are you dreaming, Frederick?

"Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood."
--George Orwell


"A word after a word after a word is power."
--Margaret Atwood


"Enjoy the little things in life, for one day you'll look back and realize they were the big things."
--Kurt Vonnegut

"The writing of a poem is like a child throwing stones into a mineshaft. You compose first, then you listen for the reverberation."
--James Fenton


"We have to consciously study how to be tender with each other until it becomes a habit."
--Audre Lorde


"Do Not Make Things Too Easy"
Do not make things too easy.
There are rocks and abysses in the mind
As well as meadows.
There are things knotty and hard: intractable.
Do not talk to me of love and understanding.
I am sick of blandishments.
I want the rock to be met by a rock.
If I am vile, and behave hideously,
Do not tell me it was just a misunderstanding.
--Martha Baird


"The Applicant"
First, are you our sort of a person?
Do you wear
A glass eye, false teeth or a crutch,
A brace or a hook,
Rubber breasts or a rubber crotch,

Stitches to show something's missing? No, no? Then
How can we give you a thing?
Stop crying.
Open your hand.
Empty? Empty. Here is a hand

To fill it and willing
To bring teacups and roll away headaches
And do whatever you tell it.
Will you marry it?
It is guaranteed

To thumb shut your eyes at the end
And dissolve of sorrow.
We make new stock from the salt.
I notice you are stark naked.
How about this suit--

Black and stiff, but not a bad fit.
Will you marry it?
It is waterproof, shatterproof, proof
Against fire and bombs through the roof.
Believe me, they'll bury you in it.

Now your head, excuse me, is empty.
I have the ticket for that.
Come here, sweetie, out of the closet.
Well, what do you think of that?
Naked as paper to start

But in twenty-five years she'll be silver,
In fifty, gold.
A living doll, everywhere you look.
It can sew, it can cook,
It can talk, talk , talk.

It works, there is nothing wrong with it.
You have a hole, it's a poultice.
You have an eye, it's an image.
My boy, it's your last resort.
Will you marry it, marry it, marry it.
--Sylvia Plath


"Marie Curie Gives Advice to Her Daughter Irene before Her Wedding"
I remember this moment--the pram distilled,
its sediment was an infant,
no longer something born from me,
not residue, not pitchblende,
but its own particle,
an open mouth, a cry,
within its head, a mind wrestling with thoughts
--my motherland could be there,
driven into the skull,
some ancient homing.
Years I have soaked
in radium.
I've begun to bleed light.
I see your father again
crossing streets in rain--
the doors are locked,
his umbrella fills with wind,
the horses approach,
hauling a wagon of soldier's uniforms--
something to dress the dead--
it's come to crush him.
My navy suit with solid stitching crushes me.
And since then I've begun to confuse
the glowing test tubes
with wicks of the moon, a dazing field of stars,
my own soul, and a moment goes by
when I forget the brutish charm of work.
My hope, daughter, is that
what you love doesn't come to kill you,
eye by eye, ear by ear, bone by radiant bone.
--Julianna Baggott


"Zebra Question"
I asked the zebra,
Are you black with white stripes?
Or white with black stripes?
And the zebra asked me,
Are you good with bad habits?
Or are you bad with good habits?
Are you noisy with quiet times?
Or are you quiet with noisy times?
Are you happy with some sad days?
Or are you sad with some happy days?
Are you neat with some sloppy ways?
Or are you sloppy with some neat ways?
And on and on and on and on
And on and on he went.
I'll never ask a zebra
About stripes
Again.
--Shel Silverstein


"Like This"
If anyone asks you
how the perfect satisfaction
of all our sexual wanting
will look, lift your face
and say,

Like this.

When someone mentions the gracefulness
of the nightsky, climb up on the roof
and dance and say,

Like this.

If anyone wants to know what "spirit" is,
or what "God's fragrance" means,
lean your head toward him or her.
Keep your face there close.

Like this.

When someone quotes the old poetic image
about clouds gradually uncovering the moon,
slowly loosen knot by knot the strings
of your robe.

Like this.

If anyone wonders how Jesus raised the dead,
don't try to explain the miracle.
Kiss me on the lips.

Like this. Like this.

When someone asks what it means
to "die for love," point
here.

If someone asks how tall I am, frown
and measure with your fingers the space
between the creases on your forehead.

This tall.

The soul sometimes leaves the body, then returns.
When someone doesn't believe that,
walk back into my house.

Like this.

When lovers moan,
they're telling our story.

Like this.

I am a sky where spirits live.
Stare into this deepening blue,
while the breeze says a secret.

Like this.

When someone asks what there is to do,
light the candle in his hand.

Like this.

How did Joseph's scent come to Jacob?

Huuuuu.

How did Jacob's sight return?

Huuuu.

A little wind cleans the eyes.

Like this.

