Request

[peeling-oranges.livejournal.com]

I should just make a quick trip to the library, but I figured someone would have this on hand: I'm looking for Lucie Brock-Broido's poem about "Baby Jessica." I forget the title. Anyone have it within reach?

And, as a thank-you for this favor, here's one of my favorite Nick Flynn poems (I'm relatively new to the community, so I hope this isn't a repeat). Also, note that this is the longer version, which appeared in Ploughshares. Flynn's book Some Ether contains a more concise (and decidedly better) version, but I thought those familiar with the poem might like to see an earlier manifestation.

Emtying Town

I want to erase your footprints
from my walls. Each pillow
is thick with your reasons. Omens

fill the sidewalk below my window: a woman
in a party hat, clinging
to a tin-foil balloon. Shadows

creep slowly across the tar, someone yells, "Stop!"
and I close my eyes. I can't watch

as this town slowly empties, leaving me
strung between bon-voyages, like so many clothes
on a line, the white handkerchief

stuck in my throat. You know the way Jesus

rips open his shirt
to show us his heart, all flaming and thorny,
the way he points to it. I'm afraid

the way I'll miss you will be this obvious.

I have a friend who everyone warns me
is dangerous, he hides
bloody images of Jesus
around my house, for me to find

when I come home; Jesus
behind the cupboard door, Jesus tucked

into the mirror. He wants to save me
but we disagree from what. My version of hell
is someone ripping open his shirt

and saying, Look what I did for you. . .

I have been one acquainted with the night....

[greenhoodloxley.livejournal.com]

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain -- and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
O luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.


-Robert Frost-

Arthur Rimbaud

[aristokat.livejournal.com]

By the time he was nineteen years old, Arthur Rimbaud had written some of the greatest poetry in the history of the French language. He literally wandered from one end of Europe to the other on foot, broke, brilliant and mad before vanishing into Africa for several years. He surfaced for a while as a cartographer, then as an arms dealer, before returning to France to die of cancer at age 37. This is my favourite poem by "The accursed poet with the foot soles of wind".


--- Première Soirée ---

Elle était fort déshabillée
Et de grands arbres indiscrets
Aux vitres jetaient leur feuillée
Malinement, tout près, tout près.

Assise sur ma grande chaise,
Mi-nue, elle joignait les mains.
Sur le plancher frissonnaient d'aise
Ses petits pieds si fins, si fins.

- Je regardai, couleur de cire
Un petit rayon buissonnier
Papillonner dans son sourire
Et sur son sein, - mouche ou rosier.

- Je baisai ses fines chevilles.
Elle eut un doux rire brutal
Qui s'égrenait en claires trilles,
Un joli rire de cristal.

Les petits pieds sous la chemise
Se sauvèrent : « Veux-tu en finir ! »
- La première audace permise,
Le rire feignait de punir !

- Pauvrets palpitants sous ma lèvre,
Je baisai doucement ses yeux :
- Elle jeta sa tête mièvre
En arrière : « Oh ! c'est encor mieux !...

Monsieur, j'ai deux mots à te dire... »
- Je lui jetai le reste au sein
Dans un baiser, qui la fit rire
D'un bon rire qui voulait bien...

- Elle était fort déshabillée
Et de grands arbres indiscrets
Aux vitres jetaient leur feuillée
Malinement, tout près, tout près

Nothing like some good sexy poetry. The translation below cheats a lot to try and preserve something of Rimbaud's rhythm and sound - a lot of the translated words are not at all accurate to the original French. Still, the content is about the same, and poetry is never easy to translate.

--- First Evening ---

Her clothes were almost off;
Outside, a curious tree
Beat a branch at the window
To see what it could see.

Perched on my enormous easy chair,
Half nude, she clasped her hands.
Her feet trembled on the floor,
As soft as they could be.

I watched as a ray of pale light,
Trapped in the tree outside,
Danced from her mouth
To her breast, like a fly on a flower.

I kissed her delicate ankles.
She had a soft, brusque laugh
That broke into shining crystals -
A pretty little laugh.

Her feet ducked under her chemise;
"Will you please stop it!…"
But I laughed at her cries -
I knew she really liked it.

Her eye trembled beneath my lips;
They closed at my touch.
Her head went back; she cried:
"Oh, really! That's too much!

"My dear, I'm warning you…"
I stopped her protest with a kiss
And she laughed, low -
A laugh that wanted more than this…

Her clothes were almost off;
Outside, a curious tree
Beat a branch at the window
To see what it could see.

John Berryman - Of 1826 (Dream Song 22)

[natelyswhore.livejournal.com]

Of 1826

I am the little man who smokes & smokes.
I am the girl who does know better but,
I am the king of the pool.
I am so wise I had my mouth sewn shut.
I am a government official & a goddamned fool.
I am a lady who takes Jokes.

I am the enemy of the mind.
I am the auto salesman and lóve you.
I am a teenage cancer, with a plan.
I am the blackt-out man.
I am the woman powerful as a zoo.
I am two eyes screwed to my set, whose blind --

It is the Fourth of July.
Collect:  while the dying man,
forgone by you creator, who forgives,
is gasping "Thomas Jefferson still lives"
in vain, in vain, in vain.
I am Henry Pussy-Cat!  My whiskers fly.

Robert Hershon - Neighbors

[natelyswhore.livejournal.com]

Neighbors

The conversation consisting of
thud and fuck you
Something heavy hits the wall
A picture shifts
Fuck you, she shouts, fuck you
 
A dish or a glass.  No, a bottle.
Fuck you, she shouts, you motherfucker,
you fucking motherfucker, fuck you
 
I want to reach through the wall with
an armload of sharpened intensifiers –
You mongoose bowel, you cabinet of phlegm,
you guppy-hearted elbow pipe –
so that, if when she bleeds, the Red Sea,
she can end the refrain, thrust home

But does it matter what she shouts,
but that she shouts, against thud
and push, any words, any arithmetic
One fuck you plus one fuck you
is one fuck you     Some days, I suppose,
only the classics will do