POETRY BOOK - FOR ENGLISH 12 - jhartnett.blog€¦ · Poetry Book – for Grade 12 English Mrs. Hartnett - Roy High School 4 5. Cheerios One bright morning in a restaurant in Chicago

POETRY BOOK - FOR ENGLISH 12 TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. This Is My Letter To The World ...................................................... 3 2. Superhero Pregnant Woman ........................................................... 3 3. Sci-Fi ......................................................................................................... 3 4. First Girls in Little League Baseball .............................................. 3 5. Cheerios .................................................................................................. 4 6. Reading an Anthology of Chinese Poems of the Sung Dynasty, I pause to Admire the Length and Clarity of their Titles ............................................................................................................. 4 7. For a Coming Extinction .................................................................... 5 8. The Heart of a Woman ....................................................................... 5 9. a song in the front yard ..................................................................... 5 10. The Common Women Poems, II. Ella, in a square apron, along Highway 80 ..................................................................................... 6 11. Unlegendary Heroes ........................................................................ 6 12. Spring .................................................................................................... 7 13. My Father Sings, to My Embarrassment ................................... 7 14. Separation ........................................................................................... 7 15. Late March ........................................................................................... 8 16. On the Pulse of Morning ................................................................. 9 17. An Old Story ........................................................................................ 9 18. Hospital parking lot, April ............................................................. 9 19. The Tree Agreement ..................................................................... 10 20. Cornflowers ..................................................................................... 10 21. Ode to Marbles ................................................................................ 10 22. After the Gentle Poet Kobayashi Issa ...................................... 11 23. Life is Beautiful ............................................................................... 11 24. The Little Rock 9 ............................................................................ 12 25. They Sit Together on the Porch ................................................ 13 26. Mimesis.............................................................................................. 13 27. What Is June Anyway .................................................................... 13 28. Different Ways to Pray ................................................................. 14 29. My Picture Left in Scotland ......................................................... 14 30. My Grandmother Washes Her Feet in the Sink of the Bathroom at Sears ................................................................................ 15 31. The Uniform ..................................................................................... 16 32. At the Beach ..................................................................................... 16

32. Turning Forty .................................................................................. 16 33. The Gift .............................................................................................. 17 34. Famous ............................................................................................... 17 35. And the Ghosts ................................................................................ 17 36. A Poem for Pulse ............................................................................ 18 37. flag ....................................................................................................... 19 38. Perhaps the World Ends Here ................................................... 19 39. The Month of June: 13 1/2 .......................................................... 20 40. martha promise receives leadbelly, 1935 ............................ 20 41. Acts of Love ...................................................................................... 20 42. Ira Will Not Be Attending the Meeting .................................... 21 43. To Look At Anything ..................................................................... 21 44. The Laughing Heart ....................................................................... 21 45. Percy and Books ............................................................................. 21 46. Deer Hit.............................................................................................. 22 47. Tattoo ................................................................................................. 23 48. Wheels................................................................................................ 23 49. Loud Music........................................................................................ 24 50. Gee, You’re So Beautiful That It’s Starting to Rain ............. 24 51. Biscuit ................................................................................................ 24 52. Happiness ......................................................................................... 25 53. When Giving Is All We Have ....................................................... 25 54. Exotic Treats .................................................................................... 25 55. Birth Day ........................................................................................... 26 56. Manifesto of the Lyric Selfie ....................................................... 26 57. Before She Died .............................................................................. 26 58. Fifth Grade Autobiography ......................................................... 27 59. At the Gym ........................................................................................ 27 60. Love Poem With Toast .................................................................. 28 61. Red Wing ........................................................................................... 28 62. Football .............................................................................................. 28 63. Doing Without ................................................................................. 29 64. After Years ........................................................................................ 29 65. Second Estrangement ................................................................... 29 66. Some Clouds ..................................................................................... 30 67. When Death Comes........................................................................ 30

Poetry Book – for Grade 12 English Mrs. Hartnett - Roy High School

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68. Blind ................................................................................................... 31 69. Ladies and Gentlemen in Outer Space .................................... 31 70. Notice ................................................................................................. 31 71. Morning ............................................................................................. 32 72. Animals .............................................................................................. 32 73. Bedecked ........................................................................................... 32 74. Entrance ............................................................................................ 32 75. Something ......................................................................................... 33 76. Shakespearean Sonnet ................................................................. 33 77. Break .................................................................................................. 33 78. Immortality ...................................................................................... 34 79. Baseball and Classicism ............................................................... 34 80. The Visitor ........................................................................................ 34

1. This Is My Letter To The World This is my letter to the world, That never wrote to me,-- The simple news that Nature told, With tender majesty. Her message is committed To hands I cannot see; For love of her, sweet countrymen, Judge tenderly of me! —Emily Dickinson

2. Superhero Pregnant Woman Her sense of smell is ten times stronger. And so her husband smells funny; she rolls away from him in the bed. She even smells funny to herself, but cannot roll away from that. Why couldn’t she get a more useful superpower? Like the ability to turn invisible, or fly? The refrigerator laughs at her from its dark corner, knowing she will have to open it some time and surrender to its villainous odors. —Jessy Randall

3. Sci-Fi There will be no edges, but curves. Clean lines pointing only forward. History, with its hard spine & dog-eared Corners, will be replaced with nuance, Just like the dinosaurs gave way To mounds and mounds of ice. Women will still be women, but

The distinction will be empty. Sex, Having outlived every threat, will gratify Only the mind, which is where it will exist. For kicks, we'll dance for ourselves Before mirrors studded with golden bulbs. The oldest among us will recognize that glow— But the word sun will have been re-assigned To the Standard Uranium-Neutralizing device Found in households and nursing homes. And yes, we'll live to be much older, thanks To popular consensus. Weightless, unhinged, Eons from even our own moon, we'll drift In the haze of space, which will be, once And for all, scrutable and safe. —Tracy K. Smith

4. First Girls in Little League Baseball December 26, 1974 Title IX of the 1972 Education Act is signed, providing for equal opportunity in athletics for girls as well as boys. The year was 1974 When Little Leaguers learned the score. President Ford took out his pen, And signed a law that said from then On women too would have the chance To wear the stripes and wear the pants. Now what you hear, as flags unfurl, Is "Atta boy!" and "Atta girl!" —J. Patrick Lewis


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5. Cheerios One bright morning in a restaurant in Chicago as I waited for my eggs and toast, I opened the Tribune only to discover that I was the same age as Cheerios. Indeed, I was a few months older than Cheerios for today, the newspaper announced, was the seventieth birthday of Cheerios whereas mine had occurred earlier in the year. Already I could hear them whispering behind my stooped and threadbare back, Why that dude’s older than Cheerios the way they used to say Why that’s as old as the hills, only the hills are much older than Cheerios or any American breakfast cereal, and more noble and enduring are the hills, I surmised as a bar of sunlight illuminated my orange juice. —Billy Collins

6. Reading an Anthology of Chinese Poems of the Sung Dynasty, I pause to Admire the Length and Clarity of their Titles It seems these poets have nothing up their ample sleeves they turn over so many cards so early, telling us before the first line whether it is wet or dry, night or day, the season the man is standing in, even how much he has had to drink. Maybe it is autumn and he is looking at a sparrow. Maybe it is snowing on a town with a beautiful name. "Viewing Peonies at the Temple of Good Fortune

on a Cloudy Afternoon" is one of Sun Tung Po's. "Dipping Water from the River and Simmering Tea" is another one, or just "On a Boat, Awake at Night." And Lu Yu takes the simple rice cake with "In a Boat on a Summer Evening I Heard the Cry of a Waterbird. It Was Very Sad and Seemed To Be Saying My Woman Is Cruel—Moved, I Wrote This Poem." There is no iron turnstile to push against here as with headings like "Vortex on a String," "The Horn of Neurosis," or whatever. No confusingly inscribed welcome mat to puzzle over. Instead, "I Walk Out on a Summer Morning to the Sound of Birds and a Waterfall" is a beaded curtain brushing over my shoulders. And "Ten Days of Spring Rain Have Kept Me Indoors" is a servant who shows me into the room where a poet with a thin beard is sitting on a mat with a jug of wine whispering something about clouds and cold wind, about sickness and the loss of friends. How easy he has made it for me to enter here, to sit down in a corner, cross my legs like his, and listen. —Billy Collins


