RON PADGETT ~

from  Pink Dust

          ________________

I shovel a path

from the porch to the truck

and another around the house

to the back door, stopping

to see if I'm one

of those geezers

who have heart attacks

while shoveling snow,

and when I'm finished

I'm not. Look

at all that snow out there

going down the hill

as far as the eye can see.

=

In my sleep I caressed you

and when I woke up

I caressed the memory

of the dream.

I never caressed you

in "real life."

I never even wanted to

though I was close

to liking the idea of caressing you.

If I had caressed you

I would remember it,

which is what I did last night.

=

I almost feel sorry

for the human thumb,

off to the side, alone,

and not looking much like

its four nrothers and sisters—

the real fingers.

They invite the thumb

to help them when they need it,

but otherwise keep their distance.

Just across the way, though,

there's another thumb.

In the old days

the two used to twiddle.

Now they're happy enough

just knowing they're both there.

=

It's satisfying to eat

exactly the right amount

of, say, French toast

and then stop,

for you have just

achieved a moral victory

in the middle

of the flow of time,

and though it slows away,

this victory,

you have its aftertaste,

along with butter

and genuine Vermont maple syrup

from a tree not far down the road.

=

A haiku went up into a tree

and sat there on a limb

it had just made up.

__________________________

Ron Padgett

Pink Dust

New York Review of Books, 2025

AGOTA KRISTOF ~

R E A D   M E 

     New Directions, 2023

NGUGI WA THIONG'O

 

NGUGI WA THIONG'O

Richard Perry

CZESLAW MILOSZ ~

Notebook: Bons By Lake Leman

Red beeches, shining poplars

And steep spruce behind October fog.

In the valley the lake steams. There is snow

Already on the hillsides of the other shore.

Of life, what remains? Only this light

So that the eyes blink in the sunny noon

Of such a season. People say: this is,

And no capacity, no artfulness

Can reach beyond what is.

And memory, useless, loses its power.

Kegs smell of cider. The vicar mixes lime

With a spade in front of the school.

My son runs there on the path. Boys carry

Sacks of chestnuts gathered on the slope.

If I forget thee, Jerusalem,

Says the prophet, let my right hand wither.

Underground tremors shake what is.

Mountains crack and forests break.

Touched by what was and what will be,

All that is crumbles into dust.

Violent, clean, the world is again in ferment

And neither ambition nor memory ceases.

Autumnal skies, the same in childhood,

In adulthood and old age. I won't

Stare at you. And you, landscapes,

Nourishing our hearts with mild warmth,

What poison dwells in you that you seal our lips,

Makes us sit with folded arms and the look

Of sleepy animals? Whoever finds order,

Peace, and an eternal moment in what is

Will vanish without a trace. Do you agree then

To abolish what is, and pluck from movement

The eternal moment as a gleam

On the current of the black river? I do.

— Bons, 1953

____________________________

Czeslaw Milosz

Poet in the New World

Poems, 1946-1953

TRANSLATED BY ROBERT HASS AND DAVID FRICK

Ecco, 2025

I DREAM OF JONI (MITCHELL) ~

 

R E A D   M E

     Gallery Books

      2025

FARID MATUK ~

 

Redolent

I'm alone, I'm told,

And decorated in English script

With eyes available, with no claim to the words

But with flowers on flowers shipped

From Bogota's savanna

Helping me talk as one of a people

With occasions to mark, viscously rolling

About each other, having forgotten

The mannered European flower code,

The local eucalyptus,

Or bright dogs that range at night,

The ground floor of my position

Holds no dictionary or science

That can really name the flowers

I'm not pointing

Because they're so obviously opening

Even then, trying to stop

Being these people

I'm not along saying

Back something like "dark

of flowers" or "stones to swallow"

We're not inside the words

No interviews

____________________

Farid Matuk

Moon Mirrored Indivisible

University of Chicago Press, 2025

MARCEL OPHULS ~

M A R C E L   O P H U L S

1927 ~ 2025

JOHN MONTAGUE ~

  

Windharp

                for Patrick Collins

The sounds of Ireland,

that restless whispering

you never get away

from, seeping out of

low bushes and grass,

heatherbells and fern,

wrinkling bog pools,

scraping tree branches,

light hunting cloud,

sound hounding sight,

a hand ceaselessly and stroking

the landscape, till

the valley gleams

like the pile upon

a mountain pony's coat.

_________________

John Montague

Collected Poems

Wake Forest, 1982

SLIM WILLET TONIGHT ~

 

  1952

KYUNG ME: COPY KITTY ~

 

K Y U N G    M E

    Graphic Novel

MICHAEL ROEMER ~

 

M I C H A E L   R O E M E R

Berlin, 1928 ~ Townshend, Vermont 2025

        Eric Robert/Sygma, via Getty Images

SUSAN BROWNMILLER ~

 

Ms. Brownmiller, center, with Gloria Steinem, left, and Bella Abzug in 1979 speaking about the organization Women Against Pornography. She believed pornography was a major contributor to sexual violence.Credit...Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

S U S A N    B R O W N M I L L E R

Brooklyn on Feb. 15, 1935 ~ NYC May 24, 2025

WANTED MAN ~

 

     Bob Dylan's

     May 24, 1941

     Duluth, MN

THE DOUBLE LIFE OF BOB DYLAN, VOLUME 2 ~

R E A D   M E 

Not "the last word", Bob Dylan will have that —

but after 836 pages of shadowing Dylan for over a

half-century, I read every page, and it was

worth it to almost go blind.

