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Undelivered Mail -- Rhina P. Espaillat

(Poem #153)Undelivered Mail
 Dear Daughter,
        Your father and I wish to commend you
 on the wisdom of your choices
 and the flawless conduct of your life
 
 Dear Poet!
        Where is the full-length manuscript
 you promised us? Your check is waiting
 The presses are ready
 and the bookstores are clamoring for delivery
 
 Darling,
        This convention is tedious
 beyond belief: the hotel is swarming 
 with disgustingly overexposed women
 far too young to have dignity 
 or any minds at all
 
 Dear Patient:
        The results of your blood tests reveal
 that your problem stems from
 a diet dangerously low 
 in pizza and chocolate
 
 Dear Mom,
        You were right about everything
 and I was an idiot not to listen
-- Rhina P. Espaillat

Unharvested -- Robert Frost

(Poem #152)Unharvested
 A scent of ripeness from over a wall. 
 And come to leave the routine road
 And look for what had made me stall, 
 There sure enough was an apple tree
 That had eased itself of its summer load, 
 And of all but its trivial foliage free, 
 Now breathed as light as a lady's fan. 
 For there had been an apple fall
 As complete as the apple had given man. 
 The ground was one circle of solid red. 
 
 May something go always unharvested! 
 May much stay out of our stated plan, 
 Apples or something forgotten and left, 
 So smelling their sweetness would be no theft.
-- Robert Frost

We Should Talk about This Problem -- Hafiz

(Poem #151)We Should Talk about This Problem
 There is a Beautiful Creature
 Living in a hole you have dug.

 So at night
 I set fruit and grains
 And little pots of wine and milk
 Beside your soft earthen mounds,

 And I often sing.

 But still, my dear,
 You do not come out.

 I have fallen in love with Someone
 Who hides inside you.

 We should talk about this problem---

 Otherwise,
 I will never leave you alone.
-- Hafiz

The Rites of Manhood -- Alden Nowlan

(Poem #150)The Rites of Manhood
 It's snowing hard enough that the taxis aren't running. 
 I'm walking home, my night's work finished, 
 long after midnight, with the whole city to myself, 
 when across the street I see a very young American sailor
 standing over a girl who's kneeling on the sidewalk
 and refuses to get up although he's yelling at her
 to tell him where she lives so he can take her there
 before they both freeze. The pair of them are drunk
 and my guess is he picked her up in a bar
 and later they got separated from his buddies
 and at first it was great fun to play at being
 an old salt at liberty in a port full of women with
 hinges on their heels, but by now he wants only to
 find a solution to the infinitely complex
 problem of what to do about her before he falls into
 the hands of the police or the shore patrol
 -- and what keeps this from being squalid is
 what's happening to him inside: 
 if there were other sailors here
 it would be possible for him
 to abandon her where she is and joke about it
 later, but he's alone and the guilt can't be
 divided into small forgettable pieces; 
 he's finding out what it means
 to be a man and how different it is
 from the way that only hours ago he imagined it.
-- Alden Nowlan

Self-Improvement -- Tony Hoagland

(Poem #149)Self-Improvement
 Just before she flew off like a swan
 to her wealthy parents' summer home,
 Bruce's college girlfriend asked him
 to improve his expertise at oral sex,
 and offered him some technical advice:

 Use nothing but his tonguetip
 to flick the light switch in his room
 on and off a hundred times a day
 until he grew fluent at the nuances
 of force and latitude.

 Imagine him at practice every evening,
 more inspired than he ever was at algebra,
 beads of sweat sprouting on his brow,
 thinking, thirty-seven, thirty-eight,
 seeing, in the tunnel vision of his mind's eye,
 the quadratic equation of her climax
 yield to the logic
 of his simple math.

 Maybe he unscrewed
 the bulb from his apartment ceiling
 so that passersby would not believe
 a giant firefly was pulsing
 its electric abdomen in 13 B.

 Maybe, as he stood
 two inches from the wall,
 in darkness, fogging the old plaster
 with his breath, he visualized the future
 as a mansion standing on the shore
 that he was rowing to
 with his tongue's exhausted oar.

 Of course, the girlfriend dumped him:
 met someone, après-ski, who,
 using nothing but his nose
 could identify the vintage of a Cabernet.

 Sometimes we are asked
 to get good at something we have
 no talent for,
 or we excel at something we will never
 have the opportunity to prove.

 Often we ask ourselves
 to make absolute sense
 out of what just happens,
 and in this way, what we are practicing

 is suffering,
 which everybody practices,
 but strangely few of us
 grow graceful in.

 The climaxes of suffering are complex,
 costly, beautiful, but secret.
 Bruce never played the light switch again.

 So the avenues we walk down,
 full of bodies wearing faces,
 are full of hidden talent:
 enough to make pianos moan,
 sidewalks split,
 streetlights deliriously flicker.
-- Tony Hoagland

Some More Light Verse -- Wendy Cope

(Poem #148)Some More Light Verse
 You have to try. You see the shrink.
 You learn a lot. You read. You think.
 You struggle to improve your looks.
 You meet some men. You write some books.
 You eat good food. You give up junk.
 You do not smoke. You don't get drunk.
 You take up yoga, walk and swim.
 And nothing works. The outlook's grim.
 You don't know what to do. You cry.
 You're running out of things to try.
 
 You blow your nose. You see the shrink.
 You walk. You give up food and drink.
 You fall in love. You make a plan.
 You struggle to improve your man.
 And nothing works. The outlook's grim.
 You go to yoga, cry and swim.
 You eat and drink. You give up looks.
 You struggle to improve your books.
 You cannot see the point. You sigh.
 You do not smoke. You have to try.
-- Wendy Cope