Tuesday, January 15, 2019
Monday, January 14, 2019
HEAVEN LAKE (16) ~
Man-Made
What a noise!
Pots that won’t
The Lifetime
What does a writer do all day?
She or he writes
Some are successful
Most are not
Even if a book or books are published
Many millions of books go by the wayside
So now what is the writer but someone who writes and fails
Books are forgotten or no books are published at all
Years and even a lifetime could be wasted
Something else is accomplished
One becomes a sales clerk
While still writing at odd hours
The writing goes nowhere
But the sales clerk is very popular
People leave you very happy, bag in hand
You try to write a book about a sales clerk
No one cares
They’d rather you be the sales clerk
Who sells caramel candy
Because you are beautiful
Someone goes home and melts
That caramel in their mouth and
Smears the caramel across
Their teeth and lips
Cabin Life
On the coldest day of winter
25 below
just to get-by
and it’s all about just getting-by
we took the two largest empty potato chip bags
in the house and fit them over our heads
making us
two feet-taller
scaring all
our cats
The Muse
I can’t get anything done
until she is out of my hair!
her eyes are that blue
her hair goes with the sun
the flash of her flowered dress in the air
and even when she is away
only momentarily, an errand to town
I’m thinking now of what I’m missing
here where I work in a woods ditch with shovel
laying in stone stairs which may as well be to the sea
since she’ll visit on her return and I’m grubby and
she steps lightly down each new step before anyone
saying how lovely it all is and all is fine
——————————————————
Bob Arnold
Heaven Lake
Longhouse 2018
Sunday, January 13, 2019
GEORGE KALAMARAS ~
The Journey Inward (Body Time No More)
From that which refuses my moth, I replace my hands.
From that which instigates the winter storms of my eyes, I open
an ear.
On the pillow, a spot of snail blood, spittle of the vanish auk.
Where my left ear had lain in the moist warm, all noise of the world
was muffled.
Draw a bath of lightly caressed playing cards.
Ask me for the king of clubs, the jack of night sweats.
There is a place in my heart even I have not touched with
diamonds.
Try if you must, but know that—in extreme quiet—you too might
get quashed.
A divide opens up along the shelf of Antarctic ice.
On one side of the deck, it is cold. On the other, cold.
I do not speak any longer in ice moths or in irreparable twos.
I will not solve the dichotomy of this winged pain, even with an
obstinate mouth.
Nor will I salve my own blue-bolstered bruise with dream talk and
shame.
I am not talking time any longer but a continental drift of ice
diamonds, devoid of the clutch of a kind hand or mouth.
_________________
George Kalamaras
That Moment of Wept
SurVision Books (Ireland)
2018
Saturday, January 12, 2019
ALEJANDRA PIZARNIK ~
Your lover has taken you in
with my eyes which are in his eyes
and which keep watch day and night
in his eyelids I sleep until dawn
in his eyes I've come to know
a last nakedness
Don't forget your eyes
because I inhabit them
——————————
Alejandra Pizarnik
The Galloping Hour
translated by Patricio Ferrari and Forrest Gander
New Directions 2018
Friday, January 11, 2019
RAE ARMANTROUT ~
Practicing
As the sun finds you,
upstanding,
knotted
at intervals,
gray-green
As you were, limbs
aloft and
eagerly splayed,
still practicing
the old faith
as I do —
these words,
pushed in the fore,
posing
——————————
RAE ARMANTROUT
Wobble
Wesleyan University Press
2018
Thursday, January 10, 2019
Wednesday, January 9, 2019
Tuesday, January 8, 2019
Monday, January 7, 2019
HEAVEN LAKE (15) ~
Make
New bowls
Make
Gentleman
no one else does —
so the dog rises
as one enters
Landscape
In the right place
at the right time
with the right lighting
and in the breeze
you could fall in love
Floating World
It was a dreamy time for you and me
The weather said so
The pair of windows that opened like shutters
The easy turn of the latch
Through the opening light dazzled
Something like your hair
Many years married please know
Is many years loved
A small bird with flashing orange wings
Sang from a tree that grew to our window
In this hut we built with our own hands
Some would call it a fairytale
These days pass by as light becomes darkness
There is next to nothing to show for it
How They Met
He took what clothes he needed washing, including the ones he was wearing, and she put everything into their old washing machine and it was done. She then took the fresh wash spun dry and carried it outdoors and hung it on the clothesline for the afternoon. Then she went to town to do errands. He cut a lot of grass. When they met up again the clothes were dry. He cut up fruit for their supper and she went out and brought the clothes in sun kissed from the line. She folded everything neat as a pin and rested it on the back of the sofa near the hallway door to the upstairs. He went carefully through the clothes and decided he needed everything of his right there downstairs. He left the clothes alone. Hours later, on her way upstairs, she took all the clothes with her up the stairs. When she got upstairs something about it all told her his clothes were supposed to stay downstairs. She brought the clothes downstairs.
He was happy to see her.
————————————————
Bob Arnold
Heaven Lake
Longhouse 2018
Sunday, January 6, 2019
Saturday, January 5, 2019
LAURIE DUGGAN (Martial) ~
III | XXVI
Real estate,
you own it all.
Money,
gold plate,
Josiah Wedgwood,
the Australian film industry,
it's yours.
Your record collection,
stunning,
and your books.
Genius?
Unquestionably yours.
But your wife?
A few drinks
and she's anybody's.
———————————
Laurie Duggan
The Epigrams of Mistral
Pressed Wafer 2010
Friday, January 4, 2019
Thursday, January 3, 2019
Wednesday, January 2, 2019
LI SHANGYIN ~
Night Rain, Sent North
You ask when I'll be back but there is no when.
In the hills night rains are flooding autumn pools.
When will we sit and trim the wicks in the west window
and talk about the hills and night and rain?
Frost and Moon
I can hear the migrating geese. There are no cicadas here,
a hundred feet up in the tower from where the water meets the sky.
The Bluegreen Lady and the Pale Fairy don't mind the cold:
that's just the moon and frost bickering over who's prettier.
Parting Thoughts
The dance before the brook. I'm out of breath.
My heart is sore at Midnight's songs.
I've never found Canyon Cloud.
What do you want from ditchwater?
The geese have stopped delivering messages.
The bamboo grove by the Xiang is stained with tears.
I will never see the color of your face
unless I rely on these ripples.
—————————————
Li Shangyin
edited and translated by Chloe Garcia Roberts,
Lucas Klein and AC Graham
(New York Review of Books, 2018)
Tuesday, January 1, 2019
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