Month: March 2022

the spring cricket

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The Spring Cricket Repudiates His Parable of Negritude
–Rita Dove

Hell,

we just climbed. Reached the lip
and fell back, slipped

and started up again––
climbed to be climbing, sang

to be singing. It’s just what we do.
No one bothered to analyze our blues

until everybody involved
was strung out or dead; to solve

everything that was happening
while it was happening

would have taken some serious opium.
Seriously: All wisdom

is afterthought, a sort of helpless relief.
So don’t go thinking none of this grief

belongs to you: Even if
you don’t know how it

feels to fall, you can get my drift;
and I, who live it

daily, have heard
that perfect word

enough to know just when
to use it––as in:

Oh hell. Hell, no.
No ––

this is hell.

Photo by Wolfgang Hasselmann on Unsplash

el mar

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El Mar
–Tracy K. Smith

There was a sea in my marriage.
And air. I sat in the middle

In a tiny house afloat
On night-colored waves.

The current rolled in
From I don’t know where.

We’d bob atop, drift
Gently out.

I liked best
When there was nothing

That I could
Or could not see.

But I know
There was more.

A map drawn on a mirror.
Globe cinched in at the poles.

Marriage is a rare game,
Its only verbs: am

And are. I aged.
Sometime ago

We sailed past bottles,
The strangest signs inside:

A toy rig. A halo of tears.
Rags like trapped doves.

Why didn’t we stop?
Didn’t sirens sing our names

In voices that begged with promise
And pity?

Photo by Matt Hardy on Unsplash

hunter

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Hunter
–Phillip B. Williams

            When you were mine though not
mine at all permanently, just a body borrowed
without permission, a body interrupted,
interruptive—

the sky opened like a secret in a mouth

mouth with a word in it

word with an arrowhead in its flank: Love, small

creature it was

crying in the night beneath me

Photo by Randy Fath on Unsplash

playing dead

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Playing Dead
–Sally Wen Mao

Photo by Robert Linder on Unsplash

 

 

a mark of resistance

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A Mark of Resistance
–Adrienne Rich

Photo by John Such on Unsplash

good bones

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Good Bones
–Maggie Smith

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.

Photo by Reba Spike on Unsplash