bric-a-brac

From an Atlas of the Difficult World | Adrienne Rich

I know you are reading this poem
late, before leaving your office
of the one intense yellow lamp-spot and the darkening window
in the lassitude of a building faded to quiet
long after rush-hour. I know you are reading this poem
standing up in a bookstore far from the ocean
on a grey day of early spring, faint flakes driven
across the plains’ enormous spaces around you.
I know you are reading this poem
in a room where too much has happened for you to bear
where the bedclothes lie in stagnant coils on the bed
and the open valise speaks of flight
but you cannot leave yet. I know you are reading this poem
as the underground train loses momentum and before running
up the stairs
toward a new kind of love
your life has never allowed.
I know you are reading this poem by the light
of the television screen where soundless images jerk and slide
while you wait for the newscast from the intifada.
I know you are reading this poem in a waiting-room
of eyes met and unmeeting, of identity with strangers.
I know you are reading this poem by fluorescent light
in the boredom and fatigue of the young who are counted out,
count themselves out, at too early an age. I know
you are reading this poem through your failing sight, the thick
lens enlarging these letters beyond all meaning yet you read on
because even the alphabet is precious.
I know you are reading this poem as you pace beside the stove
warming milk, a crying child on your shoulder, a book in your
hand
because life is short and you too are thirsty.
I know you are reading this poem which is not in your language
guessing at some words while others keep you reading
and I want to know which words they are.
I know you are reading this poem listening for something, torn
between bitterness and hope
turning back once again to the task you cannot refuse.
I know you are reading this poem because there is nothing else
left to read
there where you have landed, stripped as you are.

Midwestern Gothic

rabbit-light:

That frigid Wichita month hangs
in my history like a smoke-darkened
painting—all tight-lipped Presbyterians
and dormant cornfields frozen beneath
the iron gray slab of January. I was trapped
in a rusty carbuncle of a travel-trailer
stuck like a pimple on someone’s winter
field, a landscape slapped flat by God’s hand.
Each night my father and his wife belted out
’70s pop standards billed as Foxfyre,
in a month-long gig at The Candle Club.
In my eight-by-four bunk, I stared
out a tiny porthole at the Kansas tundra
glittering in moonlight, a bedazzled spread,
and listened to the scritch and thump
of rabbits copulating in the glow
of the heat lamps that warmed
our trailer’s plumbing. Exiled from Denver
and my sixth-grade classroom, I read and re-read
Heidi, made a week-long project of peeling
the price sticker off her face
printed on the cover, scratching away
each gluey shred until my thumbnail
softened and bent inward. But she wasn’t
pretty after all, and then I lost her
somewhere in that 160 square feet
of Kansas winter, so I filled hours
with Xeroxed worksheets and textbook
math, peering at the road outside
for February, as if looking for thaw.

Laurie Junkins

(Source: rattle.com)

lunch-poems:

The Portland Review: Of Shells

portlandreview:

by Stacey Tran

As scale of balance. As object hollowed, emptied of its mass.

As framework, mere externality without substance; as in the outer part.

Received unto windows as indecent allusion; as glass in its two halves.

As if edifice or fabric whose interior, removed is now merely an arc.

As skeletal or concessive to such regression. Remains of a ship

once carved and filled. As in building invites a return unto dust.

As coming away, as departure from the unending hymnal

procession of blues that envelop an egg as it does.

As encasement shed in order to lay the insides bare

As the child or pupa casts its skin; as giving up its outer form.

No longer fixed close, but to divide and to pare.

As an empty case of crushed fruit sits outside in unexpected storms.

As currency. As drinking vessel. As containing pigment of erasure.

Vicissitude of hues; as whiteness in fragments. As opening or as closure.

Words for Love | Ted Berrigan

for Sandy

Winter crisp and the brittleness of snow
as like make me tired as not. I go my
myriad ways blundering, bombastic, dragged
by a self that can never be still, pushed
by my surging blood, my reasoning mind.

I am in love with poetry. Every way I turn
this, my weakness, smites me. A glass
of chocolate milk, head of lettuce, dark-
ness of clouds at one o’clock obsess me.
I weep for all of these or laugh.

By day I sleep, an obscurantist, lost
in dreams of lists, compiled by my self
for reassurance. Jackson Pollock       RenÈ
Rilke       Benedict Arnold       I watch
my psyche, smile, dream wet dreams, and sigh.

At night, awake, high on poems, or pills
or simple awe that loveliness exists, my lists
flow differently. Of words bright red
and black, and blue.       Bosky.       Oubliette.       Dis-
severed. And O, alas

Time disturbs me. Always minute detail
fills me up. It is 12:10 in New York. In Houston
it is 2 pm. It is time to steal books. It’s
time to go mad. It is the day of the apocalypse
the year of parrot fever! What am I saying?

