It was like the moment when a bird decides not to eat from your hand, and flies, just before it flies, the moment the rivers seem to still and stop because a storm is coming, but there is no storm, as when a hundred starlings lift and bank together before they wheel and drop, very much like the moment, driving on bad ice, when it occurs to you your car could spin, just before it slowly begins to spin, like the moment just before you forgot what it was you were about to say, it was like that, and after that, it was still like that, only all the time.
From The Good Thief. Copyright © 1988 by Marie Howe. Reprinted by permission of Persea Books, Inc., New York.
A.k.a.
the other gold.
Now that’s the stuff,
shredded or melted
or powdered
or canned.
Behold
the pinnacle of man
in a cheeto puff!
Now that’s the stuff
you’ve been primed for:
fatty & salty & crunchy
and poof—gone. There’s the proof.
Though your grandmother
never even had one. You can’t
have just one. You
inhale them puff—
after puff—
after puff—
You’re a chain smoker. Tongue
coated & coaxed
but not saturated or satiated.
It’s like pure flavor,
but sadder. Each pink ping
in your pinball-mouth
expertly played
by the makers who have studied you,
the human animal, and culled
from the rind
your Eve in the shape
of a cheese curl.
Girl,
come curl in the dim light of the TV.
Veg out on the verge of no urge
of anything.
Long ago we beached ourselves,
climbed up the trees then
down the trees,
knuckled across the dirt
& grasses & thorns & Berber carpet.
Now is the age of sitting,
so sit.
And I must say,
crouched on the couch like that,
you resemble no animal.
Smug in your Snuggie and snug
in your sloth, you look
nothing like a sloth.
And you are not an anteater,
an anteater eats ants
without fear
of diabetes. Though breathing,
one could say, resembles a chronic disease.
What’s real
cheese and what is cheese product?
It’s difficult to say
but being alive today
is real-