When They Fail You
Bud Smith
go away at speeds approaching disintegration
go away with no trophy
go away without your name carved into a bedpost
an oak tree, any lonely mountain
be happy you had rain to drink
be happy the nights left you alive for the big birthday
party
each burned-down dawn
be right like a broken clock, on the money, twice a day
be a quitter, a 9 of clubs, but never an ace, be a fork
dropped
and picked up with a socked foot
go weigh the dice
go open the screen door for the trapped mice
go climb the reflection of the moon on each ripple
as you swim away for good, for better islands
go off crushing the violets
wherever you stomp, stomp hard.
Love Dogs
(Rumi)
One night a man was crying,
Allah! Allah!
His lips grew sweet with the praising,
until a cynic said,
“So! I have heard you
calling out, but have you ever
gotten any response?”
The man had no answer to that.
He quit praying and fell into a confused sleep.
He dreamed he saw Khidr, the guide of souls,
in a thick, green foliage.
“Why did you stop praising?”
“Because I’ve never heard anything back.”
“This longing
you express is the return message.”
The grief you cry out from
draws you toward union.
Your pure sadness
that wants help
is the secret cup.
Listen to the moan of a dog for its master.
That whining is the connection.
There are love dogs
no one knows the names of.
Give your life
to be one of them.
Revolutionary Letter #1
(Diane DiPrima)
I have just realized that the stakes are myself
I have no other
ransom money, nothing to break or barter but my life
my spirit measured out, in bits, spread over
the roulette table, I recoup what I can
nothing else to shove under the nose of the maitre de jeu
nothing to thrust out the window, no white flag
this flesh all I have to offer, to make the play with
this immediate head, what it comes up with, my move
as we slither over this go board, stepping always
(we hope) between the lines
[my body dies the more I use it]
(Sarah Sgro)
my body dies the more I use it
so I use it often / there a tender
death wish / terrifying entrance /
when I panic it’s from choking
on three separate tongues / mine
my lover’s & a tired history
of loss / what I use my body for
today is running & a mediocre poem
which I use for therapy / it works
temporarily / any small re-entrance
is a sign of progress / writing down
the trauma for the first time is still
trauma / writing down the trauma
for the fifth time is still trauma but
at least I have a poem in my hands /
my lover is resilient / peeling back
a sleeve she shows me ghost incisions /
slice your skin & you’re no longer
in a poem or a metaphor / you are
here with a paperclip inside your wrist /
does the past decay the more I use it
in a poem / can I out-poem the past
from churning in my belly-pit / yes
the future is an enzyme & a catalyst
or a burp that smells like hotdogs
& a little like my grief / I hate that
stupid constant place which refuses
tense / longing too / greedily I suck
my lover’s upper lip looking for a poem
or I lick the balmy archive of my gut
with all three tongues / one says loss
one says loss one says I am not your tongue
The Hedgehog
(Lola Haskins)
Yesterday, along a walled track
I came upon a dark-brown brush
just the size of my hand. From
under it poked a narrow snout
which, when it sensed my boot,
pulled back as fast as it could.
I know that rush, that flight.
Real fear, imagined fear, it
makes no never mind. There
is something huddled in us all.
excerpt from ‘Leap’
(Jon Woodward)
this is the second shower
I’ve taken today I didn’t
need to take this one
all I did today was
wake up and watch TV
at one point I walked
to the grocery store and
bought a pound of strawberries
for 99 cents they weren’t
too tart if my body
is found I want them
to pack it with strawberries
I want my casket lined
with strawberries I want them
to bulldoze strawberries over me
Spoiler
(Hala Alyan)
Can you diagnose fear? The red tree blooming from uterus
to throat. It’s one long nerve, the doctor says. There’s a reason
breathing helps, the muscles slackening like a dead marriage.
Mine are simple things. Food poisoning in Paris. Hospital lobbies.
My husband laughing in another room. (The door closed.)
For days, I cradle my breast and worry the cyst like a bead.
There’s nothing to pray away. The tree loves her cutter.
The nightmares have stopped, I tell the doctor. I know why.
They stopped because I baptized them. This is how my mother
and I speak of dying—the thing you turn away by letting in.
I’m tired of April. It’s killed our matriarchs and, in the back yard,
I’ve planted an olive sapling in the wrong soil. There is a droopiness
to the branches that reminds me of my friend, the one who calls
to ask what’s the point, or the patients who come to me, swarmed
with misery and astonishment, their hearts like newborns after
the first needle. What now, they all want to know. What now.
I imagine it like a beach. There is a magnificent sand castle
that has taken years to build. A row of pink seashells for gables,
rooms of pebble and driftwood. This is your life. Then comes the affair,
nagging bloodwork, a freeway pileup. The tide moves in.
The water eats your work like a drove of wild birds. There is debris.
A tatter of sea grass and blood from where you scratched your own arm
trying to fight the current. It might not happen for a long time,
but one day you run your fingers through the sand again, scoop a fistful out,
and pat it into a new floor. You can believe in anything, so why not believe
this will last? The seashell rafter like eyes in the gloaming.
I’m here to tell you the tide will never stop coming in.
I’m here to tell you whatever you build will be ruined, so make it beautiful.
