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Bacon & Eggs -- Howard Nemerov

 
(Poem #242)Bacon & Eggs
The chicken contributes,
But the pig gives his all.
-- Howard Nemerov

Fuck -- Kim Addonizio

 
(Poem #241)Fuck
 There are people who will tell you
 that using the word fuck in a poem
 indicates a serious lapse
 of taste, or imagination,
 
 or both. It’s vulgar,
 indecorous, an obscenity
 that crashes down like an anvil
 falling through a skylight
 
 to land on a restaurant table,
 on the white linen, the cut-glass vase of lilacs.
 But if you were sitting
 over coffee when the metal
 
 hit your saucer like a missile,
 wouldn’t that be the first thing
 you’d say? Wouldn’t you leap back
 shouting, or at least thinking it,
 
 over and over, bell-note riotously clanging
 in the church of your brain
 while the solicitous waiter
 led you away, wouldn’t you prop
 
 your shaking elbows on the bar
 and order your first drink in months,
 telling yourself you were lucky
 to be alive? And if you wouldn’t
 
 say anything but Mercy or Oh my
 or Land sakes, well then
 I don’t want to know you anyway
 and I don’t give a fuck what you think
 
 of my poem. The world is divided
 into those whose opinions matter
 and those who will never have
 a clue, and if you knew
 
 which one you were I could talk
 to you, and tell you that sometimes
 there’s only one word that means
 what you need it to mean, the way
 
 there’s only one person
 when you first fall in love,
 or one infant’s cry that calls forth
 the burning milk, one name
 
 that you pray to when prayer
 is what’s left to you. I’m saying
 in the beginning was the word
 and it was good, it meant one human
 
 entering another and it’s still
 what I love, the word made
 flesh. Fuck me, I say to the one
 whose lovely body I want close,
 
 and as we fuck I know it’s holy,
 a psalm, a hymn, a hammer
 ringing down on an anvil,
 forging a whole new world.

-- Kim Addonizio

Sonnet: The Poet at Seven -- Donald Justice

 
(Poem #240)Sonnet: The Poet at Seven
 And on the porch, across the upturned chair, 
 The boy would spread a dingy counterpane 
 Against the length and majesty of the rain, 
 And on all fours crawl under it like a bear 
 To lick his wounds in secret, in his lair. 
 And afterwards, in the windy yard again, 
 One hand cocked back, release his paper plane 
 Frail as a May fly to the faithless air. 
 And summer evenings he would whirl around 
 Faster and faster till the drunken ground 
 rose up to meet him; sometimes he would squat 
 Among the bent weeds of the vacant lot, 
 Waiting for the dusk and someone dear to come 
 And whip him down the street, but gently, home.
-- Donald Justice

The Gates of Damascus -- James Elroy Flecker

 
(Poem #239)The Gates of Damascus
        Four great gates has the city of Damascus,
                And four Great Wardens, on their spears reclining,
        All day long stand like tall stone men
                And sleep on the towers when the moon is shining.

        This is the song of the East Gate Warden
        When he locks the great gate and smokes in his garden.

 Postern of Fate, the Desert Gate, Disaster's Cavern, Fort of Fear,
 The Portal of Baghdad am I, and Doorway of Diarbekir.

 The Persian Dawn with new desires may net the flushing mountain spires:
 But my gaunt buttress still rejects the suppliance of those mellow fires.

 Pass not beneath, O Caravan, or pass not singing. Have you heard
 That silence where the birds are dead yet something pipeth like a bird?

 Pass not beneath! Men say there blows in stony deserts still a rose
 But with no scarlet to her leaf--and from whose heart no perfume flows.

 Wilt thou bloom red where she buds pale, thy sister rose? Wilt thou not fail
 When noonday flashes like a flail? Leave nightingale the caravan!

 Pass then, pass all! "Baghdad!" ye cry, and down the billows of blue sky
 Ye beat the bell that beats to hell, and who shall thrust you back? Not I.

