So, generally, I'm not so much a fan of Marie Howe.  If you've known me for a while-- or, specifically, if you knew me during the summer of 2003-- you've probably heard me give this dissertation.  But this poem showed up in my inbox yesterday as my National Poetry Month Poem-A-Day Poem.  I've heard it/read it before but this time, man oh man ( Read more... )

I think I need to name my car.  We spend too much time together for this anonymity to continue.  That being said, the current front-runner for a name is "Car."  A little help from the masses, por favor?

Wild Geese (by Mary Oliver)

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are ( Read more... )

Praying (by Cynthia Cruz)

When I was a girl, I was razored
Into the world.  And was never close to anyone.

World of wingless, world of hands,
I killed off everything I loved.

Do not talk to me about the stars.

I'm listening hard for the clicking
Of a river boat, cutting through

The distance, or the music of my brother
Coming back into the world, or

The sound ( Read more... )

By Accident  (by Amit Majmudar)

First she gave me the wound by accident.
Then the tourniquet she tied unwound by accident.

Your friend may want to start running.
I gave his scent to the hounds by accident.

Balloons on the mailbox, ambulance in the driveway.
Bobbing for apples I drowned by accident.

Did someone tell the devil we were building Eden?
Or did ( Read more... )

I know--  duh, right?   Here's her poem "Terror of the Future/7".  It's from her new collection, Modern Life and is also in Best American Poetry 2007.  In Best American Poetry, it's coupled with another one of her amazing poems "The Future of Terror/7."

Terror of the Future/7   (by Matthea Harvey)

Sweetheart, there's no one on the street.
I attached ( Read more... )

Break Me to Prove I Am Unbroken  (by Sophie Cabot Black)

You say you will come
Again; this time I will wait through

The extra burning, the vicinity of your
Tongue making a slow way toward beginning and this

Then becomes the argument, the only one
In the collar of moonlight as finally I cause you

To answer your several names.  It is all
About return, enough ( Read more... )

This livejournal situation is now friends-only, so drop me a line if you'd like to be added.

Also, a poem:

List of First Lines (by Megan Gannon)

when the winter sits as if
when a wrist gives
when you pour two saucersful for
when the sifter sticks
when the window
when drifts
when fenced in, staked down, full of forgetting, bent and kissed
when, if, then
when
( Read more... )

I am still trying to figure out how it possibly took me 10 hours (not including rest breaks) to get from Boston back to Philly tonight.   It was pretty foggy at the tail end, but that was only the last hour or so.   On the bright side, it was lovely to have an impromptu visit with Fucci and see her fantastic new digs and her roommate's ridiculously ( Read more... )

. . . if I were, I would be heading over to court right now.  Incredibly incredibly effed up.  If you're in New York and can make it over, please do.

"At the Sylvia Rivera Law Project's after-party following its fifth anniversary celebration last night, two members of the community were violently arrested and others were pepper sprayed by police ( Read more... )