To the One Upstairs By Charles Simic

Boss of all bosses of the universe. Mr. know-it-all, wheeler-dealer, wire-puller, And whatever else you're good at. Go ahead, shuffle your zeros tonight. Dip in ink the comets' tails. Staple the night with starlight. You'd be better off reading coffee dregs, Thumbing the pages of the Farmer's Almanac. But no! You love to put on airs, And cultivate your famous serenity While you sit behind your big desk With zilch in your in-tray, zilch In your out-tray, And all of eternity spread around you. Doesn't it give you the creeps To hear them begging you on their knees, Sputtering endearments, As if you were an inflatable, life-size doll? Tell them to button up and go to bed. Stop pretending you're too busy to take notice. Your hands are empty and so are your eyes. There's nothing to put your signature to, Even if you knew your own name, Or believed the ones I keep inventing, As I scribble this note to you in the dark.

Eyes Fastened With Pins
By Charles Simic

How much death works,
No one knows what a long
Day he puts in. The little
Wife always alone
Ironing death's laundry.
The beautiful daughters
Setting death's supper table.
The neighbors playing
Pinochle in the backyard
Or just sitting on the steps
Drinking beer. Death,
Meanwhile, in a strange
Part of town looking for
Someone with a bad cough,
But the address somehow wrong,
Even death can't figure it out
Among all the locked doors...
And the rain beginning to fall.
Long windy night ahead.
Death with not even a newspaper
To cover his head, not even
A dime to call the one pining away,
Undressing slowly, sleepily,
And stretching naked
On death's side of the bed.

The World Doesn't End

by Charles Simic

We were so poor I had to take the place of the bait in the mousetrap. All alone in the cellar, I could hear them pacing upstairs, tossing and turning in their beds. “These are dark and evil days,” the mouse told me as he nibbled my ear. Years passed. My mother wore a cat-fur collar which she stroked until its sparks lit up the cellar.

*
The stone is a mirror which works poorly. Nothing in it but dimness. Your dimness or its dimness, who’s to say? In the hush your heart sounds like a black cricket.

In Passing

by Ted Kooser

From a half block off I see you coming,
walking briskly along, carrying parcels,
furtively glancing up into the faces
of people approaching, looking for someone
you know, holding your smile in your mouth
like a pebble, keeping it moist and ready,
being careful not to swallow.

I know that hope so open on your face,
know how your heart would lift to see just one
among us who remembered. If only someone
would call out your name, would smile,
so happy to see you again. You shift
your heavy parcels, hunch up your shoulders,
and press ahead into the moment.

From a few feet away, you recognize me,
or think you do. I see you preparing your face,
getting your greeting ready. Do I know you?
Both of us wonder. Swiftly we meet and pass,
averting our eyes, close enough to touch,
but not touching. I could not let you know
that I've forgotten, and yet you know.

The world in the year 2000

by Marge Piercy

It will be covered to a depth of seven
inches by the little white plastic
chips at once soft and repellent
to the touch and with the ability
to bounce like baby beach balls
under the table and under the radiator.
They come in boxes with toasters,
with vitamin pills, with whatever
you order, as packing material : they
will conquer the world. They are
doing it already beginning
with my kitchen.

the mother

By Gwendolyn Brooks

Abortions will not let you forget.
You remember the children you got that you did not get,
The damp small pulps with a little or with no hair,
The singers and workers that never handled the air.
You will never neglect or beat
Them, or silence or buy with a sweet.
You will never wind up the sucking-thumb
Or scuttle off ghosts that come.
You will never leave them, controlling your luscious sigh,
Return for a snack of them, with gobbling mother-eye.