When Shams comes back from Tabriz,
he'll put just his head around the edge
of the door to surprise us

Like this.
--Rumi, translation by Coleman Barks


"A Small, Soul-Colored Thing"
The dog walked out of the forest with the deer in its mouth.
No. The deer came out of the forest. The dog
ran beside it, over, under: the dog slipped itself
into the animal lurching to my side of the road,
one of its throats bent back to the sky,
one of its spines dissolved to pear-white belly.
The throat was red. And the long legs looked broken.
But I made a mistake. The legs were not broken.
And the deer did not appear dead, though it must have been,
animated by the dog's hunger so that the deer moved
when the dog did, shivered like the soul inside the body,
the dog's face all red, which could be the color of the soul.
The back of the dog was sleek and brown
and expensive looking. When I stared at him,
I could see the lawns he must have escaped from,
the gravel drive winding down from the hills in the gold tags
jangling at his chest; the clean, pink flaps of his ears
flushed with cold. Now they were froth covered.
And his eyes were glazed with a furious longing.
The dog tore at the deer's throat as if he could dig
himself inside of it. The dog became a dog
again, and I watched him do it, and the deer became
something else: it left the soft ash shape of the doe
grazing by the bus stop, it abandoned
the buck's bright energy leaping over the stone wall
that separates my house from the cemetery,
its low border taut as a muscle that herds of deer trace
in moonlight, cast out of the canyons choked with snow.
The deer became some shadow torn between us:
beneath it, the beautiful legs, the elegant ribs
twisted into the road. I stopped and watched
this wrestling, the dog half deer, the deer
half dog, myself poised behind them
so as to remain invisible, though a low,
slow growl loosed itself at my approach.
It entered the deer and reverberated there
until its fur grew long and thickened,
and its face took on the shape of a lion,
a wolf, a bear. It became the shape of a mouth
tearing and tearing as I watched it, wanting
to take my share of it, kneeling at the walk
and putting my mouth to the flesh, letting
fur and blood both coat my tongue, while my hands
reached into the stomach to rip and empty it.
I wanted to loose my gray hair out
upon my shoulders, to feel antlers grow
from bone, letting my own heart be pierced
until the soft pulse shivered in the skin. No.
The dog tore at the deer's throat. And I watched it.
I was the human that could watch it. I was the small,
soul-colored thing that wouldn't change.
The deer trembled and lay still.
It grew slack in the deepening snow.
The road disappeared and the sky turned white.
The snow piled up. It kept on falling.
--Paisley Rekdal


"Modern Poetry"
Mostly grey clouds, same color
as battleships, suburban Seattle.

In the bottom left corner: a clown--
his red nose, a sudden start, or

stoplight. Only his comic prosthesis
is clear--the rest's a blur (everyone

gave up on faces in the 80s--too hard).
The clown ends at neck--his body

fades to clouds. Then, like a ghost,
in the center: white outline

of a bitchin' 70s muscle car,
hood popped. Its centrality

and size suggest deep feeling.

Questions for Discussion
1. Look at the clown under a magnifying glass. What is the word that best describes his expression? Type the word in your blog. Does that word change when you smoke pot?

2. If you were standing in the poem, would you be wearing a T-shirt or a parka?

3. The airplane on which you are flying home to visit a dying loved one (but can you really love at all? what good is your love?) suddenly loses a wing and begins plummeting towards earth. What do you grab on the way down: the cloud, the clown, or the muscle car?

4. When was your last good kiss, and why?
--Jennifer L. Knox


"On Mercy"
Knowing he was soon to be executed
the condemned man asked if first he might
please
have something to drink, if first he might
be drunk.
So the soldiers brought him a drink
and because there was no hurry, another,
and one for each of them, too.
Soon they were all
very drunk, and this was merciful
because the man probably didn't understand
when they put him to the wall and shot him.

--

I'll marry the man who can prove this happened,
the dying leaves said
in their descent.

I'll marry the one who looks through that window,
the waiting grasstips said.

But the sun went on with its golden rays
like a zealous child

and the camera-eyed bees jittered mercifully
in the distant branches.

--

The man slept on the floor
and the little mouse in his head also slept.

The soldiers didn't know who would drag him away
or where they should hide him
so they laughed nervously and one
offered the body a drink, Ha ha,
a toast!

then left him by the rich lady's liquor cabinet
where she'd find him when she came home from the hills.

--

I'll marry the girl who kisses the lips
and brings a breath to them,
the starving horses said from their fields.

I'll marry the man who pounds the chest
and starts the heart,
the caved-in houses said.

And the window let the light in
until the sun failed in the branches
and, like mercy,
darkness smothered the town.

--

Later in the story, her grown son wrapped him
in a parachute
and dumped him in a neighbor's yard.

Later, that neighbor, who understood bad luck,
dragged the man to another's lawn.

