Category: Poetry

“To Waiting” by W.S. Merwin

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You spend so much of your time
expecting to become
someone else
always someone
who will be different
someone to whom a moment
whatever moment it may be
at last has come
and who has been
met and transformed
into no longer being you
and so has forgotten you

meanwhile in your life
you hardly notice
the world around you
lights changing
sirens dying along the buildings
your eyes intent
on a sight you do not see yet
not yet there
as long as you
are only yourself

with whom as you
recall you were
never happy
to be left alone for long

“To Waiting” by W.S. Merwin, from Present Company. © Copper Canyon Press, 2007.

“A Portrait of a Dog as an Older Guy” by Katia Kapovich

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry
When his owner died in 2000 and a new family
moved into their Moscow apartment,
he went to live with mongrels in the park.
In summer there was plenty of food, kids
often left behind sandwiches, hotdogs and other stuff.
He didn’t have a big appetite,
still missing his old guy.
He too was old, the ladies no longer excited him,
and he didn’t burn calories chasing them around.
Then winter came and the little folk abandoned the park.
The idea of eating from the trash occurred to him
but the minute he started rummaging in the
overturned garbage container, a voice
in his head said: “No, Rex!”
The remnants of a good upbringing lower
our natural survival skills.

 

I met him again in the early spring of 2001.
He looked terrific. Turning gray became him.
His dark shepherd eyes were perfectly bright,
like those of a puppy.
I asked him how he sustained himself
in this new free-market situation
when even the human species suffered from malnutrition.
In response he told me his story;
how at first he thought that life without his man
wasn’t worth it, how those
who petted him when he was a pet
then turned away from him, and how one night
he had a revelation.

 

His man came to him in his sleep,
tapped him on his skinny neck and said:
“Let’s go shopping!” So the next morning he took the subway
and went to the street market
where they used to go together every Sunday and where
vendors recognized him and fed him
to his heart’s content.
“Perhaps you should move closer to that area?”
I ventured.—”No, I’ll stay here,” he sighed,
“oldies shouldn’t change their topography. That’s
what my man said.”
Indeed, he sounded like one himself.

 

Katia Kapovich, “A Portrait of a Dog as an Older Guy” from Cossacks and Bandits. Copyright © 2007 by Katia Kapovich

 

“Peach Farm” by Dean Young

On By Christina's WordsIn Music, Poetry

I’m thinking it’s time to go back
to the peach farm or rather
the peach farm seems to be wanting me back
even though the work of picking, sorting,
the sticky perils and sudden swarms are done.
Okay, full disclosure, I’ve never
been on a peach farm, just glimpsed
from a car squat trees I assumed
were peach and knew a couple in school
who went off one summer, so they said,
to work on a peach farm. She was pregnant,
he didn’t have much intention, canvases
of crushed lightbulbs and screws in paste.
He’d gotten fired from the lunch counter
for putting too much meat
on the sandwiches of his friends
then ended up in Macy’s in New York
selling caviar and she went home
I think to Scranton, two more versions
of never hearing from someone again.
I’d like to say the most important fruits
are within but that’s the very sort of bullshit
one goes to the peach farm to avoid,
not just flight from quadratic equations,
waiting for the plumber,
finding out your insurance won’t pay.
Everyone wants out of the spider’s stomach.
Everyone wants to be part of some harvest
and stop coughing to death and cursing
at nothing and waking up nowhere near
an orchard. Look at these baskets,
bashed about, nearly ruined with good employ.
Often, after you’ve spent a day on a ladder,
you dream of angels, the one with the trumpet
and free subscriptions to the New Yorker
or the archer, the oink angel, angel
of ten dollar bills found in the dryer
or the one who welcomes you in work gloves
and says if you’re caught eating a single peach,
even windfall, you’ll be executed.
Then laughs. It’s okay, kiddo,
long as you’re here, you’re one of us.

Dean Young, source: Poetry (June 2012).

 

“Peaches” by In The Valley Below

“The Soul and The Body on The Beach” by Anna Swir

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry5 Comments

The soul on the beach
studies a textbook of philosophy.
The soul asks the body:
Who bound us together?
The body says:
Time to tan the knees.

The soul asks the body:
Is it true
that we do not really exist?
The body says:
I’m tanning my knees.

The soul asks the body,
Where will the dying begin,
in you or in me?
The body laughed,
It tanned its knees.

~ Anna Swir (1909-1984), Polish poet, translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Leonard Nathan

“How We Love People We Once Loved” by Fortesa Latifi

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry1 Comment

When I tell you I don’t love you anymore, neither of us can tell if I’m lying. If old habits die hard, then bad habits die harder and this is on par with 3 packs a day. This is on par with a bottle before breakfast.
Old love tricks us I think. There is nowhere to put it. So it lies on the bottom of your heart and shivers. My body remembers you too well.
My insides light up like the traitors they are when you cross the street in front of me and it takes a full five minutes for my brain to catch up. You don’t love him anymore, remember? Or you shouldn’t, remember? Or you’re fucking stupid if you do, remember?
So ask me again. Ask me if I still love you. I don’t think so. But if I do,
it’s less like champagne and stars and more like faded Polaroids. More like the weight of the sun pressing down on the horizon every afternoon. More like the way you have to cut a tree open to see how old it is. Less like love and more like that detached way you love people you once loved.

~ Fortesa Latifi (via her tumblr madgirlf). Fortesa’s first book of poetry, This is How We Find Each Other, may be ordered at Where Are You Press.