The Lonely Shoe Lying on the Road

by Muriel Spark

One sad shoe that someone has probably flung
out of a car or truck. Why only one?

This happens on an average one year
in four. But always throughout my
life, my travels, I see it like
a memorandum. Something I have
forgotten to remember,

that there are always
mysteries in life. That shoes
do not always go in pairs, any more
than we do. That one fits;
the other, not. That children can
thoughtlessly and in a merry fashion
chuck out someone's shoe, split up
someone's life.

But usually that shoe that I
see is a man's, old, worn, the sole
parted from the upper.
Then why did the owner keep the other,
keep it to himself? Was he
afraid (as I so often am with
inanimate objects) to hurt it's feelings?
That one shoe in the road invokes
my awe and my sad pity.

After Tourism

by Ann Lauterbach

Disturbed over her marvel I heard her say
something nocturnal I saw
mystery as merely change I saw
envy and the illegitimate mile I saw
under the formal atrocity at the messy embankment
all these and vocabulary lagging behind its science
tramp unknown soldier cop
talking strange talk
under an altered light under daze
I heard her say tomorrow as if she knew
I heard her say come back
and I choose you
as analogue of the yet to be.
Do not foreclose
investigation, but come along.
I will try not to protract my look into
now I will continue as if
you were next if you will I heard a man say
on the radio the other day, well, yesterday
talking about headaches
if you will
and today I had a look at
a Chinese cabinet only it is not clear
it is Chinese it
may be from another country I took
measurements nevertheless
for my next life I am thinking of requesting librarian
although I am as yet not on a list
of possible survivors I am
thinking of erasing the word sorrow from
the world, hurting under an illusory pennant
master of ceremonies hidden behind its junk
I am thinking of coming back as
part of your coat as a tree is part wind.

The Effort

by Billy Collins

Would anyone care to join me
in flicking a few pebbles in the direction
of teachers who are fond of asking the question:
"What is the poet trying to say?"

as if Thomas Hardy and Emily Dickinson
had struggled but ultimately failed in their efforts—
inarticulate wretches that they were,
biting their pens and staring out the window for a clue.

Yes, it seems that Whitman, Amy Lowell
and the rest could only try and fail
but we in Mrs. Parker's third-period English class
here at Springfield High will succeed

with the help of these study questions
in saying what the poor poet could not,
and we will get all this done before
that orgy of egg salad and tuna fish known as lunch.

Tonight, however, I am the one trying
to say what it is this absence means,
the two of us sleeping and waking under different roofs.
The image of this vase of cut flowers,

not from our garden, is no help.
And the same goes for the single plate,
the solitary lamp, and the weather that presses its face
against these new windows--the drizzle and the
morning frost.

So I will leave it up to Mrs. Parker,
who is tapping a piece of chalk against the blackboard,
and her students—a few with their hands up,
others slouching with their caps on backwards—

to figure out what it is I am trying to say
about this place where I find myself
and to do it before the noon bell rings
and that whirlwind of meatloaf is unleashed.

Rapture

by Richard Jones

In the desert, a traveler
returning to his family
is surprised
by a wild beast.

To save himself
from the fierce animal,
he leaps into a deep well
empty of water.

But at the bottom
is a dragon, waiting
with open mouth
to devour him.

The unhappy man,
not daring to go out
lest he should be
the prey of the beast,

not daring to jump
to the bottom
lest he should be
devoured by the dragon,

clings to the branch
of a bush growing
in the cracks of the well.
Hanging upon the bough,

he feels his hands
weaken, yet still
he clings, afraid
of his certain fate.

Then he sees two mice,
one white, the other black,
moving about the bush,
gnawing the roots.

The traveler sees this
and knows that he must
inevitably perish, that he will
never see his sons again.

But while thus hanging
he looks about and sees
on the leaves of the bush
some drops of honey.

These leaves
he reaches with his tongue
and licks the honey off,
with rapture.

Dear Lonely Animal,

by Oni Buchanan


I'm writing to you from the loneliest, most
secluded island in the world. I mean,
the farthest away place from anything else.

There are so many fruits here growing on trees
or on vines that wrap and wrap. Fruits
like I've never seen except the bananas.

All night the abandoned dogs howled.
I wonder if one dog gives the first howl, and if
they take turns who's first like carrying

the flag in school. Carrying the flag
way out in front and the others
following along behind in two long lines,

pairs holding hands. Also the roosters here crow
from 4am onward. They're still crowing right now
and it's almost noon here on the island.

Noon stares back no matter where you are.
Today I'm going to hike to the extinct volcano
and balance on the rim of the crater. Yesterday

a gust almost blew me inside. I heard
that the black widows live inside the volcano
far down below in the high grasses that you can't

see from the rim. Well, I was going to tell you
that this morning the bells rang and I
followed them and at the source of the bells,

there I found so many animals
all gathered together in a room
with carved wooden statues

and wooden benches and low wooden slats
for kneeling. And the animals were there
singing together, all their voices singing,

with big strong voices rising from even
the filthiest animals. I mean, I've seen animals
come together and sing before, except in

high fancy vaults where bits of colored glass
are pieced together into stories. Some days
I want to sing with them.

