Poetry Less Than Daily

Jonathan Mayhew trans. Jonathan Mayhew

2005-08-26T14:28:00.000-07:00

ANÉCDOTA RECORDADA EN VANO

Escuchaba yo un disco - en la edad de los tocadiscos -

entró mi padre, me comentó, extrañado y despectivo, que le sonaba a piano de cóctel

En vano habría sido contestarle, avergonzado, que se trataba del gran Bill Evans

que sí tocaba en esa época algo parecido a la música de Cóctel

***

I was listening to a record - in the age of recordplayers -

when my father came in, surprised and dismissive, telling me it sounded like Cocktail piano

It would have been in vain to tell him it was the great Bill Evans

who was in fact playing, in that period, a form of Cocktail piano

**********************

Guest Editor: David Shapiro

David Shapiro

2005-08-26T11:06:00.000-07:00

Song for Another Envelope

The fatal exceptions occurred

without exception and not fatally.

They stole my throne from me:

it was a tree, or a tree

stump as they rotted it,

cut it to a chair,

democratic as a T

then sank it into the ground

and I forgot to take last snaps

of a serious mossy thing.

Fire at evening, or was it the

evening on fire?

Reader,

butterfly,

migrant drunk, ally,

unemployed luminosity,

mirror in the air, feather,

scrawny light--

You decide.

Andy Carter

2005-08-26T11:05:00.000-07:00

start with the last line or end with the beginning

I have left
that resembles what courage
bruised bananas mashed
up against the nothing
days spent rubbing
stainless steel kiss
fuck hole on my new computer
shooting smack between its toes, our future
unable to stop
I know, I let go
as they ought to
high school couples holding on
they don't speak and they choose not to
cows in a slaughter queue
for the ants to contemplate
a damp pink splotch
into the plum so cold and sweet
I'm going to insert explosives
when not, the victim of it
when convenient the author of history
they buried Ronald on a sunset drenched hill
buried Ronald in Topeka, how inappropriate
lately, I've noticed silence cutting itself
with each shrug the official offer increased
slid across the table, apocryphal
I scribbled on the back of the photo
and only one computer screen
if there were only one extension cord
I love the new Sleater-Kinney
red grows nervously on the tv, the radar, my city

Maggie Nelson

2005-08-25T11:29:00.000-07:00

Morning Prayer

This morning I awoke with a fresh sense

of the total, desperate hell

Our failure to love each other well

O let a jesus come down and make it sweet

Let a jesus take an axe to the wheel

Part the fire with tongs

Carlos Drummond de Andrade

2005-08-10T11:52:00.000-07:00

Residue

From everything a little remained.
From my fear. From your disgust.
From stifled cries. From the rose
a little remained.

A little remained of light
caught inside the hat.
In the eyes of the pimp
a little remained of tenderness,
very little.

A little remained of the dust
that covered your white shoes.
Of your clothes a little remained,
a few velvet rags, very
very few.

From everything a little remained.
From the bombed-out bridge,
from the two blades of grass,
from the empty pack
of cigarettes a little remained.

So from everything a little remains.
A little remains of your chin
in the chin of your daughter.

A little remained of your
blunt silence, a little
in the angry wall,
in the mute rising leaves.

A little remained from everything
in porcelain saucers,
in the broken dragon, in the white flowers,
in the creases of your brow,
in the portrait.

Since from everything a little remains,
why won't a little
of me remain? In the train
travelling north, in the ship,
in newspaper ads,
why not a little of me in London,
a little of me somewhere?
In a consonant?
In a well?

A little remains dangling
in the mouths of rivers,
just a little, and the fish
don't avoid it, which is very unusual.

From everything a little remains.
Not much: this absurd drop
dripping from the faucet,
half salt and half alcohol,
this frog leg jumping,
this watch crystal
broken into a thousand wishes,
this swan's neck,
this childhood secret...
From everything a little remained:
from me; from you; from Abelard.
Hair on my sleeve,
from everything a little remained;
wind in my ears,
burbing, rumbling
from an upset stomach,
and small artifacts:
bell jar, honeycomb, revolver
cartridge, aspirin tablet.

