Why Does Dick Come First?

[persephone-blue.livejournal.com]

Nin Andrews

Every year school children wrote letters to Dick and Jane and Santa. Why? Jane wondered. Why did they care if she ate her lima beans or not, if she could catch a softball, if she had a last name? One girl named Stephanie wrote to ask why she let Dick win every single race. Does he ever come in second, she asked. Didn't Stephanie know? Jane's job was to clap so Dick could run fast, to be silly so Dick could laugh, to cry so Dick could comfort her, to scream oh no, so that Dick could save the day or Puff, the kitten. And Jane's job was to dress in pretty ruffled dresses and bobby socks and patent leather shoes so that other girls could dress in pretty ruffled dresses and matching socks and shiny shoes when they, too, shouted, go Dick go.

"Spring Offensive," by Wilfred Owen

[othergoose.livejournal.com]

Spring Offensive
Wilfred Owen

Halted against the shade of a last hill,
They fed, and lying easy, were at ease
And, finding comfortable chests and knees,
Carelessly slept. But many there stood still
To face the stark, blank sky beyond the ridge,
Knowing their feet had come to the end of the world.

Marvelling they stood, and watched the long grass swirled
By the May breeze, murmurous with wasp and midge,
For though the summer oozed in their veins
Like an injected drug for their bodies’ pains,
Sharp on their souls hung the imminent line of grass,
Fearfully flashed the sky’s mysterious glass.

Hour after hour they ponder the warm field—
And the far valley behind, where the buttercup
Had blessed with gold their slow boots coming up,
Where even the little brambles would not yield,
But clutched and clung to them like sorrowing hands;
They breathe like trees unstirred.

Till like a cold gust thrills the little word
At which each body and its soul begird
And tighten them for battle. No alarms
Of bugles, no high flags, no clamorous haste—
Only a lift and flare of eyes that faced
The sun, like a friend with whom their love is done.
O larger shone that smile against the sun,—
Mightier than his whose bounty these have spurned.

So, soon they topped the hill, and raced together
Over an open stretch of herb and heather
Exposed. And instantly the whole sky burned
With fury against them; earth set sudden cups
In thousands for their blood; and the green slope
Chasmed and steepened sheer to infinite space.

( Of them who running on that last high place... )

"Boy" -- Denise Duhamel

[myselftheliar.livejournal.com]

Boy
by Denise Duhamel

I run into my old boyfriend's new boyfriend
on Boylston Street and, as he talks, I fish around
in my handbag, my pockets, for something sharp
so I can stab him. He prattles insensitive circles:
how my old boyfriend is impossible, but I already know that.
I want to call him queer boy, a faggot: he keeps calling me "hun,"
twirling the fringe on my scarf. We have nothing in common
until his goodbye: pink gums show between his teeth
and upper lip. He has my goofy kind of smile,
the kind my old boyfriend always made fun of.
Boy, is this guy in for trouble.

Eileen Tabios, "Tercets from The Book of Revelation"

[the-grynne.livejournal.com]

TERCETS FROM THE BOOK OF REVELATION

after Rupert Thomson's The Book of Revelation


(i)

How does the air
come to pulse
like a muscle

As if your scent
lingers
before your arrival

How does the night
come to press
and smother

As if a fresh wound
must accompany
a revelation

Church bells ring
over a dark street
to fracture glass

Or was it a childhood
memory evoking
how light becomes distant

A fine, silvery mist
descends
on a wall, a city

You reach me
by penetrating past
a train's smoke and whistle

Damp hair clings
to the nape
of your neck

How can the cause
for an absence
( lose relevance )

Even tinier people started worshipping there.

[grammarfight.livejournal.com]

The Black Square She Wears

In this play I wrote, a woman appears naked on stage. She has a black square painted on her bare stomach. She tries to convince the gentleman on stage that it is a painting of the two of them in a boat on a lake on a moonless night. This is you paddling from the stern she says. He sees nothing but a black square. Trees are blowing gently in the wind just below my ribs. She makes a gesture to her ribs and starts crying. Silence fills the stage as he touches the painting with his finger. He gets on his knees to study it. A pirate enters.

—Zachary Schomburg



cross-posted from grammarfight

Slow Dance - Matthew Dickman

[filmfatale.livejournal.com]

More than putting another man on the moon,
more than a New Year’s resolution of yogurt and yoga,
we need the opportunity to dance
with really exquisite strangers. A slow dance
between the couch and dinning room table, at the end
of the party, while the person we love has gone
to bring the car around
because it’s begun to rain and would break their heart
if any part of us got wet. A slow dance
to bring the evening home, to knock it out of the park. Two people
rocking back and forth like a buoy. Nothing extravagant.
A little music. An empty bottle of whiskey.
It’s a little like cheating. ( Read more... )