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[ishtat]

Nin-me-sar-ra (Hymn to Inanna

"you are greater than your own mother (Nannu)
full of wisdom, foresight, Queen of all lands,
who allows existence to many,
I will now strike up your fate determining song,
All powerful divinity, suitable for the ME,
that which you have said magnificently is the most powerful,
Oh unfathomable heart ,oh highly driven woman.
I will list for you now........"(NMS 1 61 to 65)

A hymn to the goddess Inanna by the en priestess Enheduanna of Ur circa 2350 BC
translated by AkeSjoberg/AnnetteZgoll

I have been reading some new translations of Enheduanna's work and it seems remarkable how this womans vibrancy and personality comes through her writing although in translation and over a distance of almost 4500 years. I also thought she should be here as poet 1.

 

[unapologetic]

Casabianca/Elizabeth Bishop

Loves the boy stood on the burning deck
trying to recite "The boy stood on
the burning deck." Love's the son
stood stammering elocution
while the poor ship in flames went down.

Love's the obstinate boy, the ship,
even the swimming sailors, who
would like a schoolroom platform, too,
or an excuse to stay
on deck. And love's the burning boy.

________________________________________

This poem was the inspiration for my poem Elizabeth http://www.literotica.com:81/stories/showstory.php?id=294404

 

[darkerdreamer]

A street poet who traveled the West Coast inspired me to start writing, I heard through the grapevine he passed away two years ago, I still have the xeroxed "anthology" he gave me almost a deade ago, someone else should see some of it I think:

Home by Leap Jerrek

home is where the harm is
a broken bottle spills venomous whiskey and bad memories.
a hole in the wall that was always scheduled
to get patched...

tomorrow.

tomorrow is going to be different this time
a broken home spills out spiteful offspring with bad memories.
there are cracks that they always fall into
to be forgotten...

forever.

forever and never always turn out the same
a broken heart spills lovesongs, conspiracies, and bittersweet memories.
there are always holes to be patched, cracks to be filled
flaws to smooth...

tomorrow.
there is always time tomorrow.

Untitled #4 by Leap Jerrek

Look at him,
Don't look at him,
Its impolite to stare.
But look at him,
Those clothes...
And that fucking smell.
"Get a job!"
I already have one.
"You are worthless!"
My job is to give you a sense of worth.
"You are a burden on society!"
And yet you are burdened by society.
"You fucking bum!"

Really, its just fine.
Look down on him.
But don't look at him.
Then you go home and wonder
Wonder about the point of your life.
But he is always at home,
And he never has to wonder.

 

[snake0067]

I'm Explaining a Few Things

You are going to ask: and where are the lilacs?
and the poppy-petalled metaphysics?
and the rain repeatedly spattering
its words and drilling them full
of apertures and birds?
I'll tell you all the news.

I lived in a suburb,
a suburb of Madrid, with bells,
and clocks, and trees.

From there you could look out
over Castille's dry face:
a leather ocean.
My house was called
the house of flowers, because in every cranny
geraniums burst: it was
a good-looking house
with its dogs and children.
Remember, Raul?
Eh, Rafel? Federico, do you remember
from under the ground
my balconies on which
the light of June drowned flowers in your mouth?
Brother, my brother!
Everything
loud with big voices, the salt of merchandises,
pile-ups of palpitating bread,
the stalls of my suburb of Arguelles with its statue
like a drained inkwell in a swirl of hake:
oil flowed into spoons,
a deep baying
of feet and hands swelled in the streets,
metres, litres, the sharp
measure of life,
stacked-up fish,
the texture of roofs with a cold sun in which
the weather vane falters,
the fine, frenzied ivory of potatoes,
wave on wave of tomatoes rolling down the sea.

And one morning all that was burning,
one morning the bonfires
leapt out of the earth
devouring human beings --
and from then on fire,
gunpowder from then on,
and from then on blood.
Bandits with planes and Moors,
bandits with finger-rings and duchesses,
bandits with black friars spattering blessings
came through the sky to kill children
and the blood of children ran through the streets
without fuss, like children's blood.

