Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
By Wallace Stevens
I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.
II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.
III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.
IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.
V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.
VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.
VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?
VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.
IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.
X
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.
XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.
XII
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.
XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.
--------------------------------------------------
Tenderness
By Adam William Wilson
Showing the love
And defying whats temporary
For the sake of ones will
Blueprint given
Hint the heaven scent
As your presence was as angelic
As your tone
That quelled the hell in my head
Disruptive
Hyperventilating and stressing
The exhaustion of a pawn
The exhaustion of ones love to the farthest regions
Your heart to mines
But never-less the actions
That raise suspicion amongst our peers
Isn’t for there ears
As you comfort me in silence
As the sound of our hearts beating
Masked the noise of the crowd
All I can do is gaze and smile
At the burning and flourishing
Of the crop
After every season.
-----------------------------------------------
ASCEND
By Johner Iris
Tell me, Divine One
How long?
How far?
Guide my way for I am blind to my fate
Squalls get no rest
to upset me awake
- why resist?
I trust, I trust there is a plan
Oceans moved by moons
Suns dawned then drowned
I came to the past to hold myself with future hands
Left clues to mark my path;
pebbles stranded on daydreams
a feather in the wind
The Earth pulses under my feet
Stepping on prints kept by the ground, I realize they are my own
I gather lost pieces of the puzzle of me
Thrown into flames
Ash in seabreeze
Burn my remains
All that is, perishes
My world shakes
Walls collapse
Bones ache
Skin cracks
Here I am, under layers
Breathing my soul alive
I allow the flood
to wash away, quench my thirst, water my seeds
For what will be, will be
It takes a lot to believe
when legs flinch and mind resigns
But there is no way back, so I keep climbing
Until I find - Magic
Fierce beauty blooming in me
I return to become
Untamed and almighty
I abandon my throne
To expand infinitely
And I arrive
You say;
"Ascend, my child, ascend
Time has come
Reach to where you belong
Where all Light comes together
Ascend"
_____________________________
On My Eighty-Seventh Birthday,
By Paul Panish
It is March—I have stumbled into my eighty-eighth year
since that winter of nineteen thirty-five
when I twisted my soul into the squealing flesh
of a frail, new-born body on a new-born earth.
My world was me; a patch of desire, an island,
a safe, wondering land in a warm sea.
I sucked at the breast and sucked at the sun and the songs,
my mother’s gentle songs she sang to herself
like a tiny bird.
What else fed my life?
Music there was, sounding throughout the house,
and father’s voice—I can hear it—reciting Shakespeare—
Oh, it was light, it was luminous, bright with love!
But later—a dreamy boy, in school and out—
the squawk of teachers shrilled into my daydreams
hauling me back to the school day.
Then those boys,
their fists beating me down for the sins of the Jews
and the death of Jesus, shouting, You killed our god!
I didn’t.
Weeping homeward:
They killed God!
But all through my life, there are moments—unforeseen
and sudden—they hold me, dazzle me, force me to see;
moments of beauty, moments of silent assent.
Even now, in the darkening world, a light
will burst, surpassing the light of common day.
How to seize it, own it, tell it, sing,
embody it in some shape or sound or act—
spin that word-web, shining, out of my blood,
shape some full, ripe shape of words to save,
to defend from going, all that goes and goes!
Hard! Hard to keep my gaze on the light
and still maneuver the concrete-gray ways.
And so I became a man-of-a-hundred-mistakes,
blundering on, trying a hundred trades,
ever distracted by something not in the rules—
as a soldier, mumbling Shakespeare on maneuvers,
lost in the sessions of sweet silent thought
(those words I mumbled), how could I hear the command
Gas masks on! The yelling! The shouts of the sergeants!
The curses! You! The deaf one! Pushups! Ten!
There! In the mud!
Or the jobs and jobs and jobs,
stealing time on the job to command an image,
a metaphor, a rebellious gang of words
that struggle against the stern demands of song—
Ah, once more it is March; I dodder along,
warming my hands, buying too many sweaters.
