I went into the Maverick Bar   
In Farmington, New Mexico.
And drank double shots of bourbon
        backed with beer.
My long hair was tucked up under a cap
I’d left the earring in the car.

Two cowboys did horseplay
         by the pool tables,
A waitress asked us
         where are you from?
a country-and-western band began to play   
“We don’t smoke Marijuana in Muskokie”   
And with the next song,
         a couple began to dance.

They held each other like in High School dances   
          in the fifties;
I recalled when I worked in the woods
          and the bars of Madras, Oregon.   
That short-haired joy and roughness—
          America—your stupidity.   
I could almost love you again.

We left—onto the freeway shoulders—
           under the tough old stars—
In the shadow of bluffs
          I came back to myself,
To the real work, to
         “What is to be done.”

~ from Turtle Island (New Directions, 1974)

I love to go out in late September
among the fat, overripe, icy, black blackberries
to eat blackberries for breakfast,
the stalks very prickly, a penalty
they earn for knowing the black art
of blackberry-making; and as I stand among them
lifting the stalks to my mouth, the ripest berries
fall almost unbidden to my tongue,
as words sometimes do, certain peculiar words
like strengths and squinched,
many-lettered, one-syllabled lumps,
which I squeeze, squinch open, and splurge well
in the silent, startled, icy, black language
of blackberry-eating in late September.

~ from Mortal Acts, Mortal Words (Houghton Mifflin Company 1980)

She was four, he was one, it was raining, we had colds,
we had been in the apartment two weeks straight,
I grabbed her to keep her from shoving him over on his
face, again, and when I had her wrist
in my grasp I compressed it, fiercely, for a couple
of seconds, to make an impression on her,
to hurt her, our beloved firstborn, I even almost
savored the stinging sensation of the squeezing,
the expression, into her, of my anger,
"Never, never, again," the righteous
chant accompanying the clasp. It happened very
fast-grab, crush, crush,
crush, release-and at the first extra
force, she swung her head, as if checking
who this was, and looked at me,
and saw me-yes, this was her mom,
her mom was doing this. Her dark,
deeply open eyes took me
in, she knew me, in the shock of the moment
she learned me. This was her mother, one of the
two whom she most loved, the two
who loved her most, near the source of love 
was this.

~ from 180 More, Selected by Billy Collins (Random House, 2005)

When I think of words
I am one of those people
words all over
pieces of paper
I lose those papers
writing words trying to remember
small woman in the supermarket she told me
her eggplant was the spitting image
of Richard Nixon this is my life,
although it goes by so quickly
especially summers when days
more beautiful than beautiful
begin and end before I can write
them down when I try to tell you
about the world
and my sitting
on the porch I am writing a few things down
what I want to tell you
is how life, small wonderful
bright yellow life how life
can happen if you watch and if you try
to write it down

~ from The On Being Project (September 13, 2015)

If there’s one true thing, it’s that
Google will make money off us no matter what.
If we want to know
what percentage of America is white
(as it seems we do)
what percentage of the population is gay
(as it seems we do)
what percentage of the earth is water:
the engine is ready for our desire.
The urgent snow is everywhere
is a line by Edna St. Vincent Millay, and
many have asked, apparently,
where am I right now. Also
when will I die. Do you love me
may be up there, generating
high cost-per-click, but not
as high as how to make pancakes,
what time is it in California.
So many things I wanted to ask you,
now that you’re gone, and your texts
bounce back to me
undeliverable. Praise to
the goddess of the internet search, who returns
with her basket of grain,
67,000 helpful suggestions
to everything we request:
how to solve a Rubik’s Cube,
what to do when you’re bored,
how old is the earth,
how to clear cache,
what animal am I,
why do we dream,
where are you now, come back.

~ Copyright © 2018 by Rachel Richardson

  para mi abuela en la isla   

A hurricane destroyed your sense of home
and all you wanted was to pack your bags
in dead of night, still waving mental flags,
forgetting the nation is a syndrome.
All that’s left of the sea in you is foam,
the coastline's broken voice and all its crags.
You hear the governor admit some snags
were hit, nada, mere blips in the biome,
nothing that private equity can’t fix
once speculators pour into San Juan
to harvest the bad seed of an idea.
She tells you Santa Clara in ’56
had nothing on the brutal San Ciprián,
and yes, your abuela’s named María.

