Two hours between classes.
The short Metro ride home.
Coffee table, plates, glasses,
the TV flickering afternoon
news, sometimes a car bomb…
And in the kitchen the singular tune
of his voice, his jokes, recounting this
or that—plot of a novel, book
he’s put down, I bought for his
monthly fix (how he’d love
reading in the park what I took
half an hour to choose). Above
all, the sofa: digestion a nap,
my head nestled in his lap.
Hora del almuerzo
Dos horas entre clases.
El viaje breve en Metro a casa.
Mesa de salón, platos, vasos,
la tele luciendo noticias
de tarde, a veces un coche-bomba…
Y en la cocina el tono único
de su voz, sus chistes, contando esto
y aquello—argumento de novela, libro
que ha dejado, que le compré:
sus dosis mensual (cómo le encantaba
leer en el parque lo que tardé
madia hora en escoger). Sobre
todo, el sofá: la digestión una siesta,
mi cabeza recostada en su regazo
From Puerta del Sol. Copyright © 2005, Bilingual Press / Editorial Bilingüe, Arizona State University.
An average joe comes in and orders thirty cheeseburgers and thirty fries. I wait for him to pay before I start cooking. He pays. He ain't no average joe. The grill is just big enough for ten rows of three. I slap the burgers down throw two buckets of fries in the deep frier and they pop pop, spit spit. . . pssss. . . The counter girls laugh. I concentrate. It is the crucial point-- they are ready for the cheese: my fingers shake as I tear off slices toss them on the burgers/fries done/dump/ refill buckets/burgers ready/flip into buns/ beat that melting cheese/wrap burgers in plastic/ into paper bags/fries done/dump/fill thirty bags/ bring them to the counter/wipe sweat on sleeve and smile at the counter girls. I puff my chest out and bellow: Thirty cheeseburgers! Thirty fries! I grab a handful of ice, toss it in my mouth do a little dance and walk back to the grill. Pressure, responsibility, success. Thirty cheeseburgers, thirty fries.
From Show and Tell: New and Selected Poems by Jim Daniels. Originally appeared in Places/Everyone. Copyright © 1985 by Jim Daniels. Reprinted by permission of the University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved.
I’m on a bike and someone’s name is forming.
The road is potholes the road is dust.
Cruising the dirt, the meadow humming with bugs.
Dust rising, tires crushing rock, bats ejecting from under the barn
streaming the insected air the pulse life repeating life looping back
slowing down getting longer though it didn’t and isn’t.
A little letting go of fear.
A little spittle in death’s eye.
Don’t ask don’t think (I didn’t ask or think).
Didn’t think don’t think.
I remember giving in to it lying back and then
little sprout of willow
spray of the earth green of leaves the light coming down
as if through a ferny veil dirty primal randomly animate
and we are in it still.
From The Uses of the Body, published by Copper Canyon Press. Copyright © 2015 by Deborah Landau. Reprinted with permission of Copper Canyon Press.
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
From The Poetry of Robert Frost by Robert Frost, edited by Edward Connery Lathem. Copyright 1916, 1923, 1928, 1930, 1934, 1939, 1947, 1949, © 1969 by Holt Rinehart and Winston, Inc. Copyright 1936, 1942, 1944, 1945, 1947, 1948, 1951, 1953, 1954, © 1956, 1958, 1959, 1961, 1962 by Robert Frost. Copyright © 1962, 1967, 1970 by Leslie Frost Ballantine.