Poem of the Week

November 6 - Election Day by Walt Whitman

Tue, 06 Nov 2012 20:30:00 GMT

Election Day

by Walt Whitman

If I should need to name, O Western World, your
powerfulest scene and show,
'Twould not be you, Niagara--nor you, ye limitless
prairies--nor your huge rifts of canyons, Colorado,
Nor you, Yosemite--nor Yellowstone, with all its
spasmic geyser-loops ascending to the skies,
appearing and disappearing,
Nor Oregon's white cones--nor Huron's belt of mighty
lakes--nor Mississippi's stream:
--This seething hemisphere's humanity, as now,
I'd name--the still small voice vibrating--America's
choosing day,
(The heart of it not in the chosen--the act itself the
main, the quadriennial choosing,)
The stretch of North and South arous'd--sea-board
and inland--Texas to Maine--the Prairie States--
Vermont, Virginia, California,
The final ballot-shower from East to West--the
paradox and conflict,
The countless snow-flakes falling--(a swordless
conflict,
Yet more than all Rome's wars of old, or modern
Napoleon's:) the peaceful choice of all,
Or good or ill humanity--welcoming the darker
odds, the dross:
--Foams and ferments the wine? it serves to
purify--while the heart pants, life glows:
These stormy gusts and winds waft precious ships,
Swell'd Washington's, Jefferson's, Lincoln's sails.

October 10 - 5:00 in Pike Place Market by Sara Crawford

Thu, 11 Oct 2012 03:20:00 GMT

Ooops, I missed a couple of weeks.

Oh well.

I'm going to do something I rarely do and post another one of mine. I just wrote this a couple of weeks ago when I was in Seattle.

5:00 in Pike Place Market

A woman stacks colorful glass
pipes she made on a table

next to the tie dye t-shirts
being sold by a man with

a grey beard and a blue
bandana. A middle-aged Asian

lady sells fresh peaches across
the street from a barefoot

man with crooked teeth who sings
“Octopus’s Garden” and plays his

acoustic as I pass by. The
natives lie in the grass

in front of the Sound, soaking in
as much Vitamin D as possible

on this sunny September afternoon
in Seattle. I look at the Ferris wheel

and wonder how I would feel at the top.

September 19, 2012 - Snow White's Acne by Denise Duhamel

Wed, 19 Sep 2012 22:10:00 GMT

Snow White's Acne

by Denise Duhamel

At first she was sure it was just a bit of dried strawberry juice,
or a fleck of her mother's red nail polish that had flaked off
when she'd patted her daughter to sleep the night before.
But as she scrubbed, Snow felt a bump, something festering
under the surface, like a tapeworm curled up and living
in her left cheek.
Doc the Dwarf was no dermatologist
and besides Snow doesn't get to meet him in this version
because the mint leaves the tall doctor puts over her face
only make matters worse. Snow and the Queen hope
against hope for chicken pox, measles, something
that would be gone quickly and not plague Snow's whole
adolescence.
If only freckles were red, she cried, if only
concealer really worked. Soon came the pus, the yellow dots,
multiplying like pins in a pin cushion. Soon came
the greasy hair. The Queen gave her daughter a razor
for her legs and a stick of underarm deodorant.
Snow
doodled through her teenage years—"Snow + ?" in Magic
Markered hearts all over her notebooks. She was an average
student, a daydreamer who might have been a scholar
if she'd only applied herself. She liked sappy music
and romance novels. She liked pies and cake
instead of fruit.
The Queen remained the fairest in the land.
It was hard on Snow, having such a glamorous mom.
She rebelled by wearing torn shawls and baggy gowns.
Her mother would sometimes say, "Snow darling,
why don't you pull back your hair? Show those pretty eyes?"
or "Come on, I'll take you shopping."
Snow preferred
staying in her safe room, looking out of her window
at the deer leaping across the lawn. Or she'd practice
her dance moves with invisible princes. And the Queen,
busy being Queen, didn't like to push it.