Thoughts of Katrina and the Superdome,
el Caribe mapped with blood and sandbags,
displaced, diasporic, Spanglish hashtags,
a phantom tab you keep on Google Chrome,
days of hunger and dreams of honeycomb.
Are souls reborn or worn thin like old rags?
The locust tree still stands although it sags,
austere sharks sequence the island’s genome
and parrots squawk survival politics
whose only power grid is the damp dawn.
There is no other way, no panacea.
Throw stuff at empire’s walls and see what sticks
or tear down the walls you were standing on?
Why don’t you run that question by María?

Beyond the indigenous chromosome,
your gut genealogy’s in chains and gags,
paraded through the colonies’ main drags
and left to die. So when you write your tome
please note: each word must be a catacomb,
must be a sepulcher and must be a
cradle in some sort of aporía
where bodies draw on song as guns are drawn,
resilient, silent h in huracán.
Your ache-song booms ashore. Ashé, María.

Copyright © 2018 Urayoán Noel

I like poets who swear 
less is more
earthy abbreviations of long histories
with parents
with the world
with God dammit

I write things down so I can say them again

I like poets who obviously wash dishes
the sound of service in service to words
checking both sides of a sound
for anything that might send it back into the water

you write things down so you never have to say them again

I like poets who write short books so I can sleep

~ from You’ve Changed (Mezcalita Press, 2017)

Lord,
    when you send the rain,
    think about it, please,
    a little?
Do
    not get carried away
    by the sound of falling water,
    the marvelous light
    on the falling water.
I
    am beneath that water.
    It falls with great force
    and the light
Blinds
    me to the light.

~ from Jimmy’s Blues and Other Poems (Beacon Press, 2014)

Stay, stay at home, my heart, and rest;
Home-keeping hearts are happiest,
For those that wander they know not where
Are full of trouble and full of care;
       To stay at home is best.
 
Weary and homesick and distressed,
They wander east, they wander west,
And are baffled and beaten and blown about
By the winds of the wilderness of doubt;
       To stay at home is best.
 
Then stay at home, my heart, and rest;
The bird is safest in its nest;
O’er all that flutter their wings and fly
A hawk is hovering in the sky;
       To stay at home is best.
 
~ Public domain

I am so busy at times
trying to make it all
worthwhile, that I am
stunned at how easily the
whole of life speaks to me,
when music I’ve never heard
or a truth I never understood
plucks the one string I carry
deep within.

I only want that string pluck-
ed and yet, it stays in a place
only suffering or surrender
can open.

Still, violins in minor keys
make me swallow my fear
and herons flying into
the end of a long day
make me wish I’d led
a more peaceful life.

~ from Reduced to Joy (Viva Editions  2013)

Talking can be sweet.  A field can bloom in your	
eyes when sharing words with the right person.

An invisible effulgence wafts out from a heart 
that is happy.  That is an oxygen to us.
In some cities, smoke stacks pollute the air and 	
harm the lungs of many creatures.

A good song fills our chests too, but can have	
the opposite effect—everything it touches
may be better of.

There is a governor of every region of space,	 	
a divine agent; he or she may remain hidden,
but their business is your soul, as it is mine.

Words can fertilize space now and then; don’t	
deny yourself becoming enriched.

Find some ears that love the touch of your	
sounds, and you theirs.

~ from The Purity of Desire, 100 Poems of Rumi, translated by Daniel Ladinsky with Nancy Owen Barton (Penguin Books, 2012)

When I pronounce the word Future,
the first syllable already belongs to the past.

When I pronounce the word Silence,
I destroy it.

When I pronounce the word Nothing,
I make something no non-being can hold.


~Translated by S. Baranczak & C. Cavanagh
Copyright © Wislawa Szymborska, S. Baranczak & C. Cavanagh

I have thoughts that are fed by the sun:

     The things which I see

     Are welcome to me,

     Welcome every one –

     I do not wish to lie

          Dead, dead,

Dead, without any company.

