National Poetry Month
Maybe because he was drunk
The Birds Have Vanished Into the Sky by Li Po The birds have vanished into the sky, and now the last cloud drains away. We sit together, the mountain and me, until only the mountain remains. A cable car ride up Austria’s Zwolferhorn led to this view of the […]
MoreSex in the City
Song by Frank O’Hara Is it dirty does it look dirty that’s what you think of in the city does it just seem dirty that’s what you think of in the city you don’t refuse to breathe do you someone comes along with a very bad character he seems attractive. […]
MoreThe Rest not restful at all
The Rest by Lawrence Raab You’ve tried the rest. You’ve waited long enough. Everything catches up with you. And you’re too old, or too young. Or you don’t have the money or you don’t have the time. Maybe you’re shy, and maybe you’re just afraid. How often have you heard […]
MoreA little something for what ails you
It’s just-spring here in Michigan and each little green shoot is a jigger of encouragement. So is this poem, “Thank You” by Ross Gay, which I left in a pile of dead leaves at the end of a church parking lot. Thank You by Ross Gay If you find yourself half naked and barefoot […]
MoreI really do need new underwear
File under Best Laid Plans. Nearly two years ago I resolved (publicly, unfortunately) to use up my stash of poems by posting several a week. Of course they’re still here. They’ve even grown in number. All the crinkled slips of paper stuffed in my Poem Elf bag like old underwear—I can’t bear to throw them […]
MoreInstructions for cold calling
The Business Life by David Ignatow When someone hangs up, having said to you, “Don’t come around again,” and you have never heard the phone bang down with such violence nor the voice vibrate with such venom, pick up your receiver gently and dial again, get the same reply; and dial again, until he […]
MoreFleeting forsythia, finally
I found this poem last spring, just after the last forsythia bush had turned green. I had to wait a whole year for the next blooming, and then I found that the poem is absolutely right. No one does plant forsythia anymore. The forsythia I found was mostly on private property. Private property with overgrown […]
MoreThere was a poem in the middle . . .
This is the story of the little poem that could. A tenacious little bugger. A week ago I put “In the Middle of the Road” by Carlos Drummon de Andrade in the middle of the road: With a stone to hold it in place: Two days later I walked back along the road and found […]
MoreHappy to be the biggest fool
I was stepping out the door into a thunderstorm with a shoebox of poems when my husband asked where I was going. “An errand for my blog,” I said. He looked at the weather and looked at the poems bundled in a protective garbage bag and said, “Sometimes I think you’re a […]
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