THE WESTERN CANON (HAROLD BLOOM) ~

 

W A L T   W H I T M A N' S   B I R T H D A Y

1819, West Hills, N.Y.

 R E A D   M E 

     Mariner 2025

WOMEN PRINTMAKERS ~

 

R E A D   M E

an excellent survey; great gift!

THE BEATLES OWN IT ~

 

Released on: 1968-11-22

Other, Producer: George Martin Composer Lyricist: Paul McCartney Composer Lyricist: John Lennon

THEA MATTHEWS ~

 

Huntsville

ALABAMA, 2021

FOR CHRISTINA NANCE

"Your great grand-daddy was a sharescropper here,"

my gramma would say, "until he disappeared."

Her skin was smooth like dark apple butter,

and her daughter, my mother, would look at me

like I was a whitetail.  The windows would crack,

and I'd be left with keloids and jars of pickled eggs.

The rest of my family were alligators.  I grew up shy.

Bobbing back and forth in my Sunday best,

I didn't talk much.  And when I did, I'd speak

as if my tongue were a sweet potato.

And when I'd sing, I sang making the Lord so proud of me.

I'd feel the Spirit rise within, swaying

my hips and arms like a church fan in one hand,

and frozen strawberry lemonade, in another.

O did I love to sing, and hum hymns in the halls,

and when my sister would say, "Sing, Christian!"

I would! I sure would, knowing my heart would be safe

for long walks away from the forest edge with my sister.

With my eyes hiding behind shelves, I knew to pose,

pay my taxes, write letters, pick passing

blackbirds as lovers.  They'd leave, I'd stay

I can smell anything., The scent of passion seeping

in through a man's skin.  I'd smell the sheets, Old Spice,

what lotion she was wearing.  I can even smell

the white lilacs on the day of my funeral.

To be a whitetail hunter, you must be so still.

I stopped singing the day I went missing.

Supposedly, I'm seen first lying on the lawn.

Supposedly, I'm then seen leaning on the hood of a cop car.

Supposedly, I take off my shoes.

                                                Twelve nights go by.

Somewhere, a whitetail hunter

dressed in camouflage smiles,

one arm around his doe for the trophy picture.

I'm found in the back of a police van.

___________________________

Thea Matthews

Grime

City Lights, 2025

MAKSHYA TOLBERT ~

 

Eastbound

At the end of their lives, the trees,

they tell us, Do not stay where you thin.

Can I speak about thinning?  As a child

I wrote these poems I called A Plant Called Hope.

I loved sick plants and wanted more for them.

I loved my mother and wanted more for her.

I lost the small book then lost my grandmother

then lost her house then almost lost my mother.

Believe me when I say plants and people find

their way. This time, I am eastbound. A stranger

has the grace to ask me, "Are you ready to come

back to Virginia?"  I stop believing in California:

it hurts too much.  Tell me to have my easterly

shoes on.  Tell me east will have me back, if

I love softly. I throw on my transition shoes.

Ask me again if I'm ready to come back

to Virginia.  This time, ask me in front of the trees.

I'll find a place of rest in the middle of things.

____________________________

MaKshya Tolbert

Shade is a place

Penguin 2025

DAVID HENDERSON, POET ~

 

D A V I D   H E N D E R S O N

    photo: No Land, 2019

IMMANUEL WILKINS BLUES BLOOD ~

 

℗ 2024 UMG Recordings, Inc.

DAVID PARK, A PAINTER'S LIFE ~

 

D A V I D   P A R K

    University of California Press

   2012

SONNY ROLLINS ~

 

S O N N Y   R O L L I N S

1 2   E S S E N T I A L   A L B U M S

SANDRA LIM

The Mountain Top

In truth, you still expect to order your life

in peace; you continue to long for glamour and passion.

To guard against the destiny

you don't really know, you work furiously.

Pensive and unathletic as you are, you have

your own intricate schedule,

with your shopping bags and appointments.

You always forget you're a bag of blood.

In sleep, these things lose

their power over you.

Meaninglessness does to you

what it can.  When you wake, you have no ideas;

the heart is momentarily light.

As you slip back in the days, you find

you haven't done with certain notions yet.

You read all the time, help yourself to a plate of oysters.

The dreams become fresh and astounding once more,

renewed by the drama of betrayal.

Even the self you take to be so real

falls away while you labor,

and the only stones left are the ones in your throat,

forgone things you have to get down fast

or else you'll choke.  At last, you don't even know

what you feel for yourself.

The mountaintop: you can keep your books

and your music there.  What's bad in one story

is good in another.  Something has made you brave.

There is more to life than writing.

Chicago

I had a little stove, and a wick of wakefulness

in my sleep.

In the mornings, I heard the train roar and go up

into the center of things.

I circulated thoughts like,

I will always be restless for crowds and lights and noise.

I would take long walks and say to no one,

When I was first married. . .

I saw all of Luis Bunuel's films inside of a week:

the darkness was delicious.  I could always almost smell it

I wasn't young, I wasn't old, I was still nibbling

at what lay before me.

And later, when I didn't have the energy to wait out the days

made unlike only by fact of the seasons,

I planned a few things, too.

Boston

When I first moved to this city to take a job,

and the snows began to fall, a slow sadness took hold of me.

Someone left a tiny pencil drawing of a sailboat

on the ceiling of my bedroom, and I would stare up at it each night,

thinking that it would eventually stir.

I met someone that first spring, and I didn't love him.

But I very much wanted someone to look at me,

in all my youth and feminine momentum.

Endings

The story has two endings.

It has one ending

and then another.

Do you hear me?

I do not have the heart

to edit the other out.

_______________

Sandra Lim

The Curious Thing

Norton 2021

HOW TO DISAPPEAR AND WHY ~

 

A wonderful read —

I knew how the great Richard Farnsworth left the body

but not quite that it didn't work quite right. Minor doesn't,

out of respect, mention his name. When I read large portions

of the book out loud to Sweetheart, after a few of these sessions

she finally said, "Who is this guy?" Maybe the best line in the

film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, but women

said it first.

[BA]

    R E A D   M E

      Sarabande Books

      2026

M O R E