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Sep. 14th, 2010 06:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
darchildreI think that it may be poetry time. I have read a couple of poems recently that punched me in the stomach and have meant to share them. This evening, the library is fairly slow and quiet, so it seems like a good time.
And the Meek Shall Inherit the Earth, by Elton Glaser
Lord, disinherit me. Father,
Take back your promises of dirt.
I never was the son you wanted,
Skittish as a kitten, or mild as any other
Critters you could name: the mouse, the lamb, the sow
Suckling a squeal of freeloaders at her teats.
Once, I might have fit the profile,
A shy boy in the back row, alarmed
At the spelling bees, easy to blush,
Clumsy at the school dances. Now,
I'm nobody's pet, not even a bellwether
For lazy sheep who wag themselves to you—
No clatter at my neck, but a ruckus
Ringing out below the tail.
Father, you love the self-effacing types,
Bashful and subdued, demure as a debutante,
While I presume too much, believing
More in foreplay than the afterlife,
Devotions of the belly and the brain.
I send myself on my own errands.
You like that patient look, the low gaze
That keeps me in my place, downcast,
Quiet as a pot of pink geraniums.
But I lift up my eyes and see,
Like a housefly on a windowpane,
A world broken in a thousand parts,
And each part complete, and each part free.
Retired, but not retiring, I still
Live by my own means and ways,
In the stately bedlam of these brazen days.
Little Beast, by Richard Siken
1.
An all-night barbeque. A dance on the courthouse lawn.
The radio aches a little tune that tells the story of what the night
is thinking. It's thinking of love.
It's thinking of stabbing us to death
and leaving our bodies in a dumpster.
That's a nice touch, stains in the night, whiskey kisses for everyone.
Tonight, by the freeway, a man eating fruit pie with a buckknife
carves the likeness of his lover's face into the motel wall. I like him
and I want to be like him, my hands no longer an afterthought.
2.
Someone once told me that explaining is an admission of failure.
I'm sure you remember, I was on the phone with you, sweetheart.
3.
History repeats itself. Somebody says this.
History throws its shadow over the beginning, over the desktop,
over the sock drawer with its socks, its hidden letters.
History is a little man in a brown suit
trying to define a room he is outside of.
I know history. There are many names in history
but none of them are ours.
4.
He had green eyes,
so I wanted to sleep with him
green eyes flicked with yellow, dried leaves on the surface of a pool--
You could drown in those eyes, I said.
The fact of his pulse,
the way he pulled his body in, out of shyness or shame or a desire
not to disturb the air around him.
Everyone could see the way his muscles worked,
the way we look like animals,
his skin barely keeping him inside.
I wanted to take him home
and rough him up and get my hands inside him, drive my body into his
like a crash test car.
I wanted to be wanted and he was
very beautiful, kissed with his eyes closed, and only felt good while moving.
You could drown in those eyes, I said,
so it's summer, so it's suicide,
so we're helpless in sleep and struggling at the bottom of the pool.
5.
It wasn't until we were well past the middle of it
that we realized
the old dull pain, whose stitched wrists and clammy fingers,
far from being subverted,
had only slipped underneath us, freshly scrubbed.
Mirrors and shop windows returned our faces to us,
replete with tight lips and the eyes that remained eyes
and not the doorway we had hoped for.
His wounds healed, the skin a bit thicker that before,
scars like train tracks on his arms and on his body underneath his shirt.
6.
We still groped for each other on the backstairs or in parked cars
as the road around us
grew glossy with ice and our breath softened the view through the glass
already laced with frost,
but more frequently I was finding myself sleepless, and he was running out of
lullabies.
But damn if there isn't anything sexier
n a slender boy with a handgun,
a fast car, a bottle of pills.
7.
What would you like? I'd like my money's worth.
ry explaining a life bundled with episodes of this--
swallowing mud, swallowing glass, the smell of blood
on the first four knuckles.
We pull our boots on with both hands
but we can't punch ourselves awake and all I can do
is stand on the curb and say Sorry
about the blood in your mouth. I wish it was mine.
I couldn't get the boy to kill me, but I wore his jacket for the longest time.
Do you have any poems you'd like to share?
And the Meek Shall Inherit the Earth, by Elton Glaser
Lord, disinherit me. Father,
Take back your promises of dirt.
I never was the son you wanted,
Skittish as a kitten, or mild as any other
Critters you could name: the mouse, the lamb, the sow
Suckling a squeal of freeloaders at her teats.
Once, I might have fit the profile,
A shy boy in the back row, alarmed
At the spelling bees, easy to blush,
Clumsy at the school dances. Now,
I'm nobody's pet, not even a bellwether
For lazy sheep who wag themselves to you—
No clatter at my neck, but a ruckus
Ringing out below the tail.
Father, you love the self-effacing types,
Bashful and subdued, demure as a debutante,
While I presume too much, believing
More in foreplay than the afterlife,
Devotions of the belly and the brain.
I send myself on my own errands.
You like that patient look, the low gaze
That keeps me in my place, downcast,
Quiet as a pot of pink geraniums.
But I lift up my eyes and see,
Like a housefly on a windowpane,
A world broken in a thousand parts,
And each part complete, and each part free.