Another birthday declares this old guy lives,
has not yet stumbled off to the World of Truth—
he still spins out those webs of words to trap
that light. This old poet still walks
the sounding world—
humming his own song.
--------------------------------------------------
Summer Sonata About My City
By Andrej Al-Asadi
Only the Sun has no cost
And the air that reeks of stale milk
When you return home on foot
At four in the afternoon
Workers dig
Under each clump of city mold
As if looking for an ice-cold drink
Тo fill the holes where their teeth have fallen out.
In my city, in the summer
The white dream wanders the deserted streets
And gets to drop a scent of yeast in your ears
So you may never think again
To sing about this city … which mourns the living.
Translated by: Marija Shakleva, Director
Macedonia, the former Yugoslav Republic of.
_____________________________
Contentment, For Those Who Are Content
By Sally Rawhey
Oh, River Nile
Smile, smile just for a little while
Misery will follow you mile after mile
These Pyramids standing on barren desserts
For centuries crowned a land fertile
These palms that once fed Virgin Marry
Can make the dying revive
So why can’t you bare hardship for just a little while?
Ezbet Al Hagana is the name of the place
Inhabited by a long forgotten race
Where poverty is carved on every face
And hunger dwells in every space
Infant, child and senile all in one embrace
Taken by hardship they can’t displace
Yet one lady of a different pace
She marches victorious in this inconsolable race
She replaced misery with faith
Morning still finds its way through
To a room, a floor for a bed, a bowl of foul
Morning still finds its way through
To every smiling soul
Dear Life..
Shine your glamour far from me
I am blinded of your sparkle
Your materialistic world is but a deceiving sea
It’s a cheap bargain, sell it to someone other than me
Some live chained with their desires
But I chose to live free
Who said love only flowers in vases
Fields of gold or in heavens of angels
Love also roots in the driest of lands
And survives the cruelest of ages.
____________________________
Flutter and Spin,
By Gerard Wozek
The perpetual turning. The spinning
of a whispered spell. We listen,
quietly, to decipher it. The hush,
softly embroidered in the faerie light.
Each letter, a polished gem, twirling
in the air. The blessed Imagination
working through us. Coming through
open palms and throats. Until the turning within, the flutter and spin. Calling us to soar. Tipsy on the bliss, mercurial, as we slip into a tear in the atmosphere. All is freefall, all is flight. We lick the corners of our mouths with a sweet enchantment. The music around us forms a ladder, for us to climb, higher than ever before. Dizzy and lightheaded, we let go. To our surprise, we don’t fall, but ascend. Floating, we are inseparable
from the constant whirl, the flurry of other voices, following a pattern of chords, available to only us few.
-------------------------------------------------
Aftershock
By Marius Grose
Aftershock It's like a landscape collapsing
shoreless water embraces
careful constructs between us undoing
women click fingers, supplication to genius
everything is getting smaller
a landscape collapsing
it comes, immeasurable water
echo of a mirror, the taste of failure
and marigolds flower in snow running with violets reconnecting with ghosts
the past knots with knowledge of undoing
violets reconnecting with shop window ghosts
and I’m taking photographs of
a landscape collapsing
------------------------------------------------
Gravitational Lensing
By Alicia Sometimes
Our eyes crave baths of light—
flickering playgrounds of shivering stars
an image of a blue arc on the rim
coiling around clusters of galaxies
the vivid shimmer behind you in the garden
as the torch frames your silhouette in the dark
We long for a glimpse of planets in slow motion
counting them long into the balcony of the night—
so, after we see quasars in the distance distorted
we want to understand how mass bends the light
How dark matter halos—assemble over time
by gravity, their complex webs cushioning
around baryonic matter or black holes infer
their presence from distant stars or flowing
accretion discs. Gravity flexes the structure
of spacetime (warping light from traveling in its
straight line) as if a universal river pools at the sides
of invisible stone—the brightness lit from behind
When a large galaxy becomes front-view focal lens
far off galaxies are magnified and curved, arching
at the frames. Strong and weak lensing
enhance surrounding or further set stellar hives
some nurseries billions of years in our past
If the foreground mass, background and observer
are perfectly aligned, this Einstein ring resembles
the imprint of a cereal bowl abandoned
for morning play, a seemingly concentric stain
We try to see beyond what is immediately visible
and illuminate what is known but concealed
Our bare eyes, in the coldness of night, peering
through a telescope, unable to locate most
of the weight of the universe—missing out
on all the things we cannot see
__________________________
This World
By Mary Oliver
I would like to write a poem about the world that has in it
nothing fancy.
