Anatomy Class

 The chair has

arms.

The clock,

a face.

The kites have

long and twirly tails.

The tacks have

heads.

The books have

spines.

The toolbox has

a set of nails.

Our shoes have

tongues,

the marbles,

eyes.

The wooden desk has

legs and seat.

The cups have

lips.

My watch has

hands.

The classroom rulers all have

feet.

 

Heads, arms hands, nails,

spines, legs, feet, tails,

face, lips, tongues, eyes.

 

What a surprise!

 

Is our classroom alive?

Betsy Franco, Messing Around the Monkey Bars and Other School Poems for Two Voices (Candlestick, 2009)

wrist-wrestling father

 for my father

 

On the maple wood we placed our elbows
and gripped hands, the object to bend
the other’s arm to the kitchen table.
We flexed our arms and waited for the sign.

 

I once shot a wild goose.
I once stood not twenty feet from a buck deer unnoticed.
I’ve seen a woods full of pink lady slippers.
I once caught a 19-inch trout on a tiny fly.
I’ve seen the Pacific, I’ve seen the Atlantic,
I’ve watched whales in each.

 

I once heard Lenny Bruce tell jokes.
I’ve seen Sandy Koufax pitch a baseball.
I’ve heard Paul Desmond play the saxophone.
I’ve been to London to see the Queen.
I’ve had dinner with a Nobel Prize poet.

 

I wrote a poem once with every word but one just right.
I’ve fathered two fine sons
and loved the same woman for twenty-five years.

 

But I’ve never been more amazed
than when I snapped my father’s arm down to the table.

Orval Lund, Casting Lines: Poems (New Rivers Press, 1999)

Churchgoing

The Lutherans sit stolidly in rows;

only their children feel the holy ghost

that makes them jerk and bobble and almost

destroys the pious atmosphere for those

whose reverence bows their backs as if in work.

The congregation sits, or stands to sing,

or chants the dusty creeds automaton.

Their voices drone like engines, on and on,

and they remain untouched by everything;

confession, praise, or likewise, giving thanks.

The organ that they saved years to afford

repeats the Sunday rhythms song by song,

slow lips recite the credo, smother yawns,

and ask forgiveness for being so bored.

 

I, too, am wavering on the edge of sleep,

and ask myself again why I have come

to probe the ruins of this dying cult.

I come bearing the cancer of my doubt

as superstitious suffering women come

to touch the magic hem of a saint's robe.

 

Yet this has served two centuries of men

as more than superstitious cant; they died

believing simply. Women, satisfied

that this was truth, were racked and burned with them

for empty words we moderns merely chant.

 

We sing a spiritual as the last song,

and we are moved by a peculiar grace

that settles a new aura on the place.

This simple melody, though sung all wrong,

captures exactly what I think is faith.

Were you there when they crucified my Lord?

That slaves should suffer in his agony!

That Christian, slave-owning hypocrisy

nevertheless was by these slaves ignored

as they pitied the poor body of Christ!

Oh, sometimes it causes me to tremble,

that they believe most, who so much have lost.

To be a Christian one must bear a cross.

I think belief is given to the simple

as recompense for what they do not know.

 

I sit alone, tormented in my heart

by fighting angels, one group black, one white.

The victory is uncertain, but tonight

I'll lie awake again, and try to start

finding the black way back to what we've lost.

Marilyn Nelson, For the Body (Louisiana State University Press, 1978) 

Multiple Sclerosis

for Becky 

For ten years I would not say the name.

I said: episode. Said: setback, incident,

exacerbation—anything but be specific

in the way this is specific, not a theory

or description, but a diagnosis.

I said: muscle, weakness, numbness, fatigue.

I said vertigo, neuritis, lesion, spasm.

Remission. Progression. Recurrence. Deficit.

 

But the name, the ugly sound of it, I refused.

There are two words. The last one means: scarring.

It means what grows hard, and cannot be repaired.

The first one means: repeating, or myriad,

consisting of many parts, increasing in number,

happening over and over, without end.

Cynthia Huntington, The Radiant (Four Way Books, 2003) 

Our Struggle

     Our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh,

         but against the rulers, against the authorities,
         against the cosmic powers of this present darkness,
         against the spiritual forces of evil.
                   —Ephesians 6.12


When you fight the devil with the devil's weapons
you have joined his side.
Our struggle is not against violent people
but against violence.
Our struggle is not against people at all,
even the most evil ones,
but against the evil itself, that old ruler,
which clenches our hearts as well as theirs.
Our struggle is against systems and structures,
the powers that dehumanize people and diminish life,
the spiritual forces we've ingested,
the authorities we've knelt to.
We are rebelling against our own masters.
To vanquish the conquerors
we must vanquish our desire to conquer.
Before we are victorious we must become free.