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7. For a Coming Extinction Gray whale Now that we are sending you to The End That great god Tell him That we who follow you invented forgiveness And forgive nothing I write as though you could understand And I could say it One must always pretend something Among the dying When you have left the seas nodding on their stalks Empty of you Tell him that we were made On another day The bewilderment will diminish like an echo Winding along your inner mountains Unheard by us And find its way out Leaving behind it the future Dead And ours When you will not see again The whale calves trying the light Consider what you will find in the black garden And its court The sea cows the Great Auks the gorillas The irreplaceable hosts ranged countless And fore-ordaining as stars Our sacrifices Join your word to theirs Tell him That it is we who are important —W. S. Merwin

8. The Heart of a Woman The heart of a woman goes forth with the dawn, As a lone bird, soft winging, so restlessly on, Afar o’er life’s turrets and vales does it roam In the wake of those echoes the heart calls home. The heart of a woman falls back with the night, And enters some alien cage in its plight, And tries to forget it has dreamed of the stars While it breaks, breaks, breaks on the sheltering bars. — Georgia Douglas Johnson

9. a song in the front yard I’ve stayed in the front yard all my life. I want a peek at the back Where it’s rough and untended and hungry weed grows. A girl gets sick of a rose. I want to go in the back yard now And maybe down the alley, To where the charity children play. I want a good time today. They do some wonderful things. They have some wonderful fun. My mother sneers, but I say it’s fine How they don’t have to go in at quarter to nine. My mother, she tells me that Johnnie Mae Will grow up to be a bad woman. That George’ll be taken to Jail soon or late (On account of last winter he sold our back gate). But I say it’s fine. Honest, I do. And I’d like to be a bad woman, too, And wear the brave stockings of night-black lace And strut down the streets with paint on my face. —Gwendolyn Brooks


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10. The Common Women Poems, II. Ella, in a square apron, along Highway 80 She’s a copperheaded waitress, tired and sharp-worded, she hides her bad brown tooth behind a wicked smile, and flicks her ass out of habit, to fend off the pass that passes for affection. She keeps her mind the way men keep a knife—keen to strip the game down to her size. She has a thin spine, swallows her eggs cold, and tells lies. She slaps a wet rag at the truck drivers if they should complain. She understands the necessity for pain, turns away the smaller tips, out of pride, and keeps a flask under the counter. Once, she shot a lover who misused her child. Before she got out of jail, the courts had pounced and given the child away. Like some isolated lake, her flat blue eyes take care of their own stark bottoms. Her hands are nervous, curled, ready to scrape. The common woman is as common as a rattlesnake. — Judy Grahn

11. Unlegendary Heroes 'Life passes through places.' –P.J. Duffy, Landscapes of South Ulster Patrick Farrell, of Lackagh, who was able to mow one acre and one rood Irish in a day. Tom Gallagher, Cornamucklagh, could walk 50 Irish miles in one day. Patrick Mulligan, Cremartin, was a great oarsman. Tommy Atkinson, Lismagunshin, was very good at highjumping—he could jump six feet high. John Duffy, Corley, was able to dig half an Irish acre in one

day. Edward Monaghan, Annagh, who could stand on his head on a pint tumbler or on the rigging of a house. –1938 folklore survey to record the local people who occupied the South Ulster parish landscape. Kathleen McKenna, Annagola, who was able to wash a week’s sheets, shirts and swaddling, bake bread and clean the house all of a Monday. Birdy McMahon, of Faulkland, walked to Monaghan for a sack of flour two days before her eighth child was born. Cepta Duffy, Glennan, very good at sewing—embroidered a set of vestments in five days. Mary McCabe, of Derrynashallog, who cared for her husband’s mother in dotage, fed ten children, the youngest still at the breast during hay-making. Mary Conlon, Tullyree, who wrote poems at night. Assumpta Meehan, Tonygarvey, saw many visions and was committed to the asylum. Martha McGinn, of Emy, who swam Cornamunden Lough in one hour and a quarter. Marita McHugh, Foxhole, whose sponge cakes won First Prize at Cloncaw Show. Miss Harper, Corley, female problems rarely ceased, pleasant in ill-health.


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Patricia Curley, Corlatt, whose joints ached and swelled though she was young, who bore three children. Dora Heuston, Strananny, died in childbirth, aged 14 years, last words ‘Mammy, O Mammy!’ Rosie McCrudden, Aghabog noted for clean boots, winter or summer, often beaten by her father. Maggie Traynor, Donagh, got no breakfasts, fed by the nuns, batch loaf with jam, the best speller in the school. Phyllis McCrudden, Knockaphubble, who buried two husbands, reared five children, and farmed her own land. Ann Moffett, of Enagh, who taught people to read and did not charge. —Mary O’Donnell

12. Spring To what purpose, April, do you return again? Beauty is not enough. You can no longer quiet me with the redness Of little leaves opening stickily. I know what I know. The sun is hot on my neck as I observe The spikes of the crocus. The smell of the earth is good. It is apparent that there is no death. But what does that signify? Not only under ground are the brains of men Eaten by maggots. Life in itself Is nothing,

An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs. It is not enough that yearly, down this hill, April Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers. —Edna St. Vincent Millay

13. My Father Sings, to My Embarrassment at Las Villas, a small Carol City bar with a makeshift stage, where he spends too much time drinking, pretending he can learn to play the guitar at forty-five, become a singer, a musician, who writes about "Que Difícil Es...." to live in Spanish in Miami, a city yet to be translated, in a restaurant where he has taken us for Cuban food, where I sit, frozen, unable to make a sound, where Mother smiles, all her teeth exposed, squeezes my hand, where Mae and Mitzy hide under the table shielding them from shame with a blood-red tablecloth, leaving my mother and me, pale-faced, trapped by the spotlight shining in our eyes, making it difficult for us to pretend we do not know the man in the white suit pointing to us. —Sandra M. Castillo

14. Separation Your absence has gone through me Like thread through a needle. Everything I do is stitched with its color. —W. S. Merwin


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15. Late March Saturday morning in late March. I was alone and took a long walk, though I also carried a book of the Alone, which companioned me. The day was clear, unnaturally clear, like a freshly wiped pane of glass, a window over the water, and blue, preternaturally blue, like the sky in a Magritte painting, and cold, vividly cold, so that you could clap your hands and remember winter, which had left a few moments ago— if you strained you could almost see it disappearing over the hills in a black parka. Spring was coming but hadn't arrived yet. I walked on the edge of the park. The wind whispered a secret to the trees, which held their breath and scarcely moved. On the other side of the street, the skyscrapers stood on tiptoe. I walked down to the pier to watch the launching of a passenger ship. Ice had broken up on the river and the water rippled smoothly in blue light. The moon was a faint smudge in the clouds, a brushstroke, an afterthought in the vacant mind of the sky. Seagulls materialized out of vapor amidst the masts and flags. Don't let our voices die on land, they cawed, swooping down for fish and then soaring back upwards.

