Tag Archives: prose poem

Tell Clare that I love her

books poetry lit August 22, 2015 Leave a comment

This very short story/prose poem by Marlene Olin (not quite sure what it is except that it’s fantastic) knocked my SOCKS off – read it. It’s so worth it for the end, such power and joy.

The List

When the light turned green, the old man walked into traffic. Perhaps the light was red and he took too long to negotiate the curb or maybe he just wasn’t paying attention.  But one minute there was a glimpse of white hair and an airborne fedora, and the next moment there was a thud.

The woman slammed on her brakes and ran into the street.

read more at Blue Five Notebook

Poetry: ‘Big Sky’

books poetry lit February 12, 2015 Leave a comment

prairie sky

The Kid rode west. That was where the light went. A small house there. The rest of it below the prairie. The Kid only a small moving piece that never reached the horizon. The distance reduced into a proverb.

-Bob Hemen, Right Hand Pointing

Poetry: Dear Mucha

books poetry lit October 25, 2014 Leave a comment

It is raining in Manhattan. I am sitting in a chair overlooking 14th street and I realize you were right. I told you that people are taller than buildings. I told you that there are many green places in the city. Look at Central Park, for instance.

In the morning pink light falls across hardwood floor, spreading out like a thousand peonies, and I imagine that it is a greeting from you. But it is nighttime now, and raining so it makes no difference if I tell you a few real things. Today I saw a billboard advertising cigarettes and in a fit of frenzy went home and burned dinner.

And could you love me if I was pretty enough to be painted on your billboards? I would let my hair down long enough to collect pools of curls at my waist. I would pose naked in front of your tall landscapes and reach out with both arms pulling this city into my body.

And Mucha, the weather is all over this house.

I thought of such things while walking to a shop to buy cigarettes. In Manhattan, the streets smell like a wet cement and baked bread. It feels like the whole city is yawning. I, too, am tired of this body.

Yours, Catherine

-Catherine Bresner in Burnt District

Poetry: Orderly Dispersal

books poetry lit October 13, 2014 Leave a comment

I’m asking you now in my calmest voice, my voice of patience and maintenance and strength, to rise slowly from your seats and turn to face the nearest aisle. The person in front of you is moving deliberately and efficiently. Put your trust in that person’s control of his or her impulses to rush or push or trample the persons between him or her and the ultimate goal of the exit just as you exercise your power over your own impulses to act in the same way.

Listen to the tone of calm in my voice. Do not worry. Relax the muscles in your shoulders. Lift your feet one at a time, move each a few inches forward and put it back down with plenty of clearance for the shoes and feet of the person in front of you who is proceeding in the same measured way out of the row of seats to the aisle and on toward the ultimate goal of the exit.

Read more

-Jesse Minkert, Paper Nautilus

 

The Light Keeper

books poetry lit June 16, 2014 Leave a comment

A night without ships. Foghorns called into walled cloud, and you

still alive, drawn to the light as if it were a fire kept by monks,

darkness once crusted with stars, but now death-dark as you sail inward.

Through wild gorse and sea wrack, through heather and torn wool

you ran, pulling me by the hand, so I might see this for once in my life:

the spin and spin of light, the whirring of it, light in search of the lost,

there since the era of fire, era of candles and hollow-wick lamps,

whale oil and solid wick, colza and lard, kerosene and carbide,

the signal fires lighted on this perilous coast in the Tower of Hook.

You say to me stay awake, be like the lensmaker who died with his

lungs full of glass, be the yew in blossom when bees swarm, be

their amber cathedral and even the ghosts of Cistercians will be kind to you.

In a certain light as after rain, in pearled clouds or the water beyond,

seen or sensed water, sea or lake, you would stop still and gaze out

for a long time. Also when fireflies opened and closed in the pines,

and a star appeared, our only heaven. You taught me to live like this.

That after death it would be as it was before we were born. Nothing

to be afraid. Nothing but happiness as unbearable as the dread

from which it comes. Go toward the light always, be without ships.

-Carolyn Forche, Santa Clara Review, also published in The New Yorker

Yes & No

books poetry lit May 11, 2014 Leave a comment

Yes to the wooden giraffe airmailed from Arizona

with a note from your mother-in-law saying no more

excuses to sleep unprotected by your spirit animal,

but no to a new kind of insomnia. Yes to most -philias

not in the dictionary, like car washes in the rain

and bakeries on fire, but no no no to looking at old photos

with a bottle of Maker’s. Yes to your wife drinking

beer in the shower, but don’t hop in and join her,

let her have this moment beautifully wet and alone,

you’re here in the kitchen sautéing spinach and garlic

if she needs you. No to speed limit signs graffitied

but yes to climbing the overpass at night to tell the world

exactly the year that you loved her

Read the rest at H_NGN_M

This poem by Justin Bigos rocked my world and will rock yours.

SUNDAY

books poetry lit April 13, 2014 Leave a comment

You are the start of the week
or the end of it, and according
to The Beatles you creep in
like a nun. You’re the second
full day the kids have been
away with their father, the second
full day of an empty house.
Sunday, I’ve missed you. I’ve been
sitting in the backyard with a glass
of Pinot waiting for your arrival.
Did you know the first Sweet 100s
are turning red in the garden,
but the lettuce has grown
too bitter to eat. I am looking
up at the bluest sky I have ever seen,
cerulean blue, a heaven sky
no one would believe I was under.
You are my witness. No day
is promised. You are absolution.
You are my unwritten to-do list,
my dishes in the sink, my brownie
breakfast, my braless day.

-January O’Neil, Rattle

How It Will Happen, When

books poetry lit January 12, 2014 Leave a comment

There you are, exhausted from a night of crying, curled up on the couch, the floor, at the foot of the bed, anywhere you fall you fall down crying, half amazed at what the body is capable of, not believing you can cry anymore. And there they are, his socks, his shirt, your underwear and your winter gloves, all in a loose pile next to the bathroom door, and you fall down again. Someday, years from now, things will be different, the house clean for once, everything in its place, windows shining, sun coming in easily now, sliding across the high shine of wax on the wood floor. You’ll be peeling an orange or watching a bird spring from the edge of the rooftop next door, noticing how, for an instant, its body is stopped on the air, only a moment before gathering the will to fly into the ruff at its wings and then doing it: flying. You’ll be reading, and for a moment there will be a word you don’t understand, a simple word like now or what or is and you’ll ponder over it like a child discovering language. “Is,” you’ll say over and over until it begins to make sense, and that’s when you’ll say it, for the first time, out loud: He’s dead. He’s not coming back. And it will be the first time you believe it.

-Dorianne Laux

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