3 Corners of Reality - Marvin Bell
One might speak to great length
of the three corners of reality -
what was seen, what was thought
to be seen, and what was thought
ought to be seen - and forget it.
Or one might argue the relative
merits of looking back, as opposed
to looking ahead or looking in on,
and in no time be willing to end it.
Who has that kind of time to spend?
- they asked when they had the time
to ask ; and it seems there was a movie
which flickered successfully
in behalf of these very questions.
Ever, the very very are among us,
appearing to ask for our lives.
Well, I give them the right answers:
​
"How do you recognize poetry?"
- It looks like poetry.
"How is prose different from poetry?"
- Prose goes by another name.
"Why do you write poetry?"
- Because it feels so good.
​
And I freely give samples of my pleasing.
​
​
​
Letter to a Young Poet - Robert Wrigley
In the biographies of Rilke, you get the feeling
you also get now and then in the poems
that here, surely, is a man among the archetypes of all men
you'd rather hang than have notice your daughter.
And yet, how not to admire the pure oceanic illogic
of his arguments, those preposterous
if irremediable verities. It can't be helped. They're true.
And there's no other word for him, for whom sadness is
a kind of foreplay, for whom seduction
is the by-product of the least practical art there is.
Those titanic skills in language, the knack lacked by
every other lung-driven swimmer through the waters
of lexicon, in spite of the fierce gravities of all grammar
and the sad, utilitarian wallflowers of usage:
well, there you go, my half-assed angel, that's your challenge.
Beethoven believed he was homely too, but you
must understand: Rilke's tools you can pick up, every one
but the one they all share. Even Stevens,
who must have known an actuary or two and still for whom
the brown salt skin of order sang beyond and in the ache
of longing. And Celan, whose most terrible angels
rang him like a bell of rings. And Whitman,
the dandy of the cocked hat and tilted head himself,
the gentlest, the gentile Jew, the jubilant lonely grubber
eyeing the grocery boy. Inside
them all, a man, if you could help it
you would never consent to become,
except if only, just for once, you could be him.
Siesta - Emily Grosholz
All afternoon, the heat intensifies
in leaps, like goats climbing the terraced hills;
another fig bursts on the tree; the olives
pale, surrender another cache of shadows.
Cicada transpose their note to a higher key.
As if the ear were the most material sense
they sing us back to flesh and bone, the steep
rocky quarter acre where we happen to live.
​
But the eye is aethereal, that watches over
the tranquil cool Aegean, mantle of blue
woven east and west with the stitch of wind.
We see beyond our country into another,
familiar, never attained, where scattered islands
gather like the dream's immortal children.
Who Has Seen the Wind - Christina Rossetti
Who has seen the wind?
Neither I nor you:
But when the leaves hang trembling,
The wind is passing through.
​
Who has seen the wind?
Neither you nor I:
But when the tree bow down their heads,
The wind is passing by.
Autumn - Adam Zagajewski
(Translation: Renata Gorczynski)
Autumn is always too early.
The peonies are still blooming, bees
are still working out ideal states,
and the cold bayonets of autumn
suddenly glint in the fields and the wind
rages.
What is its origin? Why should it destroy
dreams, arbors, memories?
The alien enters the hushed woods,
anger advancing, insinuating plague;
woodsmoke, the raucous howls
of Tatars.
Autumn rips away leaves, names,
fruit, it covers the borders and paths,
extinguishes lamps and tapers; young
autumn, lips purpled, embraces
mortal creatures, stealing
their existence.
Sap flows, sacrificed blood,
wine, oil, wild rivers,
yellow rivers swollen with corpses,
the curse flowing on: mud, lava, avalanche,
gush.
Breathless autumn, racing, blue
knives glinting in her glance.
She scythes names like herbs with her keen
sickle, merciless in her blaze
and her breath. Anonymous letter, terror,
Red Army.
The Oil Spill Would Advance - Josué Guébo
The oil spill would advance
eating whole pieces of white bread
Teeth rotten the spill swallows
three-quarters of the bread
and the crumbs loosen
like a knot of intestine
The tide would slide
its slum water and seaweed
across the water's white body
Without a visa the blackened tide
is not even recognized by the sky
Convinced by the shushing waves
that all will be saved
the spill throws itself across the sea
But the bread does not like the nibbling at its torso
does not want its sides to be grazed like this
The bread begins shouting out
that it opposes such a race of teeth
Blacks on this tide have a laugh
are fed up with being fed to the sea
have a laugh as lines disappear from the rainbow
laugh at the puddle of drool on the white body
of the white bread
How I Discovered Poetry - Marilyn Nelson
It was like soul-kissing, the way the words
filled my mouth as Mrs. Purdy read from her desk.
