A Woman's Shortcomings

[riceanvampire.livejournal.com]

This is my favorite poem. I don't know where I first read it. I don't even remember how long ago it was. But I frequently copy in onto paper for no reason. Sometimes I find myself repeating lines of it over and over again in my head, like when you get a song stuck. I used to use it as a checklist. If I could check off everything listed in this poem, THAT is how I would know that I was in love.

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A Woman's Shortcomings by Elizabeth Barrett Browning


She has laughed as softly as if she sighed,
She has counted six, and over,
Of a purse well filled, and a heart well tried -
Oh, each a worthy lover!
They "give her time"; for her soul must slip
Where the world has set the grooving;
She will lie to none with her fair red lip:
But love seeks truer loving.

She trembles her fan in a sweetness dumb,
As her thoughts were beyond recalling;
With a glance for one, and a glance for some,
From her eyelids rising and falling;
Speaks common words with a blushful air,
Hears bold words, unreproving;
But her silence says - what she never will swear -
And love seeks better loving.

Go, lady! lean to the night-guitar,
And drop a smile to the bringer;
Then smile as sweetly, when he is far,
At the voice of an in-door singer.
Bask tenderly beneath tender eyes;
Glance lightly, on their removing;
And join new vows to old perjuries -
But dare not call it loving!

Unless you can think, when the song is done,
No other is soft in the rhythm;
Unless you can feel, when left by One,
That all men else go with him;
( Unless you can know, when unpraised by his breath, )

"What I Know for Sure" by Alexandra Teague

[birdcages.livejournal.com]

When I look at my abdomen, I see a scar turning
back to lighter skin from where a surgeon cut

five inches across, and just before this, I remember
trying to stop screaming as my intestine ruptured

by reciting names-first middle and last-
of everyone I could think of, though I do not know

for sure if I got all the middle names right,
or if I have ever known yours.

In last Thursday's Kansas City Star, I saw a photo
of an x-ray of a man's head imbedded with a nailgun nail

that, according to the story, had missed his eyes
and seven centers of planning and purpose inside

his frontal lobe and done, really, no damage.
The doctors called this a true miracle,

which made me think that death does not happen
by cause and effect, though I do not know for sure

that the story or picture or both had not been doctored
to improve circulation, as though printed words

and paper are, the same as us, a living body.
My parents gave me the middle name Rachael

for its numerological value, and my whole name
therefore adds up to seven, which is said to be lucky.

The pre-surgical report describes me as being
of steady age which makes me wonder if some

people's ages are in visible flux.
I do not regularly sign my middle name or initial.

The surgeon recorded cutting me with a ten blade
just below McBurney's point.

Even having been opened there,
I do not recognize this name as my body.

The History Teacher - Billy Collins

[shadowfax994.livejournal.com]

The History Teacher

Trying to protect his students' innocence
he told them the Ice Age was really just
the Chilly Age, a period of a million years
when everyone had to wear sweaters.

And the Stone Age became the Gravel Age,
named after the long driveways of the time.

The Spanish Inquisition was nothing more
than an outbreak of questions such as
"How far is it from here to Madrid?"
"What do you call the matador's hat?"

The War of the Roses took place in a garden
and the Enola Gay dropped one tiny atom
on Japan.

The children would leave his classroom
for the playground to torment the weak
and the smart,
mussing up their hair and breaking their glasses,
while he gathered up his notes and walked home
past flower beds and white picket fences,
wondering if they would believe that soldiers
in the Boer War told long, rambling stories
designed to make the enemy nod off.

              --Billy Collins