The kiosks were opening and couples moved slowly past them, arm in arm, festive. Children darted in and out of walkways, which sprouted with vendors. Voices greeted the air. Kites and balloons. Handmade signs. Voyages to unknown places. The whole day had the drama of an expectation. Down at the water, the queenly ship started moving away from the pier. Banners fluttered. The passengers clustered at the rails on deck. I stood with the people on shore and waved goodbye to the travelers. Some were jubilant; others were broken-hearted. I have always been both. Suddenly, a great cry went up. The ship set sail for the horizon and rumbled into the future but the cry persisted and cut the air like an iron bell ringing in an empty church. I looked around the pier but everyone else was gone and I was left alone to peer into the ghostly distance. I had no idea where that ship was going but I felt lucky to see it off and bereft when it disappeared. —Edward Hirsch


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16. On the Pulse of Morning A Rock, A River, A Tree Hosts to species long since departed, Marked the mastodon, The dinosaur, who left dried tokens Of their sojourn here On our planet floor, Any broad alarm of their hastening doom Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages. But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully, Come, you may stand upon my Back and face your distant destiny, But seek no haven in my shadow, I will give you no hiding place down here. You, created only a little lower than The angels, have crouched too long in The bruising darkness Have lain too long Facedown in ignorance, Your mouths spilling words Armed for slaughter. The Rock cries out to us today, You may stand upon me, But do not hide your face. — Maya Angelou

17. An Old Story We were made to understand it would be Terrible. Every small want, every niggling urge, Every hate swollen to a kind of epic wind. Livid, the land, and ravaged, like a rageful Dream. The worst in us having taken over And broken the rest utterly down. A long age

Passed. When at last we knew how little Would survive us—how little we had mended Or built that was not now lost—something Large and old awoke. And then our singing Brought on a different manner of weather. Then animals long believed gone crept down From trees. We took new stock of one another. We wept to be reminded of such color. —Tracy K. Smith

18. Hospital parking lot, April Once there was a woman who laughed for years uncontrollably after a stroke. Once there was a child who woke after surgery to find his parents were impostors. These seagulls above the parking lot today, made of hurricane and ether, they have flown directly out of the brain wearing little blue-gray masks, like strangers' faces, full of wingéd mania, like television in waiting rooms. Entertainment. Pain. The rage of fruit trees in April, and your car, which I parked in a shadow before you died, decorated now with feathers, and unrecognizable with the windows unrolled and the headlights on and the engine still running in the Parking Space of the Sun. — Laura Kasischke


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19. The Tree Agreement The neighbor calls the Siberian Elm a “weed” tree, demands we hack it down, says the leaves overwhelm his property, the square backyard. He’s collar-and-tie. A weed tree? Branches screen buildings, subway tracks, his patch of yard. We disagree, claim back the sap, heartwood, wild bark. He declares the tree “hazardous.” We shelter under leaf-hoard, crossway for squirrels, branch house for sparrows, jays. The balcony soaks up the shade. Chatter-song drowns out cars below. Sun branches down. Leaves overwhelm. The tree will stay. We tell him “no.” Root deep through pavement, Elm. — Elise Paschen

20. Cornflowers She says my hair smells like corn tortillas. I raise an eyebrow. After all those honeysuckle and papaya shampoos, I can’t believe my scalp hasn’t soaked up the scent of blossom or the perfume of rainfall. No, she’s my mother, and she insists that even as a little girl, my whole bedroom breathed corn tortillas. Pressing nose to pillowcase,

I search for masa, reach back before molcajete and plow to a dusky meadow, its bed of soil flecked with teosinte, ancestor grasses. Up through the dark follicles of my skull covered in sun-cracked husks, push the black-brown silk strands, cocooning thirsty kernels. Maíz sprouts into fields of thought bearing hybrid rows of words that fall like teeth from the mouths of the dead.

— Brenda Cárdenas

21. Ode to Marbles I love the sound of marbles scattered on the worn wooden floor, like children running away in a game of hide-and-seek. I love the sight of white marbles, blue marbles, green marbles, black, new marbles, old marbles, iridescent marbles, with glass-ribboned swirls, dancing round and round. I love the feel of marbles, cool, smooth, rolling freely in my palm, like smooth-sided stars that light up the worn world. —Max Mendelsohn


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22. After the Gentle Poet Kobayashi Issa New Year’s morning— everything is in blossom! I feel about average.

A huge frog and I staring at each other, neither of us moves.

This moth saw brightness in a woman’s chamber— burned to a crisp.

Asked how old he was the boy in the new kimono stretched out all five fingers.

Blossoms at night, like people moved by music

Napped half the day; no one punished me!

Don’t worry, spiders, I keep house casually.

Hell: Bright autumn moon; pond snails crying in the saucepan. — Robert Hass

23. Life is Beautiful and remote, and useful, if only to itself. Take the fly, angel of the ordinary house, laying its bright eggs on the trash, pressing each jewel out

delicately along a crust of buttered toast. Bagged, the whole mess travels to the nearest dump where other flies have gathered, singing over stained newsprint and reeking fruit. Rapt on air they execute an intricate ballet above the clashing pirouettes of heavy machinery. They hum with life. While inside rumpled sacks pure white maggots writhe and spiral from a rip, a tear-shaped hole that drools and drips a living froth onto the buried earth. The warm days pass, gulls scree and pitch, rats manage the crevices, feral cats abandon their litters for a morsel of torn fur, stranded dogs roam open fields, sniff the fragrant edges, a tossed lacework of bones and shredded flesh. And the maggots tumble at the center, ripening, husks membrane-thin, embryos darkening and shifting within, wings curled and wet, the open air pungent and ready to receive them in their fecund iridescence. And so, of our homely hosts, a bag of jewels is born again into the world. Come, lost children of the sun-drenched kitchen, your parents soundly sleep along the windowsill, content, wings at rest, nestled in against the warm glass. Everywhere the good life oozes from the useless waste we make when we create—our streets teem with human young, rafts of pigeons streaming over the squirrel-burdened trees. If there is a purpose, maybe there are too many of us to see it, though we can, from a distance, hear the dull thrum of generation's industry, feel its fleshly wheel churn the fire inside us, pushing the world forward toward its ragged edge, rushing like a swollen river into multitude and rank disorder. Such abundance. We are gorged, engorging, and gorgeous.

— Dorianne Laux


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24. The Little Rock 9 It is Monday, I am twelve years old, summer still feel like summer to me... Ernest Green My elementary school principal was white I only had one white teacher, she was named after the juice the astronauts took into space, Tang, I got some Tang at home...did you hear about the little girls who got killed while we was in Sunday School yesterday? Elizabeth Eckford I live in Baltimore and so do you, your people the raw and stinky crew, my daddy a big shot on the Avenue your daddy can't buy a pair of shoes... Jefferson Thomas One little girl was named Addie Mae, just like my aunt from South Carolina, and when I come home from church everybody was cryin about the news from Alabama...I know Alabama Alabama was on the math test today— If you going 65 miles an hour leaving Richmond near where my cousin live and you drive for twelve hours straight will get you to Alabama? hell no, cause Alabama in hell ... Terrance Roberts The bus is hot, the white neighborhood full of angry faces just two miles from where we live, angry faces I see at night when I look out the window and wonder why I have to sit next to white children to be smart...I was smart all the time, my mama told me so when I did

things the right way, extra things, good things, smart is knowin when somethin's missing... Carlotta Walls LaNier I like Malcom X because he looks like me when I am so mad I can't stand myself, when my cousins take my model car shelf down, break up my cats and then dare me to fight, when I have to walk from the white school home through the white neighborhood when I miss the bus or when I get a beatin for what my friend did and he get a beatin, too, but mine hurt more because he did it, not me, so I like Malcom X. He so mean, Mr. Green, he so mean...you got to be mean in Chicago... Minnijean Brown When I was fourteen a boy kissed me when we were walking to the movies, he sneaked me, and I tried not to smile because kissing is a sin and all the while I was so full of hallelujah on the inside, on the way to the movies we go to now because somebody made a way somehow, standing in lines with protest signs, dogs barking all around, so I make sure I sound educated when Henry sneaks to kiss me on the way to the movies...we have all kinds of movies in Philadelphia... Gloria Ray Karlmark New York is faster than yesterday, been here and gone before you remember it ain't here no more, we go downtown in the middle of tomorrow when it still be today, New York is faster than yesterday, I got a quarter for your ten dollar bill, give it to me I'll pay your cleaners bill because New York is faster than yesterday,


