A Poem A Day

[mzwasp]

Origins of Violence

BY JENNY GEORGE

There is a hole.

In the hole is everything

people will do

to each other.

 

The hole goes down and down.

It has many rooms

like graves and like graves

they are all connected.

 

Roots hang from the dirt

in craggy chandeliers.

It's not clear

where the hole stops

 

beginning and where

it starts to end.

It's warm and dark down there.

The passages multiply.

 

There are ballrooms.

There are dead ends.

The air smells of iron and

crushed flowers.

 

People will do anything.

They will cut the hands off children.

Children will do anything—

 

In the hole is everything.

 

[brokenclay]

 

Meditation on a Grapefruit

by Craig Arnold

 

To wake when all is possible

before the agitations of the day

have gripped you

                    To come to the kitchen

and peel a little basketball

for breakfast

              To tear the husk

like cotton padding        a cloud of oil

misting out of its pinprick pores

clean and sharp as pepper

                             To ease

each pale pink section out of its case

so carefully       without breaking

a single pearly cell

                    To slide each piece

into a cold blue china bowl

the juice pooling       until the whole

fruit is divided from its skin

and only then to eat

                  so sweet

                            a discipline

precisely pointless       a devout

involvement of the hands and senses

a pause     a little emptiness

 

each year harder to live within

each year harder to live without

 

 

 

 

[mzwasp]

XXVIII

 

“Truth,” said a traveller,
“Is a rock, a mighty fortress;
Often have I been to it,
Even to its highest tower,
From whence the world looks black.”

 

“Truth,” said a traveller,
“Is a breath, a wind,
A shadow, a phantom;
Long have I pursued it,
But never have I touched
The hem of its garment.”

 

And I believed the second traveller;
For truth was to me
A breath, a wind,
A shadow, a phantom,
And never had I touched
The hem of its garment.

 

by Stephen Crane

[brokenclay]

 

[even with insects]

by Kobayashi Issa

translated by Robert Hass

 

Even with insects--

some sing,

    some can't.

[brokenclay]

This poem works on many levels for me: the rhyme and structure, the word choices, the fact that I have 2 adult sons that this could be about...

 

 

For the Love of Avocados

by Diane Lockward

 

I sent him from home hardly more than a child.

Years later, he came back loving avocados.

In the distant kitchen where he'd flipped burgers

and tossed salads, he'd mastered how to prepare

 

the pear-shaped fruit. He took a knife and plied

his way into the thick skin with a bravado

and gentleness I'd never seen in him. He nudged

the halves apart, grabbed a teaspoon and carefully

 

eased out the heart, holding it as if it were fragile.

He took one half, then the other of the armadillo-

hided fruit and slid his spoon where flesh edged

against skin, working it under and around, sparing

 

the edible pulp. An artist working at an easel,

he filled the center holes with chopped tomatoes.

The broken pieces, made whole again, merged

into two reconstructed hearts, a delicate and rare

 

surgery. My boy who'd gone away angry and wild

had somehow learned how to unclose

what had once been shut tight, how to urge

out the stony heart and handle it with care.

 

Beneath the rind he'd grown as tender and mild

as that avocado, its rubies nestled in peridot,

our forks slipping into the buttery texture

of unfamiliar joy, two halves of what we shared.

[brokenclay]

 

on paper

by Jacqueline Woodson

 

The first time I write my full name

 

Jacqueline Amanda Woodson

 

without anybody's help

on a clean white page in my composition notebook,

     I know

 

if I wanted to

 

I could write anything.

 

Letters becoming words, words gathering meaning,

     becoming

thoughts outside my head

 

becoming sentences

 

written by

 

                                                  Jacqueline Amanda Woodson

 

 

[brokenclay]

 

Translation

by Rika Lesser

 

Lost: the Original, its Reason and its Rhyme,

Words whose meanings do not change through time,

"The soul in paraphrase", the heart in prose,

Strictures or structures, meter, les mots justes;

"The owlet umlaut" when the text was German,

Two hours of sleep each night, hapax legomenon,

A sense of self, fidelity, one's honor,

Authorized versions from a living donor.

 

Found in translation: someone else's voice:

Ringing and lucid, whispered, distant, true,

That in its rising accents falls to you,

Wahlverwandtschaft, a fortunate choice,

A call to answer, momentary grace,

Unbidden, yours, a way to offer praise.

 

Footnotes:

les mots justes: French, the right words

hapax legomenon: Greek, so-called

Wahlverwandtschaft: German, elective affinity

[HogwldFLTR]

Lost in Time

 

Wrenching a Sportster

In the still, still cool morning garage

A roadrunner darts by.

[Doulton]

  On 2/14/2021 at 2:43 AM, brokenclay said:

 

[even with insects]

by Kobayashi Issa

translated by Robert Hass

 

Even with insects--

some sing,

    some can't.

Expand  

Thank you!  After decades spent  long Victorian narrative poems, I'm really appreciating what Issa can do.
Less is more!

[brokenclay]

  On 2/18/2021 at 4:55 PM, Doulton said:

Thank you!  After decades spent  long Victorian narrative poems, I'm really appreciating what Issa can do.
Less is more!

Expand  

 

🙂

 

One of the interesting things about this practice for me has been that, with very few exceptions, I am choosing poems that fit on one A4 or A5 page. As a criterion to eliminate poems, it's entirely logistical, but I like the way it helps me winnow down candidates and choose a poem that speaks to me in some way.

