Tuesday, September 30, 2025
BOBBY CAIN ~
Mr. Cain, center, leading his fellow Black students to the entrance of Clinton High School, the formerly all-white school they were integrating, in the fall 1956.Thomas J. O’Halloran/Library of Congress
1939 ~ 2025, Tennessee
Monday, September 29, 2025
LENA KHALAF TUFFAHA ~
Variations on a Last Chance
The fence does not hold.
The wire sheds its barbs, softens to silk thread.
The snipers run out of bullets.
The desert, as it always has, of its volition, blooms.
The snipers are distracted, sexting their girlfriends.
The snipers' eyes are blinded by smoke from our burning tires.
The snipers wonder if they will ever see the end of us.
The fence does not hold.
The snipers take a lunch break.
The bullets melt in their chambers.
The bullets disintegrate when they reach the word PRESS on Yasser's vest.
The news finally breaks the stillness around us.
The bullets will themselves away from the boy's skull.
The boy's sandals sprout wings and he hovers above the bullets' path.
The snipers lose interest in shooting at medics evacuating the wounded.
The snipers make eye contact with one of us and see.
There are enough saline bags at the hospital.
The snipers shoot and miss and miss and miss.
We outrun the snipers.
We bury the dead at the fence, let their roses reach the other side of home.
_________________________
LENA KHALAF TUFFAHA
Something About Living
University of Akron Press, 2024
Sunday, September 28, 2025
Saturday, September 27, 2025
Friday, September 26, 2025
CESAR VALLEJO ~
CESAR VALLEJO (Peru: 1892- Paris- 1938)
Translations by Michael Smith and Valentino Gianuzzi
THE NINE MONSTERS
So, unfortunately
pain grows in the world at all times,
it grows at thirty minutes per second, step by step,
and the nature of pain is twice the pain,
and the condition of martyrdom, carnivorous, ravenous,
is twice the pain
and the task of the purest herb, twice
the pain
and the goodness of being, our double pain.
Never, human men,
was there so much pain in the heart, in the lapel, in the wallet,
in the glass, in the butchery, in the arithmetic!
Never so much painful affection,
never did distance attack so close,
never did the fire
play better its role of dead coldness!
Never, sir minister of health, was health
so fatal
nor the headache extract so much forehead from the forehead!
And the furniture had in its drawer, pain,
and the heart, in its drawer, pain,
and the lizard, in its drawer, pain.
Misfortune grows, brother men,
faster than machines, at the rate of ten machines; it grows
with Rousseau’s cattle, with our beards;
evil flourishes for inexplicable reasons
and is a flood with liquids of its own,
with clay of its own, with a solid cloud of its own!
Suffering inverts positions, gives a function
in which the aqueous humour is vertical
to the pavement,
the eye is seen, and this ear heard,
and this ear tolls nine bells at the hour
of lightning, and nine guffaws
at the hour of wheat, and nine female sounds
at the hour of crying, and nine chants
at the hour of hunger and nine thunders
and nine lashes, less a scream.
Pain snatches us, brother men,
from behind, in profile,
drives us mad in the cinemas,
nails us to the gramophones
and unnails us on our beds, falls perpendicularly
on our tickets, on our letters;
and it’s very severe to suffer, one can pray . . .
And because
of pain, some
are born, others grow, others die,
and others are born but don’t die, others
without having been born, die, and others
are neither born nor die (these are the majority).
And also because
of suffering, I am sad
to my head, and sadder still to my ankle,
seeing the bread crucified, the turnip
bloodied,
crying, the onion,
the cereal, generally just fl our,
the salt turned to dust, the water fleeing,
the wine an ecce-homo,
the snow so pale, the sun so ardent!
Human brothers, how can I not
tell you that I cannot bear,
cannot bear do with so much drawer,
so much minute, so much
lizard and so much
inversion, so much distance and so much thirst for thirst!
Sir minister of health, what’s to be done?
Oh, unfortunately, human men,
there is much, brothers, so much to be done!
