Tag Archives: poetry

Humming

books poetry lit October 1, 2013 Leave a comment

Our father taught us
music too—
Saturday evenings,
the tubes grew hot
as the turn-table
ran across a needle.
Steady low strings
held the cut of high
strings, in the air
around the room.
We listened;
the hiss and hum
of Copland’s
Spring, resonated
the speaker gauze.
We lay with him
on the carpet;
one of our hands
in each of his,
while notes pulled
new meanings
of what it meant
to be a hard-working
man, overcome
with such sound.

-Matthew Haughton, from Hamilton Stone Review

Opera Buffa

books poetry lit September 25, 2013 Comments: 3

At La Dolce Vita, in the village,
the gnocchi lifts itself off the fork,
floats like a cloud in your mouth,
the marinara so fresh,
it ripens the tomatoes, garlic
and basil right on your tongue.

Clemenza’s in the kitchen
stirring the sauce,
telling everyone he really doesn’t eat
that much, it’s the fumes
that have permeated his body,
gotten under his skin
and made him fat.

My date Antonio closes his eyes
after each bite, groans,
Marona, this is as good
as my mother’s.

Satisfied, he lays his folded napkin
on the empty plate and slumps
in the chair while I,
having saved room,
crane my neck looking for the waiter.
What, you want dessert too?
He seems surprised.

I’d like to see what they have,
though I’ve committed it
to memory.
Aren’t you full? he asks.
Am I full? I think to myself.
It’s bad enough that we have to die,
that I’m not taller, that my metabolism
is molto lento, but to dine with someone
who is indifferent

to a chilled plate
of Panna Cotta,
silky, quivering cream
adorned with fresh berries,
or Torta Strega, cake
perfumed with liqueur,
filled with pastry cream
and finished
with hazelnut meringue.

I cannot live on lasagna alone
and the fact that Antonio
doesn’t sense this threatens
our chance for a future.

The waiter smiles as he unravels
the dessert menu, handwritten
on rough brown craft paper.
Tiramisu
Umbrian Apple Tart
Selville Orange Sorbetto …
This is so beautiful, I say,
ordering the Panna Cotta.
May I keep the menu?
Of course Signora, he says.
And you sir?

No. Nothing for me,
just a cup of espresso.

Oh Antonio, Antonio what
are you thinking?
How can I trust a man
who doesn’t like sweets?
At La Dolce Vita
what could have been the start
of a beautiful romance—
snapped like a broken string
on a Stradivarius!

-Diane Shipley DeCillis, Rattle

Book Dream

books poetry lit September 24, 2013 Leave a comment

To sleep, perchance, to dream..

libraryvia ms. brightside

Olive Oil

books poetry lit May 29, 2013 Leave a comment

The toast would taste better with egg, but there aren’t any,
so I pour a thimble-sized serving of olive oil on, to make it more

flavorful. I like the taste of olive oil. It reminds me of the time
when I was eighteen and jumped clear over the hood of my car

because I could. To be more specific, olive oil is the part where
I leave the ground and I’m in the air, halfway across. Right then,

before landing on the other side. That’s the taste of olive oil.
It also tastes the way Madagascar sounds when you say it

backwards. If there were olive oil cologne, I would wear it and if
there were olive oil goldfish, I would have two in a bowl on the

table. For some reason, it is also a man swallowing lighter
fluid because the pain in his belly is bigger than the Kalahari

Desert. But maybe that’s only when you drink it straight; and
sometimes it tastes like Brigitte Bardot. To be more specific,

in the scene where she is sunning naked in Capri, an impossibly
blue ocean wrestling with the sky in the distance.

-Paul Suntup, Rattle 

Neolithic Burial

books poetry lit May 7, 2013 Leave a comment

When he died they hunched him up
like baby in womb, curled him
into a shallow scoop in the cave-floor,
planted him like a seed as he slowly stiffened,
covering his slumped and earthen limbs
with a layer of red ochre,
sprinkling him with wildflowers—
then turned away.

Moon comes back each month, so bright,
then curls itself into a dying crescent—
baby struggles out of a woman’s darkness—
petals of delicate blue, pale yellow, in the wet woods,
how do they know
when sun is past dying and comes
to life again?

This is older than cities or books,
older than prayers or earnest discussions,
older than farming,
something buried and burst open
long before words, ideas, church or temple or crudest holy place,
older even than itself,

this longing.

-Tim Myers, Rattle

Caffeinated Links

this & that April 23, 2013 Leave a comment

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“Attacks in America are far more indelible in the world’s memory than attacks in any other country. There may be fewer victims and less blood, but American tragedies somehow seem to occur in a more poignant version of reality, in a way that evokes a more sympathetic response. Within minutes American victims are lifted from the nameless to the remembered…” – The Tragedies of Others (RT Guernica)

“Knowing nothing of the Tsarnaevs’ motives, and little about Chechens, the American media tore into Wikipedia and came back with stereotypes. The Tsarnaevs were stripped of their 21st century American life and became symbols of a distant land, forever frozen in time. Journalist Eliza Shapiro proclaimed that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was “named after a brutal warlord”, despite the fact that Tamerlan, or Timur, is an ordinary first name in the Caucasus and Central Asia.”  The Wrong Kind of Caucasian (RT Al Jazeera)

“In that moment, Gordon was the ultimate hipster Renaissance woman I aspired to be, a feminist rebel who could make avant-garde art all day, then cook a killer dinner for her family at night.” Kim Gordon Sounds Off, on Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon (RT Elle)

“True preaching must always consider lost people who are present and how to in some way invite them to turn from sin and trust in Jesus Christ. In a teaching context where the focus is on maturing believers the evangelism component is simply not equally present. This explains why formally trained preachers who have spent years on a Bible college and/or seminary campus are generally speaking less evangelistically.” What’s the Difference between Preaching and Teaching? (RT The Resurgence)

“D. had sent it to me after we broke up—four years after we’d split, more than fifteen years ago now. What I’d completely forgotten was that he’d read the book first and made notes throughout, some as simple as, “I like this” or “For Luke,” a professor we’d had a class with together at Vassar. In the poem “Still Life” he’d simply underlined the word berries.” – Notes from a Bookshop (RT The Paris Review)

“The Me Bird” Pablo Neruda Video

art & illustration, creativity March 6, 2013 Comments: 10

The short film “The Me Bird” is a free interpretation of the homonym poem by Pablo Neruda. The inspiration in the strata stencil technique helps conceptualize the repetition of layers as the past of our movements and actions. The frames depicted as jail and the past as a burden serve as the background for the story of a ballerina on a journey towards freedom. A diversified artistic experimentation recreates the tempest that connects bird and dancer.

The Me Bird from 18bis on Vimeo.

Tegan and Sara Lyrics

art & illustration, creativity March 1, 2013 Leave a comment

teganandsaralyrics
Gorgeous (from their song “Now I’m All Messed Up“)