 The Sun who flashes through the head and paints the shadows green and red,--
 The Sun shall eat thy fleshless dead, O Caravan, O Caravan!

 And one who licks his lips for thirst with fevered eyes shall face in fear
 The palms that wave, the streams that burst, his last mirage, O Caravan!

 And one--the bird-voiced Singing-man--shall fall behind thee, Caravan!
 And God shall meet him in the night, and he shall sing as best he can.

 And one the Bedouin shall slay, and one, sand-stricken on the way
 Go dark and blind; and one shall say--"How lonely is the Caravan!"

 Pass out beneath, O Caravan, Doom's Caravan, Death's Caravan!
 I had not told ye, fools, so much, save that I heard your Singing-man.

        This was sung by the West Gate's keeper
        When heaven's hollow dome grew deeper.

 I am the gate toward the sea: O sailor men, pass out from me!
 I hear you high in Lebanon, singing the marvels of the sea.

 The dragon-green, the luminous, the dark, the serpent-haunted sea,
 The snow-besprinkled wine of earth, the white-and-blue-flower foaming sea.

 Beyond the sea are towns with towers, carved with lions and lily flowers,
 And not a soul in all those lonely streets to while away the hours.

 Beyond the towns, an isle where, bound, a naked giant bites the ground:
 The shadow of a monstrous wing looms on his back: and still no sound.

 Beyond the isle a rock that screams like madmen shouting in their dreams,
 From whose dark issues night and day blood crashes in a thousand streams.

 Beyond the rock is Restful Bay, where no wind breathes or ripple stirs,
 And there on Roman ships, they say, stand rows of metal mariners.

 Beyond the bay in utmost West old Solomon the Jewish King
 Sits with his beard upon his breast, and grips and guards his magic ring:

 And when that ring is stolen, he will rise in outraged majesty,
 And take the World upon his back, and fling the World beyond the sea.

        This is the song of the North Gate's master,
        Who singeth fast, but drinketh faster.

 I am the gay Aleppo Gate: a dawn, a dawn and thou art there:
 Eat not thy heart with fear and care, O brother of the beast we hate!

 Thou hast not many miles to tread, nor other foes than fleas to dread;
 Home shall behold thy morning meal and Hama see thee safe in bed.

 Take to Aleppo filigrane, and take them paste of apricots,
 And coffee tables botched with pearl, and little beaten brassware pots:

 And thou shalt sell thy wares for thrice the Damascene retailers' price,
 And buy a fat Armenian slave who smelleth odorous and nice.

 Some men of noble stock were made: some glory in the murder-blade;
 Some praise a Science or an Art, but I like honorable Trade!

 Sell them the rotten, buy the ripe! Their heads are weak; their pockets burn.
 Aleppo men are mighty fools. Salaam Aleikum! Safe return!

        This is the song of the South Gate Holder,
        A silver man, but his song is older.

 I am the Gate that fears no fall: the Mihrab of Damascus wall,
 The bridge of booming Sinai: the Arch of Allah all in all.

 O spiritual pilgrim rise: the night has grown her single horn:
 The voices of the souls unborn are half adream with Paradise.

 To Mecca thou hast turned in prayer with aching heart and eyes that burn:
 Ah Hajji, wither wilt thou turn when thou art there, when thou art there?

 God be thy guide from camp to camp: God be thy shade from well to well;
 God grant beneath the desert stars thou hear the Prophet's camel bell.

 And God shall make thy body pure, and give thee knowledge to endure
 This ghost-life's piercing phantom-pain, and bring thee out to Life again.

 And God shall make thy soul a Glass where eighteen thousand aeons pass.
 And thou shalt see the gleaming Worlds as men see dew upon the grass.

