Imperfect by Michael Simms

 

Imperfect

Michael Simms

My native tongue doesn’t allow imperfect tense, so it’s difficult to say how something might used to happen but no more. Elizabeth used to walk among these trees. She used to walk among these trees but doesn’t anymore. Elizabeth is no more though she used to be. She doesn’t anymore but she used to walk among these trees because she used to be happy but only for a short while before she descended in despair. Elizabeth we could say used to walk among these trees because they made her happy. Elizabeth used to be but no more.

I am with you

 I am with you in the ups.

I am with you in the downs.

I am with you in the hard.

I am with you in the quiet.

I am with you in the chaotic.

I am with you in the calm.

I am with you in the storm.

I am with you in it all.

Dada poem6

 Days of him are 5 years old.

Good luck with your blue eyes that look like Hitler!

You can not touching garbage!

You can get a sea horse!

It keeps going and going to be boring.

I know something about this guy.

Poet Statement BY QUYÊN NGUYỄN-HOÀNG TRANSLATED BY QUYÊN NGUYỄN-HOÀNG

 An unfinished translation of Hàn Mặc Tử’s “Poetry”

Whoever speaks of the moon garden speaks of the dream garden.

Whoever speaks of the shore of reverie speaks of the shore of love.

The poetic human is a strange traveler walking in the spring of primeval clarity.

Above their head are nobility, boundlessness, and measurelessness, all around them are loving caresses swaddled in a hundred instants of ardent longing—

Made of softness, made of melody. From where does the wind carry the poetic human to this strange shore, a virginal shore full of song and gracefulness. The human pauses to pick the exquisite leaves. The human falls silent to listen to the echo of the moon ringing, which is not unlike the sound of jewels exploding. Ah, and so the naïve human hurriedly gathers the falling gold light and wraps it in the lapel of their coat.

The human’s mind has levitated and the human’s poetry has levitated even higher.

Turns out the enraptured human is walking in dreams, in miracles, in splendor, flying beyond the ghostly emptiness.

I make poetry?

—Meaning I pluck a melody, press on a silk thread, stir a veil of light.

You will see the instrument’s breath glide upon the breath of my soul and sink into the cascade of hot electric waves pouring from the five dancerly fingertips.

You will tremble to the hum of the fine bronze string, will leave the ravishing tune to moan and groan without end.

And you will feel strange, will look without blinking when a rustle of light bursts into a breaking star. Those are the tones and melodies of my poetry, the sacred tones and melodies born while the wild blood is howling under the pen tip.

I make poetry?

—Meaning I am so frail! I give in to temptation, I betray everything that my gut, my blood, my soul once kept utterly secret.

And meaning, also, that I have lost my mind, I have gone mad.
 

Notes:

“Poet Statement” is a translation of a passage extracted from the Vietnamese poet Hàn Mặc Tử’s prose poem “Thơ” (“Poetry”), which appeared in his collection Chơi Giữa Mùa Trăng (Ngày Mới Press, 1944), or Midseason Moonplay in Quyên Nguyễn-Hoàng’s translation in progress. The title “Poet Statement” is the translator’s addition.

Hàn Mặc Tử (1912–1940) was a Vietnamese Catholic poet. He was born Nguyễn Trọng Trí at Lệ Mỹ Village, Đồng Hới District, Quảng Bình Province. In 1937, he contracted leprosy, and three years later, died at Quy Hòa Hospital in Quy Nhơn City. Hàn was the founder and celebrated master of the Chaos (“Loạn”) or Mad (“Điên”) school of poetry, which lasted between 1936 and 1946 in Vietnam.

Source: Poetry (February 2022)

Praise the Rain BY JOY HARJO

 Praise the Rain

BY JOY HARJO

Praise the rain; the seagull dive

The curl of plant, the raven talk—

Praise the hurt, the house slack

The stand of trees, the dignity—

Praise the dark, the moon cradle

The sky fall, the bear sleep—

Praise the mist, the warrior name

The earth eclipse, the fired leap—

Praise the backwards, upward sky

The baby cry, the spirit food—

Praise canoe, the fish rush

The hole for frog, the upside-down—

Praise the day, the cloud cup

The mind flat, forget it all—

Praise crazy. Praise sad.

Praise the path on which we're led.

Praise the roads on earth and water.

Praise the eater and the eaten.

Praise beginnings; praise the end.

Praise the song and praise the singer.

Praise the rain; it brings more rain.

Praise the rain; it brings more rain.

Emily Dickinson, ‘“Hope” is the thing with feathers’.

 ‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers –

That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all …

the shoes by Wo Chan

 

the shoes

Wo Chan

fridays i love the nonslip footstuff, pure hubbub, bulk-bought then trucked  from pigeon-stacked catalogues, whose  dorsals do make gravel tones sluice  down the miniature foyer of my maury  street childhood home. each distinct starry  carload of cousins, my brother’s ostinato, three post-ambling, scramble from toyota, crash through the door in running monologue.  now, chao’s village kith doff off their dogs:  kin's greaves blackblasted,      gummed-out discounted clompers, cloved by sole meuniere,     now frowned upon her loafers pinched as elephant        leather. nearish  midnight, the mystery     whiff of cheap liquorice  & steeped beef in nut grease.    cabbage, that babylon   of napa abluted underfoot    black seasoning, black season when my uncle, his visa      goes undone, un-childrens him weeping in sheer sheets     my bodybuilder brother ivan     (russian name reclaimed     from c-drama series) wears no jordans, has cornrows     desires destiny as mutable. he’s cute   the one that girls want & it’s reciprocal, illicit     beyond touch. my aunt     cries salt, the salted earth     sheds dust, the dusted moon. human hooves     journey in warm circular rooms. dishwasher surge     creases his preteen face, steamed, my other brother (happiness)     never learns to read.  half supported, tad orphaned     we sprung our tough roughage. i bore bark and bunion       fruited my inscrutable rage. those lang syne light-ups       bygone & violet aglet   twist in absentia.          zodiac, sadness saddles the small kid’s soul.     animal smells cradle these days reversed. the late patter of heaven      labors on plain earth.

Again rejoicing Nature sees

 

Again rejoicing Nature sees
Her robe assume its vernal hues,
Her leafy locks wave in the breeze,
All freshly steep'd in morning dews.
–Robert Burns (1759–96)

🙌🏻🙌🏻 Stop the insanity!!

 Yes!!!

Stop the insanity!!

Mary Cornock

tSa1p9 fhonsurssohrefda  · 

They cancelled your feelings

They cancelled your thoughts

They cancelled the Dr. Seuss

Books that you bought

We'll cancel your culture

And history they said

They even cancelled

Poor Mr. Potato Head

They'll cancel your clothes

And the shoes that you wear

They'll cancel your opinions

And the style of your hair

You warriors of justice

I ask you to please

Stop trying to cancel

The air that I breathe

For I live in America

The Land of the Free

And one thing is certain

You won't cancel me!

We Real Cool Gwendolyn Brooks - 1917-2000

 

We Real Cool

Gwendolyn Brooks - 1917-2000

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

                   THE POOL PLAYERS. 
                   SEVEN AT THE GOLDEN SHOVEL.

We real cool. We
Left school. We

Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We
Die soon.

Character Being a Different Thing from Beauty, Describe the Difference by Carl Phillips

 

Character Being a Different Thing from Beauty, Describe the Difference

Carl Phillips

And sometimes, yes, I’d beg for it—            he’d make me beg: Shy moon,                        why shy tonight?  I heard the geese before I saw them again this morning— this time, flying north. Above them, thunderheads like doomed  zeppelins, like whales when sounding, though they brought  no rain. That’s how I used to write, insisting on ordinary things  being somehow more than that, that they had to mean something,  the way disruption can punctuate with meaning an established  pattern, or as when finding out one’s silence has been mistaken  for arrogance or, worse, indifference, when all you meant  was to be kind—retreat, not exile; less the monsters, than  how we lived beside them, our lives not leaves not trash on an  updraft that at random carries them then refuses them, can a wind  refuse. And yet…                          Shy moon -- As if doing what we’d always done were enough to be grateful for,  as if to keep doing it were itself to be grateful. You just forgot,  that’s all. It’s harder not to forget. How the yard gave way  like a ragged imperative to a forest of scrub-pines and oak, mostly,  how a stand of ferns there almost looked, from above, like a boat  of shadows, coming at last unmoored, and the forest a sea—that  endless-seeming, that steeped in night-dark, beg for it, why shy tonight?

Copyright © 2021 by Carl Phillips. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on February 1, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.

Order of Events by Phillip B. Williams

 

Order of Events

Phillip B. Williams

First, he taught us to use the dead as shawls in the viscous winter escorting his arrival. Next, he taught us to forget the dead were dead, our dead, and dead because of a wager we did not consent him to make with the thin-lipped savior of his own pantomime. Third, he delivered on promises that blew off the tops of homes in places whose names he could not pronounce. Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown1 forced to fit a quiet country that has no need for a crown. Where once was honey unhived competition. The drones meant for war prepared for war. We dusted our shoulders of Shadows’ silent reconnaissance, surveilled as practice for a slaughter we did not consent to. The royal parade pride’s malady stomped its sequence through beat drums of human skin from which emanated a rhythm impossible to decipher. I too would shake my ass to the sound of stars falling night- wise into a pit of myth-bent nomenclature if the names sounded like home. Under eroding circumstances, this kingdom could become home. Under eroding circumstances my gasp has become home enough, love not consented to yet detected from beneath my mindless right hand pressing its devotion to ritual over my heart, flag above waving heaven and blood into the smoke-diffused sky I quake my way through anthems beneath. Rockets glaring off my breath forced to evidence I belong. The crown is crooked. We straighten it with vote-vapid hands. The crown sits too heavy for the king to carry on his own. When it falls “O say can you see,” strikes its inquisition. My knees, summoned to straighten at the hinges permission most questionably opens from, strike the earth with a kiss. Could I kneel my way to revolution? Would that goad the king to unzip? 1 King Henry IV, Part Two