LYN HEJINIAN ~

 

R E A D   M E

     Wesleyan, 2023

ROBERT PETE WILLIAMS ~

 

     Arhoolie Records

Producer: Chris Strachwitz Producer: Harry Oster

FOREVER ALICE NOTLEY ~

 

November 8, 1945 Bisbee ~ May 19, 2025 Paris

A L I C E   N O T L E Y    I N T E R V I E W

         Photograph by Nigel Beale / The Biblio File

BOB ARNOLD'S ~ WHILE ALIVE ~

Secret Love

Tucked inside the large

wheel well of the old fire

truck is the robin's nest

Painting

She is walking

in a soft blue dress

through splashed summer

grass and I can watch

her from faraway come closer

a bell-shaped bag with our breakfast

swings lightly in her hand and

I still can't believe that I

have known her forever

and may meet her again

_____________________________________________

New, perfect bound, 115 pages of poems

with an introduction by Margaret Randall

Limited:

$20

plus $5 shipping

by Paypal or check

_______________________________

LONGHOUSE

P.O. Box 2454

West Brattleboro

Vermont

05303

MARIE-NOELLE AGNIAU ~

Escapade (17)

The poem has come to speak to you

of things that are not yet there.

Escapade (51)

    . . .come get a kiss from me,

I have plenty, put cool water in my mouth,

lodge the obscure in me, the heights,

and in your abundance ground

the unstable air, come to me, be devoured,

and assuage my

hideous, hideous, hideousness. . .

Escapade (54)

    Nazareth, Pontacole, great disorders, punishment

    Pruning shears where the sun shines, butterfly dried like a

fruit on exhibit, warmth, veranda, your cheeks are all red, school-

yards, an empty square on every floor.

You knock at my door on a rocking horse.

Escapade (55)

    Take off your gardening gloves and come between my thighs.

They harbor more than one fold. A second.

The light. Our Eden is a meadow: still, like the calves.

                        Chante-Merle is jealous

of my long musculature.

Escapade (56)

        Wind shifted from shoulder to shoulder

like a heavy backpack,

earth in flight in one corner of the rear-view mirror,

here I am, back in place.

The broken white of millstones. Your cry routs the phantoms.

I wear your clothes. Naked without my bracelet. And always come

to see you in the same dress and my mane like almond milk.

Escapade (57)

You make animals flee. You panic them with your voice.

It waits for me, mischievous: it waits for me despite the world.

A cut on the foot prevents me from fleeing

faster than the bullet you've made your target. Big

as a hairpin. Although. . .

                                A stride's distance between two bodies.

Escapade (58)

We call for the grand telescopes to see Venus

in front of the sun. A large pair of glasses

and aluminum foil.

What are we supposed to see? The shepherd's star. A day lasting

months. There the sky. There the books. The faces, a black room.

Escapade (59)

            As a beast, I'm afraid of me.

Even in thought. A rubber band holds back my shirt and all sounds.

___________________

The Escapades

Marie-Noelle Agniau

World Poetry, 2024

translated by Jesse Hover Amar

A.B. SPELLMAN ~

 

Kansas City Blues, 1934

Coleman (Bean) Hawkins Hung Up 

      Seeing is believing, but hearing is a bitch.

      Lester "Prez" Young

                        in '34 america partied wet again

                        & you didn't have to hide your booze

                        not that pendergast's kay cee

                        ever tried life dry

                  the Cherry Blossom

was the hot new spot

its japanese motif flashed

red & white flowers

in the wallpaper & in the kimonos

of the fine brown geishas who served

& flirted for tips

bill basie from jersey swung the house band

& when fletcher henderson & his boys

hit town they all fell by

& coleman "bean" hawkins

founder & absoloute monarch

of the tenor sax

made the dauntless error

of sitting in

bean didn't know the kay cee tenors

so they lined up on his ass

                                            herschel evans

hawkins' texas tenor progeny

deep voiced & blowing blue note thunderstorms

stretched him all the way out

& would not be cut

next came the mighty ben "frog" webster

a peer coleman didn't know he had

whose breathy chain of azure dreams

fell gracefully out of each other

on their way from the root to the new

& then

             o shit what winging hell is this?

                                                                 lester young

sax cocked at 45 degrees

the cool voice that fired the hottest sounds

tone light enough to ride

across the room on clouds of smoke

five choruses to warm up but then

& then & then & then a new indigo lyric

flowed over the joint

without floor or ceiling

                                       mary lou williams' sleep

was broken by frog webster's tap on her window

"wake up pussycat

coleman hawkins is hungup at the Cherry Blossom

& all the piano players are sweated out"

& there she found great bean in his singlet

shirt neatly folded on the chair

searching his horn for a lick

that would win this all night chase

he never found it

                             the music

never closed in '34 kansas city

Jim Crow

so there never can be a question of where you walk

you must get the hell off the sidewalk

if a white person approaches

elevators put you much too close to us

go to the freight lift as that is what you are

at the bus & train stations you will be in the colored waiting room

even if it costs us twice as much to maintain one

use the colored window at the post office

& callon the colored public telephone so we won't have

nigger earwax rubbing on our ears & nigger breath

laid near our mouths

if you reach an intersection before a white person

wait for the white car to go through before proceeding

& never pass a white driver on the road you arrogant bastard

any accident with a white driver is your fault as you know

never speak first to a white person or contradict a white person

or be first to offer your hand to a white person

never speak to or look at a white woman unless you want to be      chopped up

& barbecued

park in the colored parking space across the street

if we have to drag your thieving ass to court

swear on the colored bible as the testaments

& gospels don't mean the same for you & us

god will explain this when you die & your black soul

goes to whatever garbage dump nigger souls go to

___________________________

A.B. Spellman

Between the Night and Its Music:

New and Selected Poems

Wesleyan, 2024