Category Archives: Great Poems Online

Janet Aalfs: “Facing the Wall”


Janet Aalfs is a former Poet Laureate of Northampton and the director of Valley Women’s Martial Arts. Her poetry collection Reach was published by Perugia Press in 1999. The poem below is reprinted with permission from her chapbook Full Open (Orogeny Press, 1996).

Facing the Wall

1. Someone found a heart

on market street not human
there’s really no cause
for alarm though a naked heart
warm on the sidewalk on halloween
is upsetting but not as bad as if
it were the organ of a valuable life
we don’t mean
one of the seventeen women found
strewn along desert highways
you can’t question whores their stories
aren’t reliable their lives aren’t stable
the reason we haven’t found a suspect
yet is that we can’t
get a straight answer out of anyone
and no one really knows
a slut she’ll go with whatever man
will take her you can’t trust women
like that to die when they’re supposed to
with their clothes on at a legal address
we think we’ve discovered the eighteenth

2. I want to know why

the fbi is so good at tracking down
bank robbers twenty years later charging them
with attempt to overthrow the government and
if the killer were out to slaughter corporation
presidents they’d nab him before he stepped
into the first lobby but they can’t find
a guy who hits on women one after the next
leaves them stripped to the bone
returns to his car job tv neighbors
like whoever left the heart on market street
now floating pickled in a hospital jar
silent as the eighteenth woman tagged
in a numbered refrigerator drawer no name address
important as she ever was
I want to know how that heart
arrived at market street who cut it out
of what body I want the names of every
thrown-away life engraved on a shiny
black wall then no one will be able to stand
anywhere in the world and not face it

Melanie Braverman: “Tell” and “Fantasia”


Since 1997, independent poetry publisher Perugia Press has been supporting women at the beginning of their publishing career. Based here in Northampton, this proudly lesbian-owned press publishes one book a year through their poetry manuscript contest for a first or second book by a woman. Their books are handsomely designed and well-promoted. Below, reprinted with permission, are two poems from Melanie Braverman’s collection Red, which won their 2002 contest. Read more of her work here. Later this week, I’ll be reprinting a poem by another Perugia author, Janet Aalfs, from her chapbook Full Open (Orogeny Press, 1996).

Tell

Let’s talk
about sex, let’s talk about what
you like to do, or have
done to you, or do to
yourself while someone else
is watching, say
you like it in cars, while you’re
driving, maybe, his hands or her
mouth between your legs, or in
a basement, quiet except
for the sound of your
breathing, which is
getting
faster, you
can’t
help it, you like
the way the air fits your skin like another
skin, the air and her breath or just
her breath, you can’t tell
anymore but you like
it, you do, you’re a little
scared even though you’ve done
this with him before, you’ve known
him for years, or maybe you
just met, at a bar, in the library, on
the street in the fog, walking
the pier at two A.M., admiring the boats, the birds
quiet
mostly, the aqua the red
beam from the light
house pulsing so you feel
your blood the way
it wants you to feel
it, you see
that man walking just
ahead of you, the woman
whose arms are swinging at, you
swear, the same
cadence as your own, my god, she
has an amazing ass, it’s round or
small, whatever
kind of ass you like that’s
it, moving in front
of you like a beacon, like
an offering, forget
every bad thing that ever
happened to you, forget
danger, have faith
in your own safety now, speed
up and tell
that man hello, he wants
you to, maybe
you like it at home, in your own
bed or at his house, the way someone
else’s sheets feel like little
revelations across your back when she lifts
your shirt off and you
finally lie
down, after all
that kissing, your faces
rife with it, his
breath
and his rough
cheek or her
cheek smooth as sin there, her foreign
breath, or maybe she’s so
familiar her breath
has come
to smell
like your own, you’ve fallen into bed exhausted
with the one you love and still something
in you stirs, your body rises
now, as if sex with this
person has become
part of your dream
life, talk
about that, the mysterious, the absolute
way you fall in-
to or out
of yourself, toward
another, toward that orange
place where anything
can happen or will and know
you’ll
like it.

