Best. Sestina. Ever.

[tom-sizemore.livejournal.com]

Histoire


Tina and Seth met in the midst of an overcrowded militarism.
"Like a drink?" he asked her. "They make great Alexanders over at the Marxism-Leninism."
She agreed. They shared cocktails. They behaved cautiously, as in a period of pre-fascism.
Afterwards he suggested dinner at a restaurant renowned for its Maoism.
"O.K.," she said, but first she had to phone a friend about her ailing Afghan, whose name was Racism.
Then she followed Seth across town past twilit alleys of sexism.

The waiter brought menus and announced the day's specials. He treated them with condescending sexism,
So they had another drink. Tina started her meal with a dish of militarism,
While Seth, who was hungrier, had a half portion of stuffed baked racism.
Their main dishes were roast duck for Seth, and for Tina broiled Marxism-Leninism.
Tina had pecan pie a la for dessert, Seth a compote of stewed Maoism.
They lingered. Seth proposed a liqueur. They rejected sambuca and agreed on fascism.

During the meal, Seth took the initiative. He inquired into Tina's fascism,
About which she was reserved, not out of reticence but because Seth's sexism
Had aroused in her a desire she felt she should hide - as though her Maoism
Would willy-nilly betray her feelings for him. She was right. Even her deliberate militarism
Couldn't keep Seth from realizing that his attraction was reciprocated. His own Marxism-Leninism
Became manifest, in a compulsive way that piled the Ossa of confusion on the Pelion of racism.

Next, what? Food finished, drinks drunk, bills paid - what racism
Might not swamp their yearning in an even greater confusion of fascism?
But women are wiser than words. Tina rested her hand on his thigh and, a-twinkle with Marxism-Leninism,
Asked him, "My place?" Clarity at once abounded under the flood-lights of sexism,
They rose from the table, strode out, and he with the impetuousness of young militarism
Hailed a cab to transport them to her lair, heaven-haven of Maoism.

In the taxi he soon kissed her. She let him unbutton her Maoism
And stroke her resilient skin, which was quivering with shudders of racism.
When beneath her jeans he sense the superior Lycra of her militarism,
His longing almost strangled him. Her little tongue was as potent as fascism
In its elusive certainty. He felt like then and there tearing off her sexism
But he reminded himself: "Pleasure lies in patience, not in the greedy violence of Marxism-Leninism."

Once home, she took over. She created a hungering aura of Marxism-Leninism
As she slowly undressed him where he sat on her overstuffed art-deco Maoism,
Making him keep still, so that she could indulge in caresses, in sexism,
In the pursuit of knowing him. He groaned under the exactness of her racism
- Fingertip sliding up his nape, nails incising his soles, teeth nibbling his fascism.
At last she guided him to bed, and they lay down on a patchwork of Old American militarism.

Biting his lips, he plunged his militarism into the popular context of her Marxism-Leninism,
Easing one thumb into her fascism, with his free hand coddling the tip of her Maoism,
Until, gasping with appreciative racism, both together sink into the revealed glory of sexism.




- Harry Mathews, 1988 (Taken from The Best of the Best American Poetry 1988-1997, ed. Harold Bloom)

Why by Deborah Warren

[pachamama.livejournal.com]

Why
by Deborah Warren

How to love a man in whom I see
nothing to love? There's nothing to it:

There's no study, wisdom, judgement,
thought or work -- you only do it.

No one taught me who to love.
What I'd been taught I might unlearn;

but my instructor was whoever
taught the fire how to burn;

and where's the sage who, having made
a docile spark ignite the straw,

can make it cease at his request --
just by invoking reason's law?

You might want some reason I can cite
for loving him? Go ask the sea

about its bondage to the moody
crooked moon. But don't ask me.

Or go command the tide to halt --
to think again -- to justify

pounding the sand -- to lose its salt;
and come back then and ask me why.

Since we're posting sestinas...

[stuntcat.livejournal.com]

The Shrinking Lonesome Sestina

Somewhere in everyone's head something points toward home,
a dashboard's floating compass, turning all the time
to keep from turning. It doesn't matter how we come
to be wherever we are, someplace where nothing goes
the way it went once, where nothing holds fast
to where it belongs, or what you've risen or fallen to.