[brokenclay]

 

Mountain Pool

by James L. Weil

 

look

         and you

                         see

clear

          down through

                                   the

water

           which makes

                                  all

the

       difference

in

     the world

[HogwldFLTR]

Attraction

 

Blinding sensual flame

Draws in the unsuspecting moth

Insinerating his morality.

[brokenclay]

 

The House Was Quiet and The World Was Calm

by Wallace Stevens

 

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 his 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.

[Madeline]

  On 2/20/2021 at 12:00 AM, brokenclay said:

 

Mountain Pool

by James L. Weil

 

look

         and you

                         see

clear

          down through

                                   the

water

           which makes

                                  all

the

       difference

in

     the world

Expand  

 

Some of these poems--this one in particular!--become so much more evocative through pen and ink and paper than through the type's blank, objective face (though I certainly appreciate the typed-out/keyboard versions, too!) 

 

[brokenclay]

 

Waiting For a Poem

by Luljeta Lleshanaku

translated by Henry Israeli & Shpresa Qatipi

 

I’m waiting for a poem,

something rough, not elaborate or out of control,

something undisturbed by curses, a white raven

released from darkness.

 

Words that come naturally, without aiming at anything,

a bullet without a target,

warning shots to the sky

in newly occupied lands.

 

A poem that will well up in my chest

 

and until it arrives

I will listen to my children fighting in the next room

and cast my gaze down at the table

at an empty glass of milk

with a trace of white along its rim

my throat wrapped in silver

a napkin in a napkin ring

waiting for late guests to arrive. . . .

[Doulton]

Evolution

By Eliza Griswold

Was it dissatisfaction or hope
that beckoned some of the monkeys
down from the trees and onto the damp
forbidden musk of the forest floor?

Which one tested his thumbs
against the twig
and awkwardly dug a grub
from the soil?

What did the tribe above think
as it leaned on the slender branches
watching the others
frustrated, embarrassed,
but pinching grubs
with leathery fingers
into their mouths?

The moral is movement
is awkward. The lesson is fumble.

 

 

"Evolution" by Eliza Griswold, from Wideawake Field. © Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007. 

 

"The lesson is fumble" -- that's what I'm doing here.  I don't have the skill or the refined taste of brokenclay and others here, but I love the conversation and want to keep it going.  

[brokenclay]

  On 2/21/2021 at 9:54 PM, Doulton said:

The moral is movement
is awkward. The lesson is fumble.

 

Expand  

Oh, I like this! Thank you.

 

 

Even-Keeled and At-Eased

by Alberto Ríos

 

But the truth is, I am Thursday on a Monday. I

Am the walking calendar alive of mixed-up days and dim hours. I have

 

A week inside of me, a week or a year, time out of order. I have contracted

With the world to behave, to try, hard, to be Monday on a Monday. I

 

Look like I am happiness, don’t you think? On Monday, to you I have

The right laugh, and seem always to be even-keeled and at-eased.

[mzwasp]

  On 2/14/2021 at 7:52 PM, brokenclay said:

This poem works on many levels for me: the rhyme and structure, the word choices, the fact that I have 2 adult sons that this could be about...

 

 

For the Love of Avocados

by Diane Lockward

 

I sent him from home hardly more than a child.

Years later, he came back loving avocados.

In the distant kitchen where he'd flipped burgers

and tossed salads, he'd mastered how to prepare

 

the pear-shaped fruit. He took a knife and plied

his way into the thick skin with a bravado

and gentleness I'd never seen in him. He nudged

the halves apart, grabbed a teaspoon and carefully

 

eased out the heart, holding it as if it were fragile.

He took one half, then the other of the armadillo-

hided fruit and slid his spoon where flesh edged

against skin, working it under and around, sparing

 

the edible pulp. An artist working at an easel,

he filled the center holes with chopped tomatoes.

The broken pieces, made whole again, merged

into two reconstructed hearts, a delicate and rare

 

surgery. My boy who'd gone away angry and wild

had somehow learned how to unclose

what had once been shut tight, how to urge

out the stony heart and handle it with care.

 

Beneath the rind he'd grown as tender and mild

as that avocado, its rubies nestled in peridot,

our forks slipping into the buttery texture

of unfamiliar joy, two halves of what we shared.

Expand  

This is wonderful - I have a young teenage son myself

and find this poem to be very poignant.

You might like the poetry of Sharon Olds - she wote a lot about her children 

in a way that was very powerful and beautiful, but not sentimental.

[mzwasp]

  On 2/15/2021 at 10:09 PM, brokenclay said:

 

on paper

by Jacqueline Woodson

 

The first time I write my full name

 

Jacqueline Amanda Woodson

 

without anybody's help

on a clean white page in my composition notebook,

     I know

 

if I wanted to

 

I could write anything.

 

Letters becoming words, words gathering meaning,

     becoming

thoughts outside my head

 

becoming sentences

 

written by

 

                                                  Jacqueline Amanda Woodson

 

 

Expand  

Wonderful!

The delight of language & self-discovery.

[mzwasp]

  On 2/21/2021 at 6:57 PM, Madeline said:

 

Some of these poems--this one in particular!--become so much more evocative through pen and ink and paper than through the type's blank, objective face (though I certainly appreciate the typed-out/keyboard versions, too!) 

 

Expand  

Yes, I've had that experience as well -

the poem integrates itself in a different way in my consciousness

when I am writing it out by hand.