****

Fantasia

One week before Halloween the heterosexual
men dressed as women haunt our streets, handbags
slung across their thick wrists like those
IV poles the chronically infirm are forced
to walk around with looking
eager, hopeful, necks rigid
as spars to keep their impeccably
coiffed wigs from falling like sails askew in the harbor’s
wind, tastefully
accessorized because for a week at least they don’t
want to be bankers and miscellaneous middle-
management professionals, they want
a life in which the only meal they have to show up
for is lunch, and after that shopping, or a game
of bridge or, better yet, hearts, they want
to sit for a week in the front
windows of our cafes eating triangular-
cut sandwiches, tipping and expecting
attentive service from the gay
men and lesbians who serve them. This year the heterosexual
men dressed as women appear
to have faith that we will not think less
of them as women if they, by day, forego their stringent four-
inch heels, we are seeing an upsurge
of Keds in feminine colors: fuchsia, tomato, baby
blue, spring
green, with pointy
elongated toes. Perhaps they have been following
some cultural timeline so that now
in their imitation they have entered the moment of women’s
liberation, not
the sixties, these men would never burn
their bras, they believe
in foundation garments the way they must, in their real
lives, believe
in the appropriateness of smaller
government; no, for them it is the early
seventies, when even upper-middle-class
ladies took off their aprons and began the daily
scandal of wearing
pants, not pantsuits or slacks but the heartier fabrics once
intended only for husbands–denim, corduroy, serge, pants
that did not zip up the side, or like straight-
jackets close up the small
of the back, an era in which these men themselves might have left
their wives who are walking toward us now in Beech
Forest, their husbands slightly behind them with gingham
kerchiefs covering their voluminous artificial hair, picking
their way gingerly down the leaf-strewn path
toward my girlfriend and me, who have been speaking
in low voices about our love, how once we found
each other it seemed wrong-headed to turn away,
even when it meant hurting others, and how
unwomanly that was, and what it could mean
to never be forgiven.

C.H. Connors and Other Smith College Poets


Earlier this week, the Poetry Center at Smith College celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2008 with readings by alumnae from the past 60 years. Poems by the participants and other Smith graduates are featured on this web page. Carolyn Connors ’60, who publishes her poetry online at www.chconnors.com, has kindly permitted me to reprint her poem “A Glory from the Earth”, which she read at the gala. I especially love the last line.

A Glory from the Earth
by C.H. Connors

Our science has achieved its opposite
    and taken us down a peg or two.
    Our animal nature has come unglued
from ghost; we’re Things with skills and wit.

Once we had a soul because we thought
    the world was also made in part
    of spirit. Taught by story, art
and church, we went about the earth in awe.

Those who went before believed with ease,
    an opening between two roots
    gave passage to the underworld.
Enchanted bridges spanned the burning seas

between defeat and safety, peril and hope.
    Of host of angels, fairy host,
    song sifted from the sky or rose
in mists of heavenly vapor from the moat.

By silver water, fruit of gold bowed low
    to free the spellbound prince from form
    of tree or beast, or keep from harm
the peasant girl before whom all will bow.

What shall we do with all our magic now?
    Our wands are turned to sticks to beat
    each other off and school belief.
Once, our gift of meaning to our world

gave back the gift of meaning to our days.
    But even still, imagination
    lets all understanding happen;
even then, curiosity was praise.

****

Other favorites from the Smith College reading were Tanya Contos, Celia Gilbert, Anne Harding Woodworth (her chapbook Up from the Root Cellar, just out from Cervena Barva Press, tops my soon-to-read list), and Jane Yolen, whose original fairy tales enriched many hours of my childhood. If you can lay your hands on a copy of her out-of-print books The Hundredth Dove and The Girl Who Cried Flowers, pay any price. I’m grateful that I saved most of my picture books, including The Bed Book, a dreamy little oddity by late lamented Smith alumna Sylvia Plath.

Poems by Conway: “Walls” and “Things That Hang”


New poems below from “Conway”, my pen pal serving 25-to-life for receiving stolen goods under California’s three-strikes law. I’m exploring self-publication options for his chapbook, but would also appreciate being contacted by any interested publishers. 


Walls

As I stand in contrast
questioning authority, to which it stands

Is this wall of concrete asking itself
why I stick around, never leave?
Seeming to grieve this stoic stance
held so long, by a pillar built society.
Do the walls rejoice, in my familiar visage
whenever I caress that sharp roughness
with this softer flesh
polishing the stone.

