Poem of the Week by Joe Brainard

Happy Monday. The poem, this week, is only sort of a poem. It's an excerpt from a book-length work I Remember by Joe Brainard. Paul Auster said this "modest little gem will endure. In simple, forthright, declarative sentences, [Brainard] charts the map of the human soul and permanently alters the way we look at the world." From pages 133-134:

I remember my mother picking up tiny specks of lint off things.

I remember, at the end of the sofa, a group of four little pillows that had only one casual arrangement.

I remember that no one sat on the sofa (light beige) unless we had company.

I remember (very vaguely) hearing my mother tell a story about an old lady across the street who died, and the people who moved in after her complaining becuase they could never quite get rid of "the smell."

I remember horrible visions of that island where lepers were sent.

I remember "the green stuff" inside my first lobster.

I remember (ugh) white nurse shoes.

I remember trying to visualize "the travels" of shit, after you flush the toilet.

What do you remember?

Poem of the Week by Denise Newman

Happy Monday. Glad to see the sun is back in the Richmond District today. Here's a poem to start your week, from The New Make Believe by Denise Newman (The Post-Apollo Press, 2010).

The First Rip

then I went out new in my accident to see
if humankind looked new
and it did
looking up at people moving freely above the station
each living thing influential in its ability to move freely
along more or less the same lines
not that I was new but I was shiny and well tuned
with a new buoyancy limb, that is, my accident,
which hasn't happened but I know it
on instinct as I once was my animal,
animate, breath in that way
when it ripped through me going up the escalator
only lips moving at the tip of
a long spasm triggered from bottom like saturated
ground holding
all the dark water without
breaking and they thought I was drunk when I cried out
but this was the poem
and this is documentation, for now

Poem of the Week by Zbigniew Herbert

It's the last week of summer (and the fog has burned off on Clement Street); let's start the week off with a few prose poems from The Collected Poems of Zbigniew Herbert (Ecco Press, 2008).


CAT

It's completely black, but has an electric tail. When it sleeps in the sun it's the blackest thing you can possibly imagine. Even in its sleep it catches frightened little mice. You can tell by the claws that grow from its paws. It's terribly winsome and wicked. It swipes nestlings from the tree before they're ripe.


SEAMSTRESS

It has been raining all morning. The woman from across the street is to be buried. The seamstress. She dreamed of a wedding ring but died with a thimble on her finger. Everyone thinks this is funny. Respectable rain is darning the sky to the earth. But nothing will come of that either.


MOON

I don't understand how you can write poems about the moon. It's fat and slovenly. It picks the noses of chimneys. Its favorite thing to do is climb under the bed and sniff at your shoes.

Poem of the Week by Gustaf Sobin

Happy Monday. The poem of the week returns with one from Gustaf Sobin's Collected Poems (Talisman House, 2010).

MADRIGAL


with you
what I know of

the world
opens, has

that of
swelling, wave as

it tatters, a
ruled line, against

reefs, a
breadth that

still
spreading, breaks

in-
to dull tokens, spent

petals, what the
poem

would
close on, hold

in its
swift tissues, those

blown
ex-

panses,
shadows as

if
pouring, light

from your
fingers, your

blue, un-
loosened sash.

Poem of the Week by Timothy Liu

After a brief hiatus, the Poem of the Week returns.  This poem is from Bending the Mind Around the Dream's Blown Fuse (Talisman' House, 2009).

OASIS

Cistercian chants floating free across a trash-blown sky.

Briefs rolled down mid-thigh tethered to some dream.

Eternal flame steadily sinking towards the alcove's base.

Five nails driven through a column of melting wax.

A desert crossed at century's end a pair of cellular phones.

Topographies of tumbleweed snagged on rusted barbs. 

Along the highway's endless fuse the dashboard lit drive on.

Poem of the Week by Norma Cole

Happy Monday. Today's poem is by Norma Cole, from her book Natural Light (Libellum, 2009). Enjoy.

The Vision

fixed syntax
in our lifetime

as if they never heard of
such a thing

the figure in the strait
stirring occasionally

all the fragments
the rights of can-openers

any mystery

Poem of the Week by Duncan McNaughton

Happy Monday. This week's poem is from A Passage of Saint Devil by Duncan McNaughton (Talonbooks, 1976). There's no link because it doesn't show up on our site. But believe me, we have it, and it's beautiful. Stop by or call if you want to buy one.

Ode

Open if honor for love and art
vanishes in the precision

we dishonor, others imagine
observing constance when it is instance

we dread, and resemblant
let it wither as stone wore

out for the old ones after wood--
it was never meant to

stay in place forever, much less to offer
chance divers exercises in time

or collapse so nearly
merely extension. But the knots

you cord events
disturb the looming

areal circumvention, our
breath. Esotericism is never

more than the near perfect practice
of the real, string,

carpets, eventually
commerce, not trade but

transaction of persons the secret
invitation found as result of

donative impression,
gravitational prehension.

Poem of the Week by Jack Spicer

Let's start the week off with a little Spicer, shall we?  This is from my vocabulary did this to me: the Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer (Wesleyan University Press, 2008).


Aquatic Park
A Translation for Jack Spicer

A green boat
Fishing in blue water

The gulls circle the pier
Calling their hunger

A wind rises from the west
Like the passing of desire

Two boys play on the beach
Laughing

Their gangling legs cast shadows
On the wet sand

Then,
Sprawling in the boat

A beautiful black fish.

Poem of the Week by Aimee Nezhukumatathil

Happy Monday. Here's a poem to start your week.
Originally published in Third Coast, as reprinted in
the 2009 Pushcart Prize XXXIII Best of the Small Presses.