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and a high school diploma is all a genius like me will ever need in a city where a thrill is more to me if you will believe me...and believe me you will... Thelma Mothershed What a word will do, my momma used to say at night when her work was done, rearing back in that chair of hers with the stuffin fallin out of the arms, what a word will do when you know what words are for, she would say, layin her head back, closing her eyes and settling down inside some dream. She never told us her dreams when we asked her, she just said we would know when the moon turned over three times and ghosts rose up out of the sea. Mama was half out of this world, in California we all the way in it... Melba Patillo Beals Little Rock Nine, Shaking the line Between white no And black oh yes, I'll walk all over What is mine, thanks To Little Rock Nine.. — Afaa Michael Weaver

25. They Sit Together on the Porch They sit together on the porch, the dark Almost fallen, the house behind them dark. Their supper done with, they have washed and dried The dishes–only two plates now, two glasses, Two knives, two forks, two spoons–small work for two. She sits with her hands folded in her lap, At rest. He smokes his pipe. They do not speak, And when they speak at last it is to say What each one knows the other knows. They have One mind between them, now, that finally

For all its knowing will not exactly know Which one goes first through the dark doorway, bidding Goodnight, and which sits on a while alone. —Wendell Berry

26. Mimesis My daughter wouldn’t hurt a spider That had nested Between her bicycle handles For two weeks She waited Until it left of its own accord If you tear down the web I said It will simply know This isn’t a place to call home And you’d get to go biking She said that’s how others Become refugees isn’t it? — Fady Joudah

27. What Is June Anyway After three weeks of hot weather and drought, we've had a week of cold and rain, just the way it ought to be here in the north, in June, a fire going in the woodstove all day long, so you can go outside in the cold and rain anytime and smell the wood smoke in the air. This is the way I love it. This is why I came here almost fifty years ago. What is June anyway without cold and rain and a fire going in the stove all day? —David Budbill


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28. Different Ways to Pray There was the method of kneeling, a fine method, if you lived in a country where stones were smooth. The women dreamed wistfully of bleached courtyards, hidden corners where knee fit rock. Their prayers were weathered rib bones, small calcium words uttered in sequence, as if this shedding of syllables could somehow fuse them to the sky. There were the men who had been shepherds so long they walked like sheep. Under the olive trees, they raised their arms— Hear us! We have pain on earth! We have so much pain there is no place to store it! But the olives bobbed peacefully in fragrant buckets of vinegar and thyme. At night the men ate heartily, flat bread and white cheese, and were happy in spite of the pain, because there was also happiness. Some prized the pilgrimage, wrapping themselves in new white linen to ride buses across miles of vacant sand. When they arrived at Mecca they would circle the holy places, on foot, many times, they would bend to kiss the earth and return, their lean faces housing mystery. While for certain cousins and grandmothers the pilgrimage occurred daily, lugging water from the spring or balancing the baskets of grapes. These were the ones present at births, humming quietly to perspiring mothers. The ones stitching intricate needlework into children’s dresses,

forgetting how easily children soil clothes. There were those who didn’t care about praying. The young ones. The ones who had been to America. They told the old ones, you are wasting your time. Time?—The old ones prayed for the young ones. They prayed for Allah to mend their brains, for the twig, the round moon, to speak suddenly in a commanding tone. And occasionally there would be one who did none of this, the old man Fowzi, for example, Fowzi the fool, who beat everyone at dominoes, insisted he spoke with God as he spoke with goats, and was famous for his laugh. —Naomi Shihab Nye

29. My Picture Left in Scotland I now think Love is rather deaf than blind, For else it could not be That she, Whom I adore so much, should so slight me And cast my love behind. I'm sure my language to her was as sweet, And every close did meet In sentence of as subtle feet, As hath the youngest He That sits in shadow of Apollo's tree. O, but my conscious fears, That fly my thoughts between, Tell me that she hath seen My hundred of gray hairs, Told seven and forty years Read so much waste, as she cannot embrace My mountain belly and my rocky face; And all these through her eyes have stopp'd her ears. —Ben Jonson


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30. My Grandmother Washes Her Feet in the Sink of the Bathroom at Sears My grandmother puts her feet in the sink of the bathroom at Sears to wash them in the ritual washing for prayer, wudu, because she has to pray in the store or miss the mandatory prayer time for Muslims She does it with great poise, balancing herself with one plump matronly arm against the automated hot-air hand dryer, after having removed her support knee-highs and laid them aside, folded in thirds, and given me her purse and her packages to hold so she can accomplish this august ritual and get back to the ritual of shopping for housewares Respectable Sears matrons shake their heads and frown as they notice what my grandmother is doing, an affront to American porcelain, a contamination of American Standards by something foreign and unhygienic requiring civic action and possible use of disinfectant spray They fluster about and flutter their hands and I can see a clash of civilizations brewing in the Sears bathroom My grandmother, though she speaks no English, catches their meaning and her look in the mirror says, I have washed my feet over Iznik tile in Istanbul with water from the world's ancient irrigation systems I have washed my feet in the bathhouses of Damascus over painted bowls imported from China among the best families of Aleppo And if you Americans knew anything about civilization and cleanliness, you'd make wider washbins, anyway My grandmother knows one culture—the right one,

as do these matrons of the Middle West. For them, my grandmother might as well have been squatting in the mud over a rusty tin in vaguely tropical squalor, Mexican or Middle Eastern, it doesn't matter which, when she lifts her well-groomed foot and puts it over the edge. "You can't do that," one of the women protests, turning to me, "Tell her she can't do that." "We wash our feet five times a day," my grandmother declares hotly in Arabic. "My feet are cleaner than their sink. Worried about their sink, are they? I should worry about my feet!" My grandmother nudges me, "Go on, tell them." Standing between the door and the mirror, I can see at multiple angles, my grandmother and the other shoppers, all of them decent and goodhearted women, diligent in cleanliness, grooming, and decorum Even now my grandmother, not to be rushed, is delicately drying her pumps with tissues from her purse For my grandmother always wears well-turned pumps that match her purse, I think in case someone from one of the best families of Aleppo should run into her—here, in front of the Kenmore display I smile at the midwestern women as if my grandmother has just said something lovely about them and shrug at my grandmother as if they had just apologized through me No one is fooled, but I hold the door open for everyone and we all emerge on the sales floor and lose ourselves in the great common ground of housewares on markdown. —Mohja Kahf


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31. The Uniform Of the sleeves, I remember their weight, like wet wool, on my arms, and the empty ends which hung past my hands. Of the body of the shirt, I remember the large buttons and larger buttonholes, which made a rack of wheels down my chest and could not be quickly unbuttoned. Of the collar, I remember its thickness without starch, by which it lay against my clavicle without moving. Of my trousers, the same—heavy, bulky, slow to give for a leg, a crowded feeling, a molasses to walk in. Of my boots, I remember the brittle soles, of a material that had not been made love to by any natural substance, and the laces: ropes to make prisoners of my feet. Of the helmet, I remember the webbed, inner liner, a brittle plastic underwear on which wobbled the crushing steel pot then strapped at the chin. Of the mortar, I remember the mortar plate, heavy enough to kill by weight, which I carried by rope. Of the machine gun, I remember the way it fit behind my head and across my shoulder blades as I carried it, or, to be precise, as it rode me. Of tactics, I remember the likelihood of shooting the wrong man, the weight of the rifle bolt, the difficulty of loading while prone, the shock of noise. For earplugs, some used cigarette filters or toilet paper. I don’t hear well now, for a man of my age, and the doctor says my ears were damaged and asks if I was in the Army, and of course I was but then a wounded eardrum wasn’t much in the scheme. —Marvin Bell

32. At the Beach Looking at the photograph is somehow not unbearable: My friends, two dead, one low on T-cells, his white T-shirt an X-ray screen for the virus, which I imagine as a single, swimming paisley, a sardine with serrated fins and a neon spine. I’m on a train, thinking about my friends and watching two women talk in sign language. I feel the energy and heft their talk generates, the weight of their words in the air the same heft as your presence in this picture, boys, the volume of late summer air at the beach. Did you tea-dance that day? Write poems in the sunlight? Vamp with strangers? There is sun under your skin like the gold Sula found beneath Ajax’s black. I calibrate the weight of your beautiful bones, the weight of your elbow, Melvin, on Darrell’s brown shoulder. —Elizabeth Alexander

32. Turning Forty At times it's like there is a small planet inside me. And on this planet, there are many small wars, yet none big enough to make a real difference. The major countries—mind and heart—have called a truce for now. If this planet had a ruler, no one remembers him well. All decisions are made by committee. Yet there are a few pictures of the old dictator— how youthful he looked on his big horse, how bright his eyes. He was ready to conquer the world. —Kevin Griffith


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33. The Gift To pull the metal splinter from my palm my father recited a story in a low voice. I watched his lovely face and not the blade. Before the story ended, he’d removed the iron sliver I thought I’d die from.