Or, is it just hope
that makes me imagine the wall alive
with sight, even sturdy voice?

Then, I wonder
is it this stone
that exiles me in
or the world out…

****

Things That Hang

A sound in the air
until caught by an ear
wanted people
on the post office wall
offering money to call
A kite by the wind
with a string
on the other end
that question
of doubt
you know
what I’m talkin’ about
A hope
and a prayer
pants, on a leg
the shirt
off his back
A corpse
without any slack…

Literary E-Zine Highlights: Ginosko, The Rose & Thorn


Two favorite literary e-zines, Ginosko and The Rose & Thorn, have just released new issues. Some poems and stories that held my attention:


Penny-Anne Beaudoin, “The Morning Routine”
(The Rose & Thorn, Spring 2008)

I can feel her cool blue eyes on my face as I struggle to pull her pressure stockings over her clawed feet, her shriveled calves.

“You’re not very pretty, are you?” she says.

I should have seen that coming, but I hesitate before replying.

“No,” I say. “I’m not.”

…

Read the rest here.

****

Peter McGuire, “After ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes'”
(The Rose & Thorn, Spring 2008)

I love listening to bad poetry
Especially yours
The way you enunciate
Like a bus with cut brake lines
Veering for the bay
…

Read the rest here.

****

Dane Myers, “Sleeping With God”
(Ginosko, Issue #6)

Cynthia lifted her head from Dubliners and stared at the pale north wall, opposite their bed. Albuquerque’s April evenings were growing long and the fading light created a shadow that made the ironwood cross above her dresser appear crooked. A rare drizzle filled the air with a smell other than dust and muted the yaps of the neighbor’s three schnauzers. Cynthia tried to think how she could get out of sex, at least for the night. Wednesday had become the worst day of the week: Bible study and sex. That night’s discussion had been on Isaiah—her favorite prophet, until Jim had nicknamed his penis Isaiah.
…

Read the rest here (PDF file, p.76).

****

Randall Brown, “Let the Wind Have It”
(Ginosko, Issue #6)

I discover her in the basement, uncovered, her lips stained green. When the house ran dry, she drank mouthwash, then cough syrup, finally anti-freeze. I imagine her in the grave, still warm. Instead, they burn her, give her back to me in a vase, handing me the responsibility for the gesture that will define her death for me—the scattering of my mother.

A week after the funeral, my father calls. He wants the ashes. He will do lines of my mother until his synapses can no longer fire. She stopped loving him a year after the marriage— and told him so. He didn’t believe her, waited forty years for her to be proven wrong, forty years of asceticism and celibacy and silent waiting. He deserves the ashes, he really does, except my mother did not want to be with him, not in life, surely not in death.

Read the rest here (PDF file, p.10).

M. Lee Alexander: Poems from “Observatory”

I’ve recently finished M. Lee Alexander’s poetry chapbook Observatory, published last year by Finishing Line Press, and found it to be an insightful and enjoyable book. Clear-sighted, modest and wise, the narrator of these poems takes us to London, China, Japan, and post-Katrina New Orleans, always with an eye for the moments of common humanity that open up intimacy between strangers. Below are two of my favorite poems from this collection, reprinted by permission.

Dress Rehearsal

Theatre in the Round

My father dyed
his hair red for the Claudius Play
(or so I called it, wanting him
to be the star–till mom told me
he was a bad guy–then I cried
and called it Hamlet). He would
come home from rehearsal

orange-headed, my father and yet not
my father, almost like a clown I watched
him practice falling. We went to see
the make-up place before the play where
mom said, It’s OK, the knives aren’t real,
but my father reaching for his rust-stained 
    comb
dropped the stageprop dagger, and 
    his toe bled.

I got to stay up late that night,
look down through shining dark
to watch Claudius rolling over,
my father and not my father
on the wooden O stage below.
His crown slipped down
and his head lay bare and still.

Now flying from Orly into O’Hare, where
the river’s dyed green for St. Patrick’s Day
and the stores are full of Shamrock hats,
I’ve been called home to the funeral 
    home
too late to watch Claudius rolling over,
my father and not my father,
his hair not even gray.