And so he traveled, yard to yard,
to the edge of town
where at last he slept by a little-traveled road
in a merciful ditch

while the bombers unzipped the sky.

--

And when the town burned, he missed it,
and when the treetops bloomed and charred, he missed it.

I'll marry the man,
the grasstips said in the hot wind,

I'll marry the girl,
the horses said, running from their burning barn, aflame,

their bodies glowing bluely in the dusk.

--

And no one proved it happened,
which was merciful for us all,

the road forgotten, the man gone to root and weed,
to marrow and tooth.

--

And if it had happened--
Who would find his jawbone in the loam?
Who would pick out his bullet shells and fillings,
like glitter in the new wood?

And if a man should string them
like words on a golden chain

and make from them a charm,
and give them to his wife,
wouldn't that be mercy, too?
--Kevin Prufer


"Resurrection of the Errand Girl: An Introduction"
The girl is sent for dinner fish. Inside the market she fills her aluminum bowl with ice-blue mackerel and mullet, according to her mother's instruction. The fishmonger standing there, blood on his apron, whale knife in hand, asks, Head off and split? Translation: Do away with the watery gray eyes, the impolite razor-sharp fins, the succulent heart, tender roe, delicate sweet bones? Polite, dutiful, training to be mother, bride, kitchen frau. Her answer, Yes.

Forty summers pass. Girl no longer girl. Her blood dries into powder red dust. It is the time of animals on the move: on land, fancy blue lights beep quotidian conversations deep into the inner ear of fast-walked humans; on thinning ice, polar bears turn cannibal and the last male emperor penguin is holding one solitary egg on the quivering slope of his webbed feet. In the oil-drenched Gulf a flotilla of grandfather sea turtles floats--shell down, feet up. On hurricane-soaked rooftops Black people have been abandoned--again. The errand girl, resurrected--woman, dutiful, grown--drives home as she often does to see the two who made her. On the way in, her mama calls, to ask if she can stop and pick up dinner from the market. Friday. Fish. Tradition as old as the South itself. An hour later, she steps into Liberty Street Market, this fragrant hundred-year-old fish house. Inside, the hungry wait wall to wall. Beneath her cotton dress she wears what she could not wear when she was the errand girl--her poet's gauzy slip. She pulls her chosen fish by the tail out of the bed of ice that anchors all sides of the room. She extends her full bowl of ice-blue mullet and flounder to the fishmonger-of-her-youth's son. A man her same age but of a different persuasion. He echoes the words he heard as a boy from his father, Head off and split? Her answer is offered even quicker than the fish. No. Not this time. This time she wants what she was once sent for left whole, just as it was pulled from the sea, everything born to it still in place. Not a girl any longer, she is capable of her own knife-work now. She understands sharpness & duty. She knows what a blade can reveal & destroy. She has come to use life's points and edges to uncover life's treasures. She would rather be the one deciding what she keeps and what she throws away.

She recognizes the fishmonger: he does not recognize her. Even though she is the daughter of the most beautiful woman in the world. He holds his inherited bone-handled whale knife high in the air, teasing her answer of refusal around. He laughs out loud, warning her about the painstaking work the toothy-bony fish will require. With his hairy hands around his own hairy neck he imitates choking on an overlooked bone. Nobody waiting in the fish market laughs. He is boastful, imprecise. Three Black boys wearing rubber aprons listen right behind him, waiting to be handed bowls of fish, for dressing. His backup chorus: three-dollar-an-hour, head-off-and-split boys, snugly set like rhinestones in the dark wet air behind him. They shine out in unison, their faces speckled with the white sequined scales of fish already beheaded. The boys honk a Pip-like reverie out into the salty air of the sweaty room. The sight and sound of them does nothing to change her mind. For once in her life she will not go sentimental. She will not rescind her order. She wants what she has come for kept whole, all marrow and every organ accounted for, just as it was pulled from the sea. Her whole fish is wrapped in yesterday's news, tied with white fishmonger string, and handed over. She steps through the crowd, slips out the door, heads home.
--Nikky Finney


"60"
The forced forsythia wet on the counter
because the first vase she chose was broken

The stirring in the tight buds when winter's
seal on the storehouse of daylight is broken

The meal without you I eat with my fingers
The slick give when the shrimp shells are broken

I carry this watch because the face tells
the time although the hands are broken

The emperor's men who thought the rebellion
would stop if the children's arms were broken

For the emperor's windows hurled stones made
from the stone houses the emperor left broken

The emperor's squads of heroic women
who touch the stripped men and deliver them broken

In my pockets bits of unused tickets
Smelling of smoke Borrowed Blue Broken

How she scrabbled on the floor to assemble
the pieces of what my sons had broken

Forgive me my stranger Whose eyes I can't meet
For what's beyond healing now What's broken

Shall I stop with the dumb leaper in my chest
On and on Keeping bad time Faithful Broken
--Suzanne Gardinier