But it seems impossible.
Whatever the subject, the morning sun
glimmers it.
The tulip feels the heat and flaps its petals open and becomes a star.
The ants bore into the peony bud and there is a dark
pinprick well of sweetness.
As for the stones on the beach, forget it.
Each one could be set in gold.
So I tried with my eyes shut, but of course the birds
were singing.
And the aspen trees were shaking the sweetest music
out of their leaves.
And that was followed by, guess what, a momentous and
beautiful silence
as comes to all of us, in little earfuls, if we're not too
hurried to hear it.
As for spiders, how the dew hangs in their webs
even if they say nothing, or seem to say nothing.
So fancy is the world, who knows, maybe they sing.
So fancy is the world, who knows, maybe the stars sing too,
and the ants, and the peonies, and the warm stones,
so happy to be where they are, on the beach, instead of being
locked up in gold.
-------------------------------------------------
Ma’s Canh Chua* Recipe:
April – December 1975
By Mylo Lam
*Canh chua, translated as sour soup, is from the Mekong Delta. It has derivations in many Southeast Asian countries.
Ingredients:
¾ cup of ‘I barely know this man’
½ teaspoon of ‘I barely know his father’
6 cups of ‘I guess we’re all running away together now’
2 tamarind pods – picked from the tallest tree in the middle of a storm
1 pineapple – quartered and sliced (good luck)
2 tomatoes – quartered and sliced (good luck)
Beansprouts – as many as you can get your hands on
1 catfish – avoid the blood swimming downstream, if possible
Protein alternatives:
1 handful of escargots (i.e. edible snails)
1 non-venomous snake (go for the head with a blunt object)
8 cups water – again, avoid the blood
Dash of whichever herbs and spices you can scrounge or barter for:
Thai basil
red chili pepper
garlic
sugar (get some from a fruit?)
1 deck of cards
Instructions:
1. Two weeks before April 17, have a dream. All around you is fire except for a 40-foot statue of Quan Am off in the distance.
2. Flee Phnom Penh. When your boyfriend tells you to run away with his family, refuse. That relationship isn’t going to last anyway.
3. Be on the run for two weeks. Then, while running through the fields, see your boyfriend and his father chasing after you. No one else in their family is with them.
4. For safety reasons, collect ingredients late at night/early in the morning and with a lookout.
For the tamarind and pineapple, have someone at the base of the tree, ready to catch the fruit as you kick it off.
5. Add water to a pot and bring to a boil.
While water boils, play cards to pass the time.
6. Add catfish/escargots/snake to pot.
7. Add sugar.
8. Smash tamarind to a fine pulp (feel free to use same blunt object used to kill snake).
As your boyfriend sits there, realize you’ll probably have his children.
Look over to your boyfriend’s dad, realize he’ll be your father-in-law.
Say nothing.
9. Add tomatoes and cook for 2 minutes, then turn off the heat.
10. Toss in bean sprouts, garlic, and Thai basil
11. Quietly enjoy this meal.
12. 8 months later, get to the border of Vietnam.
Wait until the sun rises on January 1st.
Have your future father-in-law use what little Vietnamese he knows to get you in.
13. Hope you can get the ingredients needed to make proper Canh Chua.
Have a dream you’re walking down a narrow concrete stairway, leading to the outside. At the base is a two-headed snake gazing at you.
Realize you’re pregnant with your first daughter.
