For the Dead by Adrienne Rich

[alphien.livejournal.com]

I dreamed I called you on the telephone
to say: Be kinder to yourself
but you were sick and would not answer

The waste of my love goes on this way
trying to save you from yourself

I have always wondered about the left-over
energy, the way water goes rushing down a hill
long after the rains have stopped

or the fire you want to go to bed from
but cannot leave, burning-down but not burnt-down
the red coals more extreme, more curious
in their flashing and dying
than you wish they were
sitting long after midnight

Emerson.

[navy-brat-1972.livejournal.com]

Shall we
judge the country
by the majority
or by the minority?
Certainly,
by the minority.
The mass are animal,
in the state of pupilage
and nearer
the chimpanzee.

from "The Beautifully Worthless" // Ali Liebegott

[iatrogenicmyth.livejournal.com]

A thousand ways to be lost in this country --
good lost, bad lost -- people pushed by broom edges,
flicked by bristle tips into corners....

Who plots a way out, what kind of person has it in them
to stand before a mirror, straight-razor in hand
and cut the rut from their life as if it were a malignant
penny-shaped birthmark on the side of their neck?

After despair came, like a delivery boy to your door
every day for a week, and after you signed the clipboard
and reached for the package, he took your hand
and bent each finger back, until your hands were not hands,
but two sets of broken, crooked twigs...

who still has the strength to plan a breakout,
dig a tunnel with a spoon
tap on a cell wall at night, letter by letter
spelling out Rilke poems to encourage their comrades?
Who doesn't get found
is left unplucked from their stagnant life
like a penny in the dirt of a dustpan?

Who, when they find out their husband is having an affair,
can't hack the only plant in their yard to death with a shovel?

Who isn't interesting enough to help --
what forgotten woman sits in a lawn chair in her yard
with a can of soda pressed to her thigh, and the radio
blaring the death toll of Texans,
who were victims of a record heat wave?
Whose inner voice sits quiet like an obedient dog
and never says, go go go.

***

Five nights in a row, the sun going down, daytime's last breath,
each curve of a hundred-curve leaf sculpts itself black into the sky,

the half-lit wavering sun, like the electric company shutting
pieces of power off as unpaid bills pile up

first the outlet for the toaster, the lamp next to the bed
but the joke's on them, plenty of times I've loved without light.

 

( Without light, I found you in my living room )

 

help remembering a poem

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

A couple of years ago I came across a poem somewhere on the internet--it might have been in this community, actually. Unfortunately, I cannot remember where or what it was called or who it was by. I think it was by a woman, and wherever it was posted, maybe it was mentioned that it was from some poetry journal, some years ago? The poem was based on a true story, I think? (or maybe a newspaper article of a story?)--it was about children somewhere rural, going somewhere, or coming home, and a little boy getting somehow trapped/stuck on the train tracks, and his sister tried to help him, and a train was coming, but when she couldn't help him get free, she hugged him and stayed with him, and they both died.

Does anyone know this poem, or where I can find it?

TIA

And below a poem by one of my favorite poets, Vera Pavlova


***

I think it will be winter when he comes.
From the unbearable whiteness of the road
a dot will emerge, so black that eyes will blur,
and it will be approaching for a long, long time,
making his absence commensurate with his coming,
and for a long, long time it will remain a dot.
A speck of dust? A burning in the eye? And snow,
there will be nothing else but snow,
and for a long, long while there will be nothing,
and he will pull away the snowy curtain,
he will acquire size and three dimensions,
he will keep coming closer, closer . . .
This is the limit, he cannot get closer. But he keeps approaching,
now too vast to measure . . .