All the other kids zoned an hour ahead to 3:15,
but Mrs. Purdy and I wandered lonely as clouds borne
by a breeze off Mount Parnassus. She must have seen
the darkest eyes in the room brim: The next day
she gave me a poem she’d chosen especially for me
to read to the all except for me white class.
She smiled when she told me to read it, smiled harder,
said oh yes I could. She smiled harder and harder
until I stood and opened my mouth to banjo playing
darkies, pickaninnies, disses and dats. When I finished
my classmates stared at the floor. We walked silent
to the buses, awed by the power of words.
What My Father Believed - Robert Wrigley
Man of his age, he believed in the things
built by men, the miracles of rockets and bombs,
of dams and foundries, the mind-killing
efficiency of assembly line. And now the boredom
and blankness with which my students respond
to this tale of my father's loss of faith sadden me,
as times before I have saddened myself. Around
the middle of his life, I baited him wildly,
hung in my room the poster of Malcolm X,
whose lips were stilled around a word
that could have been freedom or fight or fuck.
I remember the first time I heard
my father say it. We had argued and I thought
I'd won. It was the same awful subject,
the war. I see now it was never how he had fought,
but his countrymen. He said we should not expect
to love war, but to know sometimes there was no way
around it, and I laughed and said "Just stop."
In his eyes I saw what he couldn't say,
though right as I was, I could no
predict what he muttered. The rage that made
him flush and stutter and sweat was gone,
and only a fool of twenty couldn't see the blade
of pain he suffered, and suffered all along.
What should I say to him today, when the truth
I was so eager to embrace is constantly told,
when the plainness of it rankles like a bad tooth
in our mouths and my students scold
us both as naïve and thoughtless. What of Custer?
they ask. What of racism? slavery? the inexorable theft
of every acre of native land? And I can muster
no answer they'll accept, but am left
at the end of class the argument's dull loser,
silent, contemplating the nature of instruction.
My father believed in the nation, I in my father,
a man of whom my students have not the slightest notion.
Genetics - Jacqueline Woodson
My mother has a gap between
her two front teeth. So does Daddy Gunnar.
Each child in this family has the same space
connecting us.
Our baby brother, Roman, was born pale as dust.
His soft brown curls and eyelashes stop
people on the street.
Whose angel child is this? they want to know.
When I say, My brother, the people
wear doubt
thick as a cape
until we smile
and the cape falls.
Not Everything is Sex - Lauren Whitehead
Okay
Tell that to the palm
of this Black man’s hand
ever so slightly cupped
and carrying in its bend
the finger tips of another
Black man, both of them
arms stretching upward
toward the sky, measuring
their reach against one another
on a basketball court
in Brooklyn, in spring
Okay
Spring
And when I say spring
I mean bee-buzzing-near-a-pink-bud-
almost-bursting spring
tantric spring
everyone-outside-in-three-
quarter-sleeves-despite-the-virus-
buzzing-near-our-tongues
spring So you can’t tell me
it’s not sex Cause it’s not not sex
The risk of all this tenderness
all this giving of ourselves
all this inside on the outside
open, vulnerable I know sex
when I see it and I see it
everywhere: lips on the nipple
of a soft serve, an arm fist deep in
a grocery store shelf, digging
for the last can of garbanzo beans
It’s not not a ménage à trois
these three men snuggled
in the front seat of a moving
van, singing bachata
dancing from the hips up
in the window, open
throats open, their whole necks
to the wind, reckless
reckless, I tell you, full on
abandon So say what you will
about transmission
about fluid, skin to skin
about the necessary things
that make the deed the deed
I don’t care cause it’s spring
and I’ve never seen anything so intimate
as this touch still taken
in the face of an apocalypse
Allah Castles - Faisal Mohyuddin
are what my son,
with a 5-year-old’s
sweetness, calls every
house of worship,
is how I can tell
he is a traveler too.
O, how many times
I’ve performed salah
in empty churches,
whispered ameen
at mass, made wudu
before holding
the Torah or the
Guru Granth Sahib,
nodded reverently
at the statue of Ganesh
in my best friend’s
home. God is God
is God, is a wisdom
my son’s already
divined, that echoes
through the spaciousness
of his wonder. When
I lie beside him
tonight, recite the
Ayat al-Kursi,
then blow its protective
blessings over his
beaming face, his
growing body,
I too think of Allah,
of His many castles,
His singular Throne.
The Nightingale - Gerard Manley Hopkins
‘From nine o'clock till morning light
The copse was never more than grey.
The darkness did not close that night
But day passed into day.
And soon I saw it shewing new
Beyond the hurst with such a hue
As silky garden-poppies do.
A crimson East, that bids for rain.
So from the dawn was ill begun
The day that brought my lasting pain
And put away my sun.