I have heard in the voices of the wind the voices of my dim killed children.
I have contracted. I have eased
My dim dears at the breasts they could never suck.
I have said, Sweets, if I sinned, if I seized
Your luck
And your lives from your unfinished reach,
If I stole your births and your names,
Your straight baby tears and your games,
Your stilted or lovely loves, your tumults, your marriages, aches, and your deaths,
If I poisoned the beginnings of your breaths,
Believe that even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate.
Though why should I whine,
Whine that the crime was other than mine?—
Since anyhow you are dead.
Or rather, or instead,
You were never made.
But that too, I am afraid,
Is faulty: oh, what shall I say, how is the truth to be said?
You were born, you had body, you died.
It is just that you never giggled or planned or cried.

Believe me, I loved you all.
Believe me, I knew you, though faintly, and I loved, I loved you
All.

a certain kind of calculus

sitting at a party, chatted with an older woman about nothing in particular. except i noticed she acted like a much younger, shallower woman than she really was. i moved on to smoke and my place was taken by another. later, i was chatting with that other and the older woman came up as the other went away. you're my favorite she said to him. she turned to me and said:

"you were my first favorite, but you're so inaccessible."


sitting at a table at a bar with my friend and her two friends. one of her friends was telling me all about herself. they were an odd pair of partners, these two friends. the acted like they had their own private universe. she does conceptual art. she takes notes on conversations while they happen. i asked her about her art and she said:

"you wouldn't understand."

The Young
By Roddy Lumsden

You bastards! It’s all sherbet, and folly

makes you laugh like mules. Chances

dance off your wrists, each day ready,

sprites in your bones and spite not yet

swollen, not yet set. You gather handful

after miracle handful, seeing straight,

reaching the lighthouse in record time,

pockets brim with scimitar things. Now

is not a pinpoint but a sprawling realm.

Bewilderment and thrill are whip-quick

twins, carried on your backs, each vow

new to touch and each mistake a broken

biscuit. I was you. Sea robber boarding

the won galleon. Roaring trees. Machines

without levers, easy in bowel and lung.

One cartwheel over the quicksand curve

of Tuesday to Tuesday and you’re gone,

summering, a ship on the farthest wave.

What Became

by Wesley McNair

What became of the dear

strands of hair pressed

against the perspiration

of your lover's brow

after lovemaking as you gazed

into the world of those eyes,

now only yours?

What became of any afternoon

that was so vivid you forgot

the present was up to its old

trick of pretending

it would be there

always?

What became of the one

who believed so deeply

in this moment he memorized

everything in it and left

it for you?

“A father tells his son the thing he regrets most about...”

by Claudia Rankine

A father tells his son the thing he regrets most about his life is the amount of time he has spent worrying about it.

Worry 1. A dog’s action of biting and shaking an animal so as to injure or kill it, spec., a hound’s worrying of its quarry; an instance of this. 2. A state or feeling of mental unease or anxiety regarding or arising from one’s cares or responsibilities, uncertainty about the future, fear of failure, etc.; anxious concern, anxiety. Also, an instance or cause of this.

It achieved nothing, all his worrying. Things worked out or they didn’t work out and now here he was, an old man, an old man who each year of his life bit or shook doubt as if to injure if not to kill, an old man with a good-looking son who resembles his deceased mother. It is uncanny how she rests there, as plain as day, in their boy's face.

Worry 8. Cause mental distress or agitation to (a person, oneself); make anxious and ill at ease. 9. Give way to anxiety, unease, or disquietude: allow one’s mind to dwell on difficulties or troubles.

He waits for his father’s death. His father has been taken off the ventilator and clearly will not be able to breathe for himself much longer. Earlier in the day the nurse mentioned something about an electroencephalogram (EEG), which measures brain waves in the cerebral hemispheres, the parts of the brain that deal with speech and memory. But his brain stem is damaged; it seems now the test will not be necessary. The son expects an almost silent, hollow gasp to come from the old man’s open mouth. Those final sounds, however, are nothing like the wind moving through the vacancy of a mind. The release is jerky and convulsive. There is never the rasp or the choke the son expects, though one meaning of worry is to be choked on, to choke on.

Harlem

by Langston Hughes

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up

like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore—

And then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?

