GHOSTS OF SEGREGATION ~

 

R E A D    M E

      Celadon Books, 2024

ROBERT WALSER ~ THE POEMS ~

 

The Woman With the Feathers

In the morning I write poems,

then I read amusing novels,

later I play a game of cards,

after lunch I go to the garden

or walk through a lovely grove.

I spend my time in this delusion

that I am a hardworking citizen.

I used to play with girls and boys,

in doing so I behaved rather foolishly,

I made use of my talents,

so as to feel too well on occasion.

Now I go to bed at nine,

I act dignified and proper.

Much turned out wrong, yet now and then

I see in my mind's eye my beloved's full plumage,

her sweet, beautiful, soft eyelids.

_________________________

Robert Walser

The poems

Seagull Books, 2022

translated by Daniele Pantano

CONSENT ~

 

R E A D   M E

PANTHEON, 2024

Don't hesitate

PEDRO LEMEBEL ~

 

R E A D   M E

Penguin Books, 2024

FADY JOUDAH (AGAIN) ~

 

[...]

I am unfinished business.

The business that did not finish me

or my parents

won't leave my children

in peace. In my right hand.

a paper. In my left, a feather.

To toss, to quill, to meet

my terminal velocity.

I forget Palestine

has a kind way of remembering

those who mark

it for slaughter,

and those it marks for life.

I write for the future

because my present is demolished.

I fly to the future

to retrieve my demolished present

as a legible past. To see

what isn't hard to see

in a world that doesn't.

[...]

They did not mean to kill the children.

They meant to.

Too many kids got in the way

of precisely imprecise

one-ton bombs

dropped a thousand and one times

over the children's nights.

They will not forgive the children this sin.

They wanted to save them from future sins.

Or send them wrapped lifetimes

of reconstructive

surgical hours pro bono,

mental anguish to pass down

to their offspring.

Will the children have offspring?

This is what the bomb-droppers

did not know they wanted:

to see if others will be like them

after unquantifiable suffering.

They wanted to lead

their own study, but forgot

that not all suffering worships power

after survival. What childhood does

a destroyed childhood beget?

My parents showed me the way.

________________

Fady Joudah

[...]

Milkweed Editions

2024

ZBIGNIEW HERBERT (2) ~

 

Winter (from three erotic poems)

I now think

disgracefully rarely

of my First Great Abandoned One

I carefully avoid

anything that might cause

a consternation of memories

—places we used to meet

—street corners

—landscapes

—benches

—benches

—trees

—the window where

our light burned

slowly but pitilessly

I forget

the color of her eyes

what

remains

now rests

in a cardboard box

photographic negatives

our faceless pictures

if someone ran a pointer finger

down the sharp edge of the frame

the heart's blood

would flow

            a friend told me

            that My First Great Love

            now lives alone

            not counting the sea's company

            she is blind

            and compares herself with weaving

            what does she weave

            on the dark loom

            for me it's like

            an empty platform

            like absolute

            irrevocability

            like a pensive drowned man

            with a hat firmly jammed

            over his ears

            who floats

            with his head turned away

            from the world

            like night

            in a mirror

____________________

Zbigniew Herbert

Reconstruction of the Poet

uncollected works

Ecco, 2024

THE SWAN SILVERTONES ~

 

JAMES MAGEE (1945 ~ 2024) ~

 

R E A D   M E

FADY JOUDAH "DEDICATION" ~

 

    Milkweed Edition, 2024

THE DESERT ENCYCLOPEDIA ~

 

R E A D   M E

     Lyons Press

      2024

BLAS MANUEL DE LUNA ~

 

To Hear the Leaves Sing

Going down Highway 99, to Modesto,

I see an orange glow in the sky.

At first I think it is a fire, but, as I get closer,

it is the lights of a packinghouse,

where women work through the night,

giving up the fire of their lives,

to get the peaches to market.

Ten minutes later I pass

the Avenue 20 off-ramp, the ramp

that, in summers, would take me

to the peach fields of Madera,

where, as the sun rose to its peak

in the brilliant sky,

and the bitter dust

settled in my throat,

I would stand on a ladder,

my heavy sack pulling me down,

and throw peaches, as fast

as I could, into the trees,

to hear the leaves sing,

the tiny branches break.

________________________

BLAS MANUEL DE LUNA 

from Latino Poetry

edited by Rigoberto Gonzalez

The Library of America, 2024

Blas Manuel de Luna (b. 1969) was born in Tijuana, Mexico,

raised and schooled in California and is the author of the poetry

collection Bent to the Earth (2005).

RISE UP !

 

R E A D   M E

   Univ. of Nebraska Press

2023

DOLORES KEANE ~

 

KISS THE EYES OF PEACE (Tomaž Šalamun) ~

Folk Song

Every poet is a monster.

He destroys the voice and the people.

His singing builds the technology that destroys

the earth so that the worms don't eat us.

A drunkard sells his coat.

A scoundrel sells his mother.

Only a poet sells his soul

to separate it from the body that he loves.

________________________

Tomaž Šalamun

Kiss the Eyes of Peace

Selected poems 1964-2014

translated from the Slovenian by Brian Henry

Milkweed Editions, 2024

There are far calmer and elder photographs of Tomaž Šalamun

 all over the Internet, but this is the photograph for this poem

KRIS KRISTOFFERSON, THE PILGRIM ~

 

  K R I S   K R I S T O F F E R S O N

     Kristoffer Kristofferson was born on June 22, 1936, in Brownsville, Texas ~

September 28, 2024, Maui, Hawaii

GEORGIA SEA ISLAND SINGERS ~

 

TIMOTHY O'SULLIVAN ~

 

R E A D    M E

Farrar, Strauss, Giroux

2024

LIGHTNIN HOPKINS (ASH GROVE) ~

 

JOHN PHILLIPS ~

 

Spell

Listen

carefully

you may

hear a word

in the silence

thinking

to say

something not

said before

to make something

happen

that hasn't

happened before

one word

with the belief

changing silence

changes everything

This

for Nelson Ball

There is

a here

we aren't

close to

even if

it's where

we are

Stone

If you insist on being here

at least say something

Six

Lana asked

if cats

knew they

were animals

did they have

a language

to know

it in

Or did they

think we were

animals

wondering

if we had a

language

to know

ourselves

Seen

for Eva

crows above a field

will always be

Van Gogh's

_____________________

John Phillips

Language Being Time

Shearsman Books, 2024

EDUARDO HALFON ~

 

R E A D    M E

Bellevue Literary Press

2024