--------------------------------------------------A DIALOGUE WITH GEORGIA O’KEEFFE lll:
THE SIMPLE TRUTH OF LIGHT
For Maria Chabot
By Patricia L. Meek
“Light both softens and cuts,” Georgia O’Keeffe said
when I walked the Labyrinth at Ghost Ranch in April.
It was cold, but the apple blossoms were in bloom and the bees
droned on despite the threat of snow.
“You can’t write someone else’s voice. Just your own,”
you prompted when I petitioned you for sacred words to complete
this poem I’d been working on for years in the voice of Maria Chabot.
It was then I understood how the raw-boned girl
had forgone her ill-fitting ruffle in San Antonio,
had traveled all this way to make herself useful,
which is another way asking,
How do I find my place in this life?
I understood because Maria and I are one and the same.
No different really, we
both arrived stiff and swollen,
stuffed too tightly in worldly constructs,
which is another way of saying, painful constraints.
She wanted something from you, Georgia O’Keeffe.
A way toward understanding.
A way toward freedom and belonging. Nothing,
of which you had to give.
You were a painter.
No more.
No less.
Though she was frequently star-struck,
and swooned sometimes in your wake,
she brought you tea when she thought you were dead.
You so loved your solitude.
You were no mother to her.
No sister, no lover, you couldn’t
even be her mentor.
But you turned your painter’s eye
toward her and when she saw what you saw,
she became all those things and more.
There was nothing left in her way,
but essence liberated from form.
You took her to the BLACK PLACE where no one
else but you saw. There, you could be as bare
as you liked. There was no better
feeling than being liberated by dungarees.
Far from prying eyes,
to be anything you were meant to be.
It was there, way out there,
in the impossible dark where not
even ghosts had yet been manifested.
Where the starlight of the Milky Way
softened her heart until
she could unzip her own soul and stand in her new
strength and brawn. She was, after all
your hired hand, a role for which she was well suited.
She saw the way I have come to see,
through pain and mercy, that
there are 445 hues of red,
and each Geranium holds a different shade.
She discovered that bees love garlic, and
under the right sliver of moonlight, fresh bread
has a voluptuous curve.
She learned that crows are really carpenters
and their wings in flight slice open invisible space where
spirits slip through, and the labyrinth is really,
a key that opens up time to a past that remembers itself.
When it all comes down to it.
We are all the walking dead.
We are all spirits passing by as echoes.
And we love the sound of our own noise.
You could not show Maria Chabot
as you cannot really tell me,
how to understand light,
how it softens and cuts,
until it reveals essential
essence.
This is the simple truth of light.
-------------------------------------------------
Flooded Valley
By Iván Salinas
There is a view of flooded skies behind the mountains
there are endless aisles of hundred year old trees
wood crosses on pavemented lanes
mowed lawns for dogs to sleep
shaded dusty porches closed off to strangers
flies from humid nights that lay stiff
at the foot of a white door, in a cul-de-sac
where a blue & red flag waves at full mast.
Domesticated birds in cages
whistle as I pass through
these coiled neighborhoods,
I run into mothers, bikes, strollers
on their way out to the market.
Behind glass windshields
I see their faces driving-by,
families and friends in minivans
laughing non-stop,
down the road in gold-lighted
streets for a lucky few.
There are freeways and flats
with a million stories to tell of
generations before generations,
older than this earth we build upon.
Before my mind spoke
a single word in this western tongue
when this valley flourished with life and a million flowers grew,
before a single cross was planted and all we knew were seeds.
I pass through kaleidoscopic walls of
hxstory; what once was
painted with brushes that speak truths,
native eyes that witnessed the falling
of sunsets through the years,
until this valley became holy and all that was left
was holy water,
after the flood
came the re-building,
and now the flooded skies
reclaim their land.
--------------------------------------------------
The Spring Has Many Silences,
By Laura Ridding Jackson
1901-1991
The spring has many sounds:
Roller skates grind the pavement to noisy dust.
Birds chop the still air into small melodies.
The wind forgets to be the weather for a time
And whispers old advice for summer.
The sea stretches itself
And gently creaks and cracks its bones….