Love in the Orangery


When you see a seventy-pound octopus squeeze
through a hole the size of a half-dollar coin, you

finally understand that everything you learn about
the sea will only make people you love say You lie.

There are land truths that scare me: a purple orchid
that only blooms underground. A German poet

buried in the heart of an oak tree. The lighthouse man
who used to walk around the streets at night

with a lighted candle stuck into his skull. But winters
in Florida--all the street corners have sad fruit

tucked into the curb, fallen from orangery truckers
who take corners too fast. The air is sick with citrus

and yet you love the small spots of orange in walls
of leafy green as we drive. Your love is a concrete canoe

that floats in the lake like a lead balloon, improbable
as a steel wool cloud, a metal feather. This is the truth:

I once believed nothing on earth could make me say magic.
You believe in the orange blossom tucked behind my ear.

--by Aimee Nezhukumatathil

Poem of the Week by Luljeta Lleshanaku

Happy Monday. This week's poem is from Child of Nature by Luljeta Lleshanaku (New Directions Press, 2010). Translated from the Albanian by Henry Israeli and Shpresa Qatipi. Enjoy.


Shadows on the Snow

The snow comes late this year. Violet shadows
doze like shepherds around
a white fire.
The swaying shadow of a fence looks like a woman's clavicle--
a woman who dreams of her lover's journey home through the snow,
his late return.

Thin trails lead to the doorway.
A car parked for hours
compresses black earth.
Radio signals float out of earshot.
A boat with its eel fishers
in luminous raincoats skims by.
A child--his little hands trembling--
casts slanting trees across the table.

The choir kneels.
The moment has come to speak
in a voice I have never known before.

I raise my head and see a single star in the night sky
shapeless and fearful like the shard of a broken bottleneck,
a star I have for years foolishly followed.
Perhaps the shadow of my infinite persistence
looks like a large hill
on the moon, a camel bent over a puddle
preparing for a new stretch of thirst.

Poem of the Week by Kim Addonizio

Happy Monday. Today's poem comes from Oakland poet Kim Addonizio's new book Lucifer at the Starlite. Enjoy.


Where Childhood Went


The teeth sold to the fairies
are tombstones in the graveyard of the fireflies.

By their cold caught light
you can make out the big house submerged

in the backyard creek,
thought-minnows spinning in motes in the attic.

The lovely young parents, so long preserved,
are showing signs of rot;

the kitten named Princess, signs
of invisibility. But look, the old dolls

are doing well; they smile and smile.
And the witch? Darling, the witch was real.

Poem of the Week by Anya Logvinova

Let's skip to Russia for this week's poem, shall we?

The following is by Anya Logvinova from Contemporary Russian Poetry: an Anthology, edited by Evgeny Bunimovich (Dalkey Arhive, 2008).  This poem was translated by Larissa Shmailo.

The Best Poems, I Swear to God

The best poems, I swear to God,
aren't about unfaithful husbands,  unfaithful wives.
They remind you of a list of things for the road,
essential, beautiful, permitted.

Usually they're about autumn, about white ovens
about how homes are built, how butter is churned.
They are rarely about the fact that everything could be lovely;
they are more often about what we shouldn't mention.

Poem of the Week by John Masefield

Happy Monday. I swam in the bay this weekend for the first time in a few months; the Mavericks surf contest on Saturday was epic; and I'm heading to the warm waters of Mexico later this week. So today's poem is salty. Anyone else hear the call?

Sea-Fever

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song, and the white sail's shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea's face and a grey dawn breaking.

I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull's way and the whale's way where the wind's like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a lughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over.

John Masefield (1878-1967)
from Poems of the Sea (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets series), 2001

Poem of the Week by Paul Hoover

Happy Monday, readers. This week's poem is by Paul Hoover. It's an excerpt from a poem that shares its title with its book: Edge and Fold (Apogee Press, 2006). Enjoy!

XV

the real that's in the world
is a word intending

absenting all it knows
a single leaf keeps falling

at the center of an eye
where the god is hidden

by the brightness it projects
we have not the strength

to divide ourselves by one
because it can't speak

the field is now a world
aimed at attention

Poem of the Week: Alan Bernheimer

Happy Monday. Today's poem is by Alan Bernheimer, from his 2009 collection The Spoonlight Institute. Without further ado, here's "Visible Means."

Visible Means

Here for now a small wonder
tea's velvet tongue on fluted teeth

nobody's fault prevents the poor
from being born, with spectators

no wonder foreign objects
contrary to light
touch and go numb
possibly people or plants

half indoors, top half outside
seeing stars at the edge of insomnia
and gray apples at dawn

number, uneasy and underfoot
in some lifelong radio outskirts

from Alan Bernheimer's The Spoonlight Institue, Adventures in Poetry, 2009.

Poem of the Week: Robin Ekiss

It's about time we launch our poem of the week series, isn't it? For who among us couldn't use more poetry in our lives? From now on, each Monday you will be greeted by a poem. That's it. Here's today's, from local poet Robin Ekiss: "The Opposite of the Body."

The Opposite of the Body

Of the face in general, let me say it's a house
built by men and lived in by their dreams.

When you've been plucking eyes
out of the floorboards as long as I have,

you'll see this, just as you'd see
the patience it requires

to render an eyebrow, half an hour
and an understanding of architecture.

When you see your body,
think its opposite: not the bridge,

but its lighted face reflecting the water,
some other city as seen from a ship--

your forehead, once ponderous,
now light as umbrellas--

still not beautiful enough to make time stop.
The pleasure in being a woman's

knowing everything's borrowed
and can't be denied,

as when you take apart a clock,
there's always another inside.

from The Mansion of Happiness by Robin Ekiss, University of Georgia Press, 2009.