____________________
Also see:
The Eternal Dice: Selected Poems
Cesar Vallejo
translated by Margaret Jull Costa
New Directions, 2025
Thursday, September 25, 2025
KURT VILE TONIGHT ~
Released on: 2023-11-17
Vocals, Associated Performer, Acoustic Guitar, Composer Lyricist, Producer: Kurt Vile
Electric Guitar, Associated Performer, Lap Steel Guitar: Rob Laakso
Drums, Associated Performer: Stella Mozgawa
Associated Performer: Chris Cohen
Recording Engineer, Studio Personnel: Gabe Wax
Mixer, Studio Personnel: Rob Schnapf
Engineer, Studio Personnel: Matt Schuessler
Mastering Engineer, Studio Personnel: Jessica Thompson
Wednesday, September 24, 2025
JUDITH HEMSCHEMEYER ~
Vocation
The day I finally decided
To be a poet — yesterday —
I found I had everything I needed:
A clean pair of jeans,
Half a bottle of bourbon
My four-inch brass policeman paperweight
My sandstone Cochiti mountain lion fetish
With its soul strapped to its side
And an owl's cough-ball,
A bundle of matchsticks mousebones
Floating in a puff of fur.
So in My Dream
You killed yourself
so in my dream
I introduced your husband
to a new, exciting woman
who was you.
Plea
To my friend
who can no longer see
animals in the clouds
and takes it
as a sign of madness
Hang on. Keep watch.
They must be gathering now
over the Pacific,
great, soft herds of elephants,
cirrous alligators
and horses being pulled apart
with no pain.
_____________________________
Judith Hemschemeyer
Very Close and Very Slow
Wesleyan University Press, 1975
Tuesday, September 23, 2025
Monday, September 22, 2025
GARY HOTHAM ~
from Our Backs To the Wind
_____________________________________
whatever
the rain decides
the river takes
near the mountain top —
the wind doesn't stay
on the path
another day of rain
not even stepping over
the puddles now
holding up the snowfall
the park bench
in her memory
squeezing
into our universe
cherry blossoms
New Year's day
the party hat not made
to stay on
yard sale—
a bookmark
falls out
the somewhere else
of this summer night —
the firefly in her glass jar
Dad's funeral —
the same knot
in my tie
in both hands —
the water she carries
from the ocean
another room
the song she sings
to herself
_____________________
Gary Hotham
Our Backs To the Wind
selected haiku
Brooks Books 2025
Sunday, September 21, 2025
THE SONG (MARGO PRICE, FARM AID 2025) ~
She was made to sing it
Billy Strings finished off the instrumental with the band —
String's own set is the magnificent one — waiting
to post his set once it shows
Saturday, September 20, 2025
ISHMAEL REED ~
The Banishment
We don't want you here
Your crops grow better than ours
We don't want you here
You're not one of our kind
We'll drive you out
As though you were never here
Your names, family and history
We'll make them all disappear
We don't want you here
You look too good on Sunday
We don't want you here
You work too hard on Monday
We don't want you here
Your children are learning in school
We don't want you here
Why aren't they behind a mule?
We don't want you here
Your women dress so fine
We don't want you here
Your gain means
Our decline
Why aren't your men
Stooped and bent
The way they should be
They walk about town
As though they were free
We don't want you here
Go away and never return
We don't want you here
Your homes, farms and
Churches will burn
We don't want you here
__________________________
Ishmael Reed
Why The Black Hole Sings The Blues
Poems 2007-2020
Dalkey Archive, 2020
Reed's masterpiece "The Jazz Martyrs"
is included here
Friday, September 19, 2025
Thursday, September 18, 2025
Wednesday, September 17, 2025
ROBERTO TEJADA ~
Grassland
Flax color patches of flash-flame
vast little grassland
disturbance come
in splinter light
intractable
*
morning dispersed
on encrusted earth
in gravel shade
casting mineral
hold given over
to whatever survives
*
misgiven views
in diagonal glare
to the far mount
above the patter
of pronghorn
luted beyond
the lashing Tyvek
house-wrap
from a single wide
exoskeleton
*
over winter disruption
given on proximity
long unbroken
underspread
of ground
in miles
to the great elevation
the other name
for eye and throat
for land tilt
delivery
*
here is the fiend
of family
ferocity
here is the god
to reversing
genesis
as again to grace
once-broken
blades of agave
with blooming
_____________________
Roberto Tejada
Carbonate of Copper
Fordham University Press, 2025
Tuesday, September 16, 2025
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