I wish more animals sang together all the time.
But then I can't sing sometimes
because I think of the news that happens

when the animals stop singing.
And then I think of all the medications
and their side effects that are advertised

between the pieces of news. And then I think
of all the money the drug companies spent
to videotape their photogenic, well-groomed animals,

and all the money they spent to buy
a prime-time spot, and I think, what money
buys the news, and what news

creates the drugs, and what
drugs control the animals, and I get so
choked I can't sing anymore, Lonely Animal.

I can't sing with the other animals. Because it's
hard to know what an animal will do when it
stops singing. It's complicated, you know, it's just

complicated—

“Mother”

At a Chinese restaurant, circa 1980 in Washington DC, an
elderly woman (let's call her "mother") is telling a story to
demonstrate the absence of racism in her character during
the time she lived in the pre-civil rights South: "I've never
told you this before but I was once invited to dinner by a
black minister's wife. Their daughter, a cheerful midget,
was loved by everyone in town, negro and white. Actually,
the minister's wife asked, 'If I invited you to Christmas
dinner, would you come?' But I knew what she meant."
On Christmas day "mother" called a cab and went to an
address in the black section of town. She walked into a
"modest but well kept" house past a dozen or so people on
the porch. None of them came in. She was served an
elaborate meal seated alone at the kitchen table. After
dessert, she thanked the minister's wife, called a cab and
went home. To better understand this story does it help to
notice that the "c"s in Christmas and cab are the same letter

that stands for the speed of light in a vacuum, as in e = mc²

Joan Retallack

Rendezvous

by Ted McMahon

Let's meet in Santa Fe
where we can stroll holding hands
along the acequina madre
then sip espresso
at the bookstore on Garcia Street.

Let's meet in Santa Fe
and bask like lizards
on the rocks at Bandelier
or explore the secrets
of remote creek beds.

Let's meet in Santa Fe
to share our stories and let
the whisper of cottonwood leaves
fill the silences between.

Let's meet in Santa Fe
and eat posole with our eggs
and laugh, and love, and turn
the calendar to the wall
for a few brief days.

Manufacturing

by Alan Shapiro

Up in the billboard, over old South Station,

the Captain, all wide grin and ruddy cheek,

held up a golden shot of Cutty Sark

high as the skyline where the sunset spread

a gold fan from the twig-like spars and rigging

of a departing clipper ship. Above

the picture the dull haze of a real sun rose,

dragging the day up with it. Seven o’clock.

The agitated horns, brakes, fingers, and catcalls

down below me were already merging

and channeling everybody on to warehouse,

factory, department store and office.

My father and uncle talking over all the goods

to be received that day, the goods delivered,

their two reflections in the window floating

like blurry ghosts within the Captain’s grin,

their voices raised a little above the soft

erratic humming of the big machines,

the riveters and pressers, warming, rousing:

The Century order, did it get out last night?

And had the buckles come from Personal?

Who’d go do Jaffey? Who’d diddle Abramowitz

and Saperstein? Those cocksucking sons of bitches,

cut their balls off if they fuck with us . . .

How automatically at any provocation

I can aim the words at anybody now,

woman or man, the reverberating

angry this, not that, in ‘pussy’, ‘cocksucker’,

‘fuckhead’, hammered down so far inside me

it’s almost too securely there to feel.

But I was thirteen then, and for the first

time old enough to have my father say

these things in front of me, which must have meant

I was a man now too, I listened (blushing,

ashamed of blushing) for clues of what it was

I had become, or was supposed to be:

It did and didn’t have to do with bodies,

being a man, it wasn’t fixed in bodies,

but somehow passed between them, going to

by being taken from, ever departing,

ever arriving, unstoppable as money,

and moving in a limited supply

it seemed to follow where the money went.

Being a man was something that you did

to other men, which meant a woman

was what other men became when you would do them.

Either you gave a fucking, or you took one,

did or were done to, it was simple as that.

Somebody shouted from beyond the office

that Tony had passed out in the can again.

‘The lush, the no good lush,’ my uncle said,

‘get him the fuck out of here for good, will ya.’

The stall door swung back, scrawled with giant cocks,

tits, asses and cunts, beyond which in the shadows

my father was gently wrestling with the man,

trying to hold him steady while his free hand

shimmied the tangled shorts and trousers up

over the knees and hips, and even got

the shirt tucked in, the pants zipped deftly enough

for Tony not to notice, though he did.

Even then I knew they’d fire him,

and that it wasn’t gratitude at all

that made the man weep inconsolably,

his head bowed, nodding, as my father led him

to the elevator, still with his arm around him,

patting his shoulder, easing him through the door.

I knew the tenderness that somewhere else

could possibly have been a lover’s or a father’s

could here be only an efficient way

to minimize the trouble. And yet it seemed

somehow my father was too adept at it,

too skillful, not to feel it in some way.

And feeling it not to need to pull back,

to separate himself from what the rest

of him was doing, which was why, I think,

his face throughout was blank, expressionless

like the faces of the presidents on the bills

he handed Tony as the door slid shut.

The men fast at the riveters and pressers

and the long row of women at the Singers

were oil now even more than men or women,

mute oil in the loud revving of the place,

a blur of hands on automatic pilot,

slipping leather through the pumping needles,

under the thrusting rods, the furious hammers,

the nearly invisible whirring of the blades.

