—Sylvia Plath, Poetry, July 1957
Tag Archives: poems
“Cold Reading” – Brendan Constantine
It’s really cold in here now,
easily forty below something,
and half the class is asleep.
Snow dazzles in the windows,
makes a cake of each desk.
It’s really cold in here now.
I’ve been lecturing on the same
poem for twenty six hours
and half the class is asleep.
I want them to get it. I start
to talk about death again
and it’s really cold in here now.
One student has frozen solid,
her hair snapping off in the wind
and half the class is asleep.
“See that” I say, “Lisa gets it.”
But it’s so cold in here now
half the class are white dunes
shifting to the sea.
Insomnia – Linda Pastan
I remember when my body
was a friend,
when sleep like a good dog
came when summoned.
The door to the future
had not started to shut,
and lying on my back
between cold sheets
did not feel
like a rehearsal.
Now what light is left
comes up—a stain in the east,
and sleep, reluctant
as a busy doctor,
gives me a little
of its time.
from The Virginia Quarterly Review
“In the Book of the Disappearing Book” – John Gallagher
It’s a spring flowered dress that was her effacement.
On a train, and because of what windows do sometimes.
Her face is floating above the landscape
unaware.
I used to think that I was reporting my life to someone.
I was a radio.
I used to think things happening was unfolding.
The trees are blooming all through her
and there’s no one to tell.
And the discipline of roads.
The icy discipline of to and from.
In the air of nothing, I used to think
I was understanding distance.
Green God, in your language of silences, tell me.
(Courtesy of LIT)
“The Aurora of the New Mind” – David St. John
There had been rain throughout the province
Cypress & umbrella pines in a palsy of swirling mists
Bent against the onshore whipping winds
I had been so looking forward to your silence
What a pity it never arrived
The uniforms of arrogance had been delivered only
That morning to the new ambassador & his stable of lovers
The epaulettes alone would have made a lesser man weep
But I know my place & I know my business
& I know my own mind so it never occured to me
To listen as you recited that litany of automatic
miseries
Familiar to all victims of class warfare & loveless
circumstance
By which I mean of course you & your kind
But I know my place & I know my business & baby
I know my own grieving summer mind
Still I look a lot like Scott Fitzgerald tonight with
my tall
Tumbler of meander & bourbon & mint just clacking my
ice
To the noise of the streetcar ratcheting up some
surprise
I had been so looking forward to your silence
& what a pity it never arrived
Now those alpha waves of desire light up the horizon
Just the way my thoughts all blew wild-empty as you
stood
In the doorway to leave in the doorway to leave
Yet I know my place & I know my business & I know those
Melodies melodies & the music of my own mind
:: from The Southern Review
“Desire” – Langston Hughes
Desire to us
Was like a double death,
Swift dying
Of our mingled breath,
Evaporation
Of an unknown strange perfume
Between us quickly
In a naked
Room.
(1947)
“When A Man Hasn’t Been Kissed” – Jeffrey McDaniel
When I haven’t been kissed in a long time,
I walk behind well-dressed women
on cold, December mornings and shovel
the steamy exhalations pluming from their lips
down my throat with both hands, hoping
a single molecule will cling to my lungs.
When I haven’t been kissed in a long time,
I sneak into the ladies room of a fancy restaurant,
dig into the trashcan for a napkin
where a woman checked her lipstick,
then go home, light candles, put on Barry White,
and press the napkin all over my body.
When I haven’t been kissed in a long time,
I start thinking leeches are the most romantic
creatures, cause all they want to do is kiss.
If only someone invented a kinder, gentler leech,
I’d paint it bright pink and pretend
Winona Ryder’s lips crawled off her face,
up my thigh, and were sucking on my swollen bicep.
When I haven’t been kissed
in a long time, I create civil disturbances,
then insult the cops who show up,
till one of them grabs me by the collar
and hurls me up against the squad car,
so I can remember, at least for a moment,
what it’s like to be touched.
“My Lavenderdom” – Sarah Maclay
—as in, pre-flutter, that kingdom of semi-purpleness— should I
say dome of— that area of anti-limp, lawless, drunk on your
fingering, unfingering— that omnivore, oh, eating now your—
even your branches, iceless, anti frozen, gazelle flying toward the
twin kingdoms of your cheekness (more at “flying buttress”),
nearly periwinkling now— that perpetrator of the semi-grunt,
grunt, instigator of the groanful demi-flood of— flutter, flutter,
post-flutter— gorge of neomauve, rich canal of sunsetish plush,
now unguardedly sub-fuschia; that private brandied eyelash
batting at you in its brashest postcool queenness, plump and
succulent as a plum—
—-The Best American Erotic Poems: From 1800 to the Present, 2008
In You The Earth – Pablo Neruda
Little,
rose,
roselet,
at times,
tiny and naked,
it seems
as though you would fit
in one of my hands,
as though I’ll clasp you to my mouth,
but
suddenly
my feet touch your feet and my mouth your lips:
you have grown,
your shoulders rise like two hills,
your breasts wander over my breast,
my arm scarcely manages to encircle the thin
new-moon line of your waist:
in love you have loosened yourself like sea water:
I can scarcely measure the sky’s most spacious eyes
and I lean down to your mouth to kiss the earth.
Excerpt from I Heard God Laughing: Poems of Hope & Joy
A poet is someone / who can pour Light into a spoon / then raise it / to nourish / Your beautiful parched / holy mouth
By Hafiz
drunken library 