From everything a little remained.

And from everything a little remains.
Oh, open the bottles of lotion
and smoother
the cruel, unbearable odor of memory.

Still, horribly, from everything a little remains,
under the rhythmic waves
under the clouds and the wind
under the bridges and under the tunnels
under the flames and under the sarcasm
under the phlegm and under the vomit
under the cry from the dungeon, the guy they forgot
under the spectacle and under the scarlet death
under the libraries, asylums, victorious churches
under yourself and under your feet already hard
under the ties of family, the ties of class,
from everything a little always remains.
Sometimes a button. Sometimes a rat.

--Carlos Drummond de Andrade. trans. from the Portuguese by Mark Strand

Kenneth Koch

2005-07-31T15:20:00.000-07:00

To High Spirits

You have taken the vodka
That I was probably
Saving for tomorrow.
Go on and take it
For there's more enterprise
In waking naked.

Mackenzie Carignan

2005-07-20T10:35:00.000-07:00

bear in the air

you follicular me corps me
annotate me balloon me
you prod me diethylstilbestrol me
get over it in the cotton
if it’s open to getting

you billboard me diverge me
study me cosmic me
you amygdaline me oliver me
strange pluck of recent cymbal
like your undone mystical thrust

you fenugreek me rayleigh me
gabardine me hydrofuge me
pin me to a lupine forest without
mush drawers mechanism of sorting

you venturi me command me
ossify me barnacle me
beautiful ocean in a handwriting cassette
instead of knowing instead

Tony Towle

2005-07-18T12:58:00.000-07:00

The Works of Li Po

The mountain flowers are growing and in bloom,
the different insects carry on their business.
At the sound of my rambling you awake
o drunkard
and arise from the dew of the wine shop.

The thick wine is called the wise,
the clear the sage,
poured blissfully in a ditch above the stars
where my city like yours stand by a serene waterfall
and after a jugful we are couds on the eyelid of heaven.

I cannot be less precise because my words have fewer meanings;
'vessel' is a wonderful word in our language,
for as the liquor travels it is also a ship,
bearing the liquid course of the seasons.
Syntactically I am on the vessel
as on the wine curtain of the shore.

Sandra Simonds

2005-07-17T16:00:00.000-07:00

a sonnet called I've heard a lot of conflicting etymologies for "okay"
for tony robinson

ze-

ro killed (apo-

cryphal) or the christchild’s torn paw (Choctaw language)

your chrysanthemum zippo, your bodyweight in pearls and please

[ole correct, all aboard, all right, no use]: oil?

Earp’s torso in a corral of salt and goldfish

"It is no exaggeration to say that the reputation of the Royal Navy

is founded on British oak."

see OK SODA

1. to aggressively court the generation X demographic. I fuck you.

2. ,and outright negative publicity

3. zero killed. all aboard. see the chirstchild’s mauve rib.

4. officially declared out of production by 1995

5. their slogan was “things are going to be OK”

Gina Myers

2005-07-15T14:23:00.000-07:00

The Answer

This is all I ask for—to exist. You’d think
I’d want more, you’d think I’d desire

understanding. But I am glad the earth revolves
around the sun how it does. I am glad

the earth’s rotation axis is tilted 23.5 degrees
from the sun how it is. You’d think more—

You’d think never enough, never enough.
You’d think somewhere else. But no,

these words have nothing more to offer.
You’d think no,no. You’d think naughty girl.

You’d think for Christ’s sake.

Ted Berrigan

2005-07-09T13:01:00.000-07:00

Coda: Song

When having something to do
but not yet being at it
because I'm alone, because of you
I lay down the book, & pick up the house

& move it around until it is
where it is what it is I am doing
that is the something I had to do
because I'm no longer alone, because of you.

Rae Armantrout

2005-06-28T16:19:00.000-07:00

Theory of Everything

It both hurtles
and fidgets,

otherwise
it's empty space?

*

A wide swath
of baby talk--

blue
and feathery green,
I insisted,

swinging up,

but Mother
was no longer playing.

