POETRY II
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1dianeham
Tom Clark
Things About You
1
I write this for your eyes and ears and heart
If it makes your eyes sore
ears weary
and heart burn
Stop!
I come to things about you
I didn’t use to understand
I didn’t mean to use you
I just summoned you
Then at the end you are soft and bent
The way a tulip is droopy a lilac is not
knowing this
is a joyous experience
for me
gives you endless pleasure
You are casual when the others are only easy
You go directly toward your own thought
There are some things about you I don’t understand
that’s why I married you
Do you think these are banal thoughts?
that IS what it’s all about
the portrait for instance
of the inside of the surface of something
The way You Didn’t Even Try is “about”
Do out and in exist?
and up and down
are lies about them
2
Did you say something?
From Paris Review issue no. 48 (Fall 1969)
Things About You
1
I write this for your eyes and ears and heart
If it makes your eyes sore
ears weary
and heart burn
Stop!
I come to things about you
I didn’t use to understand
I didn’t mean to use you
I just summoned you
Then at the end you are soft and bent
The way a tulip is droopy a lilac is not
knowing this
is a joyous experience
for me
gives you endless pleasure
You are casual when the others are only easy
You go directly toward your own thought
There are some things about you I don’t understand
that’s why I married you
Do you think these are banal thoughts?
that IS what it’s all about
the portrait for instance
of the inside of the surface of something
The way You Didn’t Even Try is “about”
Do out and in exist?
and up and down
are lies about them
2
Did you say something?
From Paris Review issue no. 48 (Fall 1969)
3dianeham
Jeffrey Harrison
Rare Bird
While we were waiting for the movie to begin,
my wife caught up with her old friend Maryann,
and because I could only make out every
third or fourth word, my attention fluttered off
in search of something else and landed on
the thirty-five-ish couple sitting three rows
in front of us—the backs of their heads
and then the bare left arm and hand
of the young woman, who kept gathering
locks of her long, straight auburn hair
between her middle and index fingers, pulling
each tress away from her head and through
her extended fingers with a dexterous twist
then letting it fall and gathering another,
over and over seemingly without thinking
as she chatted with her husband or companion.
There was something about that movement—
graceful but ordinary, not erotic—
that made me look harder, until, entranced,
I watched as those two slender fingers
transformed into the flexible beak of a bird
whose head was the rest of her hand and
body her forearm perched on the seat’s armrest …
as if this bird, without the woman knowing,
and through this repeated, fluid motion,
was stripping some minuscule form of nourishment
from the strands of her hair as from the blades
of seaweed, the way flamingos sift the shallows
for tiny organisms. The bird kept feeding,
and I kept staring, nourishing myself perhaps
impalpably. I wanted to show Julie
and Maryann, but not to interrupt
my looking or their conversation—then the lights
dimmed and the movie started. I don’t
remember what it was, some documentary,
I just remember that bird, and how it felt
as though I’d made a rare sighting, right there
in the middle of the movie theater,
of a species strange and beautiful,
the finger-billed whimbrel, an item
to add to my life list, if I kept one.
From Paris Review issue no. 232 (Spring 2020)
Rare Bird
While we were waiting for the movie to begin,
my wife caught up with her old friend Maryann,
and because I could only make out every
third or fourth word, my attention fluttered off
in search of something else and landed on
the thirty-five-ish couple sitting three rows
in front of us—the backs of their heads
and then the bare left arm and hand
of the young woman, who kept gathering
locks of her long, straight auburn hair
between her middle and index fingers, pulling
each tress away from her head and through
her extended fingers with a dexterous twist
then letting it fall and gathering another,
over and over seemingly without thinking
as she chatted with her husband or companion.
There was something about that movement—
graceful but ordinary, not erotic—
that made me look harder, until, entranced,
I watched as those two slender fingers
transformed into the flexible beak of a bird
whose head was the rest of her hand and
body her forearm perched on the seat’s armrest …
as if this bird, without the woman knowing,
and through this repeated, fluid motion,
was stripping some minuscule form of nourishment
from the strands of her hair as from the blades
of seaweed, the way flamingos sift the shallows
for tiny organisms. The bird kept feeding,
and I kept staring, nourishing myself perhaps
impalpably. I wanted to show Julie
and Maryann, but not to interrupt
my looking or their conversation—then the lights
dimmed and the movie started. I don’t
remember what it was, some documentary,
I just remember that bird, and how it felt
as though I’d made a rare sighting, right there
in the middle of the movie theater,
of a species strange and beautiful,
the finger-billed whimbrel, an item
to add to my life list, if I kept one.
From Paris Review issue no. 232 (Spring 2020)
4FlorenceArt
I like both poems Diane. Nice way to start a new thread!
5dianeham
>4 FlorenceArt: thank you.
7dianeham
Today is Bernadette’s birthday.
