Saturday, February 25, 2023

HUEY PIANO SMITH ~

 




January 26, 1934 – February 13, 2023




GEORGE HARRISON ~

 



GEORGE HARRISON

Feb 25, 1945, Liverpool, UK.




IRIS DEMENT ~

 



Goin' Down To Sing In Texas



Wednesday, February 22, 2023

URSULA K. LE GUIN ~

 



Extinction



Imagine dark.

Forty years'  rain.

The sinking ark.


No dogs bark

or doves complain

in the long dark.


No eel or shark

noses in vain

the ribs of the ark.


No star, no spark.

No full or wane.

Silence and dark.


Without mark,

without stain,

bright, stark,


the ocean's arc

is bare again

above the dark,

the sunken ark.



__________________

Ursula K. Le Guin

Collected Poems

The Library of America, 2023

edited by Harold Bloom



"Extinction" was first published by Longhouse in 2007

in Ursula K. Le Guin's foldout booklet Four Different Poems

reprinted here in the new The Library of America volume


Photograph by Theo Downes-Le Guin



Tuesday, February 21, 2023

MICHAEL PALMER ~




After Midnight



Sometime after midnight

Han Shan drifted down

a mountain path

and arrived in my dream

only to announce

that every angel is terrifying

also that heron you saw

by the muddy pond

was not real.


You, reader,

may believe this or not.

Han Shan said

that he does not

though he spoke

such words

to me

as if

they were his own.



_________________

Michael Palmer

Little Elegies for Sister Satan

New Directions, 2021




Monday, February 20, 2023

PETER GIZZI ~

 




The Afterlife of Paper


the last best love is language in the mouth


the last best hope for joy doesn't forget


a besting sensation


the last stranger blooming on the tongue


a compass rose blooming internally


laying down track


riding the rails


wake unto me



_____________________

Peter Gizzi

Now It's Dark

Wesleyan 2020



Friday, February 17, 2023

Thursday, February 16, 2023

LAO YANG, PEE POEMS ~

               





U F O

        


A kite from another world arrives

Bearing another lonely dream





_______________

Lao Yang

Pee Poems

Circumference Books

2016

translations by 

Joshua Edwards

Lynn Xu




Saturday, February 11, 2023

JAY HOPLER ~

 




Honky-Tonk Sonnet



Before cancer, I was a country.

Now—, I’m a fucking country

      Song: job gone, house gone,

            Wife diagnosed w/ Post-Traumatic Stress—


      I’m missing more organs

                          Than a looted church.
            Even my dog’s been repossessed!

            Know what I got left?

      2 years. The lifespan

            Of an average rat. My wife’s therapist

      Tells me I can use this time to find

                          Out who I really am. Lord help me Jesus,

                          I’ve wasted it, so/help me Jesus,

I know what I am
: squeak.



_______________


Jay Hopler

Still Life

McSweeney's, 2022