‘Come on now, Al, it’s time,’ my father said,

and the Captain seemed to grin a little wider,

as if his pleasure there at the end of his

unending day grew freer, more disencumbered,

because he saw me at the start of mine,

under my father’s arm, his soft voice broken

against the noise into an unfollowable tune

of favors and petty cash, and how much ass

he had to kiss to get me this, and I

should be a man now and not disappoint him.

I Am Much Too Alone in This World, Yet Not Alone

by Rainer Maria Rilke
(Translated by Annemarie S. Kidder)

I am much too alone in this world, yet not alone
enough
to truly consecrate the hour.
I am much too small in this world, yet not small
enough
to be to you just object and thing,
dark and smart.
I want my free will and want it accompanying
the path which leads to action;
and want during times that beg questions,
where something is up,
to be among those in the know,
or else be alone.

I want to mirror your image to its fullest perfection,
never be blind or too old
to uphold your weighty wavering reflection.
I want to unfold.
Nowhere I wish to stay crooked, bent;
for there I would be dishonest, untrue.
I want my conscience to be
true before you;
want to describe myself like a picture I observed
for a long time, one close up,
like a new word I learned and embraced,
like the everday jug,
like my mother's face,
like a ship that carried me along
through the deadliest storm.

Dear Possum

I thought death had undone about that many. A few more, a few less. It was hard to miss them at the post office.

But there are master lists of the undone, databases. You can look them up on Google. Insurance companies maintain them.

South of San Francisco there's an entire city of the dead, called Colma. You can see it from the freeway.

Wyatt Earp is undone there, in his Stetson.

(Note)

Rachel Loden

Dick of the Dead
Ahsahta Press

Questions

by Stephen Dunn

If on a summer afternoon a man should find himself
in love with only one woman
in a sea of women, all the others mere half-naked
swimmers and floaters, and if that one woman
therefore is clad in radiance
while the mere others are burdened by their bikinis,
then what does he do with a world
suddenly so small, the once unbiased sun
shining solely on her? And if that afternoon
turns dark, fat clouds like critics dampening
the already wet sea, does the man run—
he normally would—for cover, or does he dive
deeper in, get so wet he is beyond wetness
in all underworld utterly hers? And when
he comes up for air, as he must,
when he dries off and dresses up, as he must,
how will the pedestrian streets feel?
What will the street lamps illuminate? How exactly
will he hold her so that everyone can see
she doesn't belong to him, and he won't let go?

ardware

You lean disconsolate on your stool,
Sullen and certain

As minor royalty rusticated to this
Unhelpful climate of solvents, gaskets, pliers, and bolts.

Because they are new and manifold and useful

You feel their whispers against you. The staunch
Resistance of objects. How can I tell you
O my soul,

To exhaust the realm of the possible when
Ever the light
Is uncongenial as February and your hand unlovely?

Like a dog nearly annihilated by nerves
And boredom chewing her paw to sore, red velvet,

You’ve torn your nails so far flesh swells
Closed around each bed like an eyeless socket.

That you should be making such small change!

Fingers inarticulate as moles nudge a debris
Of dimes not thick enough to hide

The candy-colored butterfly flaring
Across the tender, veined delta of your hand

Heralding indelibly the eviction
Of this vulgar flesh

Or the one word needled in black, knuckle-Gothic
R a p t u r e

Averill Curdy

About a Boy Stirring Jam

A wooden spoon for stirring jam,
Dripping sweet tar, while in the pan
Plum magma's bubbles blather.
For someone who can't grasp the whole
There's salvation in the remembered detail.
What, back then, did I know about that?
The real, hard as a diamond,
Was to happen in the indefinable
Future, and everything seemed
Only a sign of what was to come. How naïve.
Now I know inattention is an unforgivable sin
And each particle of time has an ultimate dimension.

Janusz Szuber

translated from the Polish by Ewa Hryniewicz-Yarbrough

Eclipsed

by Richard Meier

Let me propose to you this way.

From here to Canada, where the tundra

Offers the sky like bare flesh beside its bleakness,

During the latest eclipse

Retinas were burned, lines were crossed

That seemed like opposites until they bent space,

As touching you more and more suddenly wasn’t,

Where the occluded sun, eyeball, and occluding moon

All take a role. Aw, one guy was stuck

Behind a milk truck in traffic. The stainless steel

Was protecting the milk, see.

The damage came undone like a ravel of hair

Which didn’t belong to anyone.

Logic is furious.

Run a little faster, dame, demimonde.

I’ll try to keep up

While my eyes ache in sympathy

With the dim shapes we used to call the world.

I can’t say I’m sorry,

You who are to me both sun and moon.

Let Birds
by Linda Gregg
Eight deer on the slope in the summer morning mist. The night sky blue. Me like a mare let out to pasture. The Tao does not console me. I was given the Way in the milk of childhood. Breathing it waking and sleeping. But now there is no amazing smell of sperm on my thighs, no spreading it on my stomach to show pleasure. I will never give up longing. I will let my hair stay long. The rain proclaims these trees, the trees tell of the sun. Let birds, let birds. Let leaf be passion. Let jaw, let teeth, let tongue be between us. Let joy. Let entering. Let rage and calm join. Let quail come. Let winter impress you. Let spring. Allow the ocean to wake in you. Let the mare in the field in the summer morning mist make you whinny. Make you come to the fence and whinny. Let birds.

