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The Player Piano -- Randall Jarrell

(Poem #77)The Player Piano
 I ate pancakes one night in a Pancake House
 Run by a lady my age. She was gay.
 When I told her that I came from Pasadena
 She laughed and said, "I lived in Pasadena
 When Fatty Arbuckle drove the El Molino bus."

 I felt that I had met someone from home.
 No, not Pasadena, Fatty Arbuckle.
 Who's that? Oh, something that we had in common
 Like -- like -- the false armistice. Piano rolls.
 She told me her house was the first Pancake House

 East of the Mississippi, and I showed her
 A picture of my grandson. Going home --
 Home to the hotel -- I began to hum,
 "Smile a while, I bid you sad adieu,
 When the clouds roll back I'll come to you."

 Let's brush our hair before we go to bed,
 I say to the old friend who lives in my mirror.
 I remember how I'd brush my mother's hair
 Before she bobbed it. How long has it been
 Since I hit my funnybone? had a scab on my knee?

 Here are Mother and Father in a photograph,
 Father's holding me.... They both look so young.
 I'm so much older than they are. Look at them,
 Two babies with their baby. I don't blame you,
 You weren't old enough to know any better;

 If I could I'd go back, sit down by you both,
 And sign our true armistice: you weren't to blame.
 I shut my eyes and there's our living room.
 The piano's playing something by Chopin,
 And Mother and Father and their little girl

 Listen. Look, the keys go down by themselves!
 I go over, hold my hands out, play I play --
 If only, somehow, I had learned to live!
 The three of us sit watching, as my waltz
 Plays itself out a half-inch from my fingers.
-- Randall Jarrell

The Psychiatrist Says She’s Severely Demented -- Bobbi Lurie

(Poem #76)The Psychiatrist Says She’s Severely Demented
 But she's my mother. She lies in her bed,
 Hi Sweetie, she says.
 Hi Mom. Do you know my name?
 I can't wait for her answer, I'm Bobbi.
 Oh, so you found me again, she says.
 Her face and hair have the same gray sheen
 Like a black and white drawing smudged on the edges.
 The bedspread is hot pink, lime green. Her eyes,
 Such a distant blue, indifferent as the sky. I put my hand
 On her forehead. It is soft, and she resembles my real mother
 Who I have not spoken to in so many years.
 I want to talk to her as her eyes close.
 She is mumbling something, laughing to herself,
 All the sadness she ever had has fled.
 And when she opens her eyes again, she stares through me
 And her eyes well up with tears.
 And I stand there lost in her incoherence,
 Which feels almost exactly like love.
-- Bobbi Lurie

Overheard In An Asylum -- Alfred Kreymborg

(Poem #75)Overheard In An Asylum
 And here we have another case
 quite different from the last,
 another case quite different --
 Listen.
 
 Baby, drink.
 The war is over.
 Mother's breasts
 are round with milk.
 
 Baby, rest.
 The war is over.
 Only pigs
 slop over so.
 
 Baby, sleep.
 The war is over.
 Daddy's come
 with a German coin.
 
 Baby, dream.
 The war is over.
 You'll be a soldier
 too.
 
 Yes, we gave her the doll --
 Now there we have another case
 quite different from --
-- Alfred Kreymborg

Wild Asters -- Sara Teasdale

(Poem #74)Wild Asters
 In the spring I asked the daisies
  If his words were true,
 And the clever, clear-eyed daisies
  Always knew.

 Now the fields are brown and barren,
  Bitter autumn blows,
 And of all the stupid asters
  Not one knows.
-- Sara Teasdale

Two Tanka -- Otomo No Yakamochi

(Poem #73)Two Tanka
 From outside my house,
 only the faint distant sound
 of gentle breezes
 wandering through bamboo leaves
 in the long evening silence.
 
 Late evening finally
 comes: I unlatch the door
 and quietly
 await the one
 who greets me in my dreams.
-- Otomo No Yakamochi

Introduction To Poetry -- Billy Collins

(Poem #72)Introduction To Poetry
 I ask them to take a poem
 and hold it up to the light
 like a color slide
 
 or press an ear against its hive.
 
