From Verse Daily...

City Beach


Your mouth said so long from so long said high
tide's not a timid girl is what is missing.
I could clap flippers skip the asterisk
and hop a plane. Some mouths say nets and not
nets to trust around anyone's daughter.
Ask what's on tap in the shape of a ship.
A mouth in a bottle is no kiss sealed
to sender. In it remainders and no answer
and a thin relic at that. Any ocean
is old enough to know better. Your mouth
to mine is departures arrivals a flawless ledger.
Some mouths say swim at your own risk say salt
again is stingy dinner. My mouth remains
a faithful measure. Some mouths say shark
in shallow water but I suspect the waves
wash in on empty and someone had to
truck in all this sand from elsewhere here.




Copyright © 2009 Dora Malech All rights reserved
from Poetry London
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission

stays for a long time on each cornstalk

From today's post at The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor:

 

Autumn Waiting

by Tom Hennen

Cold wind.
The day is waiting for winter
Without a sound.
Everything is waiting—
Broken-down cars in the dead weeds.
The weeds themselves.
Trees.
Even sunlight
Is in no hurry and stays
For a long time
On each cornstalk.
Blackbirds are silent
And sit in piles.
From a distance
They look like
Something
Spilled on the road.

"Autumn Waiting" by Tom Hennen, from Looking into the Weather. © Westerheim Press, 1983.

I feel really stupid writing this, but I just finished the fifth and final season of The Wire, and I am just flat-out depressed. 

Like I just feel like the world is full of nothing, no hope.

It's fucked up that I feel this after watching television when this kind of shit happens every second in reality, but it's something I feel, I don't know.

his new, expensive shoes

This Morning

 

I wish I had tossed the roses,
rinsed the vase of stench,
soaped and scrubbed it clean.
That kind of end to it.
Not this chitchat
in the waiting room, our son
in the OR, again, being
saved. We too, again,
sitting it out, after years,
the same straight-back chairs.
You seem fragile, he says.
I cannot bear his beard,
his new, expensive shoes.

Barbara Helfgott Hyett

Rift
University of Arkansas Press

Back from SF.  I had a wonderful time, but I miss my mommy and Emmie terribly. 

It's so calming at home, too.  The water, the green. 

And now I won't have a home. 

I'm so excited--I start work on Thursday.  I'm nervous, but I can't wait.

Flew home today, sleepy and dirty.  Need a shower.  Good to see mom, Em.

a good way to fall is with a rope to catch you

I've thought about this, falling in love.

In a Beautiful Country

 

A good way to fall in love
is to turn off the headlights
and drive very fast down dark roads.

Another way to fall in love
is to say they are only mints
and swallow them with a strong drink.

Then it is autumn in the body.
Your hands are cold.
Then it is winter and we are still at war.

The gold-haired girl is singing into your ear
about how we live in a beautiful country.
Snow sifts from the clouds

into your drink. It doesn't matter about the war.
A good way to fall in love
is to close up the garage and turn the engine on,

then down you'll fall through lovely mists
as a body might fall early one morning
from a high window into love. Love,

the broken glass. Love, the scissors
and the water basin. A good way to fall
is with a rope to catch you.

A good way is with something to drink
to help you march forward.
The gold-haired girl says, Don't worry
 
about the armies, says, We live in a time
full of love. You're thinking about this too much.
Slow down. Nothing bad will happen.

Kevin Prufer

Poetry
October 2009