The spring has many silences:
Buds are mysteriously unbound
With a discreet significance,
And buds say nothing.
There are things that even the wind will not betray.
Earth puts her finger to her lips
And muffles there her quiet, quick activity….
Do not wonder at me
That I am hushed
This April night beside you.
The spring has many silences
------------------------------------------------
A Barcode Scanner
By Zêdan Xelef
Tent block, then muddy street, then tent block
In the beginning there was the number and the number became a price tag stuck to us The number made our selection easier from afar, no need to point
Then the earth became a radio with an eternal battery, no broadcast station, and no
stop to the disruption
Muddy street, then tent block, then muddy street
We raise ourselves on the hatred of death and the love of the dead
We raise ourselves on the love of life and the hatred of the living!
The crazy nobody is singing while teenagers chase him, trying to strip off his pajamas
Tent block, then muddy street, then tent block
The IDP is a zebra in a fenced-in wilderness Browsing the statuses of a closed Facebook group
Muddy street, then tent block, then muddy street
“May your eyes cloud over and the peacock’s corpse become your eye-patch, deviant pirate”
The prayer of hungry mothers, who cook boredom for their children, who snore through midday in every tent
Tent block, then muddy street, then tent block
Who introduces the IDPs to sunrise?
Who convinces them that the sun serves any purpose but heat?
Muddy street, then tent block, then muddy street
The wind in your tent is just an ascetic Sufi mocking you with each whirl
Tent block, then muddy street, then tent block
With his ration card held tight in his extended hand The IDP walks along the streets searching
Like a mine detector
Muddy street, then tent block, then muddy street
A tomato vendor: If only there were a tomato festival, so that people could learn to associate the color red with something else
Tent block, muddy street, then tent block
An onion vendor: Long live life!
An eggplant vendor: Ha ha ha!
Tent block, then muddy street, then tent block
Life in the camp is encrypted despair, but the IDPs are not hackers
Muddy street, then tent block, then muddy street
Tent block, then muddy street, then tent block
Muddy street, then tent block, then muddy street
Dear consumer/
Could not identify the producer of war!
Translated from the Arabic
by Bryar Bajalan and David Shook with the author.
--------------------------------------------------
Uyafasfulji's Refusal:
An Ode to the Yanbaru
By Shō Yamagushiku
hold close this trembling world
let it be mercy in fragments of ocean and tree
the darkest sprawl, my treacherous mind
first death then comes light, fleeting quickly
yet oh so bright
impenetrable sadness in the cliff swept-breeze
he leaves his island behind for this land of lines
an ache always for the spiral of return in the riptide
but nine thousand moons will fall and rise in darkness
and he will have let the teachings go. faintly, tracing a
memory of bones ground to sand, compounded into coral
and then submerged to sea - our first ones who never lost
their reverence, the safekeepers of every kind of elemental blue.
but what will they say when i return to them as a sliver, a shadow
bearing nothing but this new world’s shame?
there is a monster on my back
who hoists the japanese flag into
my spine every morning
i am petrified now and
i do not remember
how to get home
the boats returned empty
no fish weighing down their hulls
the water was so still that day
that its glass surface began to dance
with stories betraying our pride
that refused to break
and we shed our skin
sun after moon after sun after moon
in the village night so dark you
could not hide but now the city
has found us and the plastic
lights burn forever but they
do not illuminate the things
i refuse to hold
the failure the occupation
the joy that once spilled forth
the tears held back until
the river burst from its banks
the people that are no longer
we are islands
and we cannot touch
we are islands
and we cannot touch
but for the moonlight showering down
and the water lapping at our shores
we are islands rising
from the same rock
--------------------------------------------------Twilight in The Sculpture Forest
By James C. Morehead
The guardians have always stood
at the trailhead, rusting in the sun.
They are totems of a kind:
father, mother, and their child,
spines assembled from sickle and shovel,
discarded metal things for arms,
queer unblinking eyes and smiles.
I do not linger for their blessing
when passing through the trees.
