greatpoetry | Entries tagged with joyce sutphen

elenbarathi.livejournal.com

Crossroads

The second half of my life will be black
to the white rind of the old and fading moon.

The second half of my life will be water
over the cracked floor of these desert years.

I will land on my feet this time,
knowing at least two languages and who
my friends are. I will dress for the
occasion, and my hair shall be
whatever color I please.

Everyone will go on celebrating the old
birthday, counting the years as usual,
but I will count myself new from this
inception, this imprint of my own desire.

The second half of my life will be swift,
past leaning fenceposts, a gravel shoulder,
asphalt tickets, the beckon of open road.

The second half of my life will be wide-eyed,
fingers shifting through fine sands,
arms loose at my sides, wandering feet.

There will be new dreams every night,
and the drapes will never be closed.

I will toss my string of keys into a deep
well and old letters into the grate.

The second half of my life will be ice
breaking up on the river, rain
soaking the fields, a hand
held out, a fire,
and smoke going
upward, always up.

~Joyce Sutphen~

Happy Solstice to all!

swannishs-epee.livejournal.com

I remember there being a poem posted on here a long time ago- a slam poem by a woman talking about what it's like to go out with a book worm. I want to use because I'm looking for poems with literature as their main focus. Here's some I have so far. Please share any other poems you know of that are about literature too!

Thanks, guys!

( In Shakespeare by James Richardson )
( The Wordsworth Effect by Joyce Sutphen )
( A Poet Recalls Fiction by Norm Sacuta )

Current Mood: curious

aimlesswanderer.livejournal.com

November, 1967
by Joyce Sutphen

Dr. Zhivago was playing at the Paramount
Theater in St. Cloud. That afternoon,
we went into Russia,

and when we came out, the snow
was falling—the same snow
that fell in Moscow.

The sky had turned black velvet.
We'd been through the Revolution
and the frozen winters.

In the Chevy, we waited for the heater
to melt ice on the windshield,
clapping our hands to keep warm.

On the highway, these two things:
a song from Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
and that semi-truck careening by.

Now I travel through the dark without you
and sometimes I turn up the radio, hopeful
the way you were, no matter what.

aimlesswanderer.livejournal.com

On the Way to the Farm I Think of My Sister
by Joyce Sutphen

There's a different highway now
coming across different fields
west of the old double lane.

Once you're on it, you don't have to stop
for anything, except congestion in July
when everyone else is heading

North. You'd like it: driving at 80 mph
with the music forty years past when
you left the planet ... but no more

gasoline at 29 cents a gallon! No more
Beatles (John and George—both dead),
no more cows in the stanchions, no more hay
in the barn. Otherwise, everything is
pretty much the way you remember it.

http://users.livejournal.com/_lyra_b/

"The Wordsworth Effect"
by Joyce Sutphen

Is when you return to a place
and it's not nearly as amazing
as you once thought it was,

or when you remember how you felt
about something (or someone) but you know
you'll never feel that way again.

It's when you notice someone has turned
down the volume, and you realize
it was you; when you have the

suspicion that you've met the enemy
and you are it, or when you get
your best ideas from your sister's journal.

Is also-to be fair-the thing that enables
you to walk for miles and miles chanting to
yourself in iambic pentameter

and to travel through Europe with
only a clean shirt, a change of
underwear, a notebook and a pen.

And yes: is when you stretch out
on your couch and summon up ten thousand
daffodils, all dancing in the breeze.

Current Music: "Devotion" - Lowly Knights

moireach.livejournal.com

Living in the Body
Joyce Sutphen

Body is something you need in order to stay
on this planet and you only get one.
And no matter which one you get, it will not
be satisfactory. It will not be beautiful
enough, it will not be fast enough, it will
not keep on for days at a time, but will
pull you down into a sleepy swamp and
demand apples and coffee and chocolate cake.

Body is a thing you have to carry
from one day into the next. Always the
same eyebrows over the same eyes in the same
skin when you look in the mirror, and the
same creaky knee when you get up from the
floor and the same wrist under the watchband.
The changes you can make are small and
costly--better to leave it as it is.

Body is a thing that you have to leave
eventually. You know that because you have
seen others do it, others who were once like you,
living inside their pile of bones and
flesh, smiling at you, loving you,
leaning in the doorway, talking to you
for hours and then one day they
are gone. No forwarding address.

somethingwitti.livejournal.com

This present tragedy will eventually
turn into myth, and in the mist
of that later telling the bell tolling
now will be a symbol, or, at least,
a sign of something long since lost.

This will be another one of those
loose changes, the rearrangement of
hearts, just parts of old lives
patched together, gathered into
a dim constellation, small consolation.

Look, we will say, you can almost see
the outline there: her fingertips
touching his, the faint fusion
of two bodies breaking into light.

-Joyce Sutphen

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I Eat Poetry

Entries tagged with joyce sutphen

Crossroads, by Joyce Sutphen

Poem about literature

November, 1967 -- Joyce Sutphen

On the Way to the Farm I Think of My Sister -- Joyce Sutphen

"The Wordsworth Effect" by Joyce Sutphen

Living in the Body, Joyce Sutphen

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