But watching while the colour grew
I only feared the wet for you
Bound for the Harbour and your crew.
I did not mean to sleep, but found
I had slept a little and was chill.
And I could hear the tiniest sound,
The morning was so still—
The bats' wings lisping as they flew
And water draining through and through
The wood: but not a dove would coo.
You know you said the nightingale
In all our western shires was rare,
That more he shuns our special dale
Or never lodges there:
And I had thought so hitherto—
Up till that morning's fall of dew,
And now I wish that it were true.
For he began at once and shook
My head to hear. He might have strung
A row of ripples in the brook,
So forcibly he sung,
The mist upon the leaves have strewed,
And danced the balls of dew that stood
In acres all above the wood.
I thought the air must cut and strain
The windpipe when he sucked his breath
And when he turned it back again
The music must be death.
With not a thing to make me fear,
A singing bird in morning clear
To me was terrible to hear.
Yet as he changed his mighty stops
Betweens I heard the water still
All down the stair-way of the copse
And churning in the mill.
But that sweet sound which I preferred,
Your passing steps, I never heard
For warbling of the warbling bird.’
Thus Frances sighed at home, while Luke
Made headway in the frothy deep.
She listened how the sea-gust shook
And then lay back to sleep.
While he was washing from on deck
She pillowing low her lily neck
Timed her sad visions with his wreck.
The Mothers - J. Mae Barizo
We must be
the inviolate
petals, always
queering to-
ward the sun,
must be water
on the lips of
flaming cities,
quenching
the husbands,
insatiable. These
days the abdomen
blossoms, but
we must be
boneless, edible
fish. We must
beg for bouquets
for absent sons.
This is how we
know devotion:
listening to lovers
sleep, breathing
like monster trucks,
wanting to soothe
them when the dream
is done. We march
the sinking avenues,
finger the curls
at the baby’s neck,
hanging from
the brink at
office hour,
gulping Xanax
in their white
oblong shells.
Cities can sleep
but we can never.
Vigilant animals
on our hands and
knees, asking for
it again and again.
Choke - Ed Roberson
maybe what I saw
was the earth’s shadow rise
up a cloud
turning it toward the top pink
then fading that back
to gray then night.
then maybe I think I see.
too much.
the tiniest gradation of  detail
squeezed from attention
by the choke hold
on thin air for the sublime a blessing.
when life stinks
and your eyes have to take it in to live.
and your eyes have to take it in to live
the exact instant you need to jump
out of  the way. to safety
or see danger’s vulnerable spot and hit it.
your eyes have to think
through what they are seeing to see
how measure measures itself
when you are in it against you to match or dis-
entangle that nascent not null of  difference. maybe what I see
is down to the continuum where what it is
is what it is one thing
undifferentiated all
except as the surface of one perfect sphere
its paris and buenos aires the same place.
What it is is what is seen without observer.
it is that said what it is.
exo-existent
thought. without outside.
there are lines as of  poetry
of  information between us though.
resonant. structure.
what is asleep when we turn the lawn mower on
if  only the pieces we think
something has caught it for—
the turning of  attention to.
the turning of  the earth. the earth is what is turning.
there is no setting
of  the sun down.
of  the sun down
some inclination to impact
at our feet as fact we stand to have
written by being here—
the rocks have source saying the same.
except they translate silent.
the word of  the wind itself spoken everywhere
has the version of  it all as well as of  not happening ...
the sun doesn’t move. its designation.
what it is pushes forward the appearance.
and behind—
the eastern shadow rising of  the sun’s soft down down.
its paris and buenos aires a same place.
what it is is what is seen without observer.
not the thing itself
the quality of  the hold on things
the choke hold on the neck of the calling bird
may be the goddamn
of  jacob’s ladder what it is
could be the hands in the air air
time of  the better roller coasters
pulled out all stops the no hold bar & café take
out. item name
on the menu—
the ladder being an upward
clearer approach to step.
the life the breath.
of an answer. the questioning.
I eye iamb I am
watching the sky read
the line below it the landscape
get shaken by storm.
a ring iamb married into
bone dance stone crazy.
claws of  geese shadow
scratching wild song across the sky.
chicago’s potemkin waking
gun we’re off on. the morning
fred hampton the bobbing flock of the 1919 boy
in the inner tube float up on the 100th anniversary of  the race riot
along lake shore drive the commuters
no idea what it is. they say it is what it is.
anger joy disgust sadness fear
are all mountains raising in the sky
an aire jump up shout
sound shape song response as
not if  but is
one body.
even among themselves at some distance.
all one sphere one point
a sense of  time can be that distance’s familiar
but the mind can empathize itself  that size the dreadlocks
of  black holes where the anger digests itself
the joy carries its brother sadness also over
and fear realizes it’s ok
and the rains come the forests the  jungles the birds!