Jackals that the jackals would despise,
stones that the dry thistle would bite on and spit out,
vipers that the vipers would abominate!

Face to face with you I have seen the blood
of Spain tower like a tide
to drown you in one wave
of pride and knives!

Treacherous
generals:
see my dead house,
look at broken Spain :
from every house burning metal flows
instead of flowers,
from every socket of Spain
Spain emerges
and from every dead child a rifle with eyes,
and from every crime bullets are born
which will one day find
the bull's eye of your hearts.

And you'll ask: why doesn't his poetry
speak of dreams and leaves
and the great volcanoes of his native land?

Come and see the blood in the streets.
Come and see
The blood in the streets.
Come and see the blood
In the streets!

-- Pablo Neruda



"and the blood of children ran through the streets
without fuss, like children's blood."

For some reason this is one of the most poignant lines I'v read IMO. The point is after all, what is truly comparable to childrens blood, nothing.

Pablo Neruda is a very, VERY famous poet from Peru. Actually there's quite a bit of good poetry that comes from that country (channeling that spanish report from JUCO).

 

[unapologetic]

Home by Leap Jerrek

home is where the harm is
a broken bottle spills venomous whiskey and bad memories.
a hole in the wall that was always scheduled
to get patched...

tomorrow.

tomorrow is going to be different this time
a broken home spills out spiteful offspring with bad memories.
there are cracks that they always fall into
to be forgotten...

forever.

forever and never always turn out the same
a broken heart spills lovesongs, conspiracies, and bittersweet memories.
there are always holes to be patched, cracks to be filled
flaws to smooth...

tomorrow.
there is always time tomorrow.

Whoa. Thanks for sharing this.

 

[RhymeFairy]

Insomniac


The night is only a sort of carbon paper,
Blueblack, with the much-poked periods of stars
Letting in the light, peephole after peephole . . .
A bonewhite light, like death, behind all things.
Under the eyes of the stars and the moon's rictus
He suffers his desert pillow, sleeplessness
Stretching its fine, irritating sand in all directions.

Over and over the old, granular movie
Exposes embarrassments--the mizzling days
Of childhood and adolescence, sticky with dreams,
Parental faces on tall stalks, alternately stern and tearful,
A garden of buggy rose that made him cry.
His forehead is bumpy as a sack of rocks.
Memories jostle each other for face-room like obsolete film stars.

He is immune to pills: red, purple, blue . . .
How they lit the tedium of the protracted evening!
Those sugary planets whose influence won for him
A life baptized in no-life for a while,
And the sweet, drugged waking of a forgetful baby.
Now the pills are worn-out and silly, like classical gods.
Their poppy-sleepy colors do him no good.

His head is a little interior of grey mirrors.
Each gesture flees immediately down an alley
Of diminishing perspectives, and its significance
Drains like water out the hole at the far end.
He lives without privacy in a lidless room,
The bald slots of his eyes stiffened wide-open
On the incessant heat-lightning flicker of situations.

Nightlong, in the granite yard, invisible cats
Have been howling like women, or damaged instruments.
Already he can feel daylight, his white disease,
Creeping up with her hatful of trivial repetitions.
The city is a map of cheerful twitters now,
And everywhere people, eyes mica-silver and blank,
Are riding to work in rows, as if recently brainwashed.



~ Sylvia Plath

 

[RhymeFairy]

My Sadness Has No Seasons


My sadness has no seasons,
It comes when the leaves
Surrender to the persistent wind
And lie at attention,
When the snow
Coats twigs and footprints
In a gentle obituary of white,
Or when the birds
Fly back to the parks
To help the old folks count the years.
It even comes when the hot air
Keeps the crickets awake,
Complaining in the parched grass.

There are no reasons for my sadness
Except living, and maybe dying.
But mostly it moves in like the fog,
Seeping from some secret cave where shadows live.

I wish I were a planet so my sadness would have seasons,
If it came with sun or snow, I'd somehow know its reasons.