"From the Point of View of Four-Dimensional Space-Time Geometry ..."
BERNADETTE MAYER
From the point of view of four-dimensional space-time geometry the topography and the history of the universe fuse into one harmonious picture, and all we have to consider is a tangled bunch of world-lines representing the motion of individual atoms, animals, or stars.
1. This space is a pace away from you. 2. This space is a mile away from you. 3. This space is a footstep away from you. 4a. This space is an acre away from you. 5b. This space is a township away from you. 6.1. This space is a bushel away from you. 7.2. This space is a tablespoon away from you. 8x3. This space is a minute away from you. 9x4. This space is a week away from you. 10x5. This space is the roaring twenties away from you.
March 2, 2016
"From the Point of View of Four-Dimensional Space-Time Geometry ..."
BERNADETTE MAYER
From the point of view of four-dimensional space-time geometry the topography and the history of the universe fuse into one harmonious picture, and all we have to consider is a tangled bunch of world-lines representing the motion of individual atoms, animals, or stars.
1. This space is a pace away from you. 2. This space is a mile away from you. 3. This space is a footstep away from you. 4a. This space is an acre away from you. 5b. This space is a township away from you. 6.1. This space is a bushel away from you. 7.2. This space is a tablespoon away from you. 8x3. This space is a minute away from you. 9x4. This space is a week away from you. 10x5. This space is the roaring twenties away from you.
March 2, 2016
8Julie_in_the_Library
We Would Never Sleep
By David Hernandez
We the people, we the one
times 320 million, I’m rounding up, there’s really
too many grass blades to count,
wheat plants to tally, just see
the whole field swaying from here to that shy
blue mountain. Swaying
as in rocking, but also the other
definition of the verb: we sway, we influence,
we impress. Unless we’re asleep,
the field’s asleep, more a postcard
than a real field, portrait of the people
unmoved. You know that shooting last week?
I will admit the number dead
was too low to startle me
if you admit you felt the same,
and the person standing by you
agrees, and the person beside that person.
It has to be double digits,
don’t you think? To really
shake up your afternoon? I’m troubled by
how untroubled I felt, my mind’s humdrum
regarding the total coffins, five
if you care to know, five still
even if you don’t. I’m angry
I’m getting used to it, the daily
gunned down, pop-pop on Wednesday,
Thursday’s spent casings
pinging on the sidewalk. It all sounds
so industrial, there’s nothing metal
that won’t make a noise, I’m thinking every gun
should come with a microphone,
each street with loudspeakers
to broadcast their banging.
We would never sleep, the field
always awake, acres of swaying
up to that shy blue mountain, no wonder
why it cowers on the horizon, I mean
look at us, look with the mountain’s eyes
we the people
putting holes in the people.
By David Hernandez
We the people, we the one
times 320 million, I’m rounding up, there’s really
too many grass blades to count,
wheat plants to tally, just see
the whole field swaying from here to that shy
blue mountain. Swaying
as in rocking, but also the other
definition of the verb: we sway, we influence,
we impress. Unless we’re asleep,
the field’s asleep, more a postcard
than a real field, portrait of the people
unmoved. You know that shooting last week?
I will admit the number dead
was too low to startle me
if you admit you felt the same,
and the person standing by you
agrees, and the person beside that person.
It has to be double digits,
don’t you think? To really
shake up your afternoon? I’m troubled by
how untroubled I felt, my mind’s humdrum
regarding the total coffins, five
if you care to know, five still
even if you don’t. I’m angry
I’m getting used to it, the daily
gunned down, pop-pop on Wednesday,
Thursday’s spent casings
pinging on the sidewalk. It all sounds
so industrial, there’s nothing metal
that won’t make a noise, I’m thinking every gun
should come with a microphone,
each street with loudspeakers
to broadcast their banging.
We would never sleep, the field
always awake, acres of swaying
up to that shy blue mountain, no wonder
why it cowers on the horizon, I mean
look at us, look with the mountain’s eyes
we the people
putting holes in the people.
9rv1988
'A Word on Statistics'
by Wisława Szymborska
(translated by Joanna Trzeciak)
Out of every hundred people
those who always know better:
fifty-two.
Unsure of every step:
almost all the rest.
Ready to help,
if it doesn't take long:
forty-nine.
Always good,
because they cannot be otherwise:
four—well, maybe five.
Able to admire without envy:
eighteen.
Led to error
by youth (which passes):
sixty, plus or minus.
Those not to be messed with:
forty and four.
Living in constant fear
of someone or something:
seventy-seven.
Capable of happiness:
twenty-some-odd at most.
Harmless alone,
turning savage in crowds:
more than half, for sure.
Cruel
when forced by circumstances:
it's better not to know,
not even approximately.
Wise in hindsight:
not many more
than wise in foresight.
