literature

bedtime story

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Bedtime Story for the Bruised-Hearted
–Donika Kelly

The trees were all women once,
fleeing a god whetted with lust

until their fathers changed them, bound
their bodies in bark, and still the god took:

a branch to crown his own head,
the reeds to hold his breath.

How like them, our fathers,
those small gods who unearthed

their children with rage,
who scored the bark

and bent the branch
to bind their bodies with our own.

Tonight, my love, we are free
of men, of gods, and I am a river

against you, drawn to current and eddy,
ready to make, to be unmade.

Photo by Alvin Engler on Unsplash

Dear Io

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Dear Io,
–Madeleine Wattenberg

Photo by IGOR FIGUEREDO on Unsplash

now a darkness is coming

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Now a Darkness is Coming

–Jane Hirshfield

Photo by Marika Vinkmann on Unsplash

family

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Family
–Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin

Water has no memory
and you drown in it like a kind of absence.
It falls apart
in a continual death
a hundred-gallon tank as
innocent as outer space.

 

Earth remembers
facts about your relations;
wood passes on patristic
characteristics,
bone and feather,
scandal,
charcoal remembering
and every stone recalls its quarry and the axe.

Photo by Victor Malyushev on Unsplash

the ungay science

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The Ungay Science
–Carlos Drummond de Andrade

Translation

A Ingaia ciência

A madureza, essa terrível prenda
que alguém nos dá, raptando-nos, com ela,
todo sabor gratuito de oferenda
sob a glacialidade de uma estela,

a madureza vê, posto que a venda
interrompa a surpresa da janela,
o círculo vazio, onde se estenda,
e que o mundo converte noma cela.

A madureza sabe o preço exato
dos amores, dos ócios, dos quebrantos,
e nada pode contra sua ciência

e nem contra si mesma. O agudo olfato,
o agudo olhar, a mão, livre de encantos,
se destroem no sonho da existência.

Photo by Kirill Balobanov on Unsplash

end of marriage

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At the End of My Marriage, I Think of Something My Daughter Said About Trees
–Maggie Smith

When a tree is cut down, the sky’s like
finally, and rushes in.

Even when you trim a tree,
the sky fills in before the branch

hits the ground. It colors the space blue
because now it can.

 

Photo by Erwin Voortman on Unsplash

why we are all afraid to be

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Why We Are All Afraid to Be
–Nikita Gill

She speaks to me fondly
of passions and talents,
of guitars and stars,
with such breathless intensity
then stops short and
apologizes, ashen-faced
for speaking at all.

All because somewhere in her life,
someone she loved broke her heart
by lashing out with ignorance
at her sublime and pure words
and telling her to
be quiet, stop talking,
because nobody cares.

If you pay attention long enough,
it’s a familiar story.
The boy who rarely participates.
The old woman who is too hesitant
to join in a conversation.
The man who thinks three seconds
too long before he speaks.

People aren’t born sad.
We make them that way.

Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash

 

power

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Power
–Andrei Codrescu

Power is an inferiority complex wound up like a clock by an
inability to relax. At the height of my power I have to be taken to
a power source in the woods where I am recharged. This power
source is not actually in the woods: it’s in my mother. It hums
quietly in her heart like an atomic plant and the place to plug in is
her eyes.

Photo by Paweł Czerwiński on Unsplash

3 corners

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The 3 Corners of Reality
–Marvin Bell

Photo by Denise Jans on Unsplash

slowly started

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Poem (The Day Gets Slowly Started)
–James Schuyler

The day gets slowly started.
A rap at the bedroom door,
bitter coffee, hot cereal, juice
the color of sun which
isn’t out this morning. A
cool shower, a shave, soothing
Noxzema for razor burn. A bed
is made. The paper doesn’t come
until twelve or one. A gray shine
out the windows. “No one
leaves the building until
those scissors are returned.”
It’s that kind of a place.
Nonetheless, I’ve seen worse.
The worried gray is melting
into sunlight. I wish I’d
brought my book of enlightening
literary essays. I wish it
were lunch time. I wish I had
an appetite. The day agrees
with me better than it did, or,
better, I agree with it. I’ll
slide down a sunslip yet, this
crass September morning.

 

Photo by Bastian Pudill on Unsplash