Or crust and sugar over—

like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags

like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

frankly, i wouldn't be upset or surprised
if someone or something came along
and took all of this away.
everything.
i wouldn't have to worry so much
about things i can't control.
i would know where i stand.
finally.

MY BOTTLE OPENER IS M I A

Jeffrey Miller

my bottle opener is M I A & I’m searching
the beer is lined up on the table & it’s not american
beer which can be opened with a soft american twist
no this is Mexican Beer in thick brown bottles
if a whore smashed a GI in the face with one of these
blood would splash out maybe his eye would hang
he could show his grandkids the scar & say get me a beer
if it was american beer the kid could open the bottle
but this is Mexican Beer & i’m in my kitchen, a jungle,
searching, because you need an opener for these babies
they’re like hand grenades without a pin to pull
& I’m no pacifist i’m just on my own side


HANDCUFFED TO THE ONE I LOVE

Jeffrey Miller

Which came first, the chicken
or The Shake & Bake? It’s a rough job
being a poet during these modern times, folderol
it’s a snap, Exhibit A: me. Each day, stepping
into nothing like it was my pants, I’m tickled
pink, a dog about to piss the length
of The Great Wall of China. We’re buddies,
me and the huge terrier. We boat calm as tourists along
the captured and monotonous ocean.
Like heroin down a motel toilet


DEPRESSED & HORNY

Jeffrey Miller

Behind every car wreck there’s a beautiful dish
& buying her drinks is smashing your head on the windshield
such a long throat, what a curve
swallowing me up foot first. I didn’t wanna go
out of the house but it was so quiet & violent (like a tree)
& I need a liquid light on my teeth, cool white
cue ball, parlor games. If you feel mixed up
you should try and drive a 52 Ford Station Wagon 50 miles
an hour down the road to my house. That will set
you straight to pursue the things in life that interest me

were you ever driving at 3 in the morning down some 2 lane road in upstate new york & it was raining & the only thing you can get on the radio is some station out of memphis or someplace which comes in perfectly clear & plays great music like life is but a dream du wop du wop & you just turn it up & say to yourself “what the fuck, what the fuck?” well that’s how I feel walking to the post office.
—Jeffrey Miller, The First One’s Free

Elizabeth’s War with the Christmas Bear

by Norman Dubie

The bears are kept by hundreds within fences, are fed cracked

Eggs; the weakest are

Slaughtered and fed to the others after being scented

With the blood of deer brought to the pastures by Elizabeth’s

Men—the blood spills from deep pails with bottoms of slate.

The balding Queen had bear gardens in London and in the country.

The bear is baited: the nostrils

Are blown full with pepper, the Irish wolf dogs

Are starved, then, emptied, made crazy with fermented barley:

And the bear’s hind leg is chained to a stake, the bear

Is blinded and whipped, kneeling in his own blood and slaver, he is

Almost instantly worried by the dogs. At the very moment that

Elizabeth took Essex’s head, a giant brown bear

Stood in the gardens with dogs hanging from his fur. . .

He took away the sun, took

A wolfhound in his mouth, and tossed it into

The white lap of Elizabeth I—arrows and staves rained

On his chest, and standing, he, then, stood even taller, seeing

Into the Queen’s private boxes—he grinned

Into her battered eggshell face.

Another volley of arrows and poles, and opening his mouth

He showered

Blood all over Elizabeth and her Privy Council.

The very next evening, a cool evening, the Queen demanded

Thirteen bears and the justice of 113 dogs: she slept

All that Sunday night and much of the next morning.

Some said she was guilty of this and that.

The Protestant Queen gave the defeated bear

A grave in a Catholic cemetery. The marker said:

Peter, a Solstice Bear, a gift of the Tsarevitch to Elizabeth.