~ James Kavanaugh

 

[Tathagata]

The Song of Wandering Aengus

I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire aflame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And some one called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

-- William Butler Yeats

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[unapologetic]

A.E. Houseman

To An Athlete Dying Young


The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.

To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay,
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:

Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.

So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.

And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl's.

_________________________________

I like to read this one whenever I get disgusted by forced rhyme.

 

[unapologetic]

Butterflies/Neil Curry

Flying worms, Albertus Magnus called them,
as though unaware that their wings
were a set of Monet's palettes;
the eyes of the peacock for example:
empurpled browns bleeding into yellow,
set off by dabs of white
cleaner than sugar.

And then the rich simplicity of all
the Blues. Trying to look one up
in a Guide (worse than dictionaries
they are for distractions) you find yourself
entagled in a clap-net of their names:
April Frillaries,
Vernon's Half-mourner.

Adam alone could have dreamt of such things.
This side Eden, on their bellies
they crawled, then came that primal soup
and Resurrection's metaphor. Scarce now;
a sometime image for frvolity,
in closed cabinets, dry
wings shrivel and fade.

 

[MsBug]

There Will Come Soft Rain

There will come soft rain and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum-trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.


- Sarah Teasdale.

 

[Angeline]

Six Years Later

So long had life together been that now
the second of January fell again
on Tuesday, making her astonished brow
lift like a windshield wiper in the rain,
_____so that her misty sadness cleared, and showed
_____a cloudless distance waiting up by the road.

So long had life been together that once
the snow began to fall, it seemed unending;
that, lest the flakes should make her eyelids wince,
I'd shield them with my hand, and they, pretending
_____not to believe that cherishing of eyes,
_____would beat against my palm like butterflies.

So alien had all novelty become
that sleep's entanglements would put to shame
whatever depths the analysts might plumb;
that when my lips blew out the candle flame,
_____her lips, fluttering from my shoulder, sought
_____to join my own, without another thought.

So long had life together been that all
that tattered brood of papered roses went,
and a whole birch grove grew upon the wall,
and we had money, by some accident,
_____and tonguelike on the sea for thirty days,
_____the sunset threatened Turkey with its blaze.

So long had life been together without
books, chairs, utensils--only that ancient bed--
that the triangle, before it came about,
had been a perpendicular, the head
_____of some acquaintance hovering above
_____two points which had been coalesced by love.

So long had life together been that she
and I, with our joint shadows, had composed
a double door, a door which, even if we
were lost in work or sleep, was always closed:
_____somehow its halves were split and we went right
_____through them into the future, into night.

~ Joseph Brodsky

 

[MsBug]

If You Were Coming In The Fall

If you were coming in the fall,
I'd brush the summer by
With half a smile and half a spurn,
As housewives do a fly.

If I could see you in a year,
I'd wind the months in balls,
And put them each in separate drawers,
Until their time befalls.

If only centuries delayed,
I'd count them on my hand,
Subtracting till my fingers dropped
Into Van Diemen's land.

If certain, when this life was out,
That yours and mine should be,
I'd toss it yonder like a rind,
And taste eternity.

But now, all ignorant of the length
Of time's uncertain wing,
It goads me, like the goblin bee,
That will not state its sting.

- Emily Dickinson.

 

[annaswirls]

EKIWAH ADLER-BELÉNDEZ
http://www.blueflowerarts.com/ekiwah.html


I saw him at Austin's poetry festival-- 18 years old, with an intense presence and connection with the audience. If he is ever in your town run like hell and see him, I am not kidding, he is amazing. I think he will be in Boston sometime this year.



COYOTES TRACE
the sky provides room
for the moon to move
the moon for my eye to linger
and this for me to ponder
on the privilege
of invisible and visible sight
yet if you wish
to find out about this freedom
if you attempt to trace me,
do not speak to me
speak to what makes me hungry
follow the tracks of what I love.

..........................


