Kindred Spirit

by Carrie Shipers

My father doesn’t say ghost, though I know
he’s haunted. Instead he says, When they let
Uncle Marion out of that hospital, he didn’t
even move the same. He said they tried to take
his stories. He loves his fifteen uncles fiercely.
Nearly all of them drank, did time in prison
or mental hospitals, died before forty.

When Marion was twenty; a judge offered him
the navy or prison. He couldn’t swim,
so he ran away. Then, prison or the army.
Marching hurt his feet. The third time,
he picked prison and was out in six months.
I never liked to hear folks call him crazy,
my father says. He couldn’t help how he was.

What I know about my father tells me why
he loves these men—the troubles they ran from
and to, stories they lived without learning
what they meant—and why he mourns.
Each time my father had a choice, he chose
the world he already knew, holding still
till what he wanted looked like what he had.

The First Green of Spring

by David Budbill

Out walking in the swamp picking cowslip, marsh marigold,
this sweet first green of spring. Now sautéed in a pan melting
to a deeper green than ever they were alive, this green, this life,

harbinger of things to come. Now we sit at the table munching
on this message from the dawn which says we and the world
are alive again today, and this is the world’s birthday. And

even though we know we are growing old, we are dying, we
will never be young again, we also know we’re still right here
now, today, and, my oh my! don’t these greens taste good.

VIII – from “Twelve Songs”

by W. H. Auden

At last the secret is out, as it always must come in the end,
The delicious story is ripe to tell to the intimate friend;
Over the tea-cups and in the square the tongue has its desire;
Still waters run deep, my dear, there’s never smoke without fire.

Behind the corpse in the reservoir, behind the ghost on the links,
Behind the lady who dances and the man who madly drinks,
Under the look of fatigue, the attack of migraine and the sigh
There is always another story, there is more than meets the eye.

For the clear voice suddenly singing, high up in the convent wall,
The scent of the elder bushes, the sporting prints in the hall,
The croquet matches in summer, the handshake, the cough, the kiss,
There is always a wicked secret, a private reason for this.

The reason Miss Delaney was my favorite teacher, not just my
favorite English teacher, is that she would let me read any book I
wanted and would allow me to report on it. I had the pleasure of
reading The Scapegoat as well as We the Living as well as Silver
Spoon (which was about a whole bunch of rich folk who were
unhappy), and Defender of the Damned, which was about
Clarence Darrow, which led me into Native Son because the real
case was defended by Darrow though in Native Son he got the
chair despite the fact that Darrow never lost a client to the chair
including Leopold and Loeb who killed Bobby Frank. Native Son
led me to Eight Men and all the rest of Richard Wright but I
preferred Langston Hughes at that time and Gwendolyn Brooks
and I did reports on both of them. I always loved English because
whatever human beings are, we are storytellers. It is our stories
that give a light to the future. When I went to college I became a
history major because history is such a wonderful story of who we
think we are; English is much more a story of who we really are.
It was, after all, Miss Delaney who introduced the class to My
candle burns at both ends; /It will not last the night; /But, ah, my
foes, and, oh, my friends— /It gives a lovely light. And I thought
YES. Poetry is the main line. English is the train.

Things Shouldn’t Be So Hard

by Kay Ryan

A life should leave
deep tracks:
ruts where she
went out and back
to get the mail
or move the hose
around the yard;
where she used to
stand before the sink,
a worn-out place;
beneath her hand
the china knobs
rubbed down to
white pastilles;
the switch she
used to feel for
in the dark
almost erased.
Her things should
keep her marks.
The passage
of a life should show;
it should abrade.
And when life stops,
a certain space—
however small—
should be left scarred
by the grand and
damaging parade.
Things shouldn’t
be so hard.

Let other mornings honor the miraculous.
Eternity has festivals enough.
This is the feast of our mortality,
The most mundane and human holiday.

