Mary Austin Speaker - The Taxidermist Relents

[natelyswhore.livejournal.com]

The Taxidermist Relents

When I told you I would sculpt
your portrait from a potato,
I was thinking of the word relief,
and how its prints would differ,
indefinitely. Pieces of the potato
keep coming off into the ink
and there is the temptation to eat it whole.
This may be called self-absorption.
I knew a man who had his late dog stuffed
with its own fur and combined
with a bird in a manner that bisected
both animals down the center.
It was a small dog.
It was a large bird.
Together they won the prize
for most beloved animal.

you and i are disappearing by yusef komunyakaa

[unwinding.livejournal.com]

You and I Are Disappearing
by Yusef Komunyakaa


The cry I bring down from the hills
belongs to a girl still burning
inside my head. At daybreak
she burns like a piece of paper.
She burns like foxfire
in a thigh-shaped valley.
A skirt of flames
dances around her
      at dusk.
We stand with our hands
hanging at our sides,
while she burns
like a sack of dry ice.
She burns like oil on water.
She burns like a cattail torch
dipped in gasoline.
She glows like the fat tip
of a banker's cigar,
silent as quicksilver.
A tiger under a rainbow
      at nightfall.
She burns like a shot glass of vodka.
She burns like a field of poppies
at the edge of a rain forest.
She rises like dragonsmoke
      to my nostrils.
She burns like a burning bush
driven by a godawful wind.

letter I by bruce beaver

[unwinding.livejournal.com]

Letter I
by Bruce Beaver

God knows what was done to you.
I may never find out fully.
The truth reaches us slowly here,
is delayed in the mail continually
or censored in the tabloids. The war
now into its third year
remains undeclared.
The number of infants, among others, blistered
and skinned alive by napalm
has been exaggerated
by both sides we are told,
and the gas does not seriously harm;
does not kill but is merely unbearably nauseating.
Apparently none of this is happening to us.

( read the rest of the poem )

"The Illiterate," William Meredith

[sansagenda.livejournal.com]

The Illiterate
William Meredith
Touching your goodness, I am like a man
Who turns a letter over in his hand
And you might think this was because the hand
Was unfamiliar but, truth is, the man
Has never had a letter from anyone;
And now he is both afraid of what it means
And ashamed because he has no other means
To find out what it says than to ask someone.

His uncle could have left the farm to him,
Or his parents died before he sent them word,
Or the dark girl changed and want him for beloved.
Afraid and letter-proud, he keeps it with him.
What would you call his feeling for the words
That keep him rich and orphaned and beloved?

"To the Ladies" / Mary, Lady Chudleigh

[im-so-creative.livejournal.com]

Wife and Servant are the same,
But only differ in the Name:
For when that fatal Knot is ty'd,
Which nothing, nothing can divide:
When she the word obey has said,
And Man by Law supreme has made,
Then all that's kind is laid aside,
And nothing left but State and Pride:
Fierce as an Eastern Prince he grows,
And all his innate Rigor shows:
Then but to look, to laugh, or speak,
Will the Nuptial Contract break.
Like Mutes she Signs alone must make,
And never any Freedom take:
But still be govern'd by a Nod,
And fear her Husband as her God:
Him still must serve, him still obey,
And nothing act, and nothing say,
But what her haughty Lord thinks fit,
Who with the Pow'r, has all the Wit.
Then shun, oh! shun that wretched State,
And all the fawning Flatt'rers hate:
Value your selves, and Men despise,
You must be proud, if you'll be wise.

G.K. Chesterton's Ballad of the Sun

[scriblingdreams.livejournal.com]

O WELL for him that loves the sun,
That sees the heaven-race ridden or run,
The splashing seas of sunset won,
And shouts for victory.

God made the sun to crown his head,
And when death's dart at last is sped,
At least it will not find him dead,
And pass the carrion by.

O ill for him that loves the sun;
Shall the sun stoop for anyone?
Shall the sun weep for hearts undone
Or heavy souls that pray?

Not less for us and everyone
Was that white web of splendour spun
O well for him who loves the sun
Although the sun should slay.

one day i want to be brilliant, too

[glass-doll.livejournal.com]

Imaging
by: Marge Piercy


I am my body
This is not a dress, a coat;
not a house I line in;
not a suit of armor for close fighting;
not a lump of meat in which I nuzzle like a worm.


I issue orders from the command tower;
I look out the twin windows staring,
reading the buzz from ears, hands, nose,
weighing, interpreting, forecasting.
Downstairs faceless crowds labor.


I am those mute crowds rushing,
I must glide down the ladder of bone,
I must slide down the silken ropes
of the nerves burning in their darkness,
I must ease into the warm egg of the limbic brain.


Like learning the chemical language of ants,
We enter and join to the body lying
Down as idd to a lover. We ourselves,
Caves we must explore in the dark,
Eyes shut tight and hands unclenched.


Estranged from ourselves to the point
Where we scarcely credit the body’s mind,
In we go reclaiming what once we knew.
We wrestle the dark angel of our hidden
Selves, fighting all night for our lives.


Who is this angel I meet on my back,
Radiant as molten steel pouring from the ladle,
Dark as the inside of the moon?
Whose is this strength I wrestle?
-the other my lost holy self.