After a long winter she had the grave opened. The bear’s skeleton

Was cleared with lye, she placed it at her bedside,

Put a candle inside behind the sockets of the eyes, and, then

She spoke to it:

You were a Christmas bear—behind your eyes

I see the walls of a snow cave where you are a cub still smelling

Of your mother’s blood which has dried in your hair; you have

Troubled a Queen who was afraid

When seated in shade which, standing,

You had created! A Queen who often wakes with a dream

Of you at night—

Now, you’ll stand by my bed in your long white bones; alone, you

Will frighten away at night all visions of bear, and all day

You will be in this cold room—your constant grin,

You’ll stand in the long, white prodigy of your bones, and you are,

Every inch of you, a terrible vision, not bear, but virgin!

I feel sorry

by Marin Sorescu

I feel sorry for the butterflies

When I turn off the light,

And for the bats

When I switch it on...

Can’t I take a single step

Without offending someone?

So many odd things happen

That I want to hold

My head in my hands,

But an anchor thrown from the sky

Pulls them down...

It’s not time yet

To tear up the sails.

Let things be.

What is this about losing respect?

by Mark Rudman

What is this about losing respect?

Do I have to talk about it?

He said he feared what I might

write about him when he was gone,

and I told him not to worry.

He worried about the “streak of morbidity” in your work.

He was a man of God, not of imagination.

And it wasn’t his fault if he got the shakes.

It was a familial tremor, not nerves.

And it first happened at a gravesite.

Near where Brigham Young did his number—“this is the place.”

He called him Friggin Young.

Well, during his bleak tenure in Greenville,

his congregants would tell nigger jokes

and he would force a smile—afraid now to rock the boat—

a mere exercise in stretching

the corners of his lips—

a fake grin he would have noted

on another face—false faces being

one of the things we loved

to laugh about when together we observed congregants’ idiosyncracies,

their ruses, their guises,

like one temple president, the son

of the “richest Jew in Salt Lake”

who, seated in the pulpit’s other red velvet wing chair,

would expose the holes in the soles of his shoes

while he batted his eyelashes to

wake himself up—

(though I owe him one: “Rosencavalier”

didn’t turn me in for copying

the wrong answers from Mary Weinstein

on our “final exam” in Sunday

school prior to confirmation.

He was ashamed for me,

young Rosencavalier.

He could hardly disguise

the curled lips and downcast eyes

of his contempt

for this lawless “Rabbi’s son”

whether or not my name

was Strome or Rudman,

but where teaching Judaism was concerned

his plodding methodical

reading to keep up each week

was a pathetic substitution

for Sidney’s well-wrought, impromptu riffs.

So there!)

Marty was ashamed of me.

I left town.

As night was falling?

*

In Utah you can drive at fifteen so by age

fourteen a lot of our talk

was hard core car talk

and somehow the word

Volkswagen came up

after confirmation class

(it was no GTO but you could drive

so far on so little gas...)

and Marty’s father—a redhead like his son—

made his way up the driveway’s ice,

smoke billowing from the exhaust

of whatever sleek black foreign car he drove.

Pulling on his elegant pigskin gloves

he announced he’d “never buy a Kraut car.”

I was bewildered

(what, hold against a country now

something that happened so long ago?)

and he held my gaze

and I shivered inside the shiver I felt

from the cold I thought he would

transmogrify into a southern sheriff

and ask “what kind of Jew are you boy”

but he didn’t have to say

another word.

*

In other words you were ready to leave town.

I’d had it with Utah.

But you wanted to stay in the west, against your father’s wishes?

Yes.

Unequivocally?

Yes. Yes. Yes.

But you did submit to psychiatrists and interviews with the heads of schools

during your sojourn in the east that summer?

Yes. I didn’t say I wasn’t ambivalent and/or confused.

Nothing more, your honor.

*

This was around the time, was it not, that a certain “Penny,” from Los

Angeles, a family friend of your grandfather’s, came to dinner in Salt Lake

City...

She was a small woman, slightly hunchbacked, who spoke in a low

voice. She was one of my mother’s major confidantes. My mother had a

great respect for her because she was the buyer for I. Magnin’s. When

the subject of my father came up, as it always did, Penny, fueled by

several Scotches, seemed to retract her head into her chest and when it

reemerged she spat out this sentence about Charles: “Why he’d stick his

prick into anything!”