Let me travel in this spider’s web
and keep my balance
swinging boldly as I spin,
not caring about understanding what I mean
or wondering what I feel;
riddles burden me,
answers seem too familiar.
Let me leave all that behind

(excerpt from Odyssey, Weaver)

 

[unapologetic]

COYOTES TRACE
the sky provides room
for the moon to move
the moon for my eye to linger
and this for me to ponder
on the privilege
of invisible and visible sight
yet if you wish
to find out about this freedom
if you attempt to trace me,
do not speak to me
speak to what makes me hungry
follow the tracks of what I love.

There was a picture of a wild coyote on a subway car in some magazine I read recently. Reading this, I can't help but think of that poor little guy looking so out of place in man-made surroundings.

Thanks for sharing this one.

 

[unapologetic]

While I liked the poem annaswirls just shared...

...it was entirely too serious for my mood today. And I've got just the antidote:

The Agamemnon Rag
by Jack Conway

(A word of warning - to be best appreciated, this piece should be read aloud.)

Atlas, you're Homer. I am so glad you're Hera.
Thera so many things to tell you. I went on that
minotaur of the museum. The new display centaurs
on how you can contract Sisyphus if you don't use
a Trojan on your Dictys. It was all Greek to me, see.
When I was Roman around,
I rubbed Midas against someone. "Medea, you look like a Goddess,"
he said. The Minerva him! I told him to
Frigg off, oracle the cops. "Loki here," I said.
"In Odin times men had better manners." It's best to try
and nymph that sort of thing in the bud. He said he knew
Athena two about women like me, then tried to Bacchus
into a corner. Dryads I could, he wouldn't stop.
"Don't Troy with my affections," he said.
"I'm already going to Helen a hand basket."
I pretended to be completely Apollo by his behavior.
If something like that Mars your day, it Styx with you
forever. "I'm not Bragi," he said. "But Idon better."
Some people will never Lerna. Juno what I did?
Valhalla for help. I knew the police would
Pegasus to the wall. The Sirens went off.
Are you or Argonaut guilty, they asked.
He told the cops he was Iliad bad clams.
He said he accidentally Electra Cupid himself
trying to adjust a lamp shade. This job has its
pluses and Minos. The cops figured he was Fulla it.
He nearly Runic for me. I'm telling you,
it was quite an Odyssey, but I knew things would
Pan out. And oh, by the way, here's all his gold.
I was able to Fleece him before the museum closed.



Okay, okay. I know. Cheap gag after cheap gag. But it's like the difference between tacky and kitsch for me. If he'd only done one or two, it would have been a groaner and disliked, but he went whole hog and I it.

 

[tungtied2u]

Pablo Neruda

Poetry

And it was at that age ... Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don't know how or when,
no they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me.

I did not know what to say, my mouth
had no way
with names,
my eyes were blind,
and something started in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering
that fire,
and I wrote the first faint line,
faint, without substance, pure
nonsense,
pure wisdom
of someone who knows nothing,
and suddenly I saw
the heavens
unfastened
and open,
planets,
palpitating plantations,
shadow perforated,
riddled
with arrows, fire and flowers,
the winding night, the universe.

And I, infinitesimal being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
felt myself a pure part
of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke loose on the wind.

 

[tungtied2u]