September 5, 2012 - Poem by Joe Brainard

Wed, 05 Sep 2012 21:00:00 GMT

I am taking a poetry writing workshop in my last semester of my MFA program, and I am about to start teaching a poetry writing class for students ages 12 - 17 at Arts of Cobb so poetry is on the brain lately.

Today's Poem-A-Day from the Academy of American Poets was so AWESOME that I had to share it.

Sign up for Poem-A-Day here, and you, too, will get an awesome poem in your e-mail every day.

Poem
by Joe Brainard

Sometimes
everything
seems
so
oh, I don't know.

More about Joe Brainard

May 26, 2011 - To My Twenties by Kenneth Koch

Thu, 26 May 2011 21:25:00 GMT

Poem of the Week is back!

To My Twenties

by Kenneth Koch

How lucky that I ran into you
When everything was possible
For my legs and arms, and with hope in my heart
And so happy to see any woman—
O woman! O my twentieth year!
Basking in you, you
Oasis from both growing and decay
Fantastic unheard of nine- or ten-year oasis
A palm tree, hey! And then another
And another—and water!
I’m still very impressed by you. Whither,
Midst falling decades, have you gone? Oh in what lucky fellow,
Unsure of himself, upset, and unemployable
For the moment in any case, do you live now?
From my window I drop a nickel
By mistake. With
You I race down to get it
But I find there on
The street instead, a good friend,
X— N—, who says to me
Kenneth do you have a minute?
And I say yes! I am in my twenties!
I have plenty of time! In you I marry,
In you I first go to France; I make my best friends
In you, and a few enemies. I
Write a lot and am living all the time
And thinking about living. I loved to frequent you
After my teens and before my thirties.
You three together in a bar
I always preferred you because you were midmost
Most lustrous apparently strongest
Although now that I look back on you
What part have you played?
You never, ever, were stingy.
What you gave me you gave whole
But as for telling
Me how best to use it
You weren’t a genius at that.
Twenties, my soul
Is yours for the asking
You know that, if you ever come back.

January 20, 2011 - Cinerama by Barbara Hamby

Fri, 21 Jan 2011 00:25:00 GMT

Cinerama by Barbara Hamby When moviegoers die, instead of paradise they go to Paris, for where else can you find 200 screens showing nearly every film you’d want to see, not to mention movies like Captain Blood, in which bad boy Errol Flynn buckles his swash across the seven seas, and though I’m not dead, I may be in heaven, walking down the rue St. Antoine, making lists of my favorite movies, number one being Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast, but I’m with Garbo at the end: “Where is my beast? Give me my beast.” Oh, the beasts have it on the silver screen—Ivan the Terrible, M, Nosferatu, The Mummy—all misshapen, murderous monsters, because no matter how beautiful we are, inside we know ourselves to be blood-sucking vampires, zombies, freaks cobbled together with spare parts from the graveyard, and God some kind of Dr. Frankenstein or megalomaniacal director, part nice-guy Frank Capra, yes, but the other part Otto Preminger, bald, with Nazi tics, because the world is so beautiful and hideous at the same time, an identical Technicolor sky over us all, and the stars, who came up with that concept: the distance, the light, the paparazzi flash? And the dialogue, which is sometimes snappy or très poétique, as if written by Shakespeare himself, then at other times by the most guttural Neanderthal on the planet, grubbing his way across the landscape, noticing the sky only when it becomes his enemy or friend, dark with birds, not Hitchcock’s, but dinner, throwing rocks into the sky, most of them missing their target, a few bouncing off his prognathous jaw, like Kubrick with his cavemen and spacemen existing on the same continuum, a Möbius strip to be sure but with Strauss, both Richard and Johann, in the background, and though it’s winter there’s a waltz in the air as I walk through the Place des Vosges, and I’m still trying to come up with number two, maybe 400 Blows or Breathless, because here I am, after all in Paris still expecting to see Belmondo and Seberg racing down the street, cops after them, bullets flying, and maybe I am in heaven, but I’ll always be waiting for Godard. From Five Points

January 14, 2011 - Snowflake by William Baer

Sat, 15 Jan 2011 00:15:00 GMT

Here's one for all of my fellow Atlantians stuck in the snowpocalypse...STILL!