Elizabeth Sloughter's Heart

from an illustration in her recipe collection, 1771

She labeled the sketch beef stake, seeing
that she had depicted what looked too like
a crooked heart. N B, when seared on the gridiron,
it must be turned perpetually. A slash

of ink across the page split the picture,
marking the best way to slice the meat
off the rump. Cutting top to bottom—
a quick quill scratch—would do if smaller servings

were needed, but chopping at the grain
was very bad. She knew from years watching
over the help that her kitchen would be a shambles
hours before every midday meal, but who

could worry over a bit of spilled blood
unless the flesh of the hothouse Seville oranges
was ruined before the jelly could be made?
But the new girl, it seemed, would never learn

to prepare meat for the master's table, would weep
like a babe when a steaming half of veal was thrown
onto the block. What waste to spend a page
on a simple drawing, but what was Mrs. Sloughter

to do? The child would have to give up
those tears. To sever, quickly and cleanly,
was an essential skill. All mortal things
owe God their deaths, she'd explained over the cleaver.

She'd held the small hands in place, so hard
she'd felt the pulse. Even ladies learned sacrifice.
What kind of woman would she become, what sort
of wife, to hold a lowly animal so dear?

Sarah Kennedy

Diary of a Wave Outside the Sea [The martyr couldn't believe his eyes]
by Dunya Mikhail
Translated by Elizabeth Winslow

The martyr couldn't believe his eyes
when his tomb was bombed
as he braided a garland for his beloved—
a red garland,
yet...on the way to heaven ...
it turned white.
He bent toward the water with a small rainbow clutched in his hand.

In this way he makes music.
He lifts is hands to the clouds and braids her tears into a flower.
In this way he sings.

A wave breaking outside the sea.
In this way I go on.

How to Sleep

Let your mountainous forehead
with its veins of bright ore
ease down, the deep line
between your brows flatten,
unruffle the small muscles
below your temples, above
your jaws, let the grimace
muscles in your cheekbones
go, the weeping muscles
sealing your eyes. Die into
the pillow, calm in the knowledge
that you will someday cease, soon
or late, late or soon, the song
you're made of will stop, your body
played out, the currents pulsing
through your brain drained
of their power, their purpose,
will frizzle out through
your fingertips, private sparks
leaping weakly onto the sheets
where you lay breathing
and then not breathing.
Lay your head down and relax
into it: death. Accept it.
Trick yourself like this.
Hover in a veil of ethers.
Call it sleep.

Dorianne Laux

Fifties Music

by Leslie Monsour

While women sip their daiquiries by the pool,
and men blow smoke into the jacarandas,
the radio plays "Fly Me to the Moon."

A child nearby, on finding a dead bee,
conducts its funeral in petunia beds,
as ants are trying to amputate a wing.

But even thought the bee is dead, it stings
her fiercely on the palm, and dies again.
She studies her small hand in disbelief.

Some fathers offer ice cubes from their highballs,
the station plays "Volare," and the bee
swings up to heaven on its single wing.

To be of use
by Marge Piercy

The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who stand in the line and haul in their places,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.

Che Fece ... Il Gran Refiuto

by C. P. Cavafy

For some people the day comes

when they have to declare the great Yes

or the great No. It’s clear at once who has the Yes

ready within him; and saying it,

he goes from honor to honor, strong in his conviction.

He who refuses does not repent. Asked again,

he’d still say no. Yet that no—the right no—

drags him down all his life.

Translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard

The River at Wolf

by Jean Valentine

Coming east we left the animals

pelican beaver osprey muskrat and snake

their hair and skin and feathers

their eyes in the dark: red and green.

Your finger drawing my mouth.

Blessed are they who remember

that what they now have they once longed for.

A day a year ago last summer

God filled me with himself, like gold, inside,

deeper inside than marrow.

This close to God this close to you:

walking into the river at Wolf with

the animals. The snake’s

green skin, lit from inside. Our second life.

How to Read a Poem: Beginner's Manual by Pamela Spiro Wagner

First, forget everything you have learned, that poetry is difficult, that it cannot be appreciated by the likes of you, with your high school equivalency diploma, your steel-tipped boots, or your white-collar misunderstandings. Do not assume meanings hidden from you: the best poems mean what they say and say it. To read poetry requires only courage enough to leap from the edge and trust. Treat a poem like dirt, humus rich and heavy from the garden. Later it will become the fat tomatoes and golden squash piled high upon your kitchen table. Poetry demands surrender, language saying what is true, doing holy things to the ordinary. Read just one poem a day. Someday a book of poems may open in your hands like a daffodil offering its cup to the sun. When you can name five poets without including Bob Dylan, when you exceed your quota and don't even notice, close this manual. Congratulations. You can now read poetry.

Traffic
by Bill Berkson
Choice is painful, Occasion but a drag. Poems are made by poets, That's no lie. "What's wrong with this town," A New York driver says, "There's too much art—and Too many art lovers!" "You an artist?" "Nah, I just drive cab."