     Here alone on my bed

With thoughts that are fed by the sun,

And hopes that are welcome every one,

     Happy am I.

Oh life there is about thee

A deep delicious peace;

I would not be without thee,

     Stay, oh stay!

Yet be thou ever as now –

Sweetness and breath, with the quiet of death –

Be but thou ever as now,

     Peace, peace, peace.

~Public Domain

Faux-leather bound and thick as an onion, it flakes —
an heirloom from Iowa my dead often read.
I open the black flap to speak the spakes
and quickly lose track of who wed, who bred.
She taped our family register as it tore,
her hand stuttering like a sewing machine,
darning the blanks with farmers gone before —
Inez, Alvah, Delbert, Ermadean.
Our undistinguished line she pressed in the heft
between the testaments, with spaces to spare,
and one stillborn’s name, smudged; her fingers left
a mounting watchfulness, a quiet repair —
when I saw the AIDS quilt, spread out in acres,
it was stitched with similar scripts by similar makers.

~ from The Road to Emmaus (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2014)

Death visits you	
in the face of your father.
He calls you	
to his curious room	
and reaches out a hand.

He has called you for a reason	
and you want to cry, want to see
what the reason is.

		*

In the long afterward	
the dead have obligations.
You see them less and less,	
like your very first friend,
like your parents in the years after leaving home.

		*

Dreams are the borrowed eyes of the dead.
They come down to you	
in old poses, faces resplendent:

you dream, and dream and dream
until they are certain you see.

		*

The dead are like the soul	
of a man while he’s singing.
They are clear escaping 	
nights, wandering and cool.

They are not breath; they have given that up.
Not breath.  But everything else.

~ from What Kind of Man Are You (Brick Books, 2018)

when the tree begins to flower
like a glimpse of

Flesh

when the flower begins to smell
as if its roots have reached

the layer of
Thirst upon the
unsealed jar of

Joy

Alice, you should
never sleep under
so much pure pale

so many shriek-mouthed blooms

as if Patience
had run out of

Patience

~from Falling Awake (W.W. Norton & Company, 2016)

I give everything away and it goes way, 	
into the dusty air,
onto the face of the water
that goes away beyond our seeing.
I give everything away	
that has been given to me:
the voices of children under clouds,
the men in the parks at the chess tables,
the women entering and leaving bakeries.
God who came here by rock, by tree, by bird.
All things silent in my seeing.
All things believable in their leaving.
Everything I have I give away	
and it goes away.

~from All of It Singing  (Graywolf Press, 2008)

In spring
I return to wonder	
as a camel calls upon
water from its hump,

I return to wonder	
carving it	
from emaciated air
inducing it—	

not from the
rubbing of genie lamps,
the recitation of wishes,
puffs of smoke,
the palming of cards,

but from irises
pushing up in their patch,
bursting through soil,
valiant purple.

I return to wonder	
snatching it 
from the press of should-dos 
distilling it
from the tug
of schedule and event
to my involuntary present.

Without wonder
I might bear winter	
in me always

Then
there might be
nothing to admire

beyond my own being.

So in spring,
I return to wonder.

~ from Red Silk, An Anthology of South Asian 
Canadian Women Poets (Mansfield Press, 2004)

I was hoping to be happy by seventeen. 
School was a sharp check mark in the roll book, 
An obnoxious tuba playing at noon because our team 
Was going to win at night. The teachers were 
Too close to dying to understand.  The hallways 
Stank of poor grades and unwashed hair. Thus, 
A friend and I sat watching the water on Saturday, 
Neither of us talking much, just warming ourselves 
By hurling large rocks at the dusty ground 
And feeling awful because San Francisco was a postcard 
On a bedroom wall. We wanted to go there,  
Hitchhike under the last migrating birds 
And be with people who knew more than three chords 
On a guitar. We didn't drink or smoke, 
But our hair was shoulder length, wild when 
The wind picked up and the shadows of 
This loneliness gripped loose dirt. By bus or car, 
By the sway of train over a long bridge, 
We wanted to get out. The years froze 
As we sat on the bank. Our eyes followed the water, 
White-tipped but dark underneath, racing out of town.

~from Poetry 180, Selected by Billy Collins (Random House, 2003)