January 26, 1934 – February 13, 2023
daydreaming w/ Bob Arnold
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
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
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
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
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