Snowflake

by William Baer

Timing’s everything. The vapor rises
high in the sky, tossing to and fro,
then freezes, suddenly, and crystalizes
into a perfect flake of miraculous snow.
For countless miles, drifting east above
the world, whirling about in a swirling free-
for-all, appearing aimless, just like love,
but sensing, seeking out, its destiny.
Falling to where the two young skaters stand,
hand in hand, then flips and dips and whips
itself about to ever-so-gently land,
a miracle, across her unkissed lips:
as he blocks the wind raging from the south,
leaning forward to kiss her lovely mouth.

From poetryfoundation.org

January 6, 2011 - I Went in With My Hands Up by Caleb Barber

Thu, 06 Jan 2011 22:30:00 GMT

I Went in With My Hands Up

by Caleb Barber

          “Sweet Jesus as morning the queenly women of our youth!
           The monumental creatures of our summer lust!”
           —Thomas McGrath, “Letter to an Imaginary Friend”

It was a little like that pregnant black heifer
stuck in the aluminum feeder-box sized specifically for calves
—jackknifed, full of muesli and seed, her head turned out
toward the snowy morning.

Me and that 80-year-old Irishman had to lift it,
the several hundred pounds of green metal, knowing,
with our elbows hefted above our divergent hairlines
and our ankles foundered in thick pasture mud, we would be totally exposed.

And she’d be coming out in a hurry, big and taut around the middle.
Us just hoping she wouldn’t lose her calf in the fuss.

It was a little like that. Stopping by that girl’s house
the other night. Except without the help. And this doesn’t come out right.
I would never be so pigheaded as to compare a woman to a cow.
Just to compare the parameters using the inconsequential vessel of simile.

I didn’t even know what horns that heifer bore.
What spawn might be brewing within her black belly.
But it had to be done. She had to be turned loose. I kept my legs.
And one doesn’t count as a stampede.

From Rattle - Poetry for the 21st Century

December 29 - New Year's Day by Kim Addonizio

Thu, 30 Dec 2010 00:08:42 GMT

One of my New Year's resolutions is to get back to posting a poem every week...because we all need more poetry in our lives, I think.

On that note, here's a poem for the new year!

New Year's Day

by Kim Addonizio

The rain this morning falls
on the last of the snow

and will wash it away. I can smell
the grass again, and the torn leaves

being eased down into the mud.
The few loves I’ve been allowed

to keep are still sleeping
on the West Coast. Here in Virginia

I walk across the fields with only
a few young cows for company.

Big-boned and shy,
they are like girls I remember

from junior high, who never
spoke, who kept their heads

lowered and their arms crossed against
their new breasts. Those girls

are nearly forty now. Like me,
they must sometimes stand

at a window late at night, looking out
on a silent backyard, at one

rusting lawn chair and the sheer walls
of other people’s houses.

They must lie down some afternoons
and cry hard for whoever used

to make them happiest,
and wonder how their lives

have carried them
this far without ever once

explaining anything. I don’t know
why I’m walking out here

with my coat darkening
and my boots sinking in, coming up

with a mild sucking sound
I like to hear. I don’t care

where those girls are now.
Whatever they’ve made of it

they can have. Today I want
to resolve nothing.

I only want to walk
a little longer in the cold

blessing of the rain,
and lift my face to it.

From poetryfoundation.org

December 8 - I'm Over the Moon by Brenda Shaughnessy

Thu, 09 Dec 2010 06:50:00 GMT

I’m Over the Moon

by Brenda Shaughnessy

I don’t like what the moon is supposed to do.
Confuse me, ovulate me,

spoon-feed me longing. A kind of ancient
date-rape drug. So I’ll howl at you, moon,

I’m angry. I’ll take back the night. Using me to
swoon at your questionable light,

you had me chasing you,
the world’s worst lover, over and over

hoping for a mirror, a whisper, insight.
But you disappear for nights on end

with all my erotic mysteries
and my entire unconscious mind.

How long do I try to get water from a stone?
It’s like having a bad boyfriend in a good band.

Better off alone. I’m going to write hard
and fast into you, moon, face-fucking.

