Month: August 2018

maternita

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Maternita
–Aila Meriluoto

So this is why everything was shaped,
the pelvis’s fine, shy curve
and the roseate fragile line of the soul.
Not for the somewhere melodious
immaterial smile of a passing god.
No. For this:
to form a gate, for a stranger to come in,
that first stranger, the ur- stranger.
And out of which will go, into the world,
other strangers, inconsequentially,
without a glance, setting their courses
towards their particular fates, driving away.

Expediency, ah – ah flesh –
not inviolate, slowly mouldering,
ah violated soul, rending from itself,
continually, a new soul,
and recovering only to rend itself again.
Scarred soul, where love, even,
is a utility, inescapable, for purpose-designed.

Life uses you. Just like that, unceremoniously,
with a sneer at best, makes use of, tosses away.
And if some corner remains untouched,
it’s no longer any use. A corner of a soul – yes.
Not tragic. Just useless now.

Photo by asoggetti on Unsplash

take cover

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Conversation in Crisis
–Audre Lorde
I speak to you as a friend speaks
or a true lover
not out of friendship or love
but for a clear meeting
of self upon self
in sight of our hearth
but without fire.

I cherish your words that ring
like late summer thunders
to sing without octave
and fade, having spoken the season.
But I hear the false heat of this voice
as it dries up the sides of your words
coaxing melodies from your tongue
and this curled music is treason.

Must I die in your fever
as the flames wax take cover
in your heart’s culverts
crouched like a stranger
under the scorched leaves
of your other burnt loves
until the storm passes over?

Photo by Michał Mancewicz on Unsplash

“nights blue and distended”

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Late August
–Margaret Atwood

This is the plum season, the nights
blue and distended, the moon
hazed, this is the season of peaches

with their lush lobed bulbs
that glow in the dusk, apples
that drop and rot
sweetly, their brown skins veined as glands

No more the shrill voices
that cried Need Need
from the cold pond, bladed
and urgent as new grass

Now it is the crickets
that say Ripe Ripe
slurred in the darkness, while the plums

dripping on the lawn outside
our window, burst
with a sound like thick syrup
muffled and slow

The air is still
warm, flesh moves over
flesh, there is no

hurry

Photo by MILKOVÍ on Unsplash

wool and cotton

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‘Nothing Lasts’
–Jane Hirshfield
“Nothing lasts” —
how bitterly the thought attends each loss.

“Nothing lasts” —
a promise also of consolation.

Grief and hope
the skipping rope’s two ends,
twin daughters of impatience.

One wears a dress of wool, the other cotton.

Photo by Stoica Ionela on Unsplash

counting the exits

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The Moves
–Sarah Kay
You can tell she is counting exit signs.
You can tell she has left
her shoes by the door, laces already tied.

Leaving is an easy art to learn. But the
advanced steps – the pirouettes and arabesques
are difficult to master.

This is how I disappear in pieces.
This is how I leave while not moving from my seat.
This is how I dance away.
This is how I’m gone before you wake.

Photo by Casey Callahan on Unsplash

aretha

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A belated RIP to Aretha.

Poem for Aretha
–Nikki Giovanni
Cause nobody deals with Aretha—a mother with four children—
having to hit the road
they always say “after she comes
home” but nobody ever says what it’s like
to get on a plane for a three week tour
the elation of the first couple of audiences the good
feeling of exchange the running on the high
you get from singing good
and loud and long telling the world
what’s on your mind.

Then comes the eighth show on the sixth day the beginning
to smell like the plane or bus the if-you-forget-your-toothbrush
in-one-spot-you-can’t-brush-until-the-second-show
the strangers
pulling at you cause they love you but you having no love
to give back
the singing the same songs night after night day after day
and if you read the gossip columns the rumors that your husband
is only after your fame
the wondering if your children will be glad to see you and maybe
the not caring if they are scheming to get
out of just one show and go just one place where some doe-doe-dupaduke
won’t say “just sing one song, please!”.

Nobody mentions how it feels to become a freak
because you have talent and how
no one gives a damn how you feel
but only cares that Aretha Franklin is here like maybe that’ll stop
chickens from frying
eggs from being laid
crackers from hating

and if you say you’re lonely or tired how they always
just say “oh come off it” or “did you see
how they loved you did you see, huh, did you?”
which most likely has nothing to do with you anyway
and I’m not saying Aretha shouldn’t have talent and I’m certainly
not saying she should quit
singing but as much as I love her I’d vote “yes” to her
doing four concerts a year and staying home or doing whatever
she wants and making records cause it’s a shame
the way we’re killing her.
We eat up artists like there’s going to be a famine at the end
of those three minutes when there are in fact an abundance
of talents just waiting let’s put some
of the giants away for a while and deal with them like they have
a life to lead.

Aretha doesn’t have to relive Billi Holiday’s life doesn’t have
to relive Dinah Washington’s death but who will
stop the pattern?

She’s more important than her music—if they must be separated—
and they should be separated when she has to pass out before
anyone recognizes she needs
a rest and I say I need
Aretha’s music
she is undoubtedly the one who put everyone on
notice.
She revived Johnny Ace and remembered Lil Green. Aretha
sings
“I say a little prayer” and Dionne doesn’t
want to hear it anymore
Aretha sings “money won’t change you”
but James can’t sing “respect” the advent
of Aretha pulled Ray Charles from marlboro country
and back into
the blues made Nancy Wilson
try one more time forced
Dionne to make a choice (she opted for the movies)
and Diana Ross had to get an afro wig pushed every
Black singer into his Blackness and negro entertainers
into negroness you couldn’t jive
when she said “you make me feel” the Blazers
had to reply “gotta let a man be/a man”
Aretha said “when my soul was in the lost and found/you came
along to claim it” and Joplin said “maybe”
there has been no musician whom her very presence hasn’t
affected when Humphrey wanted her to campaign for him she said
“woeman’s only hueman”
and he pressured James Brown
they removed Otis cause the combination was too strong the Impressions had to say “lord have mercy/we’re moving on up”
the Black songs started coming from the singers on stage and the dancers
in the streets
Aretha was the riot was the leader if she had said “come
let’s do it” it would have been done
temptations say why don’t we think about it
why don’t we think about it
why don’t we think about it

a ritual

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A Ritual to Read to Each Other
–William Stafford
If you don’t know the kind of person I am
and I don’t know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dike.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant’s tail,
but if one wanders the circus won’t find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider—
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give — yes or no, or maybe —
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

Photo by William Daigneault on Unsplash