Getting nothing out of life except things:
thirty
(though I would like to be wrong).
Doubled over in pain
and without a flashlight in the dark:
eighty-three, sooner or later.
Those who are just:
quite a few at thirty-five.
But if it takes effort to understand:
three.
Worthy of empathy:
ninety-nine.
Mortal:
one hundred out of one hundred—
a figure that has never varied yet.
by Wisława Szymborska
(translated by Joanna Trzeciak)
Out of every hundred people
those who always know better:
fifty-two.
Unsure of every step:
almost all the rest.
Ready to help,
if it doesn't take long:
forty-nine.
Always good,
because they cannot be otherwise:
four—well, maybe five.
Able to admire without envy:
eighteen.
Led to error
by youth (which passes):
sixty, plus or minus.
Those not to be messed with:
forty and four.
Living in constant fear
of someone or something:
seventy-seven.
Capable of happiness:
twenty-some-odd at most.
Harmless alone,
turning savage in crowds:
more than half, for sure.
Cruel
when forced by circumstances:
it's better not to know,
not even approximately.
Wise in hindsight:
not many more
than wise in foresight.
Getting nothing out of life except things:
thirty
(though I would like to be wrong).
Doubled over in pain
and without a flashlight in the dark:
eighty-three, sooner or later.
Those who are just:
quite a few at thirty-five.
But if it takes effort to understand:
three.
Worthy of empathy:
ninety-nine.
Mortal:
one hundred out of one hundred—
a figure that has never varied yet.
11Julie_in_the_Library
MY MOTHER SAYS
by Amy Chan
My mother says I sing like a bird
on a winter’s day,
my mother, whose grace catches,
light on water,
on her changing face.
But if I am the bird and she the sea,
I sing because she flows through me.
by Amy Chan
My mother says I sing like a bird
on a winter’s day,
my mother, whose grace catches,
light on water,
on her changing face.
But if I am the bird and she the sea,
I sing because she flows through me.
12Julie_in_the_Library
INSULT TO INJURY
by George Bilgere
I find an old air gun
and a can of ammo
down in the basement
in a cardboard moving box,
along with some other stuff,
flotsam from previous lives.
A teenager, a long-expired
me, used it to polish off
tins cans in the backyard,
and once a bright, golden
oriole, shot in mid-song,
blowing a hole through me
as it fell. Holding a pistol
is like shaking hands
with death. What the hell,
let’s see if the damn thing
still works. In the same box,
a volume of poetry, slim,
but not slim enough,
by a poet I never liked—
all smoke and mirrors—
a poet utterly, brutally
forgotten, although a blurb
on the back still calls his book
“an astonishing debut.”
I prop it against the wall,
pump, load, cock, and Blam
goes the gun as it hasn’t
in half-a-century. I inspect
the astonishing debut.
The pellet, as it happens,
made it farther than I ever did,
stopping on page sixty-two,
just deep enough to dimple,
not tear, a sonnet on the guy’s
divorce, how his wife ran off
with his best friend, how terrible
the betrayal, how deep his grief.
How losing her tore out his soul.
And now this.
by George Bilgere
I find an old air gun
and a can of ammo
down in the basement
in a cardboard moving box,
along with some other stuff,
flotsam from previous lives.
A teenager, a long-expired
me, used it to polish off
tins cans in the backyard,
and once a bright, golden
oriole, shot in mid-song,
blowing a hole through me
as it fell. Holding a pistol
is like shaking hands
with death. What the hell,
let’s see if the damn thing
still works. In the same box,
a volume of poetry, slim,
but not slim enough,
by a poet I never liked—
all smoke and mirrors—
a poet utterly, brutally
forgotten, although a blurb
on the back still calls his book
“an astonishing debut.”
I prop it against the wall,
pump, load, cock, and Blam
goes the gun as it hasn’t
in half-a-century. I inspect
the astonishing debut.
The pellet, as it happens,
made it farther than I ever did,
stopping on page sixty-two,
just deep enough to dimple,
not tear, a sonnet on the guy’s
divorce, how his wife ran off
with his best friend, how terrible
the betrayal, how deep his grief.
How losing her tore out his soul.
And now this.
13dianeham
>12 Julie_in_the_Library: love it.
14dianeham
That poem just gave me an idea for a writing "exercise." It’s called exquisite corpse. Each person writes 2 or more lines and conceals all but the last line. Like the last line of the poem above - "And now this." Then revealing only the last line you pass it to the next person and they do the same. If people are interested, i can start a new thread. We would have to use the spoiler code to hide all but the last line. (How do you do that again?)
Wanna play?
Wanna play?
15Julie_in_the_Library
>14 dianeham: Ooh, that sounds fun. I'd love to play!
16dianeham
>15 Julie_in_the_Library: oh cool. I’ll contact some of the other people who posted poems but who I haven’t seen for a while.