****

Thrift Store Elephants

Seeking a mystery for my journey
in the thrift store next to Union Station,
passing rows of bric-a-brac I saw scattered
an army of elephants, someone’s precious
collection, the alabaster white-jade figurine
the first to catch my eye, then the teakwood
one with broken tusk, and on another shelf
a plastic Dumbo, porcelain calf and mother
touching trunks, a Babar figurine, one cruelly
carved of ivory, all cast about the shelves
among the candles, mugs, and shards of 
    former lives.

Hard to think of a happy reason for their 
    presence,
unlike children’s clothes and toys outgrown–
someone labored years to assemble this herd
and would unlikely give it up without a fight.
I began examining each one in turn, wondering
    which
had been the first, the last, or the most beloved,
which the souvenir from the trip of a lifetime.
The clerk passed, saw me handling them, said
    Those came
from our Hospice box, we get some lovely things
    from there.

I longed to take them home to a place of honor,
somehow let their donor know they’d been
    admired,
but knew a dozen fragile ornaments to be 
    a foolish
addition to a traveler’s pack. Yet strewn across
    the aisles
hated to think of them going one by one to
    different homes,
maybe gathering dust for years, so I collected 
    them again,
cleared a broad space on a lower ledge and set
    them in
a festive circle tail to trunk, found nearby a carousel
    music
box and placed it in the middle, wound it up, in hopes
the circus animal parade might catch some younger eye,
a child might bring them home as newfound treasures,
maybe start a new collection round them, finding
    joy as
their first owner had by adding to their numbers by year.

Then forgot all about the elephants until I returned
from my trip a few weeks later, stopped in and saw
they’d gone, music box too. Hoped they went together
or at least in groups. On the way out saw the
    broken-tusk
bull tossed into a box of rags, took him home and named
him Hannibal, because he’d borne a war upon his back.

Kyle McDonald’s “The Rose of Ilium” Now on AudioBookRadio


Canadian actor and writer Kyle McDonald won our most recent Winning Writers War Poetry Contest last year with his masterful epic poem “The Rose of Ilium”, a stirring account of a battle between Greeks and Amazons in the Trojan War. His multimedia presentation of his poem is being broadcast this week on the UK’s AudioBookRadio.net (playing time: 23 minutes). You can also watch the video and read the entire poem on our website. Here’s an excerpt:

…Th’alarums sound with direful clarion
And forward races the bright Danàän,
Whose coursers, both bread of immortal stock,
Cause all the lesser steeds therewith to baulk;
Nor Amazon nor Dardan faced the youth,
Fearing an execution too uncouth;
Yet, this did not forestall their bloody fate,
As he with spear sought foes to extirpate:
One caught his javelin beneath the arm;
Another from his blade took mortal harm,
As head from neck was rashly severèd;
His spear recovered, to the fray he sped,
His ruby chariot thundering as he went.
A surly Amazon from life he rent,
Smiting her brains out with his weighty shield,
Her viscid claret plashing red the field.

His prey, like paltry ships upon the sea
Who strive in vain the tempest’s rage to flee,
Or, like the jackdaw flying from the hawk,
Could find no haven from the deadly shock.

Penthesilea cuts herself a path,
Voracious to expunge Achilles’ wrath,
Whereon he sees his adversary fume
And smiles grimly at the chance of doom.
Automedon his master’s manner knows,
And from a solemn nod, begins to close;
Likewise the Amazon her driver guides,
Who o’er the corpses of the fallen rides.

