,
Dear Colleagues, now these years are filed
in the infinite oceans of bureaucracy.
Everything bleaches or fades. In other words,
goodbye. Sometimes it’s possible to walk,
although you’ve been told inside the oyster
shell of your heart there is no soul.
Creatures like you must end as a spray of salt,
green droplets floating breathless in the air.
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Today's Poem
The Tyger
--William Blake
Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies.
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the fire?
And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?
What the hammer? what the chain,
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp,
Dare its deadly terrors clasp!
When the stars threw down their spears
And water'd heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
Tyger Tyger burning bright,
In the forests of the night:
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
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Today's Poem
Much Madness is divinest Sense - (620)
--Emily Dickinson
Much Madness is divinest Sense -
To a discerning Eye -
Much Sense - the starkest Madness -
’Tis the Majority
In this, as all, prevail -
Assent - and you are sane -
Demur - you’re straightway dangerous -
And handled with a Chain -
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Today's Poem
In Case of Complete Reversal
--Kay Ryan
Born into each seed
is a small anti-seed
useful in case of some
complete reversal:
a tiny but powerful
kit for adapting it
to the unimaginable.
If we could crack the
fineness of the shell
we’d see the
bundled minuses
stacked as in a safe,
ready for use
if things don’t
go well.
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Today's Poem
Caesar
--Jim Powell
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Today's Poem
Macha
--Monica McClure
All my feelings are
different and this one
is the most
Of all places here
where women once retired
from the men for fear
of boring them
I am so bloody in my own bath
of wild hairs
that I couldn't possibly
join you tonight
for that colonial thing
Heroin or whore
Babylon or Bethlehem
No matter what I'm followed by
mosquitos
Flitting dicks who want me
to teach them about themselves
But everything I know is contained in capsules
of macha that break down
in my bloodstream
And I wouldn't recommend it
for the fairer sex
who should buck up and study up
on their condition
I used to feel sick for all my sloth
but not anymore
In wanting to please
I have sinned
In leaning in I have sinned
In breaking in two
I feel sin
So
Vete ya
A haircut and a hard cock
is all I need
To govern a family
My rod
cutting them down
supplicant on the ground
For I was the first real white girl ever born
in this country of flat skulls
That's why I'm so cocky
with my staff
and my rule rock hard and inconsistent
with my favor
The mouths of L'Age d'Or
sucked well at my pre-war stockings
before cocktail hour
Bells rang and trays of mosquitos
were served with tarts
We hadn't meant to kill them with La Macha
which includes but is not limited to:
a goddess religion
unfaultering at the altar of shade
an erotics of object-identification
and compassion extending beyond the grave
My sister and I drank mournfully but afterwards
we still danced all night
wearing quite literally bedazzled bustiers
and veils of a dead boy's smoke
que mala after beating their macho dead
in ultra-feminine swoops
How do they want us to think of them now
our brothers haviing left so little charisma behind
on the internet
to aggrandize
Such small mosquitos
And though we are mourning we are still so macha
as we chip the thin teeth of traitors
and huff the scent of babies
and slap each other on the asses
and father seven times
and punish the bull
with its own marbled horns
But though we're cocky we are still martyrs
My sister says quita la macha
and I'm like why
It's okay to make up slogans in the spirit of revolution
and she's like ok but
after you systematically destroy machismo you must
put his teeth to gnash at your engorged breasts
for any sort of catagenesis to occur
and I'm like that could be hot
But it isn't the new love
conceived by and for macha
or is it?
idk
idk either
i really dk
So we taught our brothers all these methods of cameo
that they may take a small symbol of macha
to wear around their necks
to the part of culture where the money
used to be kept
May they remember the strength
of their mother's biceps as they show mercy
to their fathers who are teleological
till the end of supremacy
which is the beginning of macha
Kiss the black lips that feed you
the corn hips that rock you
and blight the prayers after you've said them
Santa Mala
Madre de Mala
ruega por nosotros pecadores
ahora y en la ahora de nuestra muerte
Hand me my beads
War without end
Amén
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Today's Poem
From My Tenth Year
--Tom Frazier
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Today's Poem
Ithaka
--Constantine Cavafy
--Translated from the Greek by Edmund Keeley
As you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonia ns, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon-don 't be afraid of them:
you'll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonia ns, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon-you won't encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.
Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbors you're seeing for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind-
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from their scholars.
Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you're destined for.
But don't hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you're old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you've gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.
Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you wouldn't have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.
And if you find her poor, Ithaka won't have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you'll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.
Original Greek:
Ιθάκη
Σα βγεις στον πηγαιμό για την Ιθάκη,
να εύχεσαι νάναι μακρύς ο δρόμος,
γεμάτος περιπέτειες, γεμάτος γνώσεις.
Τους Λαιστρυγόνας και τους Κύκλωπας,
τον θυμωμένο Ποσειδώνα μη φοβάσαι,
τέτοια στον δρόμο σου ποτέ σου δεν θα βρείς,
αν μέν' η σκέψις σου υψηλή, αν εκλεκτή
συγκίνησις το πνεύμα και το σώμα σου αγγίζει.