I blanched. My features stiffened with rage. Sensual and tormented man

that he was, whatever he was, what right did they have to tear him down

in front of me! She put her leathered multi-braceleted hand on my hand

and said, “It’s all right, dahlink.” I said, “I’ve never seen him do any-

thing like that.” And they continued. “Well he used to screw the maid,”

my mother threw in wearily.

How did they know so much about him, this shadow, this spectre?

Everyone knew.

There she was, this tiny hunchback, almost a dwarf—this was how she

conceived of loyalty to my mother. In reality, it was another patronizing

blow, as if my mother had to hear the worst in order not to feel that the

failure of the marriage might have been her failure.

And while they sat there tearing him down the phone rang and it was—

guess who. Your mother handed the phone over to Sidney who, geared for

battle, bourbon happy, quarreled with your father about the precise details

as to where you should go when you “left town.” They had come to an

impasse in the conversation when it seems your father said something like

“you can’t talk to Charles K. Rudman that way” and Sidney said—because

this you overheard—“what does the ‘K’ stand for”—and your father said—

according to Sidney—“cocksucker.”

And Sidney howled. He would rag him till the end of his days. “Is this

Charles K. Rudman?”

I didn’t call you a cocksucker, Sidney said,

but since you said it i

heard you were a cocksucker.

I didn’t say it!

"I am,” your father was rumored to have said, probably (possibly?) not

meaning it literally, but more within the vernacular of street language,

curse-words meaning “sonofabitch,” not someone who literally “sucked

cocks.”

I think so.

Your heart went out to your poor father at that moment, didn’t it? Sidney

had a way of miscalculating the effect of these shots on you. You knew your

father was writhing in an agony of frustration.

Yes.

But Sidney was running with it, relishing Charles’ self-hatred, his masoch

-ism which erupted at that moment out of frustration...And for years he

loved to tell the story of how Charles “called himself a cocksucker,” always

underscoring the anecdote by absolving himself, by making it clear that it

wasn’t he who first used the word.

He really rubbed it in.

Can you forgive him?

*

Only now that he’s dead can I let myself feel

how good we were at leaving each other alone.

Clouds Gathering

by Charles Simic

It seemed the kind of life we wanted.

Wild strawberries and cream in the morning.

Sunlight in every room.

The two of us walking by the sea naked.

Some evenings, however, we found ourselves

Unsure of what comes next.

Like tragic actors in a theater on fire,

With birds circling over our heads,

The dark pines strangely still,

Each rock we stepped on bloodied by the sunset.

We were back on our terrace sipping wine.

Why always this hint of an unhappy ending?

Clouds of almost human appearance

Gathering on the horizon, but the rest lovely

With the air so mild and the sea untroubled.

The night suddenly upon us, a starless night.

You lighting a candle, carrying it naked

Into our bedroom and blowing it out quickly.

The dark pines and grasses strangely still.

"I am the last . . ."

by Charles Simic

I am the last Napoleonic soldier. It's almost two hundred years later and I am still retreating from Moscow. The road is lined with white birch trees and the mud comes up to my knees. The one-eyed woman wants to sell me a chicken, and I don't even have any clothes on.
The Germans are going one way; I am going the other. The Russians are going still another way and waving good-by. I have a ceremonial saber. I use it to cut my hair, which is four feet long.

Lost in Translation

by Peter Pereira

Before devising, your chicken you do not have to count.

As for the penny which is rescued it is the penny which is obtained.

The girl and the spice has become entirely from the splendid sugar.

The boy has consisted of the tail of the slug and the snail and the puppy.

As for the place of the woman there is a house.

One basket your egg everything does not have to be made.

The idiot hurries being about you fear because the angel steps on.

Your cake cannot do possessing and is eaten thing.

There is no wastefulness, unless so is, we want.