Gelert greets me: Irish protector,
majestic, cast in bronze,
nose ever tilting upward
to detect the scent of hunting wolves
on basswood, balsam fir, and pine.
I caress his cool back, then move on.
The forest pulls me deeper in
where Pan is playing on his flute,
each note suspended, held and silent,
embedded in Canadian shield.
Green-gray shadows fill my wake;
canopy diffuses all sunlight.
I pass a hiker in limestone:
they wear a badge of maple leaf,
ever autumn, reddish brown.
One foot forward, one set back,
a smile, a wink, or so I think,
for their face is featureless—
a simple orb of clean, smooth stone.
Curious, a chain mail book,
forged steel covers bolted down
and each page sounds a rattle and crash.
But, despite how long I gaze,
its mysteries—hidden still,
concealed by fire.
I almost miss her as I pass,
carved from Belmont Rose.
The sleeping huntress, feathered hair
and naked skin cut from a block,
then set upon the forest floor.
Up ahead a beaver sits,
drawn from cement, with iron teeth,
to gaze upon a single lamp post:
steel, graffitied, out of place.
Turn the corner a granite gneiss dome,
low arched door and bench inside;
I rest awhile where echoes dwell.
“Silence is the language of God,”
Rumi’s words inscribed,
“all else is poor translation.”
I’ve lingered long, twilight has come,
the sculptures now—no longer stone.
Welded wire forms a man:
his arms reach up to welcome night,
unsettling, just mesh for skin.
They came before
(now all sleep)
Each paralyzed
(secrets to keep)
So I lie
(but for a while)
At midnight’s turn I try to rise,
limbs locked in place, bereft, alone,
until I hear
footsteps are near,
what are these passersby to think?
I cannot call
tongue turned to stone.
--------------------------------------------------
The Baptism
(an excerpt from the epic The Baptism at The Savica)
Fance Prešeren
1838
The warring clouds have vanished from the skies;
The war of men has ended with the night.
The morning sun gilds the tree heads that rise
Supreme above the Carniola's snowpeaks white.
The lake of Bohinj calm in stillness lies,
No sign of strife remains to outward sight;
Yet in the lake the fierce pike never sleep,
nor other fell marauders of the deep.
Is not this lake upon whose bank you stand,
Brave Črtomir, the image of your soul?
The clash of arms has ceased throughout the land,
Yet in your breast the storms of war still roll.
If aught of life's dire ills I understand
The eternal worm takes yet more deadly toll,
Battens on lifeblood in its inner lair
And reawakes the harpies of despair.
------------------------------------------------
The Bellybutton of My Universe (MacArthur Park),
by William Ramirez
I haven’t seen it for a while
but it’s been making waves in my head
even though, I think I drove by it in June
I think back to that conversation I had
with the Chapín at Davis, who said
En Guate dicen que uno siempre regresa
adonde entierra su ombligo
and, I realize, it might smell like one too
But, has it really been that long?
These eyes feel new
and it’s like that moment when you saw
your past lovers for the first time
Light
The men around it are no longer shadows
but, fathers, uncles, brothers, cousins
and it’s easier to walk through it
as they approach with the determination
of selling me a mica
The women street vendors no longer embarrass me
as I tried to avoid them
I missed them and wish
I had that kind of hustle
The walls running along Wilshire
serve for old friends to gather, reminisce, and discuss
the way the Malecón is in Havana
I imagine I can see their hearts
and, like my dad
their facial expressions reveal thought bubbles
with images of home
From here, the lake is another Atitlán
with volcanic downtown skyscrapers
Its ground vibrates
Yes, La Misión is gorgeous
with murals that sing to you
as you walk by them
and New York’s lights dazzle
almost blindingly, I must say
and the Heavens know that Havana still tugs at my heart
Even though she knows
It already has its queen
And there are still those places one dreams about
for a trip someday
No matter the years
the distance
away
and the adventures
all the adventures
and the “Guate” homeland
right there
this is the center
the place where I buried my ombligo
my umbilical cord to Mother Earth
my entrance into the world
the bellybutton of my universe
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