Spiritual Chickens - Stephen Dobyns


A man eats a chicken every day for lunch,
and each day the ghost of another chicken
joins the crowd in the dining goom. If he could
only see them! Hundreds and hundreds of spiritual
chickens, sitting on chairs, tables, covering
the floor, jammed shoulder to shoulder. At last
there is no more space and one of the chickens
is popped back across the spiritual plain to the earthly.
The man is in the process of picking his teeth.
Suddenly there’s a chicken at the end of the table,
strutting back and forth, not looking at the man
but knowing he is there, as is the way with chickens.
The man makes a grab for the chicken but his hand
passes right through her. He tries to hit the chicken
with a chair and the chair passes through her.
He calls in his wife but she can see nothing.
This is his own private chicken, even if he
fails to recognize her. How is he to know
this is a chicken he ate seven years ago
on a hot and steamy Wednesday in July,
with a little tarragon, a little sour cream?
The man grows afraid. He runs out of his house
flapping his arms and making peculiar hops
until the authorities take him away for a cure.
Faced with the choice between something odd
in the world or something broken in his head,
he opts for the broken head. Certainly,
this is safer than putting his opinions
in jeopardy. Much better to think he had
imagined it, that he had made it happen.
Meanwhile, the chicken struts back and forth
at the end of the table. Here she was, jammed in
with the ghosts of six thousand dead hens, when
suddenly she has the whole place to herself.
Even the nervous man has disappeared. If she
had a brain, she would think she had caused it.
She would grow vain, egotistical, she would
look for someone to fight, but being a chicken
she can just enjoy it and make little squawks,
silent to all except the man who ate her,
who is far off banging his head against a wall
like someone trying to repair a leaky vessel,
making certain that nothing unpleasant gets in
or nothing of value falls out. How happy
he would have been to be born a chicken,
to be of good use to his fellow creatures
and rich in companionship after death.
As it is he is constantly being squeezed
between the world and his idea of the world.
Better to have a broken head—why surrender
his corner on truth?—better just to go crazy.

 

[TheRainMan]

Phone Call by Tony Hoagland

Maybe I overdid it
when I called my father an enemy of humanity.
That might have been a little strongly put,
a slight overexaggeration,

an immoderate description of the person
who at that moment, two thousand miles away,
holding a telephone receiver six inches from his ear,
must have regretted paying for my therapy.

What I meant was that my father
was an enemy of my humanity
and what I meant behind that
was that my father was split
into two people, one of them

living deep inside me
like a bad king or an incurable disease—
blighting my crops,
striking down my herds,
poisoning my wells—the other
standing in another time zone,
in a kitchen in Wyoming,
with bad knees and white hair sprouting from his ears.

I don’t want to scream forever,
I don’t want to live without proportion
like some kind of infection from the past,

so I have to remember the second father,
the one whose TV dinner is getting cold
while he holds the phone in his left hand
and stares blankly out the window

where just now the sun is going down
and the last fingertips of sunlight
are withdrawing from the hills
they once touched like a child.

 

[Noor]

In Response to a Rumor That the Oldest Whorehouse in Wheeling, West Virginia, Has Been Condemned

I will grieve alone,
As I strolled alone, years ago, down along
The Ohio shore.
I hid in the hobo jungle weeds
Upstream from the sewer main,
Pondering, gazing.

I saw, down river,
At Twenty-third and Water Streets
By the vinegar works,
The doors open in early evening.
Swinging their purses, the women
Poured down the long street to the river
And into the river.

I do not know how it was
They could drown every evening.
What time near dawn did they climb up the other shore,
Drying their wings?

For the river at Wheeling, West Virginia,
Has only two shores:
The one in hell, the other
In Bridgeport, Ohio.

And nobody would commit suicide, only
To find beyond death
Bridgeport, Ohio.

James Wright

####

I saw him read this poem and the last two stanzas really stuck with me.

 

[tungtied2u]

Black-Eyed Susan

John Gay (1685-1732)

ALL in the Downs the fleet was moor'd,
The streamers waving in the wind,
When black-eyed Susan came aboard;
'O! where shall I my true-love find?
Tell me, ye jovial sailors, tell me true
If my sweet William sails among the crew.'

William, who high upon the yard
Rock'd with the billow to and fro,
Soon as her well-known voice he heard
He sigh'd, and cast his eyes below:
The cord slides swiftly through his glowing hands,
And quick as lightning on the deck he stands.

So the sweet lark, high poised in air,
Shuts close his pinions to his breast
If chance his mate's shrill call he hear,
And drops at once into her nest:—
The noblest captain in the British fleet
Might envy William's lip those kisses sweet.

'O Susan, Susan, lovely dear,
My vows shall ever true remain;
Let me kiss off that falling tear;
We only part to meet again.
Change as ye list, ye winds; my heart shall be
The faithful compass that still points to thee.

'Believe not what the landmen say
Who tempt with doubts thy constant mind:
They'll tell thee, sailors, when away,
In every port a mistress find:
Yes, yes, believe them when they tell thee so,
For Thou art present wheresoe'er I go.