The safe which is better than regrettable.

Living, you have lived, permit.

Holy Shit

by Peter Pereira

It used to be more private—just the

immediate family gathered after mass,

the baptismal font at the rear

of the church tiny as a bird bath.

The priest would ladle a few teaspoons’

tepid holy water on the bundled baby’s

forehead, make a crack about the halo

being too tight as the new soul wailed.

We’d go home to pancakes and eggs.

These days it’s a big Holy-wood production—

midmass, the giant altar rolls back to reveal

a Jacuzzi tub surrounded by potted palms.

The priest hikes up his chasuble, steps

barefoot out of his black leather loafers

and wades in like a newfangled John as

organ music swells and the baby-bearing families

line up like jumbo jets ready for takeoff.

But when the godparents handed my niece’s newborn

naked to their parish priest, and he dunked her

into the Jacuzzi’s bath-warm holy water,

her little one grew so calm and blissful she

pooped—not a smelly three-days’ worth, explosive

diaper load, but enough to notice. As the godparents

scooped the turds with a handkerchief,

the savvy priest pretended he hadn’t seen,

swept through the fouled water with his palm

before the next baby in line was submerged.

After mass, my niece sat speechless,

red-faced, not knowing what to say—

or whether—as church ladies, friends, and

family members presented one by one to

the tub where the babies had been

baptized. As they knelt and bowed

and dipped their fingers in,

and blessed themselves.

Anagrammer

By Peter Pereira

If you believe in the magic of language,
then Elvis really Lives
and Princess Diana foretold I end as car spin.

If you believe the letters themselves
contain a power within them,
then you understand
what makes outside tedious,
how desperation becomes a rope ends it.

The circular logic that allows senator to become treason,
and treason to become atoners.

That eleven plus two is twelve plus one,
and an admirer is also married.

That if you could just rearrange things the right way
you’d find your true life,
the right path, the answer to your questions:
you’d understand how the Titanic
turns into that ice tin,
and debit card becomes bad credit.

How listen is the same as silent,
and not one letter separates stained from sainted.

The Pieces That Fall To Earth

By Kay Ryan

One could
almost wish
they wouldn't;
they are so
far apart,
so random.
One cannot
wait, cannot
abandon waiting.
The three or
four occasions
of their landing
never fade.
Should there
be more, there
will never be
enough to make
a pattern
that can equal
the commanding
way they matter.

A Poem Without a Single Bird in It

by Jack Spicer

What can I say to you, darling,

When you ask me for help?

I do not even know the future

Or even what poetry

We are going to write.

Commit suicide. Go mad. Better people

Than either of us have tried it.

I loved you once but

I do not know the future.

I only know that I love strength in my friends

And greatness

And hate the way their bodies crack when they die

And are eaten by images.

The fun’s over. The picnic’s over.

Go mad. Commit suicide. There will be nothing left

After you die or go mad,

But the calmness of poetry.

I Would Like to Describe

by Zbigniew Herbert

I would like to describe the simplest emotion

joy or sadness

but not as others do

reaching for shafts of rain or sun

I would like to describe a light

which is being born in me

but I know it does not resemble

any star

for it is not so bright

not so pure

and is uncertain

I would like to describe courage

without dragging behind me a dusty lion

and also anxiety

without shaking a glass full of water

to put it another way

I would give all metaphors

in return for one word

drawn out of my breast like a rib

for one word

contained within the boundaries

of my skin

but apparently this is not possible

and just to say—I love

I run around like mad

picking up handfuls of birds

and my tenderness

which after all is not made of water

asks the water for a face

and anger

different from fire

borrows from it

a loquacious tongue

so is blurred

so is blurred

in me

what white-haired gentlemen

separated once and for all

and said

this is the subject

and this is the object

we fall asleep

with one hand under our head

and with the other in a mound of planets

our feet abandon us

and taste the earth

with their tiny roots

which next morning

we tear out painfully

Translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Peter Dale Scott