contemporary poetry
Taking Off Emily Dickinson’ s Clothes
POSTED IN contemporary poetry December 13, 2013
Taking Off Emily Dickinson’ s ClothesFirst, her tippet made of tulle,
easily lifted off her shoulders and laid
on the back of a wooden chair.And her bonnet,
the bow undone with a light forward pull.Then the long white dress, a more
complicated matter with mother-of-pearl
buttons down the back,
so tiny and numerous that it takes forever
before my hands can part the fabric,
like a swimmer’s dividing water,
and slip inside.You will want to know
that she was standing
by an open window in an upstairs bedroom,
motionless, a little wide-eyed,
looking out at the orchard below,
the white dress puddled at her feet
on the wide-board, hardwood floor.The complexity of women’s undergarments
in nineteenth-century America
is not to be waved off,
and I proceeded like a polar explorer
through clips, clasps, and moorings,
catches, straps, and whalebone stays,
sailing toward the iceberg of her nakedness.Later, I wrote in a notebook
it was like riding a swan into the night,
but, of course, I cannot tell you everything –
the way she closed her eyes to the orchard,
how her hair tumbled free of its pins,
how there were sudden dashes
whenever we spoke.What I can tell you is
it was terribly quiet in Amherst
that Sabbath afternoon,
nothing but a carriage passing the house,
a fly buzzing in a windowpane.So I could plainly hear her inhale
when I undid the very top
hook-and-eye fastener of her corsetand I could hear her sigh when finally it was unloosed,
the way some readers sigh when they realize
that Hope has feathers,
that reason is a plank,
that life is a loaded gun
that looks right at you with a yellow eye.
from ” Taking Off Emily Dickinson’ s Clothes (2000)”
Billy Collins
Aimless love
POSTED IN contemporary poetry December 13, 2013
Aimless love
This morning as I walked along the lakeshore,
I fell in love with a wren
and later in the day with a mouse
the cat had dropped under the dining room table.
In the shadows of an autumn evening,
I fell for a seamstress
still at her machine in the tailor’s window,
and later for a bowl of broth,
steam rising like smoke from a naval battle.
This is the best kind of love, I thought,
without recompense, without gifts,
or unkind words, without suspicion,
or silence on the telephone.
The love of the chestnut,
the jazz cap and one hand on the wheel.
No lust, no slam of the door –
the love of the miniature orange tree,
the clean white shirt, the hot evening shower,
the highway that cuts across Florida.
No waiting, no huffiness, or rancor –
just a twinge every now and then
for the wren who had built her nest
on a low branch overhanging the water
and for the dead mouse,
still dressed in its light brown suit.
But my heart is always propped up
in a field on its tripod,
ready for the next arrow.
After I carried the mouse by the tail
to a pile of leaves in the woods,
I found myself standing at the bathroom sink
gazing down affectionately at the soap,
so patient and soluble,
so at home in its pale green soap dish.
I could feel myself falling again
as I felt its turning in my wet hands
and caught the scent of lavender and stone.
from the volume “Aimless love”
Billy Collins
Cascade
POSTED IN contemporary poetry December 13, 2013
Cascade
Waiting for a bus by The Western Infirmary
One Dreary Overcast October day.
Scanning the dirty, tenement lined streets for a 43.
Windy-empty wrappers whipping around my feet
Students and hospital visitors huddled in the shelter
In scarves and anoraks. Wrapped up against the chill.
Suddenly, something changed. Quietly. Unnoticed.
A change of wind direction perhaps or
A drop in temperature as dusk descended,
but nature chose that moment to interrupt, to inspire.
For 3 whole minutes, the trees rained down their leaves
in a multi coloured cascade of splendour
Pedestrians stopped, looked up and marvelled at the show.
They talked to each other, smiled,
enjoyed 3 minutes that rivalled the Borealis,
starling clouds or bluebell woods,
and left each other as friends, with a warm feeling
on a cold Autumn day in Glasgow.
I thought of my friend in ward 8
Bright and sharp. Beautiful in her Autumn,
And strode towards Queen Street
With a renewed Spring in my step.
from “Newbury Makar”
Thatcham Festival Poetry Competition
winner of the adult category
John Black
The Secrets of Life
POSTED IN contemporary poetry December 8, 2013
The Secrets of Life
The riptide pulled and weighed us down,
swimming in our shoals.
It bent us in our will to win,
oh weary, sorry souls.
Oh tiresome, terrifying days
when scholars moved to preach
that all of Christendom was ours,
but always out of reach.
Oh weary, sorry souls, I cried
for all of us, who’re driven,
wherein unconscious mind, so tuned,
lays bare the ego given.
Always, it seems, beyond our reach,
genetics never fail
to teach us how we must survive,
not how to trim the sail.
Ego’s given winds may blow,
but odysseys must end.
For quests beyond our human bounds,
Inferno may portend.
Just when this sea of troubles weighed
too much on mortal coil,
the magic of encircling arms
became the perfect foil.
So I reset the sails for home,
embracing Vesta’s heart;
discovered Marais’ secret strength:
in concert, ne’er apart.
from My Poetry Library
© 2013 John Anstie
Deniers deny…
POSTED IN contemporary poetry December 7, 2013
Deniers deny…
Deniers deny what they don’t understand
Believers believe what they do.