I can’t remember the tale, but hear his voice still, a well of dark water, a prayer. And I recall his hands, two measures of tenderness he laid against my face, the flames of discipline he raised above my head.

Had you entered that afternoon you would have thought you saw a man planting something in a boy’s palm, a silver tear, a tiny flame. Had you followed that boy you would have arrived here, where I bend over my wife’s right hand.

Look how I shave her thumbnail down so carefully she feels no pain. Watch as I lift the splinter out. I was seven when my father took my hand like this, and I did not hold that shard between my fingers and think, Metal that will bury me, christen it Little Assassin, Ore Going Deep for My Heart. And I did not lift up my wound and cry, Death visited here! I did what a child does when he’s given something to keep. I kissed my father. —Li-Young Lee

34. Famous The river is famous to the fish. The loud voice is famous to silence, which knew it would inherit the earth before anybody said so. The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds watching him from the birdhouse. The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek. The idea you carry close to your bosom is famous to your bosom. The boot is famous to the earth, more famous than the dress shoe, which is famous only to floors. The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it and not at all famous to the one who is pictured. I want to be famous to shuffling men who smile while crossing streets, sticky children in grocery lines, famous as the one who smiled back. I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous, or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular, but because it never forgot what it could do. —Naomi Shihab Nye

35. And the Ghosts they own everything —Graham Foust


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36. A Poem for Pulse Last night, I went to a gay bar with a man I love a little. After dinner, we had a drink. We sat in the far-back of the big backyard and he asked, What will we do when this place closes? I don't think it's going anywhere any time soon, I said, though the crowd was slow for a Saturday, and he said—Yes, but one day. Where will we go? He walked me the half-block home and kissed me goodnight on my stoop— properly: not too quick, close enough our stomachs pressed together in a second sort of kiss. I live next to a bar that's not a gay bar —we just call those bars, I guess— and because it is popular and because I live on a busy street, there are always people who aren't queer people on the sidewalk on weekend nights. Just people, I guess. They were there last night. As I kissed this man I was aware of them watching and of myself wondering whether or not they were just. But I didn't let myself feel scared, I kissed him exactly as I wanted to, as I would have without an audience, because I decided many years ago to refuse this fear— an act of resistance. I left the idea of hate out on the stoop and went inside, to sleep, early and drunk and happy. While I slept, a man went to a gay club with two guns and killed forty-nine people. Today in an interview, his father said he had been disturbed recently by the sight of two men kissing. What a strange power to be cursed with: for the proof of men's desire to move men to violence. What's a single kiss? I've had kisses no one has ever known about, so many kisses without consequence—

but there is a place you can't outrun, whoever you are. There will be a time when. It might be a bullet, suddenly. The sound of it. Many. One man, two guns, fifty dead— Two men kissing. Last night I can't get away from, imagining it, them, the people there to dance and laugh and drink, who didn't believe they'd die, who couldn't have. How else can you have a good time? How else can you live? There must have been two men kissing for the first time last night, and for the last, and two women, too, and two people who were neither. Brown people, which cannot be a coincidence in this country which is a racist country, which is gun country. Today I'm thinking of the Bernie Boston photograph Flower Power, of the Vietnam protestor placing carnations in the rifles of the National Guard, and wishing for a gesture as queer and simple. The protester in the photo was gay, you know, he went by Hibiscus and died of AIDS, which I am also thinking about today because (the government's response to) AIDS was a hate crime. Now we have a president who names us, the big and imperfectly lettered us, and here we are getting kissed on stoops, getting married some of us, some of us getting killed. We must love one another whether or not we die. Love can't block a bullet but neither can it be shot down, and love is, for the most part, what makes us— in Orlando and in Brooklyn and in Kabul. We will be everywhere, always; there's nowhere else for us, or you, to go. Anywhere you run in this world, love will be there to greet you. Around any corner, there might be two men. Kissing. —Jameson Fitzpatrick


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37. flag When the kids in my class ask why I am not allowed to pledge to the flag I tell them It's against my religion but don't say, I am in the world but not of the world. This, they would not understand. Even though my mother's not a Jehovah's Witness, she makes us follow their rules and leave the classroom when the pledge is being said. Every morning, I walk out with Gina and Alina the two other Witnesses in my class. Sometimes, Gina says, Maybe we should pray for the kids inside who don't know that God said "No other idols before me." That our God is a jealous God. Gina is a true believer. Her Bible open during reading time. But Alina and I walk through our roles as Witnesses as though this is the part we've been given in a play and once offstage, we run free, sing "America the Beautiful" and "The Star-Spangled Banner" far away from our families—knowing every word. Alina and I want more than anything to walk back into our classroom press our hands against our hearts. Say, "I pledge allegiance . . ." loud without our jealous God looking down on us. Without our parents finding out. Without our mothers' voices in our heads saying, You are different. Chosen. Good. When the pledge is over, we walk single file back into the classroom, take our separate seats

Alina and I far away from Gina. But Gina always looks back at us—as if to say, I'm watching you. As if to say, I know. — Jacqueline Woodson

38. Perhaps the World Ends Here The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.

The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.

We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.

It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.

At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.

Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table.

This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.

Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory.

We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.

At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.

Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite. —Joy Harjo


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39. The Month of June: 13 1/2 As our daughter approaches graduation and puberty at the same time, at her own, calm, deliberate, serious rate, she begins to kick up her heels, jazz out her hands, thrust out her hipbones, chant I’m great! I’m great! She feels 8th grade coming open around her, a chrysalis cracking and letting her out, it falls behind her and joins the other husks on the ground, 7th grade, 6th grade, the magenta rind of 5th grade, the hard jacket of 4th when she had so much pain, 3rd grade, 2nd, the dim cocoon of 1st grade back there somewhere on the path, and kindergarten like a strip of thumb-suck blanket taken from the actual blanket they wrapped her in at birth. The whole school is coming off her shoulders like a cloak unclasped, and she dances forth in her jerky sexy child’s joke dance of self, self, her throat tight and a hard new song coming out of it, while her two dark eyes shine above her body like a good mother and a good father who look down and love everything their baby does, the way she lives their love. —Sharon Olds

40. martha promise receives leadbelly, 1935 when your man comes home from prison, when he comes back like the wound and you are the stitch, when he comes back with pennies in his pocket and prayer fresh on his lips, you got to wash him down first.

you got to have the wildweed and treebark boiled and calmed, waiting for his skin like a shining baptism

back into what he was before gun barrels and bars chewed their claim in his hide and spit him stumbling backwards into screaming sunlight.

you got to scrub loose the jailtime fingersmears from ashy skin, lather down the cuffmarks from ankle and wrist, rinse solitary’s stench loose from his hair, scrape curse and confession from the welted and the smooth, the hard and the soft, the furrowed and the lax.

you got to hold tight that shadrach’s face between your palms, take crease and lid and lip and brow and rinse slow with river water, and when he opens his eyes you tell him calm and sure how a woman birthed him back whole again. —Tyehimba Jess

