Married
In Qutang
To a trader
From day to day
In the Qutang Gorge
The times of tides
Seem easier kept
Than the words of men
Times
I wish I were
A boatman’s bride.
Source: Wong, May, translator. In the Same Light: 200 Poems for Our Century: From the Migrants & Exiles of the Tang Dynasty. First US edition, The Song Cave, 2022.
I loathe you
But I will let you pass
Through me. Your
Stupidity smeared all over me
Your hot breath in my ear
Tonight I am the only door
Through which you can be made
To disappear
Source: Reines Ariana. Mercury. 1st ed. Fence Books 2011, p. 3.
Once,
I was afraid of dying
In a field of dry weeds.
But now,
All day long I have been walking among damp fields,
Trying to keep still, listening
To insects that move patiently.
Perhaps they are sampling the fresh dew that gathers slowly
In empty snail shells
And in the secret shelters of sparrow feathers fallen on the earth.
Source: Wright, James. Above the River : The Complete Poems. A Wesleyan University Press ed. Farrar Straus and Giroux ; University Press of New England 1992, p. 142.
Oversifted fine white flour
with little crust
and that not crisp
We cannot fight on this glue
give us the bread we are used to
Of stone-ground flour
the kissing-crust
the color of the rest
and baked right through
Bread for bread, bread
for the prisoners
each craving what
from his youth he ate
not the bread of exile
and that not crisp
Source: Schuyler, James. “Boer War Bread Strike.” Collected Poems. 1st ed. Farrar Straus Giroux 1993, p. 350.
Here: hold this handful of hail until it hurts. Hold this hog as it howls. Hook its hooves. Hold this hood over its eyes. Hold this hornet in your mouth. Hush, you’re home. How horrible is too horrible? How many holes is too many for a hull? Hold the hen, behead the hen, crush the unhatched chick. This is how it feels to be held, held in a headlock, held hostage in your own house. Would you hack off your hands to escape? Helplessness becomes habit, your habitat, where you feel most at home. Heft the hissing snake around your hips. Hold the hemlock to your lips. Do you feel homesick yet? Here: hold this flag, hold this heirloom handgun, cock the hammer. Is it heavy? Huddle together, hunker down. Here come the hounds. Brace as if for a hurricane. Stop holding out for help. Stop holding your breath. It is an honor to live here. It is an honor to live hamstrung, hand- cuffed to harm. It is an honor to be hopeless. It isn’t hell, it’s holiness. It’s the hill you’ll die on. You saw what happened to the hen. Better to be the hawk; better to be the heron than the herring. It’s your heritage. Is it heavy? Did that headline hurt? Is that history harrowing? Hollow out your heart and pack the hole with hay. Pack it with holly if you miss the sensation of pain. You’ll habituate. You’ll learn to handle the heat, or you’ll be the hog. You’re the horizon, the highway, the hitcher, the hatchet, the stopping car, the house up the road. How far are you going? How far are you willing to go?
Source: Wahmanholm, Claire. “H”. The Anarchist Review of Books, vol. 6, no. 6, June 2023, p. 21.
Looking at Mapplethorpe’s Polaroids, I learn that he
liked shoes and armpit crotch-shots of men and women,
both shaved and un’—all giving a good whiff to the camera.
But best of all are his pictures of ordinary phones
which convey a palpable sense of expectancy as if
at any moment, one of the fabulous, laconic nude men
strewn about might call. One could pick up the receiver
and hear the garbled sound of ancient Greek and Roman
voices reveling in the background. But even when silent,
the dingy phone is a sex organ—cock asleep in its cradle.
Equi, Elaine. “Antiquity Calling.” Poetry Foundation, Poetry Magazine, November 2008, www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/51805/antiquity-calling. Accessed 1 Oct. 2023.
I’ve swept the floor.
I’ve shaven
All the wood and leaves off the bed
Brackish semen fills the sky
And dazed bees browse my drooping
Curls
Look asshole. I know exactly who you are
I know what you’re trying to do to me
Every once in a while white
lines appear in my field
of vision, curling sometimes
at the top of it and I
realize once again that there
is an invisible rectangle
around everything.
How do I know it’s there?
I just put it there,
that’s how.
And those white lines?
Little hairs
straggling from my eyebrows.
Source: Padgett, Ron. “The Field.” Big Cabin, Coffee House Press, 2019, p. 78. Print.
“It was not gay, that life.” You can’t “make me small,”
you “can’t put me down” or take away my job
I am immune,
although it is not gay. Why did we come at all,
consonant to whose bidding? Perhaps God is a slob,
playful, vast, rough-hewn.
Perhaps God resembles one of the last etchings of Goya
& not Valesquez, never Rembrandt no.
Something disturbed,
ill-pleased, & with a touch of paranoia
who calls for this thud of love from his creatures-O.
Perhaps God ought to be curbed.
Not only on this planet, I admit; somewhere.
Our only resource is bleak denial or
anti-potent rage, both have been tried by our wisest. Who was it back there
who died unshriven, daring to see what more
could happen to a painter with such courage.
Source: Berryman, John, and Michael Hofmann. The Dream Songs , 2014, p. 257.
I only intend to send word to my future
Self perpetuation is a war against Time
Travel is essentially the aim of any religion
Is blindness the color one sees under water
Breath can be overshadowed in darkness
The benefits of blackness can seem radical
Black people in America are rarely compulsive
Is forbidden the only word God doesn’t know
You have to heal yourself to truly be heroic
You have to think once a day of killing your self
Awareness requires a touch of blindness & self
Importance is the only word God knows
To be free is to live because only the dead are slaves
Source: Hayes, Terrance. American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin, 2018, p. 79