 I say drop a mouse into a poem
 and watch him probe his way out,
 
 or walk inside the poem's room
 and feel the walls for a light switch.
 
 I want them to waterski
 across the surface of a poem
 waving at the author's name on the shore.
 
 But all they want to do
 is tie the poem to a chair with rope
 and torture a confession out of it.
 
 They begin beating it with a hose
 to find out what it really means.
-- Billy Collins

Men at the Gates -- Gary L. Lark

(Poem #71)Men at the Gates
 They wait at the gates
 in flannel shirts and heavy denim pants.
 They wait for the gates to open,
 the whistle to blow
 signaling change of shift.
 They wait for the mill jobs
 to come back, with wages
 that will feed a family,
 wages to be proud of.
 They wait in the parking lot
 where one-stop-shoppers
 now, twenty-five years later,
 look through them like ghosts.
 They wait in a rain
 of gadgets and plunder,
 companies from somewhere else
 picking their pockets
 trying to sell them everything
 they don't need at bargain prices.
 They wait for the world 
 to make sense again,
 where calluses grow on your hands
 and the soreness in your back
 means you're worth a damn. 
-- Gary L. Lark

The Former Miner Returns from His First Day as a Service Worker (at a McDonald's somewhere in Appalachia) -- Mark Defoe

(Poem #70)The Former Miner Returns from His First Day as a Service Worker (at a McDonald's somewhere in Appalachia)
 All day he crushed the spongy buns, pawed at
 The lids of burger boxes and kiddie pacs
 As if they were chinese puzzles.

 All day long his hands ticked, ready to latch on
 Or heave or curl around a tool
 Heavier than a spatula,

 All day he rubbed his eyes in the crisp light.
 All day the blue tile, the polished chrome, said
 Be nimble, be jolly, be quick.

 All day he grinned while the public, with bland
 Or befuddled faces, scowled over his head
 And mumbled, whispered, snarled, and snapped.

 All day his coworkers, pink and scrubbed,
 Prattled and glided and skipped while he,
 All bulk and balk, rumbled and banged.

 Near shift's end he daydreamed - of the clang
 Of rock on steel, the skreel
 Of a conveyer belt, the rattling whine
 Of the man-trip, the miner's growl of gears
 As if gnarled, toothing at the seam.

 He makes his slow way home, shadow among
 Roadside shadows, groping back in himself
 For that deep, sheltering dark.
 He has never been so tired.
 His hands have never been so clean.
-- Mark Defoe

A Wreath To The Fish -- Nancy Willard

(Poem #69)A Wreath To The Fish
 Who is this fish, still wearing its wealth,
 flat on my drainboard, dead asleep,
 its suit of mail proof only against the stream?
 What is it to live in a stream,
 to dwell forever in a tunnel of cold,
 never to leave your shining birthsuit,
 never to spend your inheritance of thin coins?
 And who is the stream, who lolls all day
 in an unmade bed, living on nothing but weather,
 singing, a little mad in the head,
 opening her apron to shells, carcasses, crabs,
 eyeglasses, the lines of fisherman begging for
 news from the interior-oh, who are these lines
 that link a big sky to a small stream
 that go down for great things:
 the cold muscle of the trout,
 the shinning scrawl of the eel in a difficult passage,
 hooked-but who is this hook, this cunning
 and faithful fanatic who will not let go
 but holds the false bait and the true worm alike
 and tears the fish, yet gives it up to the basket
 in which it will ride to the kitchen
 of someone important, perhaps the Pope
 who rejoices that his cook has found such a fish
 and blesses it and eats it and rises, saying,
 "Children, what is it to live in the stream,
 day after day, and come at last to the table,
 transfigured with spices and herbs,
 a little martyr, a little miracle;
 children, children, who is this fish?" 
-- Nancy Willard