*

Everything that stays
once meaning has cleared out

is true?

*

Tomorrow
the sun eats the earth,

now
so many leaves are new,

not asking
to be recognized.

Joseph Massey

2005-06-27T14:05:00.000-07:00

Back Yard

Lit amber by
back door light

a skunk prowls
bramble's edge

--blackberry vines
and dandelions

bunched alongside
the garage--

into alley's black
spilling moths.

Maggie Nelson

2005-06-25T14:31:00.000-07:00

Imagine

The world is so full of things
you could never imagine

An old man brusing
what's left of his hair

with a plastic fork;
a Hasidic guy pushing a stroller

full of frozen poultry. Then
a postcard bearing cherry blossoms

arrives in the mail
It says that you love me

James Galvin

2005-06-24T15:12:00.000-07:00

Time Optics

Where the ditch vaults the river,
Where the wooden flume weeps over,
Paying the way,
Where its veil makes a thin distance
And has no critics but wind-in-willowshade,
My love and I lay down
In seventeen kinds of native grasses.
We took our time.
Some wasps were building
A Japanese lantern in the branches,
The flume kept weeping into the river.
Chilly ditchwater.
Don't worry, littls wasps, wooden flume.
I'll be alright gone.

Noelle Kocot

2005-05-09T12:34:00.000-07:00

Bicycle Poem

There were cathedrals falling out of your eyes
And your arms were the handlebars
I held in an abbreviated dream of crushed petals
Strewn across the limpid avenues.

I said, "I have poems for you"
But my words were lost in the wind.
I said, "I love you"
And you drifted into sleep.

And so I said nothing and rode you in and out of the rooms
Where we had stretched the boundaries of the soul
Like an endless sheet
And I felt you waking up betwen my legs.

Brenda Shaughnessy

2005-05-08T18:31:00.000-07:00

Cinema Poisoning

I will be your first, your thirst, your third.
I'll cramp up boxy, I will starlet out
in roads of light, or crimes, or words.
My second coming would not be allowed
unless your masokismet lifts her skirts.
So I will hold you flush against the glass.
Your voice & eye are muscle & they hurt
like prodigy too soft or quick in class.

My double agent, you would never ask
my miracles of sass & light to train
the athletes of seduction in the crass
voluptuary sciences like rain.

The sex & chess & cello fever's gone
from your myopic trust, my Avalon.

Spencer Short

2005-05-05T13:40:00.000-07:00

It Will But Shake & Totter

Many poems have been written about the turgid sea.
For instance: the one about the man & his lover on the cliffs above the turgid sea.
It is the English Channel
& he is Matthew Arnold in 1851.
Across from him: “ignorant armies,” “clashing by night.”

The armies are not French.
They may be stars if what we’ve always thought of as stars
turned out to be the fading chalk of a fading language,
turned out to be nothing but the small sparks of rocks
being struck by chains in the corners of sky.

Like a Russian novel the sea roils & cedes, roils & cedes.
Fish do their fish-like work among its atavistic depths.
Notice how the moonlight glistens like lacquer
between the crests & troughs, the smell of the brine,
the heavy, salt-stung air.

All night the moon rings & rings.
All night the wind searches the cliffs for a flag,
a kite, a woman’s hat.

Love, I say, let us be true. Let us be.
The world is but a darkling plain. A hill of beans.
We are the few & we are the far between.

Brenda Hillman

2005-05-02T17:59:00.000-07:00

[two untitled fragments]
from Bright Existence

(—How long will you stay here.
Maybe longer. Sometimes,
the bee has so much pollen, it can’t fly!

and lands on the drunk camelia.
I watched you sleep,
delicious flesh, I watched you rise,

you made the dawn jealous,
you kept the future of the day inside,
not showing,—

And when you left, you were
so everywhere! torn spark. The night
had used you up, but you kept going—)

+ + +

(—Why did you tremble when you came in here.
I saw some doves fly the city;
this place, had no door.