Library
By Albert Goldbart

This book saved my life.
This book takes place on one of the two small tagalong moons of Mars.
This book requests its author's absolution, centuries after his death.
This book required two of the sultan's largest royal elephants to bear it;
this other book fit in a gourd.
This book reveals The Secret Name of God, and so its author is on a death
list.
This is the book I lifted high over my head, intending to smash a roach in
my girlfriend's bedroom; instead, my back unsprung, and I toppled
painfully into her bed, where I stayed motionless for eight days.
This is a "book." That is, an audio cassette. This other "book" is a screen
and a microchip. This other "book," the sky.
In chapter three of this book, a woman tries explaining her husband's
tragically humiliating death to their daughter: reading it is like walking
through a wall of setting cement.
This book taught me everything about sex.
This book is plagiarized.
This book is transparent; this book is a codex in Aztec; this book, written
by a prisoner, in dung; the wind is turning the leaves of this book: a
hill-top olive as thick as a Russian novel.
This book is a vivisected frog, and ova its text.
This book was dictated by Al-Méllikah, the Planetary Spirit of the Seventh
Realm, to his intermediary on Earth (the Nineteenth Realm), who
published it, first in mimeograph, and many editions later in gold-
stamped leather.
This book taught me everything wrong about sex.
This book poured its colors into my childhood so strongly, they remain a
dye in my imagination today.
This book is by a poet who makes me sick.
This is the first book in the world.
This is a photograph from Viet Nam, titled "Buddhist nuns copying
scholarly Buddhist texts in the pagoda."
This book smells like salami.
This book is continued in volume two.
He was driving — evidently by some elusive, interior radar, since he was
busy reading a book propped on the steering wheel.
This book picks on men.
This is the split Red Sea: two heavy pages.
In this book I underlined deimos, cabochon, pelagic, hegira. I wanted to use
them.
This book poured its bile into my childhood.
This book defames women.
This book was smuggled into the country one page at a time, in tiny pill
containers, in hatbands, in the cracks of asses; sixty people risked their
lives repeatedly over this one book.
This book is nuts!!!
This book cost more than a seven-story chalet in the Tall Oaks subdivision.
This book — I don't remember.
This book is a hoax, and a damnable lie.
This chapbook was set in type and printed by hand, by Larry Levis's then-
wife, the poet Marcia Southwick, in 1975. It's 1997 now and Larry's
dead — too early, way too early — and this elliptical, heartbreaking poem
(which is, in part, exactly about too early death) keeps speaking to me
from its teal-green cover: the way they say the nails and the hair
continue to grow in the grave.
This book is two wings and a thorax the size of a sunflower seed.
This book gave me a hard-on.
This book is somewhere under those other books way over there.
This book deflected a bullet.
This book provided a vow I took.
If they knew you owned this book, they'd come and get you; it wouldn't
be pretty.
This book is a mask: its author isn't anything like it.
This book is by William Matthews, a wonderful poet, who died today, age
55. Now Larry Levis has someone he can talk to.
This book is an "airplane book" (but not about airplanes; mean to be read on
an airplane; also, available every three steps in the airport). What does it
mean, to "bust" a "block"?
This is the book I pretended to read one day in the Perry-Castañeda Library
browsing room, but really I was rapt in covert appreciation of someone
in a slinky skirt that clung like kitchen plasticwrap. She squiggled near,
and pointed to the book. "It's upside-down," she said.
For the rest of the afternoon I was so flustered, that when I finally left the
library... this is the book, with its strip of magnetic-code tape, that I
absentmindedly walked with through the security arch on the first day of
its installation, becoming the first (though unintentional) lightfingered
lifter of books to trigger the Perry-Castañeda alarm, which hadn't been
fine-tuned as yet, and sounded even louder than the sirens I remember
from grade school air raid drills, when the principal had us duck beneath
our desks and cover our heads — as if gabled — with a book.
The chemical formulae for photosynthesis: this book taught me that.
And this book taught me what a "merkin" is.
The cover of this book is fashioned from the tanned skin of a favorite slave.
This book is inside a computer now.
This "book" is made of knotted string; and this, of stone; and this, the gut
of a sheep.
This book existed in a dream of mine, and only there.
This book is a talk-show paperback with shiny gold raised lettering on the
cover. (Needless to say, not one by me.)
This is a book of prohibitions; this other, a book of rowdy license. They
serve equally to focus the prevalent chaos of our lives.
This book is guarded around the clock by men in navy serge and golden
braiding, carrying very capable guns.
This is the book that destroyed a marriage. Take it, burn it, before it costs
us more.
This book is an intercom for God.
This book I slammed against a wall.
My niece wrote this book in crayon and glitter.
This is the book (in a later paperback version) by which they recognized
the sea-bleached, battered, and otherwise-unidentifiable body of Shelley.
Shit: I forgot to send in the card, and now the Book Club has billed me
twice for Synopses of 400 Little-Known Operas.
This book is filled with sheep and rabbits, calmly promenading in their
tartan vests and bowties, with their clay pipes, in their Easter Sunday
salad-like hats. The hills are gently rounded. The sun is a clear firm
yolk. The world will never be this sweetly welcoming again.
This book is studded with gems that have the liquid depth of aperitifs.
This book, 1,000 Wild Nights, is actually wired to give an electr/ YOWCH!
This book I stole from Cornell University's Olin Library in the spring of
1976. Presumably, its meter's still running. Presumably, it still longs for
its Dewey'd place in the dim-lit stacks.
This book has a bookplate reminding me, in Latin, to use my scant time well.
It's the last day of the semester. My students are waiting to sell their
textbooks back to the campus store, like crazed racehorses barely
restrained at the starting gate.
This book caused a howl / a stir / a ruckus / an uproar.
This book became a movie; they quickly raised the cover price.
This book is the Key to the Mysteries.
This book has a bookplate: a man and a woman have pretzeled themselves into one lubricious shape.
This book came apart in my hands.
This book is austere; it's like holding a block of dry ice.
This Bible is in Swahili.
This book contains seemingly endless pages of calculus — it may as well be
in Swahili.
This is the book I pretended to read while Ellen's lushly naked body
darkened into sleep beside me. And this is the book I pretended to read
in a waiting room, once, as a cardiac specialist razored into my father's
chest. And THIS book I pretended having read once, when I
interviewed for a teaching position: "Oh yes," I said, "of course," and
spewed a stream of my justly famous golden bullshit into the conference
room.
This book was signed by the author fifteen minutes before she died.
This is Erhard Ratdolf's edition of Johann Regiomontanus's astronomical
and astrological calendar (1476) — it contains "the first true title-page."