Whatever you do, whatever you say
Never confuse the two.
Those who believe what they don’t understand
Or deny what they truly believe
Are caught in a spot without any hope
Of anything new to receive.
Raymond Joy
Molten Thoughts
POSTED IN contemporary poetry December 6, 2013
Molten Thoughts
Thought waves strain and stretch
to reach the margins
where complexity
melts
in chaos.
a zillion threads turn black and dip into infinity..
In the melting pot
see a dervish dance of infinite variety
to a fractal song of individuality.
See the flux
and order in the galaxy.
Yin and yang
will gently coalesce in grey matter’s density
and yet
I like simple things
green fields that glisten with hoar frost
poetry
dappled sunlight filtered through leaves,
love .
from PoetryZoo. Abigael
Gael Bage
Walkabout
POSTED IN contemporary poetry December 6, 2013
Walkabout
I went walkabout
and you died.
I was on the other side of the world.
I cried my tears into the ocean.
Ached with grief
as I swam in crystal-blue water
and marvelled at the beauty
of the Barrier Reef.
I set a place for you
at the table that evening,
and talked to you
as if you were there with me.
You were there with me.
You rediscovered your wings
and rode on the wind
to join me
in that red and gold land
of songlines and spirits.
Your soul-self
lighter than a feather.
Our mother-daughter differences
effaced in the blink of an eye.
As I walked in the
footprints of the ancestors,
you followed me.
Whispered in my ear
as I sat saddened on the beach.
Your freedom was my consolation.
I went walkabout
and you died.
You and I planned it that way,
I guess.
Copyright © 2010 Annette Gartland
Saint Louis Lesson
POSTED IN contemporary poetry December 6, 2013
Saint Louis Lesson
Yesterday the puddle pooled its chilly molecules.
I watched it grow as former snow flowed
below the lawn to where mud offered cupped embrace
then rendered reformed crystals a softer, more reflective glaze.
By today the tiny pond projected tall pines,
invited fat robins and frisky squirrels to drink and bathe;
their stone bath and hung feeders shrugged in tired ice.
I thought I saw a spring thing happen here.
But I am from where tropics mumble nature’s metaphors,
grumble from space edge clouds and lurking swamps,
where warm and warmer dull distinction.
By afternoon another snow ended the lesson.
Rick Eyerdam
Without Words
POSTED IN contemporary poetry December 5, 2013
Without Words
I slip easily
into your company,
your silken warmth,
lets me breathe
easy.
Our minds mingle
somewhere
in space between us;
each glance surfs
into my soul
aglow
like candlelight
you envelop me
in the finest cashmere
and with
or without words
you say …
“I love you.”
so often each day
from PoetryZoo Abigael
Gael Bage
Gringo
POSTED IN contemporary poetry December 1, 2013
Gringo
Wetback. Fence-jumper. My father’s heart fists
with its yearly dying as he recalls his hired hand—
a Hispanic—burying
our tractor to its axle in a soup of snowmelt
to men who, every morning,
sit half-mooned around the greasy spoon’s table,
lifting Styrofoam cups to sunburnt lips:
hardscrabble farmers—chassis grease
gloving their hands, prove rumors
of neighbors’ gone
belly-up, face down, neighbors fenced-in
by stars. And I’m ten years old, impossibly here,
spit and image of men I’m warned to call sir,
men who’ve bottle-fed
my younger sister as tenderly as their own
daughters and they’re cursing, cursing.
It’s goddamn the weather, goddamn the busted baler,
goddamn the combine’s clutch chewed to shit
then one of the men says I would have shot
the little beaner right where he stood.
Everyone laughs.
I laugh too, although I don’t
know what spick means, beaner,
only that my father is coughing, which means
one more year, two if he’s golden,
which is nothing
to cemetery soil, the patience of the open grave.
The others stay, careless in conversation,
as if their voices were enough
to keep their small, Sunday god
from deafness. Years later, I’d land summer work
at Iowa Beef Packers pressure washing
gore from stalls, as undocumented men worked
blades, quick as flies, on the bloodletting line.
When I ask Eduardo how, lace-deep in rarefied blood,
he could open the soft machines
of bulls with a razor knife, cut away flesh
easy as a winter jacket, he presses his thumb
and index finger together like locust wings
and rubs, which means money,
which means everything.
Not surprising when Eduardo
says his younger sister, unable to speak a lick
of English, would show me her naked chest
for twenty dollars after work,
says she’d already lifted her skirt
for half the slaughterhouse
gringos. She, dressed like a Salvation
Army mannequin, led me behind the dumpsters,
unsnapped a dozen iridescent buttons,
and it was done—that fast.
Afterwards only the graceless,
shopworn cups eclipsed her breasts
that, just moments before, I’d admired
as slow fire, as her necessity’s waning gift.
She’ll never know how I once opened a book
of poems over my father’s headstone
in the blue hour and began to read the words
which sounded more like a prayer
than any prayer, as soil’s sickening
labor turned his body
deftly as erratic stone, his blood greening
blades of cemetery fescue.
Brandon Courtney
