Emily Dickinson

[silverflurry.livejournal.com]

"Hope" is the thing with feathers
That perches on the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all
And sweetest in the Gale is heard
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm

I've heard it in the chillest land
And on the strangest Sea
Yet, never, in Extremity,
It asked a crumb of Me.

Unanswered Letter

[watashi.livejournal.com]

Your silence is leaning toward judgment.
Yesterday I bragged, writing to calm
my paranoid friend, that I never assume
the worst when my pals don't write. Now
assuming the worst, I think what I must have
done, or not done. Surely some recognition
will brand the door of my house, or
rich attention flutter down.

How natural, in silence, to credit delay
with intention, like the word oar
insisting on water. The need also to
advise the self around exaggeration,
i.e., "nobody loves me," because nothing is
coming back, and, next to nothing, not
to act like a transistor radio left on into
the night, voices singing like an ear
baffled by the rain, or someone refused
because they think so.

Those others you loved elsewhere, you miss
what they haven't said. They belong
to some permission to go on as more
than yourself, a clarity that adds you back
to all you cast off, as when
you want to be the good light of a lamp
scanning the firmament, or rain- its pleasure
with an open boat.

So what is unanswered keeps you coming back
to yourself, telling you what you wanted
only when it didn't come, having now
to make up this difference.
Even moments you think empty, the world
doesn't stop speaking - the windshield
blurred suddenly by a sighting of gravestones,
before you are driven
through the underpass.


-Tess Gallagher

(no subject)

[penguinboy.livejournal.com]

End of the Century
by Stuart Dischell

i. Displaced Persons

Out on the street the children are playing soldier.
It's the end of the century and still they play soldier.
Let's be unfair. Blame them for the toasted corpses,
The orphans, widows, and amputees. One aims
A broomstick, another a plastic missile launcher,
And the little ones on the lawn roll over, "I'm dead,"
They say with joy, "I'm dead," "'Im dead," '"Im dead."

ii. She Stretched Her Young Body and Went Out

She stretched her young body and went out.
The trolley lines were bright in the sun.
Bees hovered on her dress pattern.
The flowers were of spectral colors.

She was still her parent's girl, living home,
Helping out. She was always the one. She believed
In her soul, in birthday parties, in feathers and drums.
She lived in every neighborhood. You saw her.

iii. Sarajevo Zoo

With two buckets of water he had gone to the cages.
It was early in the morning, the shelling had stopped.
In a tan windbreaker he had gone to the bears.
He made our target, this old man walking.