You came in with your old sorrow,
with your other sexual loves in your mouth
your wrong previous your two laters

their little silver crosses in your eyes,
I wanted to be the boy,
I would have loved you against the wall
as hard as I could,

but there was no I right then,
desire is the good general,
the wall was nearly gone—)

C.D. Wright

2005-05-01T12:34:00.000-07:00

Gift of the Book

lights go off
all over
rhode island
everyone falls
into bed
I stay awake
reading
re-reading
the long-awaited
prose
of your
body
stunned
by the hunger

Philip Nikolayev

2005-04-30T13:41:00.000-07:00

FOUND SONNET

Glade Powder Fresh™ is a delicate
light fragrance that instantly freshens the air
with the soft scent of talc. Use Glade anywhere
in the home to effectively eliminate

odors. Glade freshens the air while leaving a light
clean scent throughout your home.
Shake well before each use; hold can upright;
press button and spray toward center of the room.

Do not set on stove or
radiator or keep where
temperature

will exceed 120° F, as container
may burst. Do not puncture
or throw in fire.

Robert Desnos

2005-04-29T10:59:00.000-07:00

SKY SONG

The flower of the Alps told the seashell: "You're shining"
The seashell told the sea: "You echo"
The sea told the boat: "You're shuddering"
The boat told the fire: "You're glowing brightly"
The fire told me: "I glow less brightly than her eyes"
The boat told me: "I shudder less than your heart does when she appears"
The sea told me: "I echo less than her name does in your love-making"
The seashell told me: "I shine less brightly than the phosphorus of desire in your hollow dream"
The flower of the Alps told me: "She's beautiful"
I said: "She's beautiful, so beautiful, she moves me."

Maureen Thorson

2005-04-28T12:30:00.000-07:00

What's Your Number?

Snaggle-Toothed Andrea drove
Me crazy, but she was classic
Mayport, another girl coming into
Whatever sexiness youth doles
Out and with no one at home who
Loved her enough to keep her
From splashing it round. In the
Meantime, she was crude, she
Made rough jokes while being
Too eager to please. She was ripe
For abuse, sitting there like
The finish line at the end of a race:
You know people are going to cross it,
Just not who's gonna get there first.

Frank O'Hara

2005-04-26T10:08:00.000-07:00

STEPS

How funny you are today New York
like Ginger Rogers in Swingtime
and St. Bridget’s steeple leaning a little to the left

here I have just jumped out of a bed full of V-days
(I got tired of D-days) and blue you there still
accepts me foolish and free
all I want is a room up there
and you in it
and even the traffic halt so thick is a way
for people to rub up against each other
and when their surgical appliances lock
they stay together
for the rest of the day (what a day)
I go by to check a slide and I say
that painting’s not so blue

where’s Lana Turner
she’s out eating
and Garbo’s backstage at the Met
everyone’s taking their coat off
so they can show a rib-cage to the rib-watchers
and the park’s full of dancers with their tights and shoes
in little bags
who are often mistaken for worker-outers at the West Side Y
why not
the Pittsburgh Pirates shout because they won
and in a sense we’re all winning
we’re alive

the apartment was vacated by a gay couple
who moved to the country for fun
they moved a day too soon
even the stabbings are helping the population explosion
though in the wrong country
and all those liars have left the UN
the Seagram Building’s no longer rivalled in interest
not that we need liquor (we just like it)

and the little box is out on the sidewalk
next to the delicatessen
so the old man can sit on it and drink beer
and get knocked off it by his wife later in the day
while the sun is still shining

oh god it’s wonderful
to get out of bed
and drink too much coffee
and smoke too many cigarettes
and love you so much

James Galvin

2005-04-25T11:53:00.000-07:00

POSTCARD

Days are cubes of light
That equal each other
Whether anything happens in them or not,
No matter what anyone did or didn't do,
They are equal.

The emptiest are lovely,
Though one is drawn to the bright-edged shards
Of days that cracked
From disappointment and longing.

Some days I go looking for oceans.
If I find one I search the beach
For the teeth I left
In a glass of water
In a motel room in Nebraska.

I'm losing the ability to tremble.
I find appearances helpful.
Some days I go looking for the sky.