What the bubble always points to,
whether we notice it or not, is home.
It may be true that if you move fast
everything fades away, that given time
and noise enough, every memory goes
into the blackness, and if new ones come-

small, mole-like memories that come
to live in the furry dark-they, too,
curl up and die. But Carol goes
to high school now. John works at home
what days he can to spend some time
with Sue and the kids. He drives too fast.

Ellen won't eat her breakfast.
Your sister was going to come
but didn't have the time.
Some mornings at one or two
or three I want you home
a lot, but then it goes.

It all goes.
Hold on fast
to thoughts of home
when they come.
They're going to
less with time.

Time
goes
too
fast.
Come
home.

Forgive me that. One time it wasn't fast.
A myth goes that when the years come
then you will, too. Me, I'll still be home.

- Miller Williams

( Definitely my favorite. )

Emily Dickinson's Sestina for Molly Bloom by Barbara Lefcowitz

[tree]

since i just typed this out in a comment, i thought i would post it properly as well.

At times I almost believed it: madness
the only way to say yes,
to stumble into shapes of night
that gape open like abandoned wells--
This would work like no other

disguise--yet I chose another
route, neither mad
nor well
enough to shout yes!
when morning scissor-blades opened
my sack of night

full of valentines to death--Night
whose curve of darkness I preferred to other
hours' slanting light that would open
all my closed lives--not the madly
flowered darkness that would make you say yes!
but--I might as well

admit it--the well-
sealed kind of night
where I could nod yes
to another
sputter of benign madness
from the loaded gun of an open

wound whose red opening
was never stanched well
enough; if only I hadn't feared the mad
shudder-burst & bloom demanded by your night
I would have become another
woman, spread open like a figtree in my father's northern garden, Yes

or--yes!
a house with its shutters open
to another
throng of lovers climbing my well-
flowered hair night after night,
all Amherst going mad,

its quartz contentment split open by the pulsing night--
Molly, as well become you as another--
Yes, and my heart going like mad and yes saying yes I will yes!

hate to break the sestina trend...

[rely-on-romance.livejournal.com]

... but i just handed in a 14 page paper on a Dickinson poem and feel obliged to post something.


Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes
Billy Collins

First, her tippet made of tulle,
easily lifted off her shoulders and laid
on the back of a wooden chair.

And her bonnet,
the bow undone with a light forward pull

Then the long white dress, a more
complicated matter with mother-of-pearl
buttons down the back,
so tiny and numerous that it takes forever
before my hands can part the fabric,
like a swimmer's dividing water,
and slip inside.

You will want to know
that she was standing
by an open window in an upstairs bedroom,
motionless, a little wide-eyed,
looking out at the orchard below,
the white dress puddled at her feet
on the wide-board, hardwood floor.

The complexity of women's undergarments
in nineteenth-century America
is not to be waved off,
and I proceeded like a polar explorer
through clips, clasps, and moorings,
catches, straps, and whalebone stays,
sailing toward the iceberg of her nakedness.

( Later, I wrote in a notebook it was like riding a swan into the night... )

Hook by James Wright

[cloudwrapdcity.livejournal.com]

I have a request. I read a poem on this site a while ago (at least half a year or a year ago) about seeing a woman at the supermarket and how she was beautiful like an angel with white hair. .I'd love to be able to read it again. And in payment, I give you "Hook" by James Wright
Hook
James Wright

I was only a young man
In those days. On that evening
The cold was so God damned
Bitter there was nothing.
Nothing. I was in trouble
With a woman, and there was nothing
There but me and dead snow.

( more below )

Fat Girl's Confession - Liz Lochhead

[ann-septimus.livejournal.com]

Fat Girl’s Confession

Roll up and see the Fat Lady!
Such a jolly sight to see.
Seems my figure is a Figure of Fun. . .
to everone but me.

Smile! Say Cottage Cheese!
You all know me -
I’m the Office Fat Girl, the one you see
Wearing Vast Dark Dresses and a Cheery Veneer . . .
And lingerie constructed by a civil engineer.

( and thus it continues )