As this redoubtable twain prepared to meet,
The gathered armies stopped t’adhere the feat,
As though the Gods themselves strove on the plain,
Who to exchange life reaving blows were fain.
First she her javelin pitches through the broil
Expecting her fair quarry’s looks to spoil:
A rav’nous hawk could not so swiftly speed
As her sharp spear, careening with blood greed.
But lo! That mordant prong, so oft unerring,
Was thwarted by his shield, not even tearing
The third bronze layer; now his stout reply,
Which her broad scutcheon cannot stultify,
But from her supple arm is wrenched away,
Transpiercéd by his javelin’s assay.
The Queen now marvels at his martial might
Whilst he propels another dart in flight:
Screaming, the pointed tip cuts through the air,
And would have rent her flesh all smooth and fair
But for the valour of her charioteer,
Who placed herself within the point’s career.
The savage blow her eyes enclosed in night,
And in the earth both point and soldier pight.
Penthesilea seized the vacant reins
And sought to vindicate her comrade’s pains
By drawing out her ringing, bronze-cast blade,
Vengeance to visit as she hoarsely bayed.
Achilles from this conflict did not shy,
But towards the Queen he bade his driver fly.
As two contestant rams in wrath will rush,
So those two champions plied the brutal crush;
Towards his chariot she tilts her course,
Meaning to capsize his war-car perforce.
He swings his weighty sword and she evades:
Unto the sullied earth the troop cascades,
As battlecar with battlecar collides;
Automedon rolls clear and battle chides,
Whilst Queen and Prince rejoin the seething fray,
Their scalpels flashing in warlike display.
…

Alleluia, Alleluia!


Alleluia, alleluia! Hearts to heaven and voices raise:
Sing to God a hymn of gladness, sing to God a hymn of praise.
He, who on the cross a Victim, for the world’s salvation bled,
Jesus Christ, in holiness and glory, now is risen from the dead.

Christ is risen, Christ, the first fruits of the holy harvest field,
Which will all its full abundance at Christ’s second coming yield:
Then the golden ears of harvest will their heads before Christ wave,
Ripened by Christ’s glorious sunshine from the furrows of the grave.

Christ is risen, we are risen! Shed upon us heavenly grace,
Rain and dew and gleams of glory from the brightness of God’s face;
That we, with our hearts in heaven, here on earth may fruitful be,
And by angel hands be gathered, and be ever, God, with you.

Alleluia, alleluia! Glory be to God on high;
Alleluia! to the Savior who has gained the victory;
Alleluia! to the Spirit, fount of love and sanctity:
Alleluia, alleluia! to the Triune Majesty.


Words: Christopher Wordsworth (19thC)
Music: Wurzburg (18thC)

Sing along at The Daily Office. Happy Easter!

George Herbert: “The Flower”


Today in the Anglican calendar we commemorate George Herbert, one of the great 17th-century metaphysical poets (1593-1633). According to the thumbnail bio at The Daily Office, he spent most of his short life as an humble and well-loved parish priest in a village near Salisbury, England. His reputation rests on a single book of poems, The Temple, that was published after his death by his friend Nicholas Ferrar. Below, his poem “The Flower” testifies to the dizzying emotional highs and lows of the spiritual life and how God’s constancy alone brings peace. I find it comforting that even a great Christian poet like Herbert had the same struggle for equanimity as the rest of us.

The Flower

    How fresh, O Lord, how sweet and clean
Are thy returns! even as the flowers in spring; 
    To which, besides their own demean,
The late-past frosts tributes of pleasures bring.
        Grief melts away 
        Like snow in May, 
    As if there were no such cold thing.

    Who would have thought my shrivled heart
Could have recovered greenness? It was gone 
    Quite under ground; as flowers depart
To see their mother-root, when they have blown;
        Where they together 
        All the hard weather 
    Dead to the world, keep house unknown.

    These are thy wonders, Lord of power,
Killing and quickening, bringing down to hell 
    And up to heaven in an hour;
Making a chiming of a passing-bell. 
        We say amiss, 
        This or that is: 
    Thy word is all, if we could spell.

    O that I once past changing were,
Fast in thy Paradise, where no flower can wither!
    Many a spring I shoot up fair,
Offering at heaven, growing and groaning thither: 
        Nor doth my flower 
        Want a spring-shower, 
    My sins and I joining together:

    But while I grow in a straight line,
Still upwards bent, as if heaven were mine own, 
    Thy anger comes, and I decline:
What frost to that? what pole is not the zone, 
        Where all things burn, 
        When thou dost turn, 
    And the least frown of thine is shown? 

    And now in age I bud again,
After so many deaths I live and write;
    I once more smell the dew and rain,
And relish versing. O my only light, 
        It cannot be 
        That I am he 
    On whom thy tempests fell all night.

