Category Archives: image

The First Time White-Corn’s-Child Came to the House Made of Dawn

Posted on by
Reply

2920375421_5eac7d6df3_bStumbling through the grounds at sunrise,
With dew-damp pollen clinging to my ragged pants cuffs
And having left all my friends behind,
I found myself here.

Beauty amazes me!
Charms hanging in the doorway!
Beauty amazes me!
I’ll dance with the altar-cloth!

Beautiful all that lies before me!
Beautiful all that creeps up behind!
Beautiful, every side I turn to!
I turn, and turn, and turn!

So here I am wandering around
In the house of happiness,
In the house of long life
That no one enters alive.

Continue reading →

Things Have Been Thought About Enough, Already

Posted on by
Reply

Che Wright

In one of his first public statements after learning of his new post, Charles Wright said that, as laureate, “I’ll probably stay here at home and think about things… I will not be an activist laureate, I don’t think…I have no program.” 

I’ve seen you out there by the barn,
surreptitiously tucking away your meditative, image-driven lyrics
Between hard covers,
Thinking that absolves you, that it’s enough.

Well, no, goddammit.
I mean, really, I don’t have to explain it to you, do I?
God damn it, get out there and sell us some poetry!
Are you with us, or against us?

Continue reading →

on the waterside path

Posted on by
Reply

Running away from fireworkson the waterside path
by the levy familiar geese
gaggle along

while a fat boy rests on the bridge
while his backpack rests beside him on the bridge
while the train goes by

that jackrabbit lolloping headlong
that reaches cover in the tall grass
and runs out the other side of the tall grass

toward the shack with walls no longer square
whose roof is rows of weathered slats that gap
to sunlight and the morning air

while two crows black and black
perch atop two dirty chunks of broken concrete
upon a low mound of broken concrete

and me watching
me watching
as if my heart would break

Continue reading →

Against Order

Posted on by
1

domes over bridgeThe arches found the city which the river underlies.
The tall cathedral towers are aspiring to the skies.

We would all be very happy in that geometric land
Some above and some below, but each according to a plan.

The rich are the deserving and the poor accept their lot
And the rich have mausoleums and the poor will get a plot.
Meanwhile, what symmetry and balance we have bought!

Did anybody notice that the pieces fit so neatly
You could jumble up the city once and fill it in completely?
You could jumble up the city like a set of building blocks
Collect them when they’ve fallen and return them to their box.

Continue reading →