She snatched this book from a garbage can, just as Time was about to
swallow it out of the visible world irrevocably. To this day, her
grandchildren read it.
This book: braille. This one: handmade paper, with threads of the poet's
own bathrobe as part of the book's rag content. This one: the cover is
hollowed glass, with a goldfish swimming around the title.
This is my MFA thesis. Its title is Goldbarth's MFA Thesis.
This is the cookbook used by Madame Curie. It still faintly glows, seven
decades later.
This book is the shame of an entire nation.
This book is one of fourteen matching volumes, like a dress parade.
This is the book I'm writing now. It's my best! (But where should I send
it?)
This book doesn't do anyth / oh wow, check THIS out!
This is the book I bought for my nephew, 101 Small Physics Experiments.
Later he exchanged it for The Book of Twerps and Other Pukey Things, and
who could blame him?
This book is completely marred by the handiwork of the Druckfehlerteufel —
"the imp who supplies the misprints."
This book has a kind of aurora-like glory radiating from it. There should be
versions of uranium detectors that register glory-units from books.
We argued over this book in the days of the divorce. I kept it, she kept the
stained glass window from Mike and Mimi.
Yes, he was supposed to be on the 7:05 to Amsterdam. But he stayed at
home, to finish this whodunit. And so he didn't crash.
This book has a browned corsage pressed in it. I picked up both for a dime
at the Goodwill.
"A diet of berries, vinegar, and goat's milk" will eventually not only cure
your cancer, but will allow a man to become impregnated (diagrams
explain this) — also, there's serious philosophy about Jews who control
"the World Order," in this book.
This book reads from right to left. This book comes with a small wooden
top attached by a saffron ribbon. This book makes the sound of a lion, a
train, or a cuckoo clock, depending on where you press its cover.
I've always admired this title from 1481: The Myrrour of the Worlde.
This book is from the 1950s; the jacket says it's "a doozie."
This book is by me. I found it squealing piteously, poor piglet, in the back
of a remainders bin. I took it home and nursed it.
This book let me adventure with the Interplanetary Police.
I threw myself, an aspirant, against the difficult theories this book
propounded, until my spirit was bruised. I wasn't any smarter — just
bruised.
This book is magic. There's more inside it than outside.
This is the copy of the Iliad that Alexander the Great took with him,
always, on his expeditions — "in," Thoreau says, "a precious casket."
Help! (thump) I've been stuck in this book all week and I don't know how
to get out! (thump)
This is the book of poetry I read from at my wedding to Morgan. We were
divorced. The book (Fred Chappell's River) is still on my shelf, like an
admonishment.
This book is stapled (they're rusted by now); this book, bound in buttery
leather; this book's pages are chemically-treated leaves; this book, the
size of a peanut, is still complete with indicia and an illustrated colophon
page.
So tell me: out of what grim institution for the taste-deprived and the
sensibility-challenged do they find the cover artists for these books?
This book I tried to carry balanced on my head with seven others.
This book I actually licked.
This book — remember? I carved a large hole in its pages, a "how-to
magazine for boys" said this would be a foolproof place to hide my
secret treasures. Then I remembered I didn't have any secret treasures
worth hiding. Plus, I was down one book.
This book is nothing but jackal crap; unfortunately, its royalties have paid
for two Rolls-Royces and a mansion in the south of France.
This book is said to have floated off the altar of the church, across the
village square, and into the hut of a peasant woman in painful labor.
This is what he was reading when he died. The jacket copy says it's "a real
page-turner — you can't put it down!" I'm going to assume he's in
another world now, completing the story.
This book hangs by a string in an outhouse, and every day it gets thinner.
This book teaches you how to knit a carrying case for your rosary; this one,
how to build a small but lethal incendiary device.
This book has pop-up pages with moveable parts, intended to look like the
factory room where pop-up books with moveable parts are made.
If you don't return that book I loaned you, I'm going to smash your face.
This book says the famously saintly woman was really a ringtailed trash-
mouth dirty-down bitch queen. Everyone's reading it!
There are stains in this book that carry a narrative greater than its text.
The Case of _______. How to _______. Books books books.
I know great petulant stormy swatches and peaceful lulls of this book by
heart.
I was so excited, so jazzed up! — but shortly thereafter they found me
asleep, over pages six and seven of this soporific book. (I won't say by
who.)
And on her way back to her seat, she fell (the multiple sclerosis) and
refused all offered assistance. Instead, she used her book she'd been
reading from, as a prop, and worked herself pridefully back up to a
standing position.
They gave me this book for free at the airport. Its cover features an Indian
god with the massive head of an elephant, as brightly blue as a druid,
flinging flowers into the air and looking unsurpassably wise.
My parents found this book in my bottom drawer, and spanked the living
hell into my butt.
This book of yours, you tell me, was optioned by Hollywood for eighty-
five impossibajillion dollars? Oh. Congratulations.
They lowered the esteemed and highly-published professor into his grave.
A lot of silent weeping. A lot of elegiac rhetoric. And one man shaking
his head in the chill December wind dumbfoundedly, who said, "And he
perished anyway."
Although my 8th grade English teacher, Mrs. Hurd, always said "Whenever
you open a book, remember: that author lives again."
After this book, there was no turning back.
Around 1000 A.D., when the Magyars were being converted over to
Christianity, Magyar children were forced to attend school for the first
time in their cultural history: "therefore the Magyar word konyv means
tears as well as book."
This book, from when I was five, its fuzzy ducklings, and my mother's
voice in the living room of the second-story apartment over the butcher
shop on Division Street.... I'm fifty now. I've sought out, and I own
now, one near-mint and two loose, yellowing copies that mean to me as
much as the decorated gold masks and the torsos of marble meant to the
excavators of Troy.
This book is done.
This book gave me a paper cut.
This book set its mouth on my heart, and sucked a mottled tangle of blood
to the surface.
I open this book and smoke pours out, I open this book and a bad sleet
slices my face, I open this book: brass knuckles, I open this book: the
spiky scent of curry, I open this book and hands grab forcefully onto my
hair as if in violent sex, I open this book: the wingbeat of a seraph, I
open this book: the edgy cat-pain wailing of the damned thrusts up in a
column as sturdy around as a giant redwood, I open this book: the travel
of light, I open this book and it's as damp as a wound, I open this book
and I fall inside it farther than any physics, stickier than the jelly we
scrape from cracked bones, cleaner than what we tell our children in the
dark when they're afraid to close their eyes at night.
And this book can't be written yet: its author isn't born yet.
This book is going to save the world.