Steve Garnass-Holmes, unfoldinglight.net, August 19, 2021

Ode to a Barn

 The first memory I recall

is watching this barn rise

into a sky where nothing stood,

the nothing there said, “Bye.”

 

What if endless fires raged

and swept the barns away?

Where would we keep our tools and toil?

Where would the critters stray?

 

The first memory I recall

is of our dog chasing a fox.

My father raised his rifle, aimed.

Guess which one he shot.

 

Daniel Scott Tysdal, The League of Canadian Poets, National Poetry Month Archive, Poem in Your Pocket Day, April 2016 

When They Sleep

All people are children when they sleep.

There's no war in them then.
They open their hands and breathe
in that quiet rhythm heaven has given them.

They pucker their lips like small children
and open their hands halfway,
soldiers and statesmen, servants and masters.
The stars stand guard
and a haze veils the sky,
a few hours when no one will do anybody harm.

If only we could speak to one another then
when our hearts are half-open flowers.
Words like golden bees
would drift in.
—God, teach me the language of sleep.

Rolf Jacobsen, The Roads Have Come to an End Now: Selected and Last Poems of Rolf Jacobsen, translated from the Norwegian by Robert Hedin (Copper Canyon Press, 2001)

Hold Out Your Hand

Let’s forget the world for a while

fall back and back
into the hush and holy
of now

are you listening? This breath
invites you
to write the first word
of your new story

your new story begins with this:
You matter

you are needed—empty
and naked
willing to say yes
and yes and yes

Do you see
the sun shines, day after day
whether you have faith
or not
the sparrows continue
to sing their song
even when you forget to sing
yours

stop asking: Am I good enough?
Ask only
Am I showing up
with love?

Life is not a straight line
it’s a downpour of gifts, please—
hold out your hand

Julia Fehrenbacher, goingtowalden.com, December 25, 2020

Two

 

On a parking lot staircase

I met two fine-looking men

descending, both in slacks

and dress shirts, neckties

much alike, one of the men

in his sixties, the other

a good twenty years older,

unsteady on his polished shoes,

a son and his father, I knew

from their looks, the son with his

right hand on the handrail,

the father, left hand on the left,

and in the middle they were

holding hands, and when I neared,

they opened the simple gate

of their interwoven fingers

to let me pass, then reached out

for each other and continued on.

Ted Kooser, Splitting an Order (Copper Canyon Press, 2014)

Bike Ride with Older Boys

 

The one I didn't go on.

 

I was thirteen,

and they were older.

I'd met them at the public pool. I must

 

have given them my number. I'm sure

 

I'd given them my number,

knowing the girl I was. . .

 

It was summer. My afternoons

were made of time and vinyl.

My mother worked,

but I had a bike. They wanted

 

to go for a ride.

Just me and them. I said

okay fine, I'd

meet them at the Stop-n-Go

at four o'clock.

And then I didn't show.

 

I have been given a little gift—

something sweet

and inexpensive, something

I never worked or asked or said

thank you for, most

days not aware

of what I have been given, or what I missed—

 

because it's that, too, isn't it?

I never saw those boys again.

I'm not as dumb

as they think I am

 

but neither am I wise. Perhaps

 

it is the best

afternoon of my life. Two

cute and older boys

pedaling beside me—respectful, awed. When we

 

turn down my street, the other girls see me ...

 

Everything as I imagined it would be.

 

Or, I am in a vacant field. When I

stand up again, there are bits of glass and gravel

ground into my knees.

I will never love myself again.

Who knew then

that someday I would be

 

thirty-seven, wiping

crumbs off the kitchen table with a sponge, remembering

them, thinking

of this—

 

those boys still waiting

outside the Stop-n-Go, smoking

cigarettes, growing older

Laura Kosischke, Dance and Disappear (University of Massachusetts Press, 2002)

1969

 My brother enlisted

in the winter. I pitched

for the sixth-grade Indians

and coach said

I was almost as good

as Johnny. My mother

fingered rosary beads,

watched Cronkite say

and that’s the way it is.

I smoked my first

and last cigarette. My father

kept his promise,

washed Johnny’s Mustang

every weekend. Brenda Whitson

taught me how to French kiss

in her basement. Sundays

we went to ten o’clock Mass,

dipped hands in holy water,

genuflected, walked down

the aisle and received

Communion. Cleon Jones

got down on one knee, caught

the last out and the Mets

won the World Series.

Two white-gloved Marines

rang the bell, stood

on our stoop. My father

watched their car

pull away, then locked

the wooden door. I went

to our room, climbed

into the top bunk,

pounded a hard ball

into his pillow. My mother

found her Bible, took

out my brother’s letters,

put them in the pocket

of her blue robe. My father

started Johnny’s car,

revved the engine

until every tool

hanging in the garage

shook.

