A Longhouse Birdhouse: 03/01/2016

Thursday, March 31, 2016

Wednesday, March 30, 2016

B L A C K     P R E S I D E N T

If a black man could be president

Could a white man be his slave?

Could a sinner enter heaven

By uttering his name?

If the terminator is my governor

Could a cowboy be my king?

When shall the cavalry enter Deadwood

And save my prince?

An exo-cannibal eats her enemies

An indo-cannibal eats his friends

I'd rather starve myself silly

Than to make amends

Blood on the altar       Blood on the lamb

Blood in the chalice

Not symbolic        but fresh

_____________________

Marilyn Chin
Hard Love Province
Norton 2014

Tuesday, March 29, 2016

STARLEP SIGNS ~

Monday, March 28, 2016

BOB ARNOLD ~

sweetheart

photo ~ bob arnold

Love and Landscape

Don’t ask us how we crossed the saltwater marsh

Grasses were high and easy under foot

The last stream was spanned by a driftwood plank

Thrown carefully into the muck

I didn’t sink and you didn’t sink

And when we came to ocean

Skittering of sandpipers

You held your dress and walked into the spray

It must have been also the sudden daylight that I loved

What I Hear

This river water is

The warm breath of

Her whisper, what I hear —

The brown and white flurry

Of her thin clothing

The sweat of handwork

That musses the long

Blonde hair — dirt across

The forehead, may I wash

It off? thicken my hands

In that hair, kiss what I love

Away from our work and bathing

Part whisper and part water

Hummingbird

Rarely pausing

Though I have seen

It stop the flutter

Of its amazing

Wings and perch

Nearly invisible

On a wire against

The evening sky —

And be sighted —

And being very

Still, be thought

Of as not there

How We Build

It is a day

Of sawing slab wood

Splitting

Then stacking

And be done

Tucking away insulation

Fixing windows

Sharpening every tool

The happy moment

Is there are still

Small grasshoppers

In the slip of meadow

That it is 28 degrees

At 7 this morning

And I wash your hair

In one bucket of

Strong spring water —

There is nothing like it

__________________________

Bob Arnold

WHERE RIVERS MEET

Sunday, March 27, 2016

SO LONG, JIM HARRISON ~

J I M H A R R I S O N

(Grayling, Michigan 1937~ Patagonia, Arizona 2016)

Bird Nightmares

The worst dream ever that all the birds in the world died overnight.

Science couldn't figure it out but then a humble graduate student

from Caltech said that a prodigious number of quasar particles were

speeding toward earth at 5,0000 miles per second. These particles sup-

posedly pass through us harmlessly from a galaxy that had a black

hole the equal in power to five billion suns. Is God thinking too big? I

wondered. So the birds were destroyed by this surge in cosmic power.

Bird-watching groups committed suicide en masse. They were in a

medieval hell without birds. It was soon discovered that the quasars

were reducing human intelligence by a fatal half. Minor wars broke

out everywhere in the world. Luckily no one was bright enough to

press the red button. Dogs ate dogs. Married couples murdered each

other in great numbers to no surprise. Animals went berserk, unlike

us they couldn't adjust to being stupid. People were reduced to read-

ing poetry because it was shorter. A raven on the verge of death said

to me, "Why did you do this to us?" The same question they always

ask us. A few swallows were found in Brazil deep in a cove behind a

giant waterfall. Brazil kept these for themselves, wanting to be the

only country with birds. There was money in it. Thousands died try-

ing to visit the birds. The waterfall made Niagara look like a trickle.

Many stayed with the birds until they starved to death.

___________________________

JIM HARRISON
Dead Man's Float
Copper Canyon Press 2016

Jim Harrison's New York Times obituary

Thomas McGuane on Jim Harrison

LIFTING HEADS OUT OF THE SAND ~ ~

WHY BERNIE SANDERS

SHIRLEY HAZZARD ~

Columbia University Press, 2016

THE PARIS REVIEW INTERVIEW

Saturday, March 26, 2016

IF I WERE A CARPENTER ~

Friday, March 25, 2016

THE KAPLINSKI SYSTEM ~

Knutersi Christiani osas Karl Kalkun, Bastubacka Märteni osas Jaan Kaplinski
Foto Viktor Mendunen
Kersti Gailani kogu

T H E K A P L I N S K I S Y S T E M

J A A N K A P L I N S K I

Thursday, March 24, 2016

FOR, SUSAN ~

Wednesday, March 23, 2016

STEPHEN CRANE ~

_________

There is a grey thing that lives in the tree-tops

None know the horror of its sight

Save those who meet death in the wilderness

But one is enabled to see

To see the branches move at its passing

To hear at times the wail of black laughter

And to come often upon mystic places

Places where the thing has just been.

________________________

S T E P H E N C R A N E
Complete poems
THE LIBRARY OF AMERICA 2011

Tuesday, March 22, 2016

NINE POUND HAMMER ~

THE FILMS OF PHILIP TREVELYAN ~

Basil Bunting (1982)

T H E F I L M S O F

P H I L I P T R E V E L Y A N

Monday, March 21, 2016

REVERSE PRAYER ~

J I M H A R R I S O N

Reverse Prayer

I pray for Mandelstam hiding covered
with snow in a ditch. The Stalinists want to kill
him and finally succeed. I want him to escape
to Nebraska, please God. I pray for Lorca
that the assassin's guns won't work and he'll
escape like a heron flying west to the Mediterranean
then across the ocean to Michigan where he might
dislike the snow but at least he's alive.
He loved Cuba and Brazil for their music which
we don't have much of here. Please God, save him.
I even pray for Keats that he won't die
so young but get another thirty years or so
to write poems in Rome. He likes
sitting with my girlfriend on the Spanish
Steps. Can I trust him? Probably not
but I want more of his poems so I'll overlook
his behavior. And of course Caravaggio
the king of painters must live longer,
God. Why create a great painter
then let him die early?

_____________

JIM HARRISON
Dead Man's Float
Copper Canyon Press
2016

DAYS ALONE ~

Visitors

The river for weeks is low

Visitors arrive

Call it a creek

We know better

Say nothing

Next month in a downpour

Bridges wash out

Trees go down

Days of mud

No one visits

Walking From Town Between
Midnight and 4 A.M.

I must have carried out

Every peeper in this valley

Home with me, 13 miles

Trees shiver in light rain

The moon following the

Fences following

A hillside of fog lies down

Generously in an apple orchard

Here is where a few sheep

Suddenly break into a run

A horse pounds the night

Meeting you at barbed wire

What is the sound between us

It is water that has brought me back

Winter

Just before supper

I watched a storm draw in

Taking light

The trees toss

No matter

I have finished carrying

Elm from the edge of the woods

Bucked, split then stacked

I am done

Well used

Come snow

______________

Bob Arnold

Where Rivers Meet

Mad River Press

Sunday, March 20, 2016

MAEVE BRENNAN ~

Counterpoint Press, 2016

MAEVE BRENNAN REVIVAL?

CLAUDIA SEREA ~

C L A U D I A S E R E A

You made me write bad poetry for years

You must stick your head in the oven,

and fake your own death

in every poem,

that critic said.

Honey, you have to open a vein

with your pen

every time.

But I couldn't help it.

I was young

and had a breeze for heart.

I was a bright green leaf

in your arms.

Light passed through my flesh

and refracted

translucent emotions.

I wrote about birds taking flight.

Gosh, white horses,

and poplars with eyes.

For years, I wrote

about being blind.

_______________

Claudia Serea
Nothing Important Happened Today
Broadstone 2016