 

STILL UNBUTTONED & UNBOTHERED: On Imagining That Freedom Probably Feels Like Getting the Itis

Jacqui Germain

The table settles. Before you is a series of well-seasoned scraps framed in silverware and open palms. The entire kitchen exhales and every torso leans back in unison, a table blossoming bodies in satisfaction. Someone pops open a button, and then another. Several burps that interrupt, scoff at the hand cupped around the mouth, bellow with pleasure as they fling out of the body in triumph. Every bra is undone unceremoniously, straps wilting out of shirt sleeves or across furniture. The land of satiation. The land of, if it itches, scratch it. Land of pleasure. Everything sagging with joy. Someone passes gas loudly. It is full and foul, but no one is embarrassed by the scent of a body that has gotten exactly what it needed.                                               The stench of enough. My god, to be so satisfied you reek of it. Smell badly of, I do not want more, I have had my fill. To stink of gratitude, to be immobilized by its weight. The eyelids flutter, nearly drunk with it. Here, the body so saturated and somehow fears nothing. What a condition for the body, so unlike the state I am in. So enough that all it must do is sleep.

Thou sing’st alone on the bare wintry bough,

 

Thou sing’st alone on the bare wintry bough,
As if Spring with its leaves were around thee now; 
And its voice that was heard in the laughing rill,
And the breeze as it whispered o’er meadow and hill,
Still fell on thine ear, as it murmured along 
To join the sweet tide of thine own gushing song.  
–Jones Very (1813–80)

Death Is Nothing At All Henry Scott-HollandBy Henry Scott-Holland

 

Death Is Nothing At All

By Henry Scott-Holland More Henry Scott-Holland

Death is nothing at all.
It does not count.
I have only slipped away into the next room.
Nothing has happened.

Everything remains exactly as it was.
I am I, and you are you,
and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged.
Whatever we were to each other, that we are still.

Call me by the old familiar name.
Speak of me in the easy way which you always used.
Put no difference into your tone.
Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.

Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together.
Play, smile, think of me, pray for me.
Let my name be ever the household word that it always was.
Let it be spoken without an effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it.

Life means all that it ever meant.
It is the same as it ever was.
There is absolute and unbroken continuity.
What is this death but a negligible accident?

Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight?
I am but waiting for you, for an interval,
somewhere very near,
just round the corner.

All is well.
Nothing is hurt; nothing is lost.
One brief moment and all will be as it was before.
How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again!

Source: https://www.familyfriendpoems.com/poem/death-is-nothing-at-all-by-henry-scott-holland

Would It Kill Me to Be a Nicer Guy? Raquel Gutiérrez

 

Would It Kill Me to Be a Nicer Guy?

Raquel Gutiérrez

Insomniac for a high noon called midnight. Another howling Coyote ass chorus of disapproval—Malinche           was my Farrah Fawcett poster           no strap               no thong no tongue               just hair masculine taped to     my bedroom wall an imagined papacito in a big bad brown teen lobo den for real. The gigalo furrowed browed spittled jowls highlights yellow         an estrangement with my pack of sancho sinvergüenzas swimming in lack for Mommy Malinchismo But we appreciate over time, our bellies get full over time. And     these papers     overwhelm an archive. So for a good time call Cortez, a casual encounter.  No strings attached              cuando estoy triste I swipe right.

Forever Gone are the days of peace

 Gone are the days of peace,

And though we thought they'd never cease,

Yet they are gone,

So, sing we this song,

And hope to defeat wrong,

But, yet, that chance is gone!

We hoped for better days,

Where folks would sing the praise,

Of the forces of those of the side of good

And of those who do the things that they should,

But, yet, to defeat wrong,

Some good men joined that evil throng!

Yahya Hassan

 

From “YOU DA ONE” BY JENNIFER TAMAYO

From “YOU DA ONE”

BY JENNIFER TAMAYO

At the airport, we all take a shot of aguardiente

because we all had each other’s faces

When I saw my brother I saw my face

I saw my grandmother I saw my face

I saw my aunt I saw my stupid face

On the way up the mountain I saw my face in a pile of trash

I saw my face in the mule’s ass

I saw my lover I saw my face but it was white & weary

I saw my brother again and there was my face;

               my other brother, my other face

I saw my face in the American Apparel ivory chiffon blouse

I brought for this occasion

In the occasion I saw my face, I did

I saw my face in the pankekes the next morning

My face was in the talk of death

My face was in her teeth, the pavement, etc.,

There was a jail cell at the Museo Nacional, I saw my face

A woman flowercunted & crosslegged, my face & my face

Everywhere my face like I didn’t have one

Botero’s asses all my faces

I took down notes when it came to torture

& the inquisition and saw my face in the leather swing set

Clavicle spikerest & eye ruptrest

Faces, I suppose, are a type of torture

to look like one but never be one