Something you wouldn’t understand.
You with no swampy sexual

promise but what we glue onto you.
That’s not real. You have no begging

cunt. No panties ripped off and the crotch
sucked. No lacerating spasms

sending electrical sparks through the toes.
Stars have those.

What do you have? You’re a tool, moon.
Now, noon. There’s a hero.

The obvious sun, no bullshit, the enemy
of poets and lovers, sleepers and creatures.

But my lovers have never been able to read
my mind. I’ve had to learn to be direct.

It’s hard to learn that, hard to do.
The sun is worth ten of you.

You don’t hold a candle
to that complexity, that solid craze.

Like an animal carcass on the road at night,
picked at by crows,

taunting walkers and drivers. Your face
regularly sliced up by the moving

frames of car windows. Your light is drawn,
quartered, your dreams are stolen.

You change shape and turn away,
letting night solve all night’s problems alone.

From poetryfoundation.org

October 28 - Dream Song 14 by John Berryman

Thu, 28 Oct 2010 23:55:00 GMT

Dream Song 14

by John Berryman

Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.
After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,
we ourselves flash and yearn,
and moreover my mother told me as a boy
(repeatingly) ‘Ever to confess you’re bored
means you have no

Inner Resources.’ I conclude now I have no
inner resources, because I am heavy bored.
Peoples bore me,
literature bores me, especially great literature,
Henry bores me, with his plights & gripes
as bad as achilles,

who loves people and valiant art, which bores me.
And the tranquil hills, & gin, look like a drag
and somehow a dog
has taken itself & its tail considerably away
into mountains or sea or sky, leaving
behind: me, wag.

From PoetryFoundation.org

October 22 - Night Watch by Mark Smith-Soto

Sat, 23 Oct 2010 01:20:00 GMT

Night Watch

by Mark Smith-Soto

Chico whines, no reason why. Just now walked,
dinner gobbled, head and ears well scratched.
And yet he whines, looking up at me as if confused
at my just sitting here, typing away, while darkness
is stalking the back yard. How can I be so blind,
he wants to know, how sad, how tragic, how I
won’t listen before it is too late. His whines are
refugees from a brain where time and loss have
small dominion, but where the tyranny of now
is absolute. I get up and throw open the kitchen door,
and he disappears down the cement steps, barking
deeper and darker than I remember. I follow
to find him perfectly still in the empty yard—
the two of us in the twilight, standing guard.

From PoetryFoundation.org

October 7, 2010 - Love Sections a Grapefruit by Barbara Bates

Thu, 07 Oct 2010 19:20:00 GMT

Love Sections a Grapefruit

by Barbara Bates

The knife circles the inside edge along the lip
until the little triangles loosen
and the fruit opens

to more than it's mirror image,
an interior pattern, so perfectly hewn
that following it ensures each bite exquisite.

But those in a hurry to taste the pulp
will quarter the whole and eagerly fold
spoke, membrane and zest into their mouths.

They never notice the divine pattern,
the discreet placement of flesh in the mold,
juice just runs down their chins and on to the floor.

Frpm Caveat Lector. Barbara Bates has published work in American Indian Culture and Research Journal, Red Rock Review, and elsewhere. Her first book, Littoral Zone (John Daniel Press), appeared in 2004. She lives in Santa Barbara, California.

September 16, 2010 - Fifteen by Leslie Monsour

Thu, 16 Sep 2010 21:30:00 GMT

Fifteen

by Leslie Monsour

The boys who fled my father's house in fear
Of what his wrath would cost them if he found
Them nibbling slowly at his daughter's ear,
Would vanish out the back without a sound,
And glide just like the shadow of a crow,
To wait beside the elm tree in the snow.
Something quite deadly rumbled in his voice.
He sniffed the air as if he knew the scent
Of teenage boys, and asked, "What was that noise?"
Then I'd pretend to not know what he meant,
Stand mutely by, my heart immense with dread,
As Father set the traps and went to bed.

From PoetryFoundation.org

September 9, 2010 - Visiting by Sara Crawford

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 23:05:00 GMT

Since my first chapbook just came out on Tuesday (see above!), I decided to do something I never do and post one of my own poems as the poem of the week. Plus, people have been asking me to post more of my own poetry on the website. So here you go.