'If to fair India's coast we sail,
Thy eyes are seen in diamonds bright,
Thy breath is Afric's spicy gale,
Thy skin is ivory so white.
Thus every beauteous object that I view
Wakes in my soul some charm of lovely Sue.

'Though battle call me from thy arms
Let not my pretty Susan mourn;
Though cannons roar, yet safe from harms
William shall to his Dear return.
Love turns aside the balls that round me fly,
Lest precious tears should drop from Susan's eye:

The boatswain gave the dreadful word,
The sails their swelling bosom spread,
No longer must she stay aboard;
They kiss'd, she sigh'd, he hung his head.
Her lessening boat unwilling rows to land;
'Adieu!' she cries; and waved her lily hand.

 

[Bill Dada]

Karma Bird
by Jim Dodge

Invisible and shrill,
the Karma Bird rides on your shoulder
like some gruesome offspring
of Long John Silver’s crusty parrot
and the raven that haunted Poe’s brain.
It’s clamped on your shoulder to remind you
that what’s purchased at the spirit’s expense
invariably falls due,
that what you give is finally what you get,
and what you get is yours.

So when karma curves ‘round,
as it assuredly does,
that crass, gleeful bird goes crazy,
hopping up and down on your clavicle
while screeching righteously in your ear,
“Kar-ma! Kar-ma! Kar-ma!”
till you want to strangle the little fucker,

anything to shut him up.
For though it’s true
we act in constant ignorance
and often fail the faith we try to keep,
we’re wise to accept
all consequences as deserved-
but that doesn’t mean you have to like it,
much less love that demented bird.

 

[Epmd607]

Wallace Stevens

this poem is one of my favorites, even though it's probably nonsense--it reminds me of a town in upstate ny.

The Emperor of Ice-Cream

Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

 

[DeepAsleep]

Daphne Gottlieb

www.daphnegottlieb.com

bikini killer

at 4, it's already clear
that mimi's going to grow
up to be one of those ladies
her momma calls a "fame fer tall"
one of those cigarette-swilling heartbreakers
who strides in
and gets things going
like a party
or a murder

mimi's got those 4-year-old
high heels on, those
coffee-can romper stompers
strapped to her feet
with the ribbon laces
that match her bathing suit

the ants scramble out
of the guillotine clank of her walk
as she sh-clanks her way
up and down the sidewalk
slicing worms in half with
a single-minded step
the art of the crush

makes her the terror of the insect world
but the she's the darling of every
dog on the block
want her like nothing
can't take their eyes off her
drool for her
whine to the shine of her step
nose to her like fresh bones
no one's seen anything like it
the dogs

won't leave her side
jostle each other for her
attention
and skulk home when she goes
in to dinner

she's born to break
hearts and like any good
minx, she's got her secrets

cherry kool-aid
makes her lips red

"please" gets her
what she wants

and she never gives up
the leftover meatloaf
she hid
in her bikini bottoms.

 

[Angeline]

Thanks DA!

I really like Daphne Gottlieb. She's more hard-edged than me, but I can relate to her voice. She sounds like a cousin or someone who lived on my dorm floor in college. Must be the Jewish thing. I totally got the Jewish Aetheist Mother poem.

watch your tense and case
daphne gottlieb

oh baby
i want to be your direct object.
you know, that is to say
i want to be on the other
side of all the verbs i know
you know how to use.

i've seen you conjugate:
i touch
you touched
you heard
she knows
who cares

i'm interested in
a few decent prepositions:
above, over, inside, atop,
below, around and
i'm sure there are more
right on the tip of
your tongue.

i am ready to spend
the present perfect
splitting your infinitive
there's an art to the way you
dangle your participle and

since we're being informal it's okay to
use a few contractions, like
wasn't (going to)
shouldn't (have)
and a conjunction:
but (did it anyway)

and i'm really really glad
you're not into dependent
clauses since all i'm really
interested in is your
bad, bad grammar
and your exclamation point.