Sara Crawford has had poetry published in several publications. In the summer or fall of 2010, her chapbook, Coiled and Swallowed, will be published by Virgogray Press. Stay tuned for news on this release!• "Roots" in Share: Art and Literary Magazine, Fall 2008 • “Cement Steps” and “Bullfighting” in Share: Art and Literary Magazine, Spring 2008 • “Music Theory” in Illogical Muse: The Best of 2007 • “Spinning” in Share: Art and Literary Magazine, Fall 2007 • “Spinning” in Children, Churches, & Daddies, July 2007 • “Suburban Evening” in Children, Churches, & Daddies, June 2007 • “Bullfighting,” “Present Skin,” “Jigsaw Puzzles,” “Waking,” “Stage Makeup,” and -“Dreaming” in Ceremony Collected, Summer 2007 • “Airport” in Children, Churches, & Daddies, May 2007 • “Waking” in Ceremony, March 2007 • “Music Theory” and “Flask” in Illogical Muse Spring 2007 |
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"Poem of the Week" is updated every Thursday. Interested in submiting your poem for "Poem of the Week"? E-mail poetry@saracrawford.net. |
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Heart, we will forget him! by Emily Dickenson
One of my all-time favorite poems.
Heart, we will forget him! by Emily Dickenson Heart, we will forget him! You an I, tonight! You may forget the warmth he gave, I will forget the light. When you have done, pray tell me That I my thoughts may dim; Haste! lest while you're lagging. I may remember him! February 25 - The name of that country is lonesome by Marge Piercy
The name of that country is lonesome
by Marge Piercy We go to meet our favorite programs the way we might have met a lover, the mixture of the familiar routine and the unexpected revelation. We can buy love at the shelter if we get there before they have executed it for being unwanted, its fur cooling in the garbage. It becomes more and more unusual to be invited to dinner; fast food is the family feast. Who can be bothered with friends? They have needs, you have to remember their birthdays, they want to talk when you’re just too tired. Leave the answering machine on. No one comes to the door any longer. We would be scared. That’s why we have an alarm. That’s why we keep the gun loaded. Drive in food, drive in teller, drive by shooting, stay in the car. Talk only to the television set. It tells you just what to buy so you won’t feel lonely any longer, so you won’t feel inadequate, bored, so you can almost imagine yourself alive. The well preserved man He was dug up from a bog where the acid tanned him like a good leather workboot. He is complete, teeth, elbows, toenails and stomach, penis, the last meal he was fed. Sacrificed to a god or goddess for fertility, good weather, an end to a plague, who knows? Only he was fed and then killed, as I began to realize as you ordered the expensive wine, urged lobster or steak, you whose eyes always toted the bill, I was to be terminated that night. I could not eat my last meal. I kept running to the ladies room. All I could do was drink and try, try not to weep at the table. I was green as May leaves on the maple. I was new as a never folded dollar, a child who didn't know how the old story always ended. Sacrificed to a woman with more to offer up, the new May queen, lady of prominent family, like the bog man I was strangled with little bruising. I lay in my bed with my arms folded believing my life had bled out. How astonished I was to survive, to find I was intact and hungry. All that happened was I knew the story now and I grew long nails and teeth. Copyright 1998, Middlemarsh, Inc. from Early Grrrl A Leapfrog Press Paperback Original ISBN 0-9654578-6-9 Available Now http://www.margepiercy.com/ February 18 - Embrace Them All by Katy Didden
Embrace Them All
by Katy Didden Parc Georges-Brassens, Paris Most afternoons, I’d run laps through Parc Brassens where grows the second smallest vineyard I have ever seen, and where those silver, pruned-back stalks looked blunt, strung-out on wires, and mostly dead all winter. That was how I saw them. That’s all I expected. Even in the cold, I’d see a guy my age there, once a week, playing his guitar. He’d sit next to the bench where I’d be stretching. He rarely spoke— just to ask if I’d like a song— until the week before I left for good. I was sitting at the top of a hill about a hundred feet away from where if you stand tiptoe you can see the Eiffel Tower. He sat too close to me. We spoke of many things. Then he suggested we go at it right there, on the ground, under the sun. This is how one lives who knows that she will die: rolling in the arms of anyone when she can— rolling in the arms of a musician—aware that no one cares much what we do in little knolls behind reedy forsythia, in the middle of a Tuesday, in the middle of living. And I would know now how he felt, and the ground against me, and whether he was rough or sweet. And what is possible would widen every hour. Oh, but me, I thought I was immortal. Katy Didden is pursuing her PhD in literature and creative writing at the University of Missouri. February 12 - Kisses by Kim Addonizio
I realized I forgot to post the Poem of the Week today (yesterday? today?) and then I heard this poem on Album 88 (WRAS 88.5 in Atlanta - Georgia State University's Radio Station) and immediately fell in love with it. Also, it's appropriate for Valentine's Day...kind of. Hehe.
