poetry: results 217–240 of 735

what comes to pass

at the pass

of stitches, of interstices

of wet weather on sandy rocks?

in maiz, in maiz, gentle, ease

y with the cutlass easy maiz,

steady with the cutlass gentle

boarding axe, plank by plank

Swiss, great-grandmother says "blood" to the row of the riverboat gently covering its tracks. Father defends their western terms, "I'm no wagon, no horse." Anchored—land, land ho—grandfather's in the motor, radio, hull, in the rain. Aunt J says "he touched it, it's ruined" and pops bread from a bread pan. Uncles talk Canada, a state away, with its good hunting, fishing.

Say, "remove your red bandana" and even her doll's eyes blink—

even the Mekong stops flowing,

even the small Khmer orphan.

The throw-away camera aims, and shoots an expression, arm-distance away.

He called

my thumb the knuckled tornado; called me

darling when we hid in the closet,

giggling, fumbling, splendid. That was the roast,

the rest was gravy.

In black branches hanging

over the roof, four or five

crab apples, overripe. Even

when no one is looking, walls

exhibit images made by the troubled hands.

Washed from my hands

a thin film after shelving

jars filled with leeches pond

lilies green stems so when

the time comes to extract

bad blood mixing with the good

I feel nothing…

Because your water is discovered by clouds

rising into the rapt blue abyss of sky,

now your body is love, on the rise, a mist.

If anyone asks: did you ever love? Say that

a moth was born from leaves and landed

on your tongue, like fingers plucking the harp strings.

And though it was not pronounced

you knew that an angelic form had come

with dusty wings.

Scallop of the top lip crowned in points, full pout

of the lower lip, teeth even ivories, an aristocratic mouth.

Before alar and DDT and GMO's, she was a red stone

in a cling peach whose stem was an aromatic mouth.

Yet everything that touches us, me and you,

takes us together like a violin's bow,

which draws one voice out of two separate strings.

We might be fifty, we might be five,

So snug, so compact, so wise are we!

Under the kitchen-table leg

My knee is pressing against his knee.

I love thee to the level of everyday's

Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.

The only store in walking distance

is the one for the rich. So many aisles; bright

and convenient as Dinner-Nirvana: Tofu

from Iowa, rice from California, cherries

from Chile. Everything fresh-

frozen in plastic. I can feel The Invisible-Hand-

of-the-Market reaching into my pants.

Dear BLANK.

I shall be brief, but frank,

Terse if not curt, aloof, though unswerving—

What little we had amounted to nothing.

It's a furnace of the first place, fever of mine.

The mattress can't be trusted. I suture shut my eyelids.

I align my terrors to their predetermined brinks.

But the bed that is my boat, slopes lee side,

Then sinks.

Then Winter.

Then Spring.

Then came those seasons

That splinter from the seasons.

Then came the ring

That I wore without good reason.

'O Winter! bar thine adamantine doors:

The north is thine; there hast thou built thy dark

Deep-founded habitation. Shake not thy roofs,

Nor bend thy pillars with thine iron car.'

The waves, as if they were ashamed, roll up to it tentatively, and just before they reach the shore, they turn back.

On the treadmill, he did not know if he was walking forward or backward. It was the same when he was stopped in traffic and the cars started to move and his car seemed to be drifting backward and he slammed on the breaks.

Gone grazin'. You Boch-drunk. Clink of spoons on sunglasses—

Me, girl gone glisterlight. Whitehot malaise in the grasses

Gone soft aspen slantlight that blisters, then passes—

Gone your kisses, O my Clearing! Wildwooded ways in the grasses…

A break is a labor

precise as bonework,

a steady dismantling

of dichotomy: …

The Frost performs its secret ministry,

Unhelped by any wind. The owlet's cry

Came loud—and hark, again! loud as before.

The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,

Have left me to that solitude, which suits

Abstruser musings: save that at my side

My cradled infant slumbers peacefully.

There's a certain slant of light,

On winter afternoons,

That oppresses, like the weight

Of cathedral tunes.

Heavenly hurt it gives us;