I’m sick of my face. Can I take it off,
mask of pantyhose worn by a thief?
Can I trade up, for museum beauty
or airbrushed celebrity perfection?
Those faces don’t crinkle or age:
they shine bright as headlights of
an SUV careening down the Autobahn
en route to mecca or the Lower Rhine.
My face resounds, reduplicates, divides.
If an equation, it’s the string of symbols
devised by Einstein to describe a theory
of General Relativity: the left-hand side
pictorializes the geometry of spacetime,
the right-hand side, all mass and energy.
Information is not knowledge, he wrote:
knowledge’s only source is experience.
My face is tired of experience, sapped
by being gaslit out of my true feelings:
rage, reverence, adoration, antipathy.
My ancestors, mostly potato farmers
from hardy Eastern European stock,
speak out of my face like prophets
in search of an incarnate messiah,
my face a burning bush or wheel.
You view my administrative face:
its abandonment during the throes
of passion is also a mystery to me.
Sad, slumping face, consternated
face overwrought by cognition,
face upturned with dumb hope:
I trace your origins, relentlessly.
When my ex-husband called me
a black hole, he was, in a sense,
correct: my face a gravity field
so strong even light cannot beam.
Supernova explosion, neutron star,
lead me to a beyond, deep within:
eros of the unthought, undreamed.
Copyright © 2024 by Virginia Konchan. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on April 17, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.
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.
You are enough
Divinity flows in your fingertips
with light so radiant
every beat of your heart
a victory march
made of whole universes
stitched by the hands of creation
with flawless design
a prophecy You fulfill perfectly with every breath
You
The sun wouldn’t shine the same without it
Creation is only waiting for You
to smile back at it
Do you see it yet?
You are enough
For the birds to sing about
For the seeds to sprout about
For the stars to shoot about
Do you see it yet?
Gardens in your speech
Fields of wildflowers in your prayers
Lighthouses in your eyes
No one else can see it for you
You have always been enough
You will always be enough
Your simple act of being is enough
Do you see it yet?
Copyright © 2022 by Andru Defeye. Sacramento Poetry Center Anthology (2022). Used with permission of the poet.