Kisses by Kim Addonizio All the kisses I've ever been given, today I feel them on my mouth. And my knees feel them, the reckless ones placed there through the holes in my jeans while I sat on a car hood or a broken sofa in somebody's basement, stoned, the way I was in those day, still amazed that boys and even men would want to lower their beautiful heads like horses drinking from a river and taste me. The back of my neck feels them, my hair swept aside to expose the nape, and my breasts tingle the way they did when my milk came in after the birth, when I was swollen, and sleepless, and my daughter fed and fed until I pried her from me and laid her in her crib. Even the chaste kisses that brushed my cheeks, the fatherly ones on my forehead, I feel them rising up from underneath the skin of the past, a delicate, roseate rash; and the ravishing ones, God, I think of them and the filaments in my brain start buzzing crazily and flare out. Every kiss is here somewhere, all over me like a fine, shiny grit, like I'm a pale fish that's been dipped in a thick swirl of raw egg and dragged through flour, slid down into a deep skillet, into burning. Today I know I've lost no one. My loves are here: wrists, eyelids, damp toes, all scars, and my mouth pouring praises, still asking, saying kiss me; when I'm dead kiss this poem, it needs you to know it goes on, give it your lovely mouth, your living tongue. Kim Addonizio's website February 4 - Namaste by Ruth Becker
Namaste
by Ruth Becker The road opens up I travel along its path Where it leads me I know not Yet up it I go anyway Family, Friends, Coworkers Light, Healing, Health Love, Joy, Peace Ananda I thank the open road For its willingness to be traveled I thank the open road For all it has in store A traveler I am now A path that ever changes Travel with me my friend Find your way with me. Namaste January 28, 2010 - Hide and Seek by Justin Blackburn
Hide and Seek
by Justin Blackburn When I was a child I played hide and seek with angels One day I hid in the darkest place around They didn’t find me Until I came out. Justin Blackburn's book of poems, Farting Fire, is available via Virgogray Press here. January 21, 2010 - Used Bookstore by B.Z. Niditch
Used Bookstore
by B.Z. Niditch There is something to a used bookstore; the quiet earthy climate, moving, fluttery sounds of hands which retrieve a love note in the leaf, binding us to someone who notes and writes in certain creative corners; those brusque, foaming reviews which stay with you long after volumes return to their rebound leather in our solitary rooms. From Illogical Muse January 14, 2010 - Iron Flowers by Kalamu ya Salaam
Iron Flowers
by Kalamu ya Salaam sluggish, semi-stagnant the water in Haitian gutters, small gullets, trickles green, sewerage green, here even the dirt is poor and there is a cloying dullness camouflaging even strongly persistent colors in squared, white walled cemeteries funeral flowers are made of painted iron/ i see no roses rising through this Port Au Prince poverty i hesitate to take pictures it is like thievery almost like i am stealing precious light that these, my brothers and sister, need to live January 7, 2010 - Snow Day by Billy Collins
Snow Day
by Billy Collins Today we woke up to a revolution of snow, its white flag waving over everything, the landscape vanished, not a single mouse to punctuate the blankness, and beyond these windows the government buildings smothered, schools and libraries buried, the post office lost under the noiseless drift, the paths of trains softly blocked, the world fallen under this falling. In a while, I will put on some boots and step out like someone walking in water, and the dog will porpoise through the drifts, and I will shake a laden branch sending a cold shower down on us both. But for now I am a willing prisoner in this house, a sympathizer with the anarchic cause of snow. I will make a pot of tea and listen to the plastic radio on the counter, as glad as anyone to hear the news that the Kiddie Corner School is closed, the Ding-Dong School, closed. the All Aboard Children’s School, closed, the Hi-Ho Nursery School, closed, along with—some will be delighted to hear— the Toadstool School, the Little School, Little Sparrows Nursery School, Little Stars Pre-School, Peas-and-Carrots Day School the Tom Thumb Child Center, all closed, and—clap your hands—the Peanuts Play School. So this is where the children hide all day, These are the nests where they letter and draw, where they put on their bright miniature jackets, all darting and climbing and sliding, all but the few girls whispering by the fence. And now I am listening hard in the grandiose silence of the snow, trying to hear what those three girls are plotting, what riot is afoot, which small queen is about to be brought down. From Poetry Foundation Billy Collins, “Snow Day” from Sailing Alone Around the Room: New and Selected Poems (New York: Random House, 2001). Copyright © 2001 by Billy Collins. December 31 - Burning the Old Year by Naomi Shihab Nye
Burning the Old Year
by Naomi Shihab Nye Letters swallow themselves in seconds. Notes friends tied to the doorknob, transparent scarlet paper, sizzle like moth wings, marry the air. So much of any year is flammable, lists of vegetables, partial poems. Orange swirling flame of days, so little is a stone. Where there was something and suddenly isn’t, an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space. I begin again with the smallest numbers. Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves, only the things I didn’t do crackle after the blazing dies. From PoetryFoundation.Org |
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Sara Crawford has had poetry published in several publications. In the summer or fall of 2010, her chapbook, Coiled and Swallowed, will be published by