41. Acts of Love If endear is earned and is meant to identify two halves

then it composes one meaning

which means a token a knot a note

a noting in the head of how it feels

to have your heart be the dear one. —Pam Rehm


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42. Ira Will Not Be Attending the Meeting When working on a small scale He is practicing a gesture. So much of life is practicing gestures. So much of living is evaluating Those around you for signs of damage. Now it is night, morning’s a blink away. Sleep is sometimes thought of As an avalanche of repair gnomes That attends your pit stop. Would that we were sleeping now! Viable alternatives will be reviled Until the point of no return is passed. The only reasonable course of action Is to look for sizeable flotsam, Redo the resume, learn a martial art. —Jordan Davis

43. To Look At Anything To look at any thing, If you would know that thing, You must look at it long: To look at this green and say, “I have seen spring in these Woods,” will not do – you must Be the thing you see: You must be the dark snakes of Stems and ferny plumes of leaves, You must enter in To the small silences between The leaves, You must take your time And touch the very peace They issue from. —John Moffitt

44. The Laughing Heart your life is your life don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission. be on the watch. there are ways out. there is a light somewhere. it may not be much light but it beats the darkness. be on the watch. the gods will offer you chances. know them. take them. you can’t beat death but you can beat death in life, sometimes. and the more often you learn to do it, the more light there will be. your life is your life. know it while you have it. you are marvelous the gods wait to delight in you. —Charles Bukowski

45. Percy and Books Percy does not like it when I read a book. He puts his face over the top of it, and moans. He rolls his eyes, sometimes he sneezes. The sun is up, he says, and the wind is down. The tide is out, and the neighbor’s dogs are playing. But Percy, I say, Ideas! The elegance of language! The insights, the funniness, the beautiful stories that rise and fall and turn into strength, or courage. Books? says Percy. I ate one once, and it was enough. Let’s go. —Mary Oliver


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46. Deer Hit You're seventeen and tunnel-vision drunk, swerving your father's Fairlane wagon home

at 3:00 a.m. Two-lane road, all curves and dips—dark woods, a stream, a patchy acre

of teazle and grass. You don't see the deer till they turn their heads—road full of eyeballs,

small moons glowing. You crank the wheel, stamp both feet on the brake, skid and jolt

into the ditch. Glitter and crunch of broken glass in your lap, deer hair drifting like dust. Your chin

and shirt are soaked—one eye half-obscured by the cocked bridge of your nose. The car

still running, its lights angled up at the trees. You get out. The deer lies on its side.

A doe, spinning itself around in a frantic circle, front legs scrambling,

back legs paralyzed, dead. Making a sound— again and again this terrible bleat.

You watch for a while. It tires, lies still. And here's what you do: pick the deer up

like a bride. Wrestle it into the back of the car— the seat folded down. Somehow, you steer

the wagon out of the ditch and head home, night rushing in through the broken window,

headlight dangling, side-mirror gone. Your nose throbs, something stabs

in your side. The deer breathing behind you, shallow and fast. A stoplight, you're almost home

and the deer scrambles to life, its long head appears like a ghost in the rearview mirror

and bites you, its teeth clamp down on your shoulder and maybe you scream, you struggle and flail

till the deer, exhausted, lets go and lies down.

2 Your father's waiting up, watching tv. He's had a few drinks and he's angry.

Christ, he says, when you let yourself in. It's Night of the Living Dead. You tell him

some of what happened: the dark road, the deer you couldn't avoid. Outside, he circles

the car. Jesus, he says. A long silence. Son of a bitch, looking in. He opens the tailgate,

drags the quivering deer out by a leg. What can you tell him—you weren't thinking,

you'd injured your head? You wanted to fix what you'd broken—restore the beautiful body,

color of wet straw, color of oak leaves in winter? The deer shudders and bleats in the driveway.

Your father walks to the toolshed, comes back lugging a concrete block.

Some things stay with you. Dumping the body deep in the woods, like a gangster. The dent

in your nose. All your life, the trail of ruin you leave. — Jon Loomis


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47. Tattoo What once was meant to be a statement— a dripping dagger held in the fist of a shuddering heart—is now just a bruise on a bony old shoulder, the spot where vanity once punched him hard and the ache lingered on. He looks like someone you had to reckon with, strong as a stallion, fast and ornery, but on this chilly morning, as he walks between the tables at a yard sale with the sleeves of his tight black T-shirt rolled up to show us who he was, he is only another old man, picking up broken tools and putting them back, his heart gone soft and blue with stories. —Ted Kooser

48. Wheels My brother kept in a frame on the wall pictures of every motorcycle, car, truck: in his rusted out Impala convertible wearing his cap and gown waving in his yellow Barracuda with a girl leaning into him waving on his Honda 350 waving on his Honda 750 with the boys holding a beer waving in his first rig wearing a baseball hat backwards waving in his Mercury Montego getting married

waving in his black LTD trying to sell real estate waving back to driving trucks a shiny new rig waving on his Harley Sportster with his wife on the back waving his son in a car seat with his own steering wheel my brother leaning over him in an old Ford pickup and they are waving holding a wrench a rag a hose a shammy waving. My brother helmetless rides off on his Harley waving my brother's feet rarely touch the ground- waving waving face pressed to the wind no camera to save him. —Jim Daniels.


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49. Loud Music My stepdaughter and I circle round and round. You see, I like the music loud, the speakers throbbing, jam-packing the room with sound whether Bach or rock and roll, the volume cranked up so each bass note is like a hand smacking the gut. But my stepdaughter disagrees. She is four and likes the music decorous, pitched below her own voice-that tenuous projection of self. With music blasting, she feels she disappears, is lost within the blare, which in fact I like. But at four what she wants is self-location and uses her voice as a porpoise uses its sonar: to find herself in all this space. If she had a sort of box with a peephole and looked inside, what she'd like to see would be herself standing there in her red pants, jacket, yellow plastic lunch box: a proper subject for serious study. But me, if I raised the same box to my eye, I would wish to find the ocean on one of those days when wind and thick cloud make the water gray and restless as if some creature brooded underneath, a rocky coast with a road along the shore where someone like me was walking and has gone. Loud music does this, it wipes out the ego, leaving turbulent water and winding road, a landscape stripped of people and language- how clear the air becomes, how sharp the colors. —Stephen Dobyns

50. Gee, You’re So Beautiful That It’s Starting to Rain Oh, Marcia, I want your long blonde beauty to be taught in high school, so kids will learn that God lives like music in the skin and sounds like a sunshine harpsichord. I want high school report cards to look like this:

Playing with Gentle Glass Things A

Computer Magic A

Writing Letters to Those You Love A

Finding out about Fish A

Marcia’s Long Blonde Beauty A+! —Richard Brautigan

51. Biscuit The dog has cleaned his bowl and his reward is a biscuit, which I put in his mouth like a priest offering the host. I can't bear that trusting face! He asks for bread, expects bread, and I in my power might have given him a stone. —Jane Kenyon


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52. Happiness There’s just no accounting for happiness, or the way it turns up like a prodigal who comes back to the dust at your feet having squandered a fortune far away.

And how can you not forgive? You make a feast in honor of what was lost, and take from its place the finest garment, which you saved for an occasion you could not imagine, and you weep night and day to know that you were not abandoned, that happiness saved its most extreme form for you alone.

No, happiness is the uncle you never knew about, who flies a single-engine plane onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes into town, and inquires at every door until he finds you asleep midafternoon as you so often are during the unmerciful hours of your despair.

It comes to the monk in his cell. It comes to the woman sweeping the street with a birch broom, to the child whose mother has passed out from drink. It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing a sock, to the pusher, to the basketmaker, and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots in the night. It even comes to the boulder in the perpetual shade of pine barrens, to rain falling on the open sea, to the wineglass, weary of holding wine. —Jane Kenyon

53. When Giving Is All We Have We give because someone gave to us. We give because nobody gave to us.

We give because giving has changed us. We give because giving could have changed us.

We have been better for it, We have been wounded by it—

Giving has many faces: It is loud and quiet, Big, though small, diamond in wood-nails.

Its story is old, the plot worn and the pages too, But we read this book, anyway, over and again:

Giving is, first and every time, hand to hand, Mine to yours, yours to mine.

