Poetry – Page 3 – Open (Open (Close)

An Apology, Just As the Weather Gets Nice

February 12, 2009 4 Comments

I.

Dear darling, I’m sorry, I have broken
all
of our windows.

The first while I was alone, spring cleaning, tipping inwards, wiping years of grey
away

Something shifted.

A squeak I could not attribute
to a mouse.

I tried to get back hold of the thing darling, but it is difficult, balancing on a six-dollar bookshelf and a three-foot-high rolling chair and when your fingers drip with blue glass cleaner and the February wind sucks in, the February wind throws your hair in your face

One side of the latch, snap, the
other side of the latch, snap

I panicked. I pushed the top pane up, the bottom pane down, I held them with shaking arms and with a pale forehead locked them into place, and I made a mental note

to tell you

when you got home from running that errand, for me

“darling, we can simply never
open that window again.”

Luckily you got home just as I was breaking the second one.

Poetry

How These Skills May Benefit You Later in Life

January 8, 2009 4 Comments

I.
I am surrounded by third graders, and I am playing the role of silent typist. My job
is twofold:

1.) type what they say
2.) act the mute

Small detail: hilarious typos
are encouraged.

II.
“What does Alien Gus look like” the storyteller
asks, his eyes as big as fists, “use

simile, no blah words,
is he orange is he purple?”

The third graders
are overwhelmed with possibilities.

The room is very still.

Then, someone suggests
he wears a fancy suit.

From Others, Poetry

Like a Kettle to Keep You

November 12, 2008 No Comments

When it’s not raining . . . read Young? From Issue 5 of A Public Space — “I Don’t Burn” by Kevin Young:

Dear Darkness — consider this
my last attempt

to reach you. My previous
few missives

having boomeranged back
unread, postmarks blurred

Costa Rica, Poetry

The Dividing Line

May 7, 2008 2 Comments

I would like very much to go
snorkeling with you —

Our pale, East Coast bodies floating like foam
in a cobalt salty sea

Where, fluttering alongside schools of flatfish,
darling you and I would speak

A new language

of air bubbles and gestures, pirouettes and
pipe-delayed gasps

as electric eels writhe below.

From Others, Poetry

Poet, Be Like God

April 24, 2008 2 Comments

I’ve briefly mentioned this before, but I’ll say it again: I think if there’s one, immediately irksome subject for a poem to tackle, it’s writing poetry — describing the writing process, the agony of writer’s block, the expectation from an imaginary audience. Such poems are inaccessible to people who have no interest in writing poetry. They’re annoying to people who do. The only audience I could see actually enjoying such self-important, self-indulgent, generally self-y whining are the people who romanticize poetry writing — who think that, if they only had the time, if they only lived in the Catskills, if only there were fresh strawberries, they would be poets.

Unsurprisingly there’s a lot of such poetry out there. Surprisingly to me, today I read one I really liked. Courtesy of The Writer’s Almanac — this is “Man Writes Poem” by Jay Leeming.