by David Musgrave
View full post on Poem of the Day
My Daughter and Apple Pie
Posted by admin on May 14th, 2012
My Daughter and Apple Pie
by Raymond Carver
“She serves me a piece of it a few minutes
out of the oven. A little steam rises
from the slits on top. Sugar and spice –
cinnamon – burned into the crust”…
View full post on Poem of The Day
Blues for Alice by Clark Coolidge
Posted by admin on May 14th, 2012
When you get in on a try you never learn it back
umpteen times the tenth part of a featured world
in black and in back it’s roses and fostered nail
bite rhyme sling slang, a song that teaches without
travail of the tale, the one you longing live
and singing burn
It’s insane to remain a trope, of a rinsing out
or a ringing whatever, it’s those bells that . . .
and other riskier small day and fain would be
of the soap a sky dares
but we remand,
that we a clasp of the silence you and I, all of
tiny sphering rates back, I say to told wall, back
and back and leave my edge, and add an L
Night is so enclosed we’ll never turn its page
its eye, can be mine will be yours, to see all the people
the underneath livid reaching part and past of the lying buildings
the overreacher stops and starts, at in his head, in
in her rhythm
that knowledge is past all of us, so we flare and tap
and top it right up, constant engage and flap in on
keeping pace, our whelming rift, and soil and gleam
and give back the voice, like those eary dead
Step down off our whelm lessons and shortly fired
enter the bristle strum of Corrosion Kingdom
where the last comes by first ever ring, every
race through that tunnel of sun drop and pencil
in the margins of a flare, of higher wish than dare,
the stroked calmings of a line will spin and chime
in blue quicks of a dream blues, the chores
of those whispering gone crenulations
To meet a care is to dial redeem
and we limp in the time sound balms
so out of kilter is my name in the sun, and I win
in the moon and you sing in that other spelling of win
the way a blue is never singular
Clark Coolidge, “Blues for Alice” from Sound as Thought: Poems 1982-1984. Copyright © 1990 by Clark Coolidge. Reprinted by permission of Green Integer.
Source: Sound as Thought: Poems 1982-1984 (Green Integer, 1990)
View full post on Poem of the Day
The Dream of a Lacquer Box by Kimiko Hahn
Posted by admin on May 14th, 2012
Read this poem by Kimiko Hahn from the May 2012 issue of Poetry magazine.
View full post on Poetry Magazine
The History of Mothers of Sons By Lisa Furmanski
Posted by admin on May 13th, 2012
On Mother’s Day by Grace Paley
Posted by admin on May 13th, 2012
I went out walking
in the old neighborhood
Look! more trees on the block
forget-me-nots all around them
ivy lantana shining
and geraniums in the window
Twenty years ago
it was believed that the roots of trees
would insert themselves into gas lines
then fall poisoned on houses and children
or tap the city’s water pipes starved
for nitrogen obstruct the sewers
In those days in the afternoon I floated
by ferry to Hoboken or Staten Island
then pushed the babies in their carriages
along the river wall observing Manhattan
See Manhattan I cried New York!
even at sunset it doesn’t shine
but stands in fire charcoal to the waist
But this Sunday afternoon on Mother’s Day
I walked west and came to Hudson Street tricolored flags
were flying over old oak furniture for sale
brass bedsteads copper pots and vases
by the pound from India
Suddenly before my eyes twenty-two transvestites
in joyous parade stuffed pillows under
their lovely gowns
and entered a restaurant
under a sign which said All Pregnant Mothers Free
I watched them place napkins over their bellies
and accept coffee and zabaglione
I am especially open to sadness and hilarity
since my father died as a child
one week ago in this his ninetieth year
Grace Paley, “On Mother’s Day” from Begin Again: The Collected Poems of Grace Paley. Copyright © 1999 by Grace Paley. Used by permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, LLC, www.fsgbooks.com. All rights reserved. Caution: Users are warned that this work is protected under copyright laws and downloading is strictly prohibited. The right to reproduce or transfer the work via any medium must be secured with Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.
Source: Begin Again: The Collected Poems of Grace Paley (Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2000)
View full post on Poem of the Day
Getting There by Christopher Buckley
Posted by admin on May 13th, 2012
Read this poem by Christopher Buckley from the May 2012 issue of Poetry magazine.
View full post on Poetry Magazine
The Crescent Moon
Posted by admin on May 13th, 2012
The Crescent Moon by Amy Lowell
“Slipping softly through the sky
Little horned, happy moon,
Can you hear me up so high?
Will you come down soon”…
View full post on Poem of The Day
The Widow’s Lament in Springtime By William Carlos Williams
Posted by admin on May 12th, 2012
Postcard 2 by Franz Wright
Posted by admin on May 12th, 2012
Read this poem by Franz Wright from the May 2012 issue of Poetry magazine.
View full post on Poetry Magazine