You gave me blue and I gave you yellow. Together we are simple green. You gave me

What you did not have, and I gave you What I had to give—together, we made

Something greater from the difference. — Alberto Ríos

54. Exotic Treats Especially on long drives through the country, you like to tell that story about your old girlfriend whose parrot was killed one afternoon by a raccoon who stole in through the pet door. It was horrible, you say. Feathers everywhere. Are you laughing? Stop laughing. She really loved that bird. —Laura McKee


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55. Birth Day For Alexandra, born May 17, 1999

Armored in red, her voice commands every corner. Bells gong on squares, in steeples, answering the prayers. Bright tulips crown the boulevards.

Pulled from the womb she imitates that mythic kick from some god's head. She roars, and we are conquered. Her legs, set free, combat the air.

Naked warrior: she is our own. Entire empires are overthrown. —Elise Paschen

56. Manifesto of the Lyric Selfie Our “I”s. They are multiple. We shuffle them often as we like. They can tag us. We can untag ourselves. We’ve got our to-be-looked-at-ness oh we have got it. We peer and cross. Go lazy. We’re all girly. We’re pretty selfie. We write our poems. We write our manifestos. While sitting in the photo booth. While skipping down the street. We think: if only my camera could see me now. There is a tranquil lyric

but we recollect emotion with the speed of the feed. We pose to show the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings. There are no more countrysides. There are no more churchyards. We smudge our vistas. We flip the cam around. What is burning in our little hearts? Hashtags of interiority licking like flames. We had been reflective. We have been reflected. — Becca Klaver

57. Before She Died When I look at the sky now, I look at it for you. As if with enough attention, I could take it in for you. With all the leaves gone almost from the trees, I did not walk briskly through the field. Late today with my dog Wool, I lay down in the upper field, he panting and aged, me looking at the blue. Leaning on him, I wondered how finite these lustered days seem to you, A stand of hemlock across the lake catches my eye. It will take a long time to know how it is for you. Like a dog's lifetime -- long -- multiplied by sevens. —Karen Chase


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58. Fifth Grade Autobiography I was four in this photograph fishing with my grandparents at a lake in Michigan. My brother squats in poison ivy. His Davy Crockett cap sits squared on his head so the raccoon tail flounces down the back of his sailor suit.

My grandfather sits to the far right in a folding chair, and I know his left hand is on the tobacco in his pants pocket because I used to wrap it for him every Christmas. Grandmother's hips bulge from the brush, she's leaning into the ice chest, sun through the trees printing her dress with soft luminous paws.

I am staring jealously at my brother; the day before he rode his first horse, alone. I was strapped in a basket behind my grandfather. He smelled of lemons. He's died— but I remember his hands. — Rita Dove

59. At the Gym This salt-stain spot marks the place where men lay down their heads, back to the bench, and hoist nothing that need be lifted but some burden they've chosen this time: more reps,

more weight, the upward shove of it leaving, collectively, this sign of where we've been: shroud-stain, negative flashed onto the vinyl where we push something unyielding skyward, gaining some power at least over flesh, which goads with desire, and terrifies with frailty. Who could say who's added his heat to the nimbus of our intent, here where we make ourselves: something difficult lifted, pressed or curled, Power over beauty, power over power! Though there's something more tender, beneath our vanity, our will to become objects of desire: we sweat the mark of our presence onto the cloth. Here is some halo the living made together. —Mark Doty


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60. Love Poem With Toast Some of what we do, we do to make things happen, the alarm to wake us up, the coffee to perc, the car to start. The rest of what we do, we do trying to keep something from doing something, the skin from aging, the hoe from rusting, the truth from getting out. With yes and no like the poles of a battery powering our passage through the days, we move, as we call it, forward, wanting to be wanted, wanting not to lose the rain forest, wanting the water to boil, wanting not to have cancer, wanting to be home by dark, wanting not to run out of gas, as each of us wants the other watching at the end, as both want not to leave the other alone, as wanting to love beyond this meat and bone, we gaze across breakfast and pretend. —Miller Williams.

61. Red Wing Here's where they make the good work shoes in the long brick buildings beside the road. Shoes whose stitched, crepe-wedge soles and full-grain, oil-resistant leathers bless tiny bones in the ankles and feet, shoes of carpenters balanced on roof beams, electricians, farmers, iron workers, welders - cuffs frayed with sparks from the torch. At shift's end the socks emerge tinged

pale orange, tops of the arches crisscrossed with lace marks, propped up in front of the six o'clock news. Here's to the sweet breath of pond mist filling the lungs of summer. Here's to baked beans and twelve hours off. Here's to dust from the trucker's shoe, dust he stepped into three states back. Here's to shingles, aluminum flashing, wall studs, rafters, ten-penny nails, here's to tomatoes, onions and corn, here's squatting down and here's reaching over, here's to the ones who showed up. —Joseph Millar

62. Football I take the snap from the center, fake to the right, fade back... I've got protection. I've got a receiver open downfield... What the hell is this? This isn't a football, it's a shoe, a man's brown leather oxford. A cousin to a football maybe, the same skin, but not the same, a thing made for the earth, not the air. I realize that this is a world where anything is possible and I understand, also, that one often has to make do with what one has. I have eaten pancakes, for instance, with that clear corn syrup on them because there was no maple syrup and they weren't very good. Well, anyway, this is different. (My man downfield is waving his arms.) One has certain responsibilities, one has to make choices. This isn't right and I'm not going to throw it. —Louis Jenkins.


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63. Doing Without 's an interesting custom, involving such invisible items as the food that's not on the table, the clothes that are not on the back the radio whose music is silence. Doing without is a great protector of reputations since all places one cannot go are fabulous, and only the rare and enlightened plowman in his field or on his mountain does not overrate what he does not or cannot have. Saluting through their windows of cathedral glass those restaurants we must not enter (unless like burglars we become subject to arrest) we greet with our twinkling eyes the faces of others who do without, the lady with the fishing pole, and the man who looks amused to have discovered on a walk another piece of firewood. —David Ray

64. After Years Today, from a distance, I saw you walking away, and without a sound the glittering face of a glacier slid into the sea. An ancient oak fell in the Cumberlands, holding only a handful of leaves, and an old woman scattering corn to her chickens looked up for an instant. At the other side of the galaxy, a star thirty-five times the size of our own sun exploded and vanished, leaving a small green spot

on the astronomer's retina as he stood on the great open dome of my heart with no one to tell. —Ted Kooser

65. Second Estrangement Please raise your hand, whomever else of you has been a child, lost, in a market or a mall, without knowing it at first, following a stranger, accidentally thinking he is yours, your family or parent, even grabbing for his hands, even calling the word you said then for “Father,” only to see the face look strangely down, utterly foreign, utterly not the one who loves you, you who are a bird suddenly stunned by the glass partitions of rooms. How far the world you knew, & tall, & filled, finally, with strangers. —Aracelis Girmay


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66. Some Clouds Now that I've unplugged the phone, no one can reach me- At least for this one afternoon they will have to get by without my advice or opinion. Now nobody else is going to call & ask in a tentative voice if I haven't yet heard that she's dead, that woman I once loved- nothing but ashes scattered over a city that barely itself any longer exists. Yes, thank you, I've heard. It had been too lovely a morning. That in itself should have warned me. The sun lit up the tangerines & the blazing poinsettias like so many candles. For one afternoon they will have to forgive me. I am busy watching things happen again that happened a long time ago. as I lean back in Josephine's lawnchair under a sky of incredible blue, broken - if that is the word for it - by a few billowing clouds, all white & unspeakably lovely, drifting out of one nothingness into another. —Steve Kowit

67. When Death Comes When death comes like the hungry bear in autumn; when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut; when death comes like the measle-pox;

when death comes like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering: what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything as a brotherhood and a sisterhood, and I look upon time as no more than an idea, and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth, tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder if I have made of my life something particular, and real. I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened, or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world. —Mary Oliver


