Poetry Dispensary

He tells me, “Your back
is so beautiful.” He traces
my spine with his hand.

I’m burning like the white ring
around the moon. “A witch’s moon,”
dijo mi abuela. The schools call it

“a reflection of ice crystals.”
It’s a storm brewing in the cauldron
of the sky. I’m in love

but won’t tell him
if it’s omens
or ice.

by Lorna Dee Cervantes

(via confusionis)

Matilde, where are you? Down there I noticed, 
under my necktie and just above the heart, 
a certain pang of grief between the ribs, 
you were gone that quickly. 

I needed the light of your energy, 
I looked around, devouring hope. 
I watched the void without you that is like a house, 
nothing left but tragic windows. 

Out of sheer taciturnity the ceiling listens 
to the fall of the ancient leafless rain, 
to feathers, to whatever the night imprisoned: 

so I wait for you like a lonely house 
till you will see me again and live in me. 
Till then my windows ache. 

by Pablo Neruda

(Source: electricityscape, via unicornology)

Starting here, what do you want to remember?
How sunlight creeps along a shining floor?
What scent of old wood hovers, what softened
sound from outside fills the air?
 
Will you ever bring a better gift for the world
than the breathing respect that you carry
wherever you go right now? Are you waiting
for time to show you some better thoughts?
 
When you turn around, starting here, lift this
new glimpse that you found; carry into evening
all that you want from this day. This interval you spent
reading or hearing this, keep it for life -
 
What can anyone give you greater than now,
starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?
 
by William Stafford

(Source: lunchboxpoems)

          What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for
I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache
self-conscious looking at the full moon.
          In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went
into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
          What peaches and what penumbras!  Whole families
shopping at night!  Aisles full of husbands!  Wives in the
avocados, babies in the tomatoes!—and you, Garcia Lorca, what
were you doing down by the watermelons?

          I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber,
poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery
boys.
          I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the
pork chops?  What price bananas?  Are you my Angel?
          I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans
following you, and followed in my imagination by the store
detective.
          We strode down the open corridors together in our
solitary fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen
delicacy, and never passing the cashier.

          Where are we going, Walt Whitman?  The doors close in
an hour.  Which way does your beard point tonight?
          (I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the
supermarket and feel absurd.)
          Will we walk all night through solitary streets?  The
trees add shade to shade, lights out in the houses, we’ll both be
lonely.

          Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love
past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?
          Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher,
what America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and
you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat
disappear on the black waters of Lethe?

Berkeley, 1955

by Allen Ginsberg

(Source: ldcsoundsystem)

When we got really bad,

I would put another coat of mop water on the floor of the bar

to make sure you were asleep when I got to my side of the bed.

You are the only person to whom I’ve lied, knowing

I was telling the truth. I miss the way your neck

wraps around my face like a cave we are both lost in.

I remember when you said being with me

is like being alone with company.

My friend Sarah wrote a poem about pink ponies.

I’m scared you’re my pink pony.

Hers is dead. It is really sad. You’re not dead.

You live in Ohio, or Washington, or Wherever.

You are a shadow my body leaves on other girls.

I have a growing queue of things I know

will make you laugh and I don’t know where to put them.

I mourn like you’re dead. If you had asked me to stay,

I would not have said no.

It would never mean yes.

by Jon Sands

(via lunchboxpoems)

We all think about suddenly disappearing.

The train tracks lead there, into the woods.

Even in the financial district: wooden doors in alleyways. First I want to put something small into your hand, a button or river stone or key I don’t know to what.

I don’t have that house anymore across from the graveyard and its black angel. What counts as a proper goodbye?

My last winter in Iowa there was always a ladybug or two in the kitchen for cheer even when it was ten below.

We all feel suspended over a drop into nothingness. Once you get close enough, you see what one is stitching is a human heart. Another is vomiting wings.

Hell, even now I love life. Whenever you put your feet on the floor in the morning, whatever the nightmare, it’s a miracle or fantastic illusion: the solidity of the boards, the steadiness coming into the legs.

Where did we get the idea when we were kids to rub dirt into the wound or was that just in Pennsylvania?

Maybe poems are made of breath, the way water, cajoled to boil, says, This is my soul, freed.

by Dean Young

My daughter, at eleven
(almost twelve), is like a garden.

Oh, darling! Born in that sweet birthday suit
and having owned it and known it for so long,
now you must watch high noon enter -
noon, that ghost hour.
Oh, funny little girl – this one under a blueberry sky,
this one! How can I say that I’ve known
just what you know and just where you are?

It’s not a strange place, this odd home
where your face sits in my hand
so full of distance,
so full of its immediate fever.
The summer has seized you,
as when, last month in Amalfi, I saw
lemons as large as your desk-side globe -
that miniature map of the world -
and I could mention, too,
the market stalls of mushrooms
and garlic buds all engorged.
Or I think even of the orchard next door,
where the berries are done
and the apples are beginning to swell.
And once, with our first backyard,
I remember I planted an acre of yellow beans
we couldn’t eat.

Oh, little girl,
my stringbean,
how do you grow?
You grow this way.
You are too many to eat.

I hear
as in a dream
the conversation of the old wives
speaking of womanhood.
I remember that I heard nothing myself.
I was alone.
I waited like a target.

Let high noon enter –
the hour of the ghosts.
Once the Romans believed
that noon was the ghost hour,
and I can believe it, too,
under that startling sun,
and someday they will come to you,
someday, men bare to the waist, young Romans
at noon where they belong,
with ladders and hammers
while no one sleeps.

But before they enter
I will have said,
Your bones are lovely,
and before their strange hands
there was always this hand that formed.

Oh, darling, let your body in,
let it tie you in,
in comfort.
What I want to say, Linda,
is that women are born twice.

If I could have watched you grow
as a magical mother might,
if I could have seen through my magical transparent belly,
there would have been such a ripening within:
your embryo,
the seed taking on its own,
life clapping the bedpost,
bones from the pond,
thumbs and two mysterious eyes,
the awfully human head,
the heart jumping like a puppy,
the important lungs,
the becoming -
while it becomes!
as it does now,
a world of its own,
a delicate place.

I say hello
to such shakes and knockings and high jinks,
such music, such sprouts,
such dancing-mad-bears of music,
such necessary sugar,
such goings-on!

Oh, little girl,
my stringbean,
how do you grow?
You grow this way.
You are too many to eat.

What I want to say, Linda,
is that there is nothing in your body that lies.
All that is new is telling the truth.
I’m here, that somebody else,
an old tree in the background.

Darling,
stand still at your door,
sure of yourself, a white stone, a good stone -
as exceptional as laughter
you will strike fire,
that new thing!

by Anne Sexton