daydreaming w/ Bob Arnold
america never looked for us
I forget my name and it turns me gold
canned heat inn winter is warm
when I find you and
listen to
all we've become
can you dream in color
if you were not born in color?
you once told me we could never separate
being Native from
the original
big migration
into
you're in america now.
____________________
M.S. Redcherries
Mother
Penguin Books, 2024
Louvre Messages
The palace is always haunted.
The pond does not lack reflections.
* * *
The sea never reflects the sky quietly.
Empty mountains are indifferent to the presence of life and death.
* * *
This "moment" refuses to understand time greater than a moment.
Ordinary flowers of the moment form a collective.
* * *
Angels without a collective greet each other across generations.
Their remnants stars of a single era.
* * *
Don't try so hard, idiot:
The goddess of victory is the goddess of victory even without her head.
Putting her arms back on wouldn't make Venus any sweeter.
* * *
The gods stare at statues of gods to recognize themselves.
No matter how strong the sunlight is, it needs the help of lightbulbs.
* * *
But staring at anything too long
is an intrusion on its past and future lives.
* * *
Let your thoughts go wild, idiot:
Angels are angels because when they fly
they can see the dust on the heads of "everything."
August 18, 2023
____________________
Translated from the Chinese by Lucas Klein
from At the Louvre
NYRB, 2024
LOVE SONG OF THE PLATANOS MADUROS
No, this is not a song for us, ripe plantains sliced and fried in a pan.
This is a song for you, a song in praise of your mouth and tongue,
a song anticipating your anticipation of the first bite into our yellow
hearts, a song to celebrate the delirium of the first kiss from you.
No, this is not a song for us, the alchemy of the tough skin green,
then yellow, then black. This is a song for you, a song in praise
of your nose, breathing us in, a song for your eyes as they close
to contemplate this offering more tempting than the wafer in church.
No, this is not a song for us, flying from islands where the peasant
stain of the platano says: This is who I am. This is a song for you,
a song in praise of your hands, lifting us slowly on the fork as if
to savor the delicacy of aristocrats, a song of delight in your delight.
We live to be useful, and useful we will be, warming your belly as you
crave one more. We will doe heroes. We will die happy on your lips.
____________________
Martin Espada
Jailbreak of Sparrows
Knopf 2025
Mr. Wells in 2011. When he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, he decided not to undergo treatment. “He accomplished what he set out to do,” a former colleague said.Credit...
Photo ~ Tony Cenicola/The New York Times
W A L D E N
THOREAU AND THE LANGUAGE OF TREES
2019
Douglas Brinkley with Henry David Thoreau
Backroad Chalkie
Spring 2025
Skunk
The pot I'm
smoking now
smells like
Armpits after sex (
not with you
of course). You
always tell me
to go to hell. (this
may be the
last time we
see each other.) Where
I will lie is where
I say I loved
you more than this.
Verse
some-
thing's out
there—aft (her
the uni-
verse). The verse
is yet.
Call It
Tobacco
cotton
sugar in
Louisiana
shirts
made of gingham
and slaves
after
and the crack
of what twang of what
tight strings what
on earth under
the sun nothing mugs
but time
for the
load coffee
is like that double
time to
the old swing
No Joke
dragging myself
through 3rd street
& across avenues
depends on the kindness
pf strangers, cars, trucks, bicycles
refuse to run me over. The other
day a bus stopped just short
of a crutch at a curb I was
hanging precariously from
& swung out to miss me, it was
an old man who
was getting on that alerted
the driver & a young hoodie
that grabbed my pack: i
thought he was going to run, but he didn't.
"Watch out pop!" he said, solicitously, &
never asked me for
a quarter. Maybe more
people should be crippled: even cops.
_____________________
John Farris
Last Poems
Archway Editions 2025
