poetry

american sonnets 23

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American Sonnet 23
–Wanda Coleman

–after Akhmatova
here’s to my ruined curbless urban psyche/the spent
tempest fleeing the golden rain of cruel day
wandering star-starved punched-out bleached-blind

here’s to the poison i greedily consume as sustenance
to the killer humdrum of my life without fulfillment
my love’s isolation, my nation and me – our bickerings

i drink the cold ugly and funky negro divas who
cast me down their death-dealing amused eyes
delighting in my writhing/castration/made numb
in this world – made brutal made coarse made jealous of
they who have usurped and commodified god

here’s to

my uncompromising vision and to the young blood who
tells me i carry the broom like a cross

Photo by Daniele Colucci on Unsplash

awakening in new york

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Awakening in New York
–Maya Angelou

Curtains forcing their will
against the wind,
children sleep,
exchanging dreams with
seraphim. The city
drags itself awake on
subway straps; and
I, an alarm, awake as a
rumor of war
lie stretching into dawn
unasked and unheeded.

Photo by Jon Skinner on Unsplash

final first poem

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Final First Poem
–Phillip B. Williams

In the beginning, I suspect my index is on fire.
Daystart spasmodic with hunger, my dull teeth catch
on pale figures voweling from an empty heaven. God
been left, bored too with ransom for art, allusionsstacked like reluctant saints in a pyre: Eliot, Alighieri,
Homer. The sun’s glossy odyssey traces half-
moon above the horizon, clefts these Alexandrine hours
into shoddy boats I’m tired of drifting toward nothing on.

“There was once a sea,” I begin, having never seen a sea
nor been able to seam any time to “once.” Now, I sleep
and avoid documenting my rhyme-sourced wet dreams,
and who would collect these metered christenings?

I want to know what you must know. I own nothing
impressive. No noctuaries of gallivanting steeds, no
beloveds creeping from sun-bloodied water in a salt-
stained stolen dress, no oceans from which she stole

her voice to give to me to offer you slow-blinkingly,
awaiting “genius” and a circle of rooks (all the crows
have gone, my love, and all shovels cradling yarrow and jewels
of beetles have rusted away revealing my face all along

held these things in unrequited climax) to crown me king.
The book is burning. Come, sit at my bedside. Let ash
fill in the fugue that was your need. Now, open your hands.
Reader, read to me what you have stolen and called your life.

Photo by Sonnie Hiles on Unsplash

all the stops

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All the Stops
–Dora Malech

Photo by Andrew Ling on Unsplash

 

 

 

the pyramid scheme

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The Pyramid Scheme
–Rosa Alcalá

 

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

fire escape fantasy

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Fire Escape Fantasy
–Tracy K. Smith

Photo by Charles Postiaux on Unsplash

 

the ghost

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The Ghost
–Frank Bidart

You must not think that what I have
accomplished through you

could have been accomplished by any other means.

Each of us is to himself
indelible. I had to become that which could not

be, by time, from human memory, erased.

I had to burn my hungry, unappeasable
furious spirit

so inconsolably into you

you would without cease
write to bring me rest.

Bring us rest. Guilt is fecund. I knew

nothing I made
myself had enough steel in it to survive.

I tried: I made beautiful
paintings, beautiful poems. Fluff. Garbage.

The inextricability of love and hate?

If I had merely made you
love me you could not have saved me.

Photo by Yaoqi on Unsplash

Let’s Crawl Into That Photograph & Stay There for a While

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Let’s Crawl Into That Photograph & Stay There for a While

–Rachel McKibbens

A child came up to me in the park
and asked for a cigarette.
Her eyes were startled cats,
her voice, a chandelier.
I don’t smoke, I said.
She took a seat beside me
on the bench, resting her head
against my shoulder.
Her hair smelled like an old
dictionary cracked open
after rain. I want tenderness,
she said, as a row
of pigeons crashed
against the trees
like good china.

Photo by Tamara Menzi on Unsplash

evanescent

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Earth Evanescent
–Maxwell Anderson

If other planets dark as earth
About dim trembling stars
Carry frail freight of death and birth,
Wild love, and endless wars;

If from far, unseen motes in flight
Life look down questioning
This helpless passage through the night
Is a less lonely thing:

But if unchained through empty space
Drift only shell and fire
What seeks the beauty of this face,
What end has its desire?

A candle in a night of storms,
Blown back and choked with rain,
Holds longer than the mounting forms
That ride time’s hurricane.

Photo by Anandu Vinod on Unsplash

the hummingbird

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The Hummingbird
–Blas Falconer

A blur in the periphery,
like the mind if the mind

were airborne, a buzz among
leaf and orange blossom.

the long beak pressing quick
into flower after flower, high

on each sweet center, and 
each iridescent feather shines

hard— a thought, half-formed,
charged, a hum before it lights

on the branch—and you
see it clearly—dimmed, now,

small, no longer what it was.