Aperture

by Gary Short

From behind the screen door I watch the cat
in the bunchgrass stalking at dusk.
With the pure attention of religion,
he waits for the skitter of a field mouse,
a shiver in an owl's dream.

The cat delivers his limp prey
to the chipped gray paint of the porch.
I step outside, not knowing
if I will punish the cat
or accept the mouse.

At the edge of the porch I kneel and see
the map of red capillaries
in the delicate mouse ear.

I lift it by the tail to toss,
but in the blink of a smug cat's eye
I feel a tug—an escape
back into life.

In the African journals, Livingston tells
of the charging lion that knocked him down.
When he was held in the lion's mouth,
the human body's trance-like response
was to go limp in an ecstatic giving up
that saved. To assume death

to stay alive.

A Confederate soldier at Antietam
played dead when his battalion was overrun.
for a moment he thought he was safe,
but to make sure, the Union infantryman
drove a bayonet into each body on the ground.

When I pick up the mouse
and it jerks from terror-induced sleep,
I feel all that fear
in a small heartbeat.

My panicked fingers let go
and the mouse slips into the brush where it may be
safe for awhile. Though the cat
is all tension now and ready
to pounce again. I shut him in the house,
stand on the porch and watch the first stars
burn holes in the sky.
Dark enlarging around me,
the pupil in a cat's eye.