This is from my book, Coiled and Swallowed.

Visiting

by Sara Crawford

Four hours, mostly on a deserted
two-lane road,
with fields of corn, cotton, and
cows whizzing
by outside of the car windows,
we drive
past a sign that says,
“clean restrooms here!”
with an arrow that points
to a brown house
still standing
(not like the ten or so
abandoned
crumbling
houses I counted
along the way)
where an old man in a straw hat
sits in a squeaky rocking chair
on the front porch,
selling boiled peanuts.

We arrive in a town,
smaller than a University,
just above the Georgia-Florida
border
and pull into the parking lot.
This is my brother’s house now,
underneath the Spanish moss,
next to the palm trees,
behind the barbed wire fences,
and a policewoman who
looks at her watch.
Visiting hours, already.

We get out of our car,
stretching our legs
looking similar to a family
I saw in a van
a few miles back
starting their summer vacation.
The little sisters used beach towels
for pillows in the back seat.

After we give the policewoman
our driver’s licenses, fill out the
appropriate forms, walk down the
long
grey
hallway,
waving away
South Georgia gnats, unwelcome guests
that invade every room,
we sit at a table.
In brown metal folding chairs that must
hurt my mother’s back.
My brother,
dressed in orange,
sits across from us.

As visiting hours pass, we catch up,
laughing, pretending
everything is normal.
The fluorescent lights shine brightly
down on us, and a fan
in the corner
of the room
blows a little girl’s blonde curls
as she hugs her father, his tattooed arms
tightly around her little white dress.

For a moment, we are just a family
around a table,
like when we used to play Risk.
My brother always won.
I wish we could all get back
into the car
and follow that van down to
Florida.
But this is my brother’s house now.
I guess we’ll have to wait until next summer
(or maybe the summer after)
for beach towels that can double
as pillows.
For now, we have the gnats and metal folding chairs.
At least, we have that.

August 27, 2010 - The Church of Divine Reality, Inc. by Kevin Brown

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 21:25:00 GMT

The Church of Divine Reality, Inc.

by Kevin Brown

There are laws, you know, legal
liabilities that must be
considered. If Jesus shows up
in a vision, and somebody

veers off the interstate into a
telephone pole, who do you
think they’re going to sue?
It’s not going to be Jesus, I

can assure you. Or take the
case from a few years ago:
a man rids himself of all
his worldly possessions (well,

except for a camel’s hair coat)
and goes all paparazzi on
people, getting in their faces
and screaming about repentance.

Lost his head, he did. And
who did the family go after?
It wasn’t the Spirit, as if he or
she or whatever has any type

of representation; he or, you
know, barely has any kind
of manifestation these days.
You see, someone around here

has to store up treasures
and make sure they’re protected
from every bit of rust, moth, or
ne’er-do-well who has the Virgin

Mother show up on a burrito.
Someone has to take responsibility
for God, after all; it’s not like
we want him running wild.

This poem is from KevinBrownWrites.com

August 19, 2010 - Heavy Summer Rain by Jane Kenyon

Thu, 19 Aug 2010 20:15:00 GMT

Heavy Summer Rain

by Jane Kenyon

The grasses in the field have toppled,
and in places it seems that a large, now
absent, animal must have passed the night.
The hay will right itself if the day

turns dry. I miss you steadily, painfully.
None of your blustering entrances
or exits, doors swinging wildly
on their hinges, or your huge unconscious
sighs when you read something sad,
like Henry Adam’s letters from Japan,
where he traveled after Clover died.

Everything blooming bows down in the rain:
white irises, red peonies; and the poppies
with their black and secret centers
lie shattered on the lawn.

From PoetryFoundation.org

August 12, 2010 - Disappearing on a Summer Morning by Christopher Fox

Thu, 12 Aug 2010 21:15:00 GMT

That's right, folks. Poem of the week is back!

If you're interested in sharing your poetry here, send it to me at poetry@saracrawford.net. I always love to share poems with people :-)

Here's a poem I stumbled across on Poet's Haven.

