I read the papers,
I unfold them and examine them in the sunlight.
The way the red mortars, in photographs,
arc down into the neighborhoods
like stars, the way death
combs everything into a gray rubble before
the camera moves on. What
dark part of my soul
shivers: you don’t want to know more
about this. And then: you don’t know anything
unless you do. How the sleepers
wake and run to the cellars,
how the children scream, their tongues
trying to swim away–
how the morning itself appears
like a slow white rose
while the figures climb over the bubbled thresholds,
move among the smashed cars, the streets
where the clanging ambulances won’t
stop all day–death and death, messy death–
death as history, death as a habit–
how sometimes the camera pauses while a family
counts itself, and all of them are alive,
their mouths dry caves of wordlessness
in the smudged moons of their faces,
a craziness we have so far no name for–
all this I read in the papers,
in the sunlight,
I read with my cold, sharp eyes.
Category: Poetry
“Listening to Paul Simon” by Dorianne Laux
Such a brave generation.
We marched onto the streets
in our T-shirts and jeans, holding
the hand of the stranger next to us
with a trust I can’t summon now,
our voices raised in song.
Our rooms were lit by candlelight,
wax dripping onto the table, then
onto the floor, leaving dusty
starbursts we would pop off
with the edge of a butter knife
when it was time to move.
But before we packed and drove
into the middle of our lives
we watched the leaves outside
the window shift in the wind
and listened to Paul Simon,
his cindery voice, then fell back
into our solitude, leveled our eyes
on the American horizon
that promised us everything
and knew it was never true:
smoke and blinders, insubstantial
as fingerprints on glass.
It isn’t easy to give up hope,
to escape a dream. We shed
our clothes and cut our hair,
our former beauty piled at our feet.
And still the music lived inside us,
whole worlds unmaking us
in the dark, so that sleeping and waking
we heard the train’s distant whistle,
steel trestles shivering
across the land that was still ours
in our bones and hearts, its lone headlamp
searching the weedy stockyards,
the damp, gray rags of fog.
-Dorianne Laux, via Serving House Journal. Originally published in Two Weeks: A Digital Anthology of Contemporary Poetry.
“Peace Like a River” by Paul Simon
“Some Notes on Courage” by Susan Ludvigson
Think of a child who goes out
into the new neighborhood,
cap at an angle, and offers to lend
a baseball glove. He knows
how many traps there are–
his accent or his clothes, the club
already formed.
Think of a pregnant woman
whose first child died–
her history of blood.
Or your friend whose father
locked her in basements, closets,
cars. Now when she speaks
to strangers, she must have
all the windows open.
She forces herself indoors each day,
sheer will makes her climb the stairs.
And love. Imagine it. After all
those years in the circus, that last
bad fall when the net didn’t hold.
Think of the ladder to the wire,
spotlights moving as you move,
then how you used to see yourself
balanced on the shiny air.
Think of doing it again.
Susan Ludvigson, featured in The Made Thing: An Anthology of Contemporary Southern Poetry.
“Things You Don’t Write About 9/11/2001” by Stanley Anne Zane Latham
It was an ordinary train ride
You, me, Leita, and Dan
We didn’t mean to get separated.
We didn’t mean anything
in those days. We were
in college. It seemed
like we were rebels. Our parents
ate cabbage; our parents. Gosh,
we thought, what happened to them?
We simply got on a train. We didn’t
tell them. We were skipping school,
old enough to be our own.
I have to tell them, you loved me.
Dan loved Leita. I loved you.
We all kind of loved.
It was supposed to be
a simple day in New York.
It was supposed to be
A simple day in New York.
You don’t want me to bring
our life after this back
to this. Moment. There
is nothing like an almost.
In the aftermath, when the train
stopped, when no one was
ever the same again; i mean
the conductor said – Do you remember
what the conductor said?
i remember : it was a morning train
i remember : the birds flying at the windows
i remember : You shrouding me across
the platform.
i had you. You had me.
Dan had Leita, Leita had Dan.
We were never the same.
***
Note: I remember reading this poem last year on September 12. My good friend Michelle sent it to me, saying, “You HAVE to read this.” Well, I did: read it and have to. And it has haunted me every day since, much like that tragic day fifteen years ago.
Gratitude to Eric Robert Nolan (friend of the poet) who originally shared this piece on his blog.
“Forty Years” by Mary Oliver
for forty years
the sheets of white paper have
passed under my hands and I have tried
to improve their peaceful
emptiness putting down
little curls little shafts
of letters words
little flames leaping
not one page
was less to me than fascinating
discursive full of cadence
its pale nerves hiding
in the curves of the Qs
behind the soldierly Hs
in the webbed feet of the Ws
forty years
and again this morning as always
I am stopped as the world comes back
wet and beautiful I am thinking
that language
is not even a river
is not a tree is not a green field
is not even a black ant traveling
briskly modestly
from day to day from one
golden page to another.
-Mary Oliver, West Wind, (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1997).
Happy Birthday to Mary Oliver, (born September 10, 1935).
Words ... for the Time Being 