Austin, Texas
Saturday, October 11, 2025
PHILIP LARKIN ~
Days
What are days for?
Days are where we live.
They come, they wake us
Time and time over.
They are to be happy in:
Where can we live but days?
Ah, solving that question
Brings the priest and the doctor
In their long coats
Running over the fields.
_____________________
Philip Larkin
Friday, October 10, 2025
Thursday, October 9, 2025
FORUGH FARROKHZAD ~
The Wind Will Blow Us Away
Inside my little night, alas,
the wind has a rendezvous with the leaves;
inside my little night, there is fear
and dread of desolation.
Listen.
Hear the darkness blow like wind?
I watch this prosperity through alien eyes.
I am addicted to my despair.
Listen.
Hear the darkness blow?
This minute, inside this night,
something's coming to pass. The moon
is troubled and red; clouds
are a procession of mourners waiting
to release tears upon this rooftop,
this rooftop about to crumble, to give way.
A moment,
then, nothing.
Beyond this window, the night quivers,
and the earth once again halts its spin.
From beyond this window, the eyes
of the unknown are on you and me.
May you be green, head to toe —
put your hands like a fevered memory in mine . . .
these hands that love you.
And cede your lips
like a life-warmed feeling
to the caress of my lovesick lips.
The wind will one day blow us all away.
The wind will blow us away.
____________________________
Forugh Farrokhzad
Sin, selected poems
The University of Arkansas Press 2007
Wednesday, October 8, 2025
THE TRAMP PRINTERS ~
The tramp printer was a typesetting troubadour with a story in lieu of a song, a scholarly hobo, and a master of the type case. Carrying little more than a union journeyman’s card and a few basic tools, these “itinerant” typographers criss-crossed the continent for more than a century, train-hopping from newspaper to newspaper.
To the tramp printer, personal autonomy and adventure were far more valuable than material possessions. Many of them were brilliant, literate individuals who were nevertheless compelled by a predilection for bacchanalian debauchery. The tramps helped each other over the hard places and spread the craft of printing, and always standing in solidarity with their fellow workers.
Eberhardt Press
636 SE 11th Avenue
Portland, Oregon
97214
Tuesday, October 7, 2025
Monday, October 6, 2025
LEELADHAR JAGOORI ~
I'll Come To You
crossing the bridge of the fresh grain's sweet scent
I'll come to you
just as soon as you accept my words
I'll come to you
like the cloud
that approaches the mountain summit
and swallows it
only those whose heads are raised
will be able to see it
I want to come to the desert
inside your mind
I'll come
but not like the barbarians do
and not like a bullet
striking its target
I'll come
I'll come like new life
comes to a beaten-down
exhausted soul
The Waiting Place
in the sky
the stairs of today's music
are covered with tomorrow's leaves
that we must descend
I am here
on the mountain peak
of music
hundreds of years old
the world today
is filled with the scent of
freshly dug-up earth
shaking each coal fire
from the womb
My Story
my story
is a story about
a worn spade
a shuttered factory
a rough road
my story
is a story about
rock tuned to sand
trees turned to kindling
charcoal turned to fire
my story
is a story
of endless change
For Tomorrow
deep in some sleepy world
having heard the sound of a muffled bullet
the girl is filling the vase with water
deep in some sleep world
having taken off her socks
to see how her bare feet shine
the girl is sewing a button to her shirt
deep in some sleepy world
in the forest that meets the river
a bridge
made out of windows
descends
and the girl covers it with leaves
to save
for tomorrow
________________________
Leeladhar Jagoori
What of the Earth Was Saved
TRANSLATED BY HINDI BY MATT REECK
World Poetry, 2024
Sunday, October 5, 2025
Saturday, October 4, 2025
CISCO HOUSTON TONIGHT ~
Pie in the Sky by Cisco Houston was written by Fillmore Bennett, Joe Hill and Joseph Webster and was first recorded and released by Charlie Craver in 1930
Friday, October 3, 2025
AN INDIGENOUS PRESENT ~
Plains Cree and member of the Siksika Nation
- Dream Catcher – 2015
- Archival pigment print on watercolour paper
- 81.3 x 167.6 cm
Dream Catcher is part of the larger body of work I produced titled Wanderings (2015); the themes within these images are those related to wandering, exploring the unknown and considering the limitation and possibilities of the self. A red thread or colour red follows me throughout the images, illustrating this indivisible connection to home or the past, which informs me of who I am and possibly who I may become. This constant reminder of the inescapable factors that make us who we are – our past, our circumstance or our genes – can sometimes anchor us to a contrasting certainty. Tethered as we may be to the past and all that makes us who we are, I still seek a world of boundless possibilities of who I may become. I’ve created dream-like images with imaginary creatures to act as my guides to enable the viewer to get lost within their own thoughts and return to their child-like nature, to be free from restrictions and to be the person we dream to be.
In 2022, the Santa Clara Pueblo artist Rose B. Simpson made her public debut with “Counterculture," a series of 12 cast concrete structures in Williamstown, Mass.Commissioned by Art & the Landscape, a program of The Trustees, Massachusetts. Courtesy of the artist, Jessica Silverman, San Francisco, and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York. Photo by Stephanie Zollshan.
AN INDIGENOUS PRESENT (Big NDN Press/DelMonico Books
Thursday, October 2, 2025
RAFAEL ALBERTI ~
The Angel of Sand
Seriously, in your eyes the sea was two children spying on me,
afraid of knots and harsh words.
Two children of the night, terrible, expelled from heaven,
whose childhood was a robbery of ships and a crime of suns and moons.
Sleep now. Close your eyes.
I saw that the true sea was a boy who jumped naked,
inviting me to a plate of stars and a bed of algae.
Yes, yes! My life would be, already was, a detached coast.
But you, waking, drowned me in your eyes.
Living Snow
Without lying, tell me what lie of snow walked mute through my dream!
Voiceless snow, with blue eyes perhaps, slow and with hair.
When did the snow, looking distracted, push coils of fire?
It walked mute, whitewashing the unanswered questions,
the forgotten and crossed out sepulchers, to launch new memories.
Giving to ashes, already airborne, the shape of boneless light.
_________________________________
Rafael Alberti
Concerning the Angels
translated from the Spanish by John Murillo
Four Way Books, 2025
Wednesday, October 1, 2025
NEW! ELECTRIC BOAT by PAUL McDONOUGH ~
Paul McDonough
Electric Boat, A Collection of Atomic Shipyard Poems
Longhouse
2026
available now
New, perfect bound, 142 pages
Poetry & Photographs
$24
$6 shipping to US addresses
by Paypal or check
Please use our email address of longhousepoetry@gmail.com
LONGHOUSE
P.O. Box 2454
West Brattleboro
Vermont
05303
~
"The poems have the sea edge to them, the rime, the flotsam, the hurt of working in the open, the science of something ever larger than us. It isn’t simply the poems a poet wants to make, but that is essential, and more the overall aura. It is the aura missing from most poets and music today. They don’t live in their work, and your book has it, along with some fright to what you are living with."
"The photos, by the way, are essential to the text to swim the mind and eye, and it does."
— Bob Arnold
~
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
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