Only this. My poems do contain
wilde beestes. I write for my Lady
of the Lake. My god is immense, and lonely
but uncowed. I trust my sanity, and I am proud. If
I sometimes grow weary, and seem still, nevertheless

my heart still loves, will break.

-

(I’m going through a Berrigan thing.)

Desire

structureandstyle:

The June breeze will tell you:
the middle of things is where the juices are;
where the years bulge best with desire
though nothing worth desire can be defined—
I have known this so long and wanted to tell you.

You are the servant of something about to happen.
You were never meant to be young—a dreadful mistake
on the verge of correction.

I am only your carpet, your coat, a soft pillow,
a good place to file—those things you miss only
in their absence, like teeth, like water.

When your heart has that afternoon hurt,
breathe deeply the comfort from those you have harmed.
We have all failed in all things that matter
and excuse ourselves even better than gods.

Think of clean nights under the stars,
the way light startles the water,
other beds and hair dark on the pillow,
of what I am like with another
his hand massaging my heart,
how dangerous I am loving you better
and rocks rinsed by waves
on shores where cranes wade at dawn.

—Mary Ellen Miller

from Tinderbox Lawn by Carol Guess

kathleenjoy:

Your next-door neighbor was always crying. One afternoon she stood in the grass cutting her hair, which vanished as it fell into the thick of green things. In case you’re wondering, I have a web cam. People pay me to have sex and then cry. She brewed herbal tea with leaves from her garden, mint so sharp it brought tears to your eyes.

File under: books that shook me to the bone.

(Source: poemeleon.org)

rapscallions:

LOL

YESSSSS. 

(Source: jamieflorance)

redvelvetteacake:

If you will die for me, I will die for you and our graves will be like two lovers washing their clothes together in a Laundromat.

I’ll never get over Brautigan.

(via rapscallions)

Alcohol | Franz Wright

You do look a little ill.

But we can do something about that, now.

Can’t we.

The fact is you’re a shocking wreck.

Do you hear me.

You aren’t all alone.

And you could use some help today, packing in the
dark, boarding buses north, putting the seat back and
grinning with terror flowing over your legs through
your fingers and hair…

I was always waiting, always here.

Know anyone else who can say that.

My advice to you is think of her for what she is:
one more name cut in the scar of your tongue.

What was it you said, “To rather be harmed than
harm, is not abject.”

Please.

Can we be leaving now.

We like bus trips, remember. Together

we could watch these winter fields slip past, and
never care again,

think of it.

I don’t have to be anywhere.

Endangered Species | Bob Hicok

alinapleskova:

All bundled up.

& now I’m unbundled.

pica

dictionaryofobscuresorrows:

n. the smallest measurable unit of human connection, typically exchanged between passing strangers—a flirtatious glance, a sympathetic nod, a shared laugh about some odd coincidence—moments that are fleeting and random but still contain powerful emotional nutrients that can alleviate the symptoms of feeling alone.

The Honest House | Megan Falley

In an effort not to crawl back to you, I crossed the 2 train off my subway map in blue ink,
called it a river, sold my canoe.

Swept the soot from the chimney into a vase, scattered it all over Manhattan. Husband, I
pretended it was your ash.

Spoke your name in past tense and still, when we found ourselves in the same bar,
phoned a mystic. Told her I was seeing ghosts.

When you confessed your mistress, her red hair, her scars, how you learned them from
up-close, from inside out, you were no longer the man I married but a dead deer in the
center of our swimming pool.

Our dog has always considered you a burglar. Knew to spit, bark, bite before I did. Once
while you were sleeping, I stitched her electric fence through your skin. I wear her shock
collar on nights I go out drinking, on days I can’t find a reason to stay away even though
you have left so many behind.

I’ve watched you with other women. The way you hand fruit to supermarket clerks, how
your eyebrows lift at anyone with fake nails. Your favorite party story is how you once,
publicly, pleasured a girl with your band mate’s drumstick. It’s no wonder we don’t
love the same music.

On our first date, I bought a dress off a woman in Brooklyn so I could stay with you one
more day. Last week I threw your clothes from our roof knowing they would have fallen
faster had there been a body in them.

When I found a picture of your ex-lovers tits, used as a bookmark, I began opening every
novel upside down like a teenager shaking birthday cards waiting for cash to fall out.
This explains my love for fiction. We were never married. The dog is not ours.

While washing the dishes I watch from the window as the children we never had drown
in the piss-filled pool. I’ve never tried to save them. I invented that pool, this sink.

Did you know that the metronome inside us quickens when telling a lie? I want to build
an honest house, where the motion detector is so sharp it knows when my thoughts leave
the room. Where the clap-on lamp works as a polygraph. When you swear you still love
me, the lights flicker.

(source)