RON PADGETT ~

 

Another Thing That Annoys Me

The spelling of 40. We have four and fourteen, and then, for

no reason I know of, the u is dropped and we're left with forty,

not to mention the schizophrenic forty-four. Most annoying, as

Sei Shōnagon would say.

__________________

Ron Padgett

Dot

Coffee House Books

2022

photograph ~ Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times

PATRICIA SMITH ~

K A T R I N A


I was birthed restless and elsewhere



gut dragging and bulging with ball lightning, slush,

broke through with branches, steel



I was bitch-monikered, hipped, I hefted

a whip rain, a swirling sheet of grit.



Scraping toward the first of you, hungering for wood, walls,

unturned skin. With shifting and frantic mouth, I loudly loved

the slow bones



of elders, fools, and willows.




__________________

Patricia Smith
Blood Dazzler
Coffee House Books
2008