Hello, my lovely poetry lovers,
I stumbled across several poems while going through the “poems of the day” in my email that I let pile to embarrassing numbers, and I just wanted to share my favorites with you! Many of these have aspects that I would like to steal and use in my own poetry–the content for some, comparisons that I seem less able to make in my own work.
Poem of the Day: Constructive
BY HEATHER MCHUGHYou take a rock, your hand is hard.
You raise your eyes, and there’s a pair
of small beloveds, caught in pails.
The monocle and eyepatch correspond.You take a glove, your hand is soft.
The ocean floor was done
in lizardskin. Around a log or snag
the surface currents runlike lumber about a knot. A boat
is bent to sea—we favor the medium
we’re in, our shape’s
around us. It takes time.At night, the bed alive, what
teller of truth could tell
the two apart? Lover, beloved,
hope is command. Your handis given, when you take a hand.
“You take a glove, your hand is soft.
The ocean floor was done
in lizardskin” Great, as I’ve been trying to write about my lover in which I focus on on his hands… Although, now it seems I’d only be able to half-ass the focus seen in this poem.
The Widow’s Lament in Springtimeby William Carlos WilliamsSorrow is my own yardwhere the new grassflames as it has flamedoften before, but notwith the cold firethat closes round me this year.Thirty-five yearsI lived with my husband.The plum tree is white todaywith masses of flowers.Masses of flowersload the cherry branchesand color some bushesyellow and some red,but the grief in my heartis stronger than they,for though they were my joyformerly, today I notice themand turn away forgetting.Today my son told methat in the meadows,at the edge of the heavy woodsin the distance, he sawtrees of white flowers.I feel that I would liketo go thereand fall into those flowersand sink into the marsh near them.
The Catatonic Speaks – Poem by Pamela Spiro Wagner
At first it seemed a good idea not to
move a muscle, to resist without
resistance. I stood still and stiller. Soon
I was the stillest object in that room.
I neither moved nor ate nor spoke.
But I was in there all the time,
I heard every word said,
saw what was done and not done.
Indifferent to making the first move,
I let them arrange my limbs, infuse
IVs, even toilet me like a doll.
Oh, their concern was so touching!
And so unnecessary. As if I needed anything
but the viscosity of air that held me up.
I was sorry when they cured
me, when I had to depart that warm box,
the thick closed-in place of not-caring,
and return to the world. I would
never go back, not now. But
the Butterfly Effect says sometimes
the smallest step leads nowhere,
sometimes to global disaster. I tell you
it is enough to scare a person stiff.