Disappearing on a Summer Morning

by Christopher Fox

I fall down deep through the air
Dipping my fingers in the quiet earth
A small boy with blond hair and blue
Eyes walks outisde and lies on me
Making snow angels all morning
I am born in the winter and
I die in the summer
I lie down quietly on the cold earth
And wait for children to lie down
And make snow angels of me
Through the long afternoons
I fall on the children's heads and
Wait till dawn when it is time to dream
While lying in bed they wonder
When summer will arrive
As I swiftly fall down
Through the cold night air
The earth warms up at last
Light dawns and it warms me up
The morning has come and a small
Boy on a rooftop shouts out
Summer! And slowly day by day
I fade in each morning's light

July 1, 2010 - "My intro" by Aria Fiore

Thu, 01 Jul 2010 22:05:00 GMT

My intro

by Aria Fiore

Like I've said before
I am not Caucasian,
layin' in the tannin' bed
like some dried up old raisin.
I don't cake my face
with a mask of lined raccoon eyes
and glitter from my forehead
to my toenails
lyin' about my dress size.
I am 36'', 25'', 40''.
Wearin' Gucci shoes,
all hoity-toity,
Shit ain't my style.
I am tatted up
and lovin' how it gets
my professors all riled up.
I can quote Shakespeare
and tell you how carbon and oxygen bond;
Covalently,
to form carbon monoxide.
Yeah, that's me.
Glasses and an eyebrow ring.
You can find me drivin' around
rappin' about that ol' penetration thing.
But who cares about the me, myself, and I?
We were born just to die.
Short lives. Leaves not enough time.
Keeps us wondering about
the when, the where and the why.
Yeah, I got so many questions.
What I wanna know
is where did all the poets go?
All the artists, dreamers, and free thinkers?
I find them sometimes.
Dust covered.
Tarred and feathered.
Persecuted for their words and not actions.
But I guess as a writer
you are taken at your word
as soon as you stand up
and ask to be heard.

Aria Fiore is a poet from Marietta, Georgia.

June 24, 2010 - "A Thing of Beauty" by John Keats

Thu, 24 Jun 2010 19:45:00 GMT

A Thing of Beauty

by John Keats

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.

Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
Of all the unhealthy and o'er-darkened ways
Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon,
Trees old, and young, sprouting a shady boon
For simple sheep; and such are daffodils
With the green world they live in; and clear rills
That for themselves a cooling covert make
'Gainst the hot season; the mid-forest brake,
Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms:
And such too is the grandeur of the dooms
We have imagined for the mighty dead;
All lovely tales that we have heard or read:
An endless fountain of immortal drink,
Pouring unto us from the heaven's brink.

Nor do we merely feel these essences
For one short hour; no, even as the trees
That whisper round a temple become soon
Dear as the temple's self, so does the moon,
The passion poesy, glories infinite,
Haunt us till they become a cheering light
Unto our souls, and bound to us so fast
That, whether there be shine or gloom o'ercast,
They always must be with us, or we die.

Therefore, 'tis with full happiness that I
Will trace the story of Endymion.
The very music of the name has gone
Into my being, and each pleasant scene
Is growing fresh before me as the green
Of our own valleys: so I will begin
Now while I cannot hear the city's din;
Now while the early budders are just new,
And run in mazes of the youngest hue
About old forests; while the willow trails
Its delicate amber; and the dairy pails
Bring home increase of milk. And, as the year
Grows lush in juicy stalks, I'll smoothly steer
My little boat, for many quiet hours,
With streams that deepen freshly into bowers.
Many and many a verse I hope to write,
Before the daisies, vermeil rimmed and white,
Hide in deep herbage; and ere yet the bees
Hum about globes of clover and sweet peas,
I must be near the middle of my story.
O may no wintry season, bare and hoary,
See it half finished: but let Autumn bold,
With universal tinge of sober gold,
Be all about me when I make an end!
And now at once, adventuresome, I send
My herald thought into a wilderness:
There let its trumpet blow, and quickly dress
My uncertain path with green, that I may speed
Easily onward, thorough flowers and weed.