Talking About New Orleans
by Jayne Cortez
Talking about New Orleans About deforestation & the flood of vodun paraphernalia the Congo line losing its Congo the funeral bands losing their funding the killer winds humming intertribal warfare hums into two storm-surges touching down tonguing the ground three thousand times in a circle of grief four thousand times on a levee of lips five thousand times between a fema of fangs everything fiendish, fetid, funky, swollen, overheated and splashed with blood & guts & drops of urinated gin in syncopation with me riding through on a refrigerator covered with asphalt chips with pieces of ragtime music charts torn photo mug shots & pulverized turtle shells from Biloxi me bumping against a million-dollar oil rig me in a ghost town floating on a river on top of a river me with a hundred ton of crab legs and no evacuation plan me in a battered tree barking & howling with abandoned dogs my cheeks stained with dried suicide kisses my isolation rising with a rainbow of human corpse & fecal rat bones where is that fire chief in his big hat where are the fucking pumps the rescue boats & the famous coalition of bullhorns calling out names hey I want my red life jacket now & I need some sacred sandbags some fix-the-levee-powder some blood-pressure-support-juice some get-it-together-dust some lucky-rooftop-charms & some magic-helicopter-blades I'm not prepared to live on the bottom of the water like Oshun I don't have a house built on stilts I can't cross the sea like Olokun I'm not equipped to walk on water like Marie Laveau or swim away from a Titanic situation like Mr. Shine Send in those paddling engineers I'm inside of my insides & I need to distinguish between the nightmare, the mirage, the dream and the hallucination Give me statistics how many residents died while waiting how many drowned how many suffocated how many were dehydrated how many were separated how many are missing how many had babies and anyway who's in charge of this confusion this gulf coast engulfment this displacement this superdome shelter this stench of stank this demolition order this crowded convention center chaos making me crave solitary confinement Am I on my own exhausted from fighting racist policies exhausted from fighting off sex offenders exhausted from fighting for cots for tents for trailers for a way out of this anxiety this fear this emptiness this avoidance this unequal opportunity world of disappointments accumulating in my undocumented eye of no return tickets Is this freedom is this global warming is this the new identity me riding on a refrigerator through contaminated debris talking to no one in particular about a storm that became a hurricane & a hurricane that got violent and started eyeballing & whistling & stretching toward a category three domination that caught me in the numbness of my own consciousness unprepared, unprotected and made more vulnerable to destabilization by the corporate installation of human greed, human poverty human invention of racism & human neglect of the environment I mean even Buddy Bolden came back to say move to higher ground because a hurricane will not rearrange its creativity for you & the river will meet the ocean in the lake of your flesh again so move to higher ground and let your jungle find its new defense let the smell of your wisdom restore the power of pure air & let your intoxicated shoreline rumble above & beyond the water-marks of disaster I'm speaking of New Orleans of deportation of belching bulldozers of poisonous snakes of bruised bodies of instability and madness mechanism of indifference and process of elimination I'm talking about transformation about death re-entering life with Bonne chance, bon ton roulé, bonjour & bonne vie in New Orleans, bon

Keeping Track of My Genius

by Jack Stewart

I sometimes find him in the attic,

lying on his side, contemplating

the insulation. Or just staring at

the beams, trying to get the measure

of force and distribution. He

turns up a lot in the garage.

I know he loves me. But if I look

away for an instant, he's off,

and I worry that he won't come back

(or when he does he'll have no taste,

gone in for some fad I'll have to bear,

and every move he makes a test).

But usually he's charming,

following me to the cafe

and lying on the awning so carefully

as not to make it sag, only

casting a slight shadow on my table.

Of course I act as though I

haven't seen a thing. He only wants,

I think, to do what can't be done.

Why just yesterday, for instance,

I found him going through the public trash,

figuring how to fill a bottle

some angry drunk had smashed.

The Peace That So Lovingly Descends
by Noelle Kocot
"You" have transformed into "my loss." The nettles in your vanished hair Restore the absolute truth Of warring animals without a haven. I know, I'm as pathetic as a railroad Without tracks. In June, I eat The lonesome berries from the branches. What can I say, except the forecast Never changes. I sleep without you, And the letters that you sent Are now faded into failed lessons Of an animal that's found a home. This.

A Little Called Pauline

by Gertrude Stein

A little called anything shows shudders.

Come and say what prints all day. A whole few watermelon. There is no pope.

No cut in pennies and little dressing and choose wide soles and little spats really little spices.

A little lace makes boils. This is not true.

Gracious of gracious and a stamp a blue green white bow a blue green lean, lean on the top.

If it is absurd then it is leadish and nearly set in where there is a tight head.

A peaceful life to arise her, noon and moon and moon. A letter a cold sleeve a blanket a shaving house and nearly the best and regular window.

Nearer in fairy sea, nearer and farther, show white has lime in sight, show a stitch of ten. Count, count more so that thicker and thicker is leaning.

I hope she has her cow. Bidding a wedding, widening received treading, little leading mention nothing.

Cough out cough out in the leather and really feather it is not for.

Please could, please could, jam it not plus more sit in when.

Four Kinds of Lilacs

by Leo Dangel

"Why don't you turn at the next corner,"
she said, "and take another road home.
Let's go past that farm with all the
different colored lilacs."

"That's seven miles out of the way,"
he said. "I wanted to plant the rest
of the corn before evening. We
can look at lilacs some other time."

"It'll take only a few minutes"
she said. "You know that lilacs
aren't in bloom for long—if we
don't go now, it will be too late."

"We drove past there last year,"
he said. "They're like any other lilacs
except for the different colors. The rest
of the year, they're all just bushes."

"They're lilac, purple, white, and pink,"
she said. "And today, with no breeze,
the scent will hang in the air—no flowers
smell as good as lilacs in the spring."

"I thought of planting lilacs once,"
he said, "for a windbreak in the grove.
The good smell lasts only a few days.
I suppose we can go, if we hurry."

"Now slow up," she said.
"Last year, you drove by so fast
we couldn't even get a good look.
It wouldn't hurt to take it easy."

"Well, there they are," he said,
"and looking pretty scraggly—past
full bloom already. You should
have thought of doing this sooner."