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68. Blind It's okay if the world goes with Venetian; Who cares what Italians don't see?- Or with Man's Bluff (a temporary problem Healed by shrieks and cheating)-or with date: Three hours of squirming repaid by laughs for years. But when an old woman, already deaf, Wakes from a night of headaches, and the dark Won't disappear-when doctors call like tedious Birds, "If only..." up and down hospital halls- When, long-distance, I hear her say, "Don't worry. Honey, I'll be fine," is it a wonder If my mind speeds down blind alleys? If the adage "Love is blind" has never seemed So true? If, in a flash of blinding light I see Justice drop her scales, yank off Her blindfold, stand revealed - a monster-god With spidery arms and a mouth like a black hole- While I leap, ant-sized, at her feet, blinded By tears, raging blindly as, sense by sense, My mother is sucked away? —Charles Harper Webb

69. Ladies and Gentlemen in Outer Space Here is my philosophy: Everything changes (the word "everything" has just changed as the word "change" has: it now means "no change") so quickly that it literally surpasses my belief, charges right past it like some of the giant ideas in this area. I had no beginning and I shall have no end: the beam of light

stretches out before and behind and I cook the vegetables for a few minutes only, the fewer the better. Butter and serve. Here is my philosophy: butter and serve. —Ron Padgett

70. Notice This evening, the sturdy Levi's I wore every day for over a year & which seemed to the end in perfect condition, suddenly tore. How or why I don't know, but there it was: a big rip at the crotch. A month ago my friend Nick walked off a racquetball court, showered, got into his street clothes, & halfway home collapsed & died. Take heed, you who read this, & drop to your knees now & again like the poet Christopher Smart, & kiss the earth & be joyful, & make much of your time, & be kindly to everyone, even to those who do not deserve it. For although you may not believe it will happen, you too will one day be gone, I, whose Levi's ripped at the crotch for no reason, assure you that such is the case. Pass it on. —Steve Kowit


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71. Morning Salt shining behind its glass cylinder. Milk in a blue bowl. The yellow linoleum. The cat stretching her black body from the pillow. The way she makes her curvaceous response to the small, kind gesture. Then laps the bowl clean. Then wants to go out into the world where she leaps lightly and for no apparent reason across the lawn, then sits, perfectly still, in the grass. I watch her a little while, thinking: what more could I do with wild words? I stand in the cold kitchen, bowing down to her. I stand in the cold kitchen, everything wonderful around me. —Mary Oliver

72. Animals I think the death of domestic animals mark the sea changes in our lives. Think how things were, when things were different. There was an animal then, a dog or a cat, not the one you have now, another one. Think when things were different before that. There was another one then. You had almost forgotten. —Miller Williams

73. Bedecked Tell me it’s wrong the scarlet nails my son sports or the toy store rings he clusters four jewels to each finger.

He’s bedecked. I see the other mothers looking at the star choker, the rhinestone strand he fastens over a sock. Sometimes I help him find sparkle clip-ons when he says sticker earrings look too fake.

Tell me I should teach him it’s wrong to love the glitter that a boy’s only

a boy who’d love a truck with a remote that revs, battery slamming into corners or Hot Wheels loop-de-looping off tracks into the tub.

Then tell me it’s fine—really—maybe even a good thing—a boy who’s got some girl to him, and I’m right for the days he wears a pink shirt on the seesaw in the park.

Tell me what you need to tell me but keep far away from my son who still loves a beautiful thing not for what it means— this way or that—but for the way facets set off prisms and prisms spin up everywhere and from his own jeweled body he’s cast rainbows—made every shining true color.

Now try to tell me—man or woman—your heart was ever once that brave. —Victoria Redel

74. Entrance Whoever you are: step out of doors tonight, Out of the room that lets you feel secure. Infinity is open to your sight. Whoever you are. With eyes that have forgotten how to see From viewing things already too well-known, Lift up into the dark a huge, black tree And put it in the heavens: tall, alone. And you have made the world and all you see. It ripens like the words still in your mouth. And when at last you comprehend its truth, Then close your eyes and gently set it free.

(After Rilke) —Dana Gioia


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75. Something The minute the doctor says colon cancer you hardly hear anything else. He says other things, something about something. Tests need to be done, but with the symptoms and family something, excess weight, something about smoking, all of that together means something something something something, his voice a dumb hum like the sound of surf you know must be pounding, but the glass window that has dropped down between you allows only a muffled hiss like something something. He writes a prescription for something, which might be needed, he admits. He hands you something, says something, says goodbye, and you say something. In the car your wife says something something and something about dinner, about needing to eat, and the doctor wanting tests doesn’t mean anything, nothing, and something something something about not borrowing trouble or something. You pull into a restaurant where you do not eat but sit watching her eat something, two plates of something, blurry in an afternoon sun thick as ketchup, as you drink a glass of something-cola and try to recall what the doctor said about something he said was important, a grave matter of something or something else. —James Valvis

76. Shakespearean Sonnet With a first line taken from the tv listings A man is haunted by his father’s ghost. Boy meets girl while feuding families fight. A Scottish king is murdered by his host. Two couples get lost on a summer night. A hunchback murders all who block his way.

A ruler’s rivals plot against his life. A fat man and a prince make rebels pay. A noble Moor has doubts about his wife. An English king decides to conquer France. A duke learns that his best friend is a she. A forest sets the scene for this romance. An old man and his daughters disagree. A Roman leader makes a big mistake. A sexy queen is bitten by a snake. —R. S. Gwynn

77. Break We put the puzzle together piece by piece, loving how one curved notch fits so sweetly with another. A yellow smudge becomes the brush of a broom, and two blue arms fill in the last of the sky. We patch together porch swings and autumn trees, matching gold to gold. We hold the eyes of deer in our palms, a pair of brown shoes. We do this as the child circles her room, impatient with her blossoming, tired of the neat house, the made bed, the good food. We let her brood as we shuffle through the pieces, setting each one into place with a satisfied tap, our backs turned for a few hours to a world that is crumbling, a sky that is falling, the pieces we are required to return to. —Dorianne Laux


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78. Immortality In Sleeping Beauty's castle the clock strikes one hundred years and the girl in the tower returns to the world. So do the servants in the kitchen, who don't even rub their eyes. The cook's right hand, lifted an exact century ago, completes its downward arc to the kitchen boy's left ear; the boy's tensed vocal cords finally let go the trapped, enduring whimper, and the fly, arrested mid-plunge above the strawberry pie, fulfills its abiding mission and dives into the sweet, red glaze. As a child I had a book with a picture of that scene. I was too young to notice how fear persists, and how the anger that causes fear persists, that its trajectory can't be changed or broken, only interrupted. My attention was on the fly; that this slight body with its transparent wings and lifespan of one human day still craved its particular share of sweetness, a century later. —Lisel Mueller

79. Baseball and Classicism Every day I peruse the box scores for hours Sometimes I wonder why I do it Since I am not going to take a test on it And no one is going to give me money The pleasure’s something like that of codes Of deciphering an ancient alphabet say So as brightly to picturize Eurydice In the Elysian Fields on her perfect day The day she went 5 for 5 against Vic Raschi —Tom Clark

80. The Visitor Does no dishes, dribbles sauce across the floor. Is more dragon than spaniel, more flammable than fluid. Is the loosening in the knit of me, the mixed-fruit marmalade in the kitchen of me. Wakes my disco and inner hibiscus, the Hector in the ever-mess of my Troy. All wet mattress to my analysis, he’s stayed the loudest and longest of any houseguest, is calling now as I write this, tiny B who brings the joy. — Idra Novey


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Index – NEEDS TO BE EDITED!

Poems about relationships:

Poems about family:

Poems about identity:

Poems about fear or pain:

Poems about death:

Poems about faith/religion

Poems about loneliness:

Poems that are whimsical:

Poems that are odd or intriguing:

Poems about nature or animals:

Poems in or containing Spanish:

Poems about race relationships:

Poems about athletes:

Documents

POETRY BOOK - FOR ENGLISH 12 - jhartnett.blog€¦ · Poetry Book – for Grade 12 English Mrs. Hartnett - Roy High School 4 5. Cheerios One bright morning in a restaurant in Chicago