The Graves

by Joanna Klink

So here are the strange feelings that flicker

in you or anchor like weights in your eyes.

Turn back and you might undo them,

the way trees seem to float

free of themselves as they root.

A swan can hold itself on the gray ice water

and not waver, an open note upon which minor chords

blur and rest. But it was born dark.

The shore of that lake is littered with glass.

How you came to be who you are

was all unwinding, aimless on a bike,

off to retrieve a parcel that could only be a gift,

and felt, as a child, the sea

weave around your feet, white light rushing in with the surf.

What lived there?

 ~ ❇ ✾ ❈ ✾ ❇ ~

                              —Joy, dispatched from nowhere,

and no need to think about your purpose,

and no fear that the sun gliding down

might burn the earth it feeds. Black habitat of now

in which decimation looks tender.

Sometimes the call of a bird is so clear

it bruises my hands. At night, behind glass,

light empties out then fills a room and the people in it,

hovering around a fire, gorgeous shapes of wind

leaning close to each other in laughter.

From this distance, they are a grace,

an ache. The kingdom inside.

In a Station of the Metro

by Ezra Pound

THE apparition of these faces in the crowd;

Petals on a wet, black bough.

The Embankment

The Embankment
(The fantasia of a fallen gentleman on a cold, bitter night)

by T. E. Hulme

Once, in finesse of fiddles found I ecstasy,
In a flash of gold heels on the hard pavement.
Now see I
That warmth’s the very stuff of poesy.
Oh, God, make small
The old star-eaten blanket of the sky,
That I may fold it round me and in comfort lie.

Image

by Edward Storer

Forsaken lovers,

Burning to a chaste white moon,

Upon strange pyres of loneliness and drought.

Poems of the Week – Denis Johnson

THREE POEMS BY DENIS JOHNSON

There Are Trains Which Will Not Be Missed

They tell you if you write great poems
you will be lifted into the clouds
like a leaf which did not know

this was possible, you will never
hear of your darkness
again, it will become
distant while you become
holy, look,

they say, at the emptiness
of train tracks and it is poetry
growing up like flowers between
the ties, but those

who say this
are not in control of themselves
or of anything and they must

lie to you in order
that they may at night not bear witness
to such great distances cascading and such

eternities unwinding
around them as to cause even the most powerful
of beds to become silences, it

is death which continues
over these chasms and these
distances deliberately like a train.

A Consequence of Gravity

my wife’s voice yelling…

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Guitar

by Ahmatjan Osman

Nostalgia wears a crown of thorns

and leads a convoy of camels

through the desert of the body … 

I am its homeless string.

The pregnancy of words

by Bob Hicok

Eros scrabbles to rose and rage

to gear or gare, as in Gare du Nord,

where I trained in to Paris from not

smoking pot in Master Mad, I’m sorry,

Amsterdam, with its canals

called grachts and clocks

that bonged my homesick hours

at different times. Which is smite

for you violet types, a flower

that says “love it” if you listen. Me, I do

and don’t feel it matters that evil thrives

in live, that we tinker and smash

everything down to bits and then

try to patch a path back home, it’s our lotto

in life, to have no clue

what a natural disaster is

when that disaster is us. That’s what I love

about the shrug, it says zilch

sans le mouth and becomes

more aerobic the more you admit

the less you know, you know? It’s a jumble

out there, kids, with slips and slides

and elide’s eally ool, depending

what’s lopped off, as in light of   hand

or slight of and, but I better spot

before you pots how sparse

this parsing is. Besides, what can I say

about language other than it’s an anal egg

in need of one glorious u. Words

or sword — pick your poisson. Every time

I try to peak into speaking, the bag

of gab to learn what our noodles

are really up to, I get flummoxed

that the tools I use

are the stool I stand on

to see a way in or out. I can’t even tell

if  I’m more trapped or rapt,

if meaning’s mean or play’s

a dumb waiter riding numbly

up and down. But have you noticed

read becomes dear

if you ignore the world

as you find it and find it in you

to swirl the word, in the way

solve and loves are the same

bones, different skeletons.

Everyone Sang

by Siegfried Sassoon

Everyone suddenly burst out singing;

And I was filled with such delight

As prisoned birds must find in freedom,

Winging wildly across the white

Orchards and dark-green fields; on – on – and out of sight.

 ~ ❇ ✾ ❈ ✾ ❇ ~

Everyone’s voice was suddenly lifted;

And beauty came like the setting sun:

My heart was shaken with tears; and horror

Drifted away … O, but Everyone

Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done.

 ~ ❇ ✾ ❈ ✾ ❇ ~                    April  1919

Strange Metamorphosis of Poets

by Howard Nemerov

From epigram to epic is the course

For riders of the American winged horse.

They change both size and sex over the years,

The voice grows deeper and the beard appears;

Running for greatness they sweat away their salt,

They start out Emily and wind up Walt.

An Obsessive Combination Of Onotological Inscape, Trickery And Love

by Anne Sexton

Busy, with an idea for a code, I write
signals hurrying from left to right,
or right to left, by obscure routes,
for my own reasons; taking a word like writes
down tiers of tries until its secret rites
make sense; or until, suddenly, RATS
can amazingly and funnily become STAR
and right to left that small star
is mine, for my own liking, to stare
its five lucky pins inside out, to store
forever kindly, as if it were a star
I touched and a miracle I really wrote.