    These are thy wonders, Lord of love,
To make us see we are but flowers that glide: 
    Which when we once can find and prove,
Thou hast a garden for us, where to bide. 
        Who would be more, 
        Swelling through store, 
    Forfeit their Paradise by their pride.


Charles Wesley: “Come, O Thou Traveler Unknown”


An ongoing paradox of my spiritual life is the interplay of willpower and surrender. I am flung back most heavily upon God when I reach the limits of my moral or intellectual abilities to solve some problem. At such times I must learn to quit thrashing around and trust that God will reveal the way forward in His own good time. I have an aversion to inactivity, which always feels to me like edging close to the precipice of depression. Yet, as anyone who’s practiced meditation can testify, rest is not the same as passivity or inaction. Stillness is hard work! That’s where the willpower comes in. Not to batter my way bull-headedly through my problems on my own, but to cling with all my might to the promises of God, and refuse to be distracted by subtle doubts and speculations. “For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” (1 Cor 2:2)

Richard F. Lovelace recently sent me a link to this classic hymn by Charles Wesley, a presentation of the gospel through the metaphor of Jacob wrestling with the angel, which to me expresses the perfect balance between God’s action and ours:

Come, O thou Traveler unknown,
Whom still I hold, but cannot see!
My company before is gone,
And I am left alone with Thee;
With Thee all night I mean to stay,
And wrestle till the break of day.

I need not tell Thee who I am,
My misery and sin declare;
Thyself hast called me by my name,
Look on Thy hands, and read it there;
But who, I ask Thee, who art Thou?
Tell me Thy name, and tell me now.

In vain Thou strugglest to get free,
I never will unloose my hold!
Art Thou the Man that died for me?
The secret of Thy love unfold;
Wrestling, I will not let Thee go,
Till I Thy name, Thy nature know.

Wilt Thou not yet to me reveal
Thy new, unutterable Name?
Tell me, I still beseech Thee, tell;
To know it now resolved I am;
Wrestling, I will not let Thee go,
Till I Thy Name, Thy nature know.

’Tis all in vain to hold Thy tongue
Or touch the hollow of my thigh;
Though every sinew be unstrung,
Out of my arms Thou shalt not fly;
Wrestling I will not let Thee go
Till I Thy name, Thy nature know.

What though my shrinking flesh complain,
And murmur to contend so long?
I rise superior to my pain,
When I am weak, then I am strong
And when my all of strength shall fail,
I shall with the God-man prevail.

My strength is gone, my nature dies,
I sink beneath Thy weighty hand,
Faint to revive, and fall to rise;
I fall, and yet by faith I stand;
I stand and will not let Thee go
Till I Thy Name, Thy nature know.

Yield to me now, for I am weak,
But confident in self-despair;
Speak to my heart, in blessings speak,
Be conquered by my instant prayer;
Speak, or Thou never hence shalt move,
And tell me if Thy Name is Love.

’Tis Love! ’tis Love! Thou diedst for me!
I hear Thy whisper in my heart;
The morning breaks, the shadows flee,
Pure, universal love Thou art;
To me, to all, Thy bowels move;
Thy nature and Thy Name is Love.

My prayer hath power with God; the grace
Unspeakable I now receive;
Through faith I see Thee face to face,
I see Thee face to face, and live!
In vain I have not wept and strove;
Thy nature and Thy Name is Love.

I know Thee, Savior, who Thou art.
Jesus, the feeble sinner’s friend;
Nor wilt Thou with the night depart.
But stay and love me to the end,
Thy mercies never shall remove;
Thy nature and Thy Name is Love.

The Sun of righteousness on me
Hath rose with healing in His wings,
Withered my nature’s strength; from Thee
My soul its life and succor brings;
My help is all laid up above;
Thy nature and Thy Name is Love.

Contented now upon my thigh
I halt, till life’s short journey end;
All helplessness, all weakness I
On Thee alone for strength depend;
Nor have I power from Thee to move:
Thy nature, and Thy name is Love.

Lame as I am, I take the prey,
Hell, earth, and sin, with ease o’ercome;
I leap for joy, pursue my way,
And as a bounding hart fly home,
Through all eternity to prove
Thy nature and Thy Name is Love.


Sing along at CyberHymnal!