Τους Λαιστρυγόνας και τους Κύκλωπας,
τον άγριο Ποσειδώνα δεν θα συναντήσεις,
αν δεν τους κουβανείς μες στην ψυχή σου,
αν η ψυχή σου δεν τους στήνει εμπρός σου.
Να εύχεσαι νάναι μακρύς ο δρόμος.
Πολλά τα καλοκαιρινά πρωϊά να είναι
που με τι ευχαρίστησι, με τι χαρά
θα μπαίνεις σε λιμένας πρωτοειδωμένους·
να σταματήσεις σ' εμπορεία Φοινικικά,
και τες καλές πραγμάτειες ν' αποκτήσεις,
σεντέφια και κοράλλια, κεχριμπάρια κ' έβενους,
και ηδονικά μυρωδικά κάθε λογής,
όσο μπορείς πιο άφθονα ηδονικά μυρωδικά·
σε πόλεις Αιγυπτιακές πολλές να πας,
να μάθεις και να μάθεις απ' τους σπουδασμένους.
Πάντα στον νου σου νάχεις την Ιθάκη.
Το φθάσιμον εκεί είν' ο προορισμός σου.
Αλλά μη βιάζεις το ταξίδι διόλου.
Καλλίτερα χρόνια πολλά να διαρκέσει·
και γέρος πια ν' αράξεις στο νησί,
πλούσιος με όσα κέρδισες στον δρόμο,
μη προσδοκώντας πλούτη να σε δώσει η Ιθάκη.
Η Ιθάκη σ' έδωσε το ωραίο ταξίδι.
Χωρίς αυτήν δεν θάβγαινες στον δρόμο.
Αλλο δεν έχει να σε δώσει πια.
Κι αν πτωχική την βρεις, η Ιθάκη δεν σε γέλασε.
Ετσι σοφός που έγινες, με τόση πείρα,
ήδη θα το κατάλαβες η Ιθάκες τι σημαίνουν.
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Today's Poem
Mud Season
--Tess Taylor
We unstave the winter’s tangle.
Sad tomatoes, sullen sky.
We unplay the summer’s blight.
Rotted on the vine, black fruit
swings free of the strings that bound it.
In the compost, ghost melon; in the fields(,)
grotesque extruded peppers.
We prod half-thawed mucky things.
In the sky, starlings eddying.
Tomorrow, snow again, old silence.
Today, the creaking icy puller.
Last night I woke
to wild unfrozen prattle.
Rain on the roof— a foreign liquid tongue.
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Today's Poem
They buried their son last winter
--Serhiy Zahdan
--translated from the Ukrainian by John Hennessy and Ostap Kin
They buried their son last winter.
Strange weather for winter—rain, thunder.
They buried him quietly—everybody’s busy.
Who did he fight for? I asked. We don’t know, they say.
He fought for someone, they say, but who—who knows?
Will it change anything, they say, what’s the point now?
I would have asked him myself, but now—there’s no need.
And he wouldn’t reply—he was buried without his head.
It’s the third year of war; they’re repairing the bridges.
I know so many things about you, but who’d listen?
I know, for example, the song you used to sing.
I know your sister. I always had a thing for her.
I know what you were afraid of, and why, even.
Who you met that winter, what you told him.
The sky gleams, full of ashes, every night now.
You always played for a neighboring school.
But who did you fight for?
To come here every year, to weed dry grass.
To dig the earth every year—heavy, lifeless.
To see the calm after tragedy every year.
To insist you didn’t shoot at us, at your people.
The birds disappear behind waves of rain.
To ask forgiveness for your sins.
But what do I know about your sins?
To beg the rain to finally stop.
It’s easier for birds, who know nothing of salvation, the soul.
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Today's Poem
In the Sanatorium
--Anya Silver
It was after the war.
My father lay in an Austrian sanatorium,
his lungs full of tuberculosis.
Next to him, a young Soviet veteran
needed to confess to another Russian.
He had done something terrible, he said.
In Kharkov, before the Germans came.
Under orders, he had taken enemies of the state,
shoved them between two stopped trains,
and burned them to death. Then swept away remains.
Could he ever be forgiven for such a sin?
How could he know, that tormented man,
that my father’s father was one of the dead?
What chance that these two men would lie,
shushed to sleep by nurses, bed to bed?
My father, unable to respond, simply averted
his head, refusing to grant comfort.
Riven, six more decades, between two ghosts:
one wasted from coughing, pale; one burning.
Both beyond any word he might have spoken.
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Today's Poem
Myth
--Bohdan-Ihor Antonych
--Translated from Ukrainian by Ivan Petryshyn
As if in ancient pre-aryan books,-
The horseshoe, the boat and the dart.
In an oak wood, there shine silver troops,
The Sanskrit words rustling in the heart.
Blond and high-browed, are marching the old tribes,
And horses and long ships are their mates.
In the sky, there shine bright stars’ flags in the height,
As if a crossing of the winged swords’ blades.
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