Retired, but not retiring, I still
Live by my own means and ways,
In the stately bedlam of these brazen days.
Little Beast, by Richard Siken
1.
An all-night barbeque. A dance on the courthouse lawn.
The radio aches a little tune that tells the story of what the night
is thinking. It's thinking of love.
and leaving our bodies in a dumpster.
That's a nice touch, stains in the night, whiskey kisses for everyone.
Tonight, by the freeway, a man eating fruit pie with a buckknife
carves the likeness of his lover's face into the motel wall. I like him
and I want to be like him, my hands no longer an afterthought.
2.
Someone once told me that explaining is an admission of failure.
I'm sure you remember, I was on the phone with you, sweetheart.
3.
History repeats itself. Somebody says this.
History throws its shadow over the beginning, over the desktop,
over the sock drawer with its socks, its hidden letters.
trying to define a room he is outside of.
I know history. There are many names in history
4.
He had green eyes,
green eyes flicked with yellow, dried leaves on the surface of a pool--
You could drown in those eyes, I said.
the way he pulled his body in, out of shyness or shame or a desire
not to disturb the air around him.
Everyone could see the way his muscles worked,
I wanted to take him home
and rough him up and get my hands inside him, drive my body into his
like a crash test car.
I wanted to be wanted and he was
very beautiful, kissed with his eyes closed, and only felt good while moving.
You could drown in those eyes, I said,
so we're helpless in sleep and struggling at the bottom of the pool.
5.
It wasn't until we were well past the middle of it
that we realized
the old dull pain, whose stitched wrists and clammy fingers,
had only slipped underneath us, freshly scrubbed.
Mirrors and shop windows returned our faces to us,
replete with tight lips and the eyes that remained eyes
His wounds healed, the skin a bit thicker that before,
scars like train tracks on his arms and on his body underneath his shirt.
6.
We still groped for each other on the backstairs or in parked cars
grew glossy with ice and our breath softened the view through the glass
already laced with frost,
but more frequently I was finding myself sleepless, and he was running out of
But damn if there isn't anything sexier
7.
What would you like? I'd like my money's worth.
swallowing mud, swallowing glass, the smell of blood
on the first four knuckles.
but we can't punch ourselves awake and all I can do
is stand on the curb and say Sorry
I couldn't get the boy to kill me, but I wore his jacket for the longest time.
Do you have any poems you'd like to share?
no subject
Date: 2010-09-15 05:01 pm (UTC)instructions for a body by Marty McConnell
praise the miracle body: the odd
and undeniable mechanics of hand,
hundred-boned foot, perfect stretch
of tendon
tell me there are no gods then,
no master plans for this anatomy
with its mobile and evident spark
someone says “children of light”
and another, “goddess fragment” and
another, “chosen” / a dozen makers,
myriad paths, one goal:
some scalpel, some chisel, some crazed
sentimental engineer giving rib, giving
eyelash, giving gut and thumb --
all mattering. all set down
in a going world, vulnerable
and divine
in the beginning was the word.
or before time there was a void
until a voice said “I” and was
or there was star and dust,
explosion and animal, mineral, us:
praise the veins that river these wrists
praise the prolapsed valve in a heart
praise the scars marking a gall bladder absent
praise the rasp and rattle of functioning lungs
praise the pre-arthritic ache of elbows
and ankles
praise the lifeline sectioning a palm
praise the photographic pads of fingertips
praise the vulnerable dip at the base of a throat
praise the muscles surfacing on an abdomen
praise these arms that carry babies
and anthologies
praise the leg hairs that sprout
and are shaved
praise the ass that refuses to shrink
or be hidden
praise the cunt that bleeds
and accepts, bleeds
and accepts
praise the prominent ridge
of nose
praise the strange convexity of ribcage
praise the single hair that insists on growing
from a right areola
praise the dent where the mole was clipped from the back
of a neck
praise these inner thighs brushing
praise these eyelashes that sometimes turn inward
praise these hips preparing to spread
into a grandmother’s skirt
praise the beauty of the freckle
on the first knuckle of a left little finger
we're gone / in a blizzard of seconds
love the body human
while we're here, a gift of minutes
on an evolving planet, a country
in flux / give thanks
what we take for granted, bone and dirt
and the million things that will kill us
someday, motion and the pursuit
of happiness / no guarantees / give thanks
for chaos theory, ecology, common sense that says
we are web. a planet in balance or out, the butterfly
in Tokyo setting off thunderstorms in Iowa,
tell me you don't matter to a universe that conspired
to give you such a tongue, such rhythm
or rhythmless hips, such opposable thumbs –
give thanks or go home a waste of spark
speak or let the maker take back your throat
march or let the creator rescind your feet
dream or let your god destroy your good and fertile mind
this is your warning / this
your birthright / do not let
this universe regret you.
Aberration
(The Hubble Space Telescope before repair)
by Rebecca Elson
The way they tell it
All the stars have wings
The sky so full of wings
There is no sky
And just for a moment
You forget
The error and the crimped
Paths of light
And you see it
The immense migration
And you hear the rush
The beating