Flies - Alice Oswald
This is the day the flies fall awake mid-sentence
and lie stunned on the windowsill shaking with speeches
only it isn’t speech it is trembling sections of puzzlement which
break off suddenly as if the questioner had been shot
this is one of those wordy days
when they drop from their winter quarters in the curtains and sizzle as they fall
feeling like old cigarette butts called back to life
blown from the surface of some charred world
and somehow their wings which are little more than flakes of dead skin
have carried them to this blackened disembodied question
what dirt shall we visit today?
what dirt shall we re-visit?
they lift their faces to the past and walk about a bit
trying out their broken thought-machines
coming back with their used-up words
there is such a horrible trapped buzzing wherever we fly
it’s going to be impossible to think clearly now until next winter
what should we
what dirt should we
Custodians - David Livewell
Retired from other trades, they wore
Work clothes again to mop the johns
And feed the furnace loads of coal.
Their roughened faces matched the bronze
Of the school bell the nun would swing
To start the day. They limped but smiled,
Explored the secret, oldest nooks:
The steeple’s clock, dark attics piled
With inkwell desks, the caves beneath
The stage on Bingo night. The pastor
Bowed to the powers in their hands:
Fuses and fire alarms, the plaster
Smoothing a flaking wall, the keys
To countless locks. They fixed the lights
In the crawl space above the nave
And tolled the bells for funeral rites.
Maintain what dead men made. Time blurs
Their scripted names and well-waxed floors,
Those keepers winking through the years
And whistling down the corridors.
From the Antique - Christina Rossetti
It's a weary life, it is, she said:
Doubly blank in a woman's lot:
I wish and I wish I were a man:
Or, better then any being, were not:
Were nothing at all in all the world,
Not a body and not a soul:
Not so much as a grain of dust
Or a drop of water from pole to pole.
Still the world would wag on the same,
Still the seasons go and come:
Blossoms bloom as in days of old,
Cherries ripen and wild bees hum.
None would miss me in all the world,
How much less would care or weep:
I should be nothing, while all the rest
Would wake and weary and fall asleep.
Translation - Susanna Brougham
Months later, my father and I
discovered his mother’s last word—
deep in the downstairs freezer,
one loaf of dark rye.
Its thaw slowed the hours.
I could not bear
the thought of eating it.
Then the ice subsided. The bread
was firm, fragrant, forgiving.
My father got the knife,
the butter. The slices
held. Together we ate
that Finnish silence.
The Zen of Housework - Al Zolynas
I look over my own shoulder
down my arms
to where they disappear under water
into hands inside pink rubber gloves
moiling among dinner dishes.
My hands lift a wine glass,
holding it by the stem and under the bowl.
It breaks the surface
like a chalice
rising from a medieval lake.
Full of the grey wine
of domesticity, the glass floats
to the level of my eyes.
Behind it, through the window
above the sink, the sun, among
a ceremony of sparrows and bare branches,
is setting in Western America.
I can see thousands of droplets
of steam—each a tiny spectrum—rising
from my goblet of grey wine.
They sway, changing directions
constantly—like a school of playful fish,
or like the sheer curtain
on the window to another world.
Ah, grey sacrament of the mundane!
American Smooth - Rita Dove
We were dancing—it must have
been a foxtrot or a waltz,
something romantic but
requiring restraint,
rise and fall, precise
execution as we moved
into the next song without
stopping, two chests heaving
above a seven-league
stride—such perfect agony,
one learns to smile through,
ecstatic mimicry
being the sine qua non
of American Smooth.
And because I was distracted
by the effort of
keeping my frame
(the leftward lean, head turned
just enough to gaze out
past your ear and always
smiling, smiling),
I didn’t notice
how still you’d become until
we had done it
(for two measures?
four?)—achieved flight,
that swift and serene
magnificence,
before the earth
remembered who we were
and brought us down. 
Every Morning - Mary Oliver
I read the papers,
I unfold them and examine them in the sunlight.
The way the red mortars, in photographs,
arc down into the neighborhoods
like stars, the way death
combs everything into a gray rubble before
the camera moves on. What
dark part of my soul
shivers: you don't want to know more
about this. And then: you don't know anything
unless you do. How the sleepers
wake and run to the cellars,
how the children scream, their tongues
trying to swim away -
how the morning itself appears
like a slow white rose
while the figures climb over the bubbled thresholds,
move among the smashed cars, the streets
where the clanging ambulance won't
stop all day - death and death, messy death -
death as history, death as a habit -
how sometimes the camera pauses while a family
counts itself, and all of them are alive,
their mouths dry caves of wordlessness
in the smudged moons of their faces,
a craziness we have so far no name for -
all this I read in the papers,
in the sunlight,
I read with my cold, sharp eyes.