Tony Gloeggler, Rattle #25  (Summer 2006)

Almost a Conversation

 I have not really, not yet, talked with otter

about his life.

He has so many teeth, he has trouble
with vowels.

Wherefore our understanding
is all body expression —

he swims like the sleekest fish,
he dives and exhales and lifts a trail of bubbles.
Little by little he trusts my eyes
and my curious body sitting on the shore.

Sometimes he comes close.
I admire his whiskers
and his dark fur which I would rather die than wear.

He has no words, still what he tells about his life
is clear.
He does not own a computer.
He imagines the river will last forever.
He does not envy the dry house I live in.
He does not wonder who or what it is that I worship.
He wonders, morning after morning, that the river
is so cold and fresh and alive, and still
I don’t jump in.

Mary Oliver, Evidence (Beacon Press, 2009)

7th Game: 1960 Series

 Nice day,

sweet October afternoon

Men walk the sun-shot avenues,

                                                     Second, Third, eyes

                                                     intent elsewhere

ears communing with transistors in shirt pockets

                                    Bars are full, quiet,

discussion during commercials

                                                      only

Pirates lead New York 4-1, top of the 6th, 2

Yankees on base,    1 man out

 

What a nice day for all this!

Handsome women, even

dreamy jailbait, walk

                                      nearly neglected:

men’s eyes are blank

their thoughts are all in Pittsburgh

 

Last half of the 9th, the score tied 9-all,

Mazeroski leads off for the Pirates

The 2nd pitch he simply, sweetly

                                                           CRACK!

belts it clean over the left-field wall

 

Blocks of afternoon

acres of afternoon

Pennsylvania Turnpikes of afternoon.  One

                                    diamond stretches out in the sun

                                                     the 3rd base line

                                    and what men come down

                                    it

 

                                    The final score, 10-9

 

Yanquis, come home

Paul Blackburn, The Selected Poems of Paul Blackburn (Persea Books, 1989)

23 Miners Dead at Century Mine

Thursday, March 22, 1906
No. 1 Shaft Mine
Century, West Virginia

The first trip out fetches ten men,

five alive, five dead.

None of the living look like Tata.

As Mama shadows the stretchers,

I clutch the sleeve of her dress.

Some women snatch at the sheets

covering the bodies, the faces

raw blurs of hair, blood, and bone.  

In the tipple office, 

where they row the bodies, 

a mine boss Mama knows 

shakes his head, Naw, he ain’t here. 

Later, twenty fire-blackened men 

crawl out of the smoky hole

into the chaos of wives and mothers,

their accent-slurred English giving way

to the comfort of Lithuanian, Polish, or Italian, 

until four more bodies. Then silence.

All night, we wait at the entrance of the shaft. 

After the parish priest recites De profundis,

he reminds us Christ rose from the depths

of the tomb. Me, I cannot comprehend.

I can only hope 

Jesus raises Tata like Lazarus.

Old women pray. Their rosaries 

dangle, weeping willow branches

beaded with frozen rain.

When a higher death toll is announced,

a newspaper reporter curses,

too late for the morning edition.

 

My head on Mama’s aproned lap, 

I smell the supper we will never eat

and fall asleep to a Polish lullaby.

Near dawn she wakes me,

tells me plain, the last trip brought up 

the last dead miner, the twenty-third, 

Tata’s favorite Psalm. I cry

when I imagine I see him walking

away, toward the valley of the shadow.

A company man tells Mama

to stop by the office for the insurance,

$100, minus store bills, rent, and burial. 

Uncle Michal rigs a hasty coffin

of spalted wormy elm planks 

yanked from a swaybacked barn. 

When my cousins set up the narrow box,

the sitting room becomes smaller.

When they bring in the body, I cannot breathe.

Mama prepares a basin of bathwater and lilac.

After washing Tata’s face,

the comb snarls, a briar in his matted hair.

I wash his hands best I can.

Under the nails, quarter moons of coal dust  

linger in endless eclipse.

On the porch, surviving miners huddle.

One by one they enter. I shake their hands,

large and hard as lumps of anthracite.

My older brother, Jozef, 

now the man of the house, offers whiskey

from a half-pint, half full.

When the mourners leave, Mama mopes 

by the casket, fussing with Tata’s clothes. 

After trimming the char, I lower the lamp wick.

Saturday, at the cemetery, rain 

and thirteen other gaping graves          

shorten the words spoken over Tata.

That evening, after Mama mends 

and hems all of his work clothes,

I scrub them on the washboard

and hang them on the line. 

Next morning, frost stiffens them 

like frightened scarecrows.

On Monday, Jozef quits school.

While Mama fixes breakfast, 

I pack him Tata’s lunch bucket.

The Century Coal Company is hiring.

 

donnarkevic, Rattle #72 (Summer 2021)