On other days we misinterpret time,
Pretending that we live the present moment.
But can this blur, this smudgy in-between,
This tiny fissure where the future drips

Into the past, this flyspeck we call now
Be our true habitat? The present is
The leaky palm of water that we skim
From the swift, silent river slipping by.

The new year always brings us what we want
Simply by bringing us along—to see
A calendar with every day uncrossed,
A field of snow without a single footprint.

Geography of the Forehead

by Ron Koertge

Everyone thinks the brain is so complicated,
but let’s look at the facts. The frontal lobe,
for example, is located in the front! And
the temporal lobe is where the clock is.
What could be simpler?

The hippocampal fissure is where big, dumb
thoughts camp, while at the Fissure of Rolando
dark-skinned men with one gold earring lie
around the fire and play guitars.

The superior frontal convolution is where
a lot of really nice houses are set back off
a twisty road, while the inferior frontal
convolution is a kind of trailer park, regularly
leveled by brainstorms.

The area of Broca is pretty much off limits.
And if you know Broca, you know why.

Christmas Light

When everyone had gone
I sat in the library
With the small silent tree,
She and I alone.
How softly she shone!

And for the first time then
For the first time this year,
I felt reborn again,
I knew love’s presence near.

Love distant, love detached
And strangely without weight,
Was with me in the night
When everyone had gone
And the garland of pure light
Stayed on, stayed on.

Their friends looked shocked—said not
possible, said how sad. The trees carried on
with their treeish lives—stately except when
they shed their silly dandruff of birds. And
the ocean did what oceans mostly do—
suspended almost everything, dropped one
small ship, or two. The day beauty divorced
meaning, someone picked a flower, a fight,
a flight. Someone got on a boat.
A closet lost its suitcases. Someone
was snowed in, someone else on. The sun
went down and all it was, was night.

How To Scratch Mother Lips

For a day, maybe thousand,
I rested under a harrowing wind
at a bus stop, waiting for the aunt to be inside.
Carry me onto your raft - the apple of my school -

/poem/9288b8d98c54a191

I Expected Mothers

Our new rose, our scrupulous ritual tetrahedrons.
In the face of so many blades to animosity.
Within the scratching receptacles.
I'd do it for the branch in which you preserve
for the honeysuckles of cashmire you've built.

A loaf of bread baked with lewd sincerity and salt.
The green car weaves in transforming your eyelids.
It showers like a flag outside the cathedral.

-poetry ninja (ai generated)

/poem/d651b4862dedc231

Unslept

Of an evening sky this blood entailed

There was blood in the forest

And blood on the trail

The shotgun suicide sky has wept

All its forlorn gore and most of its flesh

Bone - it had none - nor tendons to stretch

Its breath without lungs but still sucked once

Then strangled the black neck of twilight

The silence the night the quiet the none

A torn photo of daylight remained

Like eventual or sometime or maybe

A thin sprocket of light a razor the drain

Of becoming but teased - extinguished

His tar becomes dark

Of deep night sky this charcoal emitted

The patient's mouth gaping

His charcoal ingrained

Upon lips and between broken teeth

His stomach is pumped completely

And all that remains is sweet stain

And black sticky between his burned ribs

This is where the suicide patient

Lies darkly his wrists without skin

This is where the wound was compressed

And look... they found the bottle

Empty of his daylight prescribed

And having swallowed it all

He vomited night

Of specular dawn this horror arising

A stainless steel table

At an angle of seven degrees

Sluices catch serums and juices that seep

From the suicide specter with sun in his eyes

Wrinkles of cloud sprinkle drops of despair

Over purple edged moles with black shaven hairs

The urine is dried by a pale burning sun

The saliva stains gathered in jars

The snake stalks the rodent with a tongue

That can smell and the tang in the forest appalled

And people who sleep through all of this glory

Never visit this forest at all

This is the place where insomniacs walk

The landscape where lunatics fall

– Rob Diebold