The world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don’t mind happiness
not always being
so very much fun
if you don’t mind a touch of hell
now and then
just when everything is fine
because even in heaven
they don’t sing
all the time
The world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don’t mind some people dying
all the time
or maybe only starving
some of the time
which isn’t half so bad
if it isn’t you
Oh the world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don’t much mind
a few dead minds
in the higher places
or a bomb or two
now and then
in your upturned faces
or such other improprieties
as our Name Brand society
is prey to
with its men of distinction
and its men of extinction
and its priests
and other patrolmen
and its various segregations
and congressional investigations
and other constipations
that our fool flesh
is heir to
Yes the world is the best place of all
for a lot of such things as
making the fun scene
and making the love scene
and making the sad scene
and singing low songs of having
inspirations
and walking around
looking at everything
and smelling flowers
and goosing statues
and even thinking
and kissing people and
making babies and wearing pants
and waving hats and
dancing
and going swimming in rivers
on picnics
in the middle of the summer
and just generally
‘living it up’
Yes
but then right in the middle of it
comes the smiling
mortician
From A Coney Island of the Mind, copyright © 1955 by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.
from “Mama and Papa Have the Going Home Shiprock Blues”
Forever.
And ever.
And ever.
There’s my cousin. Auntie. Uncle.
Another cousin.
Ever.
And ever.
And ever.
Vending machines and pop.
Chips, candy, and not enough clean water.
And ever, ever, ever.
Waiting and tired.
Tired of waiting.
Forever.
And ever.
And ever.
Go water the horses.
This poem was commissioned for T.C. Cannon: At the Edge of America, a book edited by Karen Kramer and published by Peabody Essex Museum. Copyright © 2018 by Joy Harjo. Used with the permission of the author.
mary is an old woman without shoes.
she doesn’t believe it.
not when her belly starts to bubble
and leave the print of a finger where
no man touches.
not when the snow in her hair melts away.
not when the stranger she used to wait for
appears dressed in lights at her
kitchen table.
she is an old woman and
doesn’t believe it.
when Something drops onto her toes one night
she calls it a fox
but she feeds it.
Lucille Clifton, “my dream about the second coming” from The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton. Copyright © 1987 by Lucille Clifton. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC, on behalf of BOA Editions Ltd., boaeditions.org.
I found myself unable to consume
the scallops after reflection—
their whole lives were
eating and suffocating.
This is much sadder than tortured people—
in extreme pain we leave our bodies
and look down to commit the pain
to memory like studious angels.
The waiter brought me two fortune cookies.
One future was traumatic enough.
I decided to open just one cookie—
the one on my right side.
It said in blue on a thin white strip,
You must learn to love yourself.
*
The cookie was much less sweet
than my psychiatrist.
Earlier that day he said he was proud
that as my tumors grow
my self-loathing seems to shrink.
My teeth made the cookie blades
that cut my tongue, and I spat it out.
I was seized with a question for Dr. Possick,
but he was on the other coast, fast asleep.
I would've asked
If all of me is the part that's loving
what is left to love?
*
I was suddenly overwhelmed with certainty
that the second cookie could answer my question.
I imagined the paper as a body—
a second body for me,
baking in a clay oven
half beneath it and half overhead.
I didn't open the cookie, though.
I have to grow up at some point—
my imagination can't always be kicking fate
as if it were the floor at a stupid party.
*
But when you decide someone has something to say
their silences speak to you too—
The cookie's clear wrapper had a rooster printed on it,
the lamp's reflection made a little sun
clutched by the talons, deep in the clay:
What is left to love
is the part of you that is already dead.
*
The dead part of me
is very busy preparing heaven for the rest.
He envisions it as a dream cemetery:
no rabbis, wildflowers and scrub everywhere,
rolling hills with nothing marked,
computer chips clipped to the ears of the dead
so that loved ones can visit the exact spot.
He is unskilled with his hands,
but he's moneyed and shouts well.
It's hard to love people committed to projects:
when I tell him he's abusing the labor
he smiles proudly and says, God can only do good,
I can do good and bad.
From The Final Voicemails. Copyright © 2018 by Max Ritvo. Used with the permission of Milkweed Editions.