 And sons of Islam, it may be that thou shalt learn at journey's end
 Who walks thy garden eve on eve, and bows his head, and calls thee Friend.
-- James Elroy Flecker

Lending Out Books -- Hal Sirowitz

 
(Poem #238)Lending Out Books
 You're always giving, my therapist said.
 You have to learn how to take. Whenever
 you meet a woman, the first thing you do
 is lend her your books. You think she'll
 have to see you again in order to return them.
 But what happens is, she doesn't have the time
 to read them, & she's afraid if she sees you again
 you'll expect her to talk about them, & will
 want to lend her even more. So she
 cancels the date. You end up losing
 a lot of books. You should borrow hers.
-- Hal Sirowitz

Poem for Everyone -- John T Wood

 
(Poem #237)Poem for Everyone
 I will present you
 parts
 of
 my
 self
 slowly
 if you are patient and tender.
 I will open drawers
 that mostly stay closed
 and bring out places and people and things
 sounds and smells,
 loves and frustrations,
 hopes and sadnesses,
 bits and pieces of three decades of life
 that have been grabbed off
 in chunks
 and found lying in my hands.
 they have eaten
 their way into my memory,
 carved their way into
 my heart.
 altogether
 - you or i will never see them -
 they are me.
 if you regard them lightly,
 deny that they are important
 or worse, judge them
 i will quietly, slowly,
 begin to wrap them up,
 in small pieces of velvet,
 like worn silver and gold jewelry,
 tuck them away
 in a small wooden chest of drawers
 
 and close.
-- John T Wood

Romantics -- Lisel Mueller

 
(Poem #236)Romantics
 Johannes Brahms and Clara Schumann
                           
 The modern biographers worry
 "how far it went," their tender friendship.
 They wonder just what it means
 when he writes he thinks of her constantly,
 his guardian angel, beloved friend.
 The modern biographers ask
 the rude, irrelevant question
 of our age, as if the event
 of two bodies meshing together
 establishes the degree of love,
 forgetting how softly Eros walked
 in the nineteenth-century, how a hand
 held overlong or a gaze anchored
 in someone’s eyes could unseat a heart,
 and nuances of address not known
 in our egalitarian language
 could make the redolent air
 tremble and shimmer with the heat
 of possibility. Each time I hear
 the Intermezzi, sad
 and lavish in their tenderness,
 I imagine the two of them
 sitting in a garden
 among late-blooming roses
 and dark cascades of leaves,
 letting the landscape speak for them,
 leaving us nothing to overhear.
-- Lisel Mueller

The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm -- Wallace Stevens

(Poem #235)The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm
 The house was quiet and the world was calm.
 The reader became the book; and summer night
 Was like the conscious being of the book.
 The house was quiet and the world was calm.
 The words were spoken as if there was no book,
 Except that the reader leaned above the page,
 Wanted to lean, wanted much most to be
 The scholar to whom the book is true, to whom
 The summer night is like a perfection of thought.
 The house was quiet because it had to be.
 The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind:
 The access of perfection to the page.
 And the world was calm. The truth in a calm world,
 In which there is no other meaning, itself
 Is calm, itself is summer and night, itself
 Is the reader leaning late and reading there.
-- Wallace Stevens

Red, Red Bra -- Hal Sirowitz

(Poem #234)Red, Red Bra
 I bought a red bra, she said.
 I knew you'd like it.
 The only problem was I didn't
 have a red blouse to wear with it.
 I bought that & red pants
 & shoes, so it wouldn't stand out
 so much. I also thought of getting
 red panties. But I said to hell with that.
 I'm not going to worry if one small part 
 of the outfit doesn't match. And who's 
 going to see my underwear? Just you.
 What do you know about fashion? Nothing.
-- Hal Sirowitz

Sometimes -- Sheenagh Pugh

(Poem #233)Sometimes
 Sometimes things don't go, after all,
 from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
 faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don't fail.
 Sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.

 A people sometimes will step back from war,
 elect an honest man, decide they care
 enough, that they can't leave some stranger poor.
 Some men become what they were born for.

 Sometimes our best intentions do not go
 amiss; sometimes we do as we meant to.
 The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
 that seemed hard frozen; may it happen for you.
-- Sheenagh Pugh