daydreaming w/ Bob Arnold
Bloodaxe Books, 2024
___________________________________
Land Flown So Few
Now known nor new, one mend or mind attune
how so for more to do, where lend and saw
by law in sound, to fend or done where found,
to send in pair and bond, low or snow-bound,
land flown so few, as near to kind or there
and bind, appear by care in fund. Or end.
Summons
Keep me from going to sleep too soon
Or if I go to sleep too soon
Come wake me up. Come any hour
Of night. Come whistling up the road.
Stomp on the porch. Bang on the door.
Make me get out of bed and come
And let you in and light a light.
Tell me the northern lights are on
And make me look. Or tell me clouds
Are doing something to the moon
They never did before, and show me.
See that I see. Talk to me till
I'm half as wide awake as you
And start to dress wondering why
I ever went to bed at all.
Tell me the walking is superb.
Not only tell me but persuade me.
You know I'm not too hard persuaded.
_______________________
Robert Francis
A Certain Distance
Pourboire Press 1976
To That Room
And I return to that town,
to that house,
to that room,
the bones of the dead beneath me;
they know me
though I do not know them.
I'm surrounded by the books and papers
of other dead;
I know them
though they do not know me.
This earth: the remains of strangers
naturalized by death.
I return
because one must return,
because the dead must rise again.
A Distant Country
How many bedrooms do I need
to get a bit of sleep?
How many chairs
to sit myself down?
How many roads
to walk back to you,
my distant country?
This time I've gone
and I'm not coming back.
Your job, now, is to slip out,
lovesick and afraid,
and come in search of me.
Lightning Writes Poetry
Lightning never sits down at a table
to write poetry,
yet it is poetry's only embodiment.
It lights up the whole universe
then disappears.
What poet hasn't dreamed
of becoming lightning?
As For My Singing
"Sing, sing before we slit your throat."
Did they think fear
would disturb my song?
True, I was scared of life,
but death
is the last thing I'm afraid of.
Why would a free man fear
to meet a friend?
So let our embrace be tinged with blood.
As for my singing in this moment,
I want it to be perfect.
My freedom lies in this:
No matter what they do,
the murderers still
cannot disturb my song.
______________
Najwan Darwish
No One Will Allow You Tomorrow
translated from the Arabic by Kareem James Abu-Zeid
Yale Univ. Press, 2024
A small Michigan community banded together to help a beloved local bookstore move its stock to a new storefront
Little House Under the Hill
He said his grandma was a twin and she
and her sibling were born out of wedlock.
Their mother was a sister at that
place up on the hill. Folks there were
celibate. The twins were born in that
cottage hidden in the woods below.
They never knew their father, shame of it.
Could have been one of the brothers although
most of them were too old. Most likely
one of them hired hands come up from town,
the herdsman or that travelling farrier.
You never know, makes you wonder now,
how many of us here have kin that age
who sprung to life from that little cottage.
___________________
Of Course the Money Musk
Dudley Laufman
Wind in the Timothy Press
2025
Here's a stone wall I built in March 2025 when two days of thaw slipped in for a moment and I got to work. I was widening a bar-way ten-feet and had to tear down the stone corner you see and rebuild. Tricky. The stone wall run in the background I built in the early 80s. The mound I'm standing on was leveled by shovel and all the stone pulled out of the ground and from an old stone wall in the way went into the new wall I am standing beside. The ground was still blocked with frost and going at it a little at a time each day removed the mound. Even before any of this work could be started there were two four foot high snow banks to shovel away and base ice to melt. Now three weeks later two full days of snow is back since March won't let go. Once it does, a full truck load of 3/4 stone will arrive and we'll get this bar-way looking pretty.
[ BA ]
photograph by Susan Arnold
Rainfall
Here in the world cocooned beneath the rain, the moist warmth,
the roof of droplets and twigs, the soft blankets of air with a
thousand splashing stings. Here is beauty on her bed of water,
awakened by the sudden fresh transparency, attuned to a pure
idea of herself, drawn like water by glass. In the air where
the water's babbling above fragrant with grass, and suspends from
the tieback of lianas pearl-studded canopies and the crackling
arithmetic of a crystal abacus.
_____________________
Julien Gracq
Abounding Freedom
translated by Alice Yang
World Poetry, 2024
Blow Back
once
upon a time
a boat due
for wetdock
maintenance
and repairs
officers
enlisted men
headed to port
...
...
waste
dumped
fore not aft
in briny deep
by mistake
boat sailed
through a cloud
of trash
what was nuclear
gave the hull
a radioactive
veneer
...
...
atomic footprints
of one hundred men
headed for shore
leave
across the deck
of the submarine
tracked
hither and yon
through the night
to
bars
brothels
trailer parks
families and friends
crew pulled back
for safety checks
...
...
but also
running silent
running deep
to keep it
from the press
________________________
Paul McDonough
Electric Boat
Bullhead Books 2024
from Mojave Ghost
In the city, a weather of zeros-and-ones
cascades through rising static, while here
in this xeric topography, we fold ourselves
into the circumstances of desert foothills
chewed away by leprosies, toothed winds, and
sudden rains. Will you let me
approach you? Bend forward
and touch consequences, tenderness, leave
the trace of my fingertips
on your throat's dimple, your
clavicle, nipple? Lean in. In
my mouth, the sound of
your name has changed.
___________________
Forrest Gander
Mojave Ghost
New Directions 2024
