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.
after Pedro Pietri
We were nocturnal players,
Bats in ball, & ever since Don Pedro said
There are Puerto Ricans on the moon
The night is my cousin & the clustered stars
My cousin & Saturn’s little ring of smoke my second cousin
Though not the same ring as a freshly snapped Medalla bottle which
My abuelo also named Pedro apparently liked too much
But back to the moon the first rock dollop of sugar
& slinging hoop in the dark which we learned was a game
of approximation
Less math more muscle memory less Mozart more Machito
Like descarga more riff more wrist.
We set our eyes on not seeing but feeling a thing through, indeed
From elbow to hip wherever the orange lip might lead
Copyright © 2022 by Denice Frohman. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on October 6, 2022, by the Academy of American Poets.
for Reuben
When he looks at the edges,
The covers of books and records,
He remembers when and where
He got them, how it felt.
Everything’s a testament
To life lived on the fringe
Of some sense of sanity.
All the vehicles for imbibing
These treasures are obsolete.
Even his eyes and ears, as their
Function fades under each year’s
Mud and tussle to stay alive
The damned fine few who know
Try not to lose the memories,
Talk as if each was there
For the other, laughter supplants tears.
If he can, a story gets written
About each song, how a chord
A lyric, the last line of a book
Make more sense, the same as the
Warnings his mother threw
at fledgling feet like seeds in soil.
He wishes he could buy them all again,
Heed the messages, grow as if
Each signpost was a vitamin
Make what became a recollection
A catalyst for pathfinding and strength.
Copyright © 2022 by Brandon D. Johnson. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on February 17, 2022, by the Academy of American Poets.
Past years are figures in old glass
wobbly in a lake
wrinkled by a stone.
The lake will settle down
a face will reappear
in a scent of evergreen.
Years are present as noon as now
or in a rippled moonglade night;
they summon shadow as in fragile memory
easy as stepping into a lake
breaking the present mirror.
It is the way events are stored,
they come back twisted
in wrinkles of water
blurred inscapes into today.
From Writing the Silences (University of California Press, 2010) by Richard O. Moore. Copyright © 2010 by the Regents of the University of California. Used with permission of University of California Press Books.
I once made a diorama from a shoebox
for a man I loved. I was never a crafty person,
but found tiny items at an art store and did my best
to display the beginning bud of our little love,
a scene recreating our first kiss in his basement
apartment, origin story of an eight-year marriage.
In the dollhouse section, I bought a small ceiling fan.
Recreated his black leather couch, even found miniscule
soda cans for the cardboard counters that I cut and glued.
People get weird about divorce. Think it’s contagious.
Think it dirty. I don’t need to make it holy, but it purifies—
It’s clear. Sometimes the science is simple. Sometimes
people love each other but don’t need each other
anymore. Though, I think the tenderness can stay
(if you want it too). I forgive and keep forgiving,
mostly myself. People still ask, what happened?
I know you want a reason, a caution to avoid, but
life rarely tumbles out a cheat sheet. Sometimes
nobody is the monster. I keep seeing him for the first
time at the restaurant off of West End where we met
and worked and giggled at the micros. I keep seeing
his crooked smile and open server book fanned with cash
before we would discover and enter another world
and come back barreling to this one, astronauts
for the better and for the worse, but still spectacular
as we burned back inside this atmosphere to live
separate lives inside other shadow boxes we cannot see.
I remember I said I hate you once when we were driving
back to Nashville, our last long distance. I didn’t mean it.
I said it to hurt him, and it did. I regret that I was capable
of causing pain. I think it’s important to implicate
the self. The knife shouldn’t exit the cake clean.
There is still some residue, some proof of puncture,
some scars you graze to remember the risk.
Copyright © 2021 by Tiana Clark. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on October 14, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.
Haven’t found anyone From the old gang. They must be still in hiding, Holding their breaths And trying not to laugh. Our street is down on its luck With windows broken Where on summer nights One heard couples arguing, Or saw them dancing to the radio. The redhead we were All in love with, Who sat on the fire escape, Smoking late into the night, Must be in hiding too. The skinny boy On crutches Who always carried a book, May not have Gotten very far. Darkness comes early This time of year Making it hard To recognize familiar faces In those of strangers.
Copyright © 2018 by Charles Simic. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on March 13, 2018, by the Academy of American Poets
I ask about where water sings.
Here is surplus of sun, ocean
of excess, remaindered song.
Whose hands wash this sky?
Who drains this sun against worry?
Whose mighty ache makes history?
This is where water drains,
where gardens grow against
worry, against the crisis of capital,
& capital knows nothing but the
veil hiding hand from profit. Here
is leftover rice. & the wild imaginary
of hunger. Here is a canal in
the crook of the earth. & here is
where water sings. & this, this
is water singing us elsewhere.
Copyright © 2023 by Jason Magabo Perez. This poem first appeared in the virtual exhibition “Profits Enslave the World: Philip Vera Cruz, the Manong Generation, and the Migrant Laborer Experience” by Welga Archive/Bulosan Center for Filipinx Studies, Fall 2020. Used with permission of the author.
To live without the one you love
an empty dream never known
true happiness except as such youth
watching snow at window
listening to old music through morning.
Riding down that deserted street
by evening in a lonely cab
past a blighted theatre
oh god yes, I missed the chance of my life
when I gasped, when I got up and
rushed out the room
away from you.
From Supplication: Selected Poems of John Wieners, edited by Joshua Beckman, CAConrad, and Robert Dewhurst © 2015 John Wieners Literary Trust, Raymond Foye, Administrator. Reprinted with the permission of The John Wieners Literary Trust.
This poem is in the public domain.
You ask me again this evening
at what price
Does wisdom finally come
in any life
Or at any age & now I think
I know
The answer swear to me that
when I tell you
It is only everything you believe
You will travel as far from this city
as you can before
The streets grow smeared & lost
to the smug
& promiscuous coming of the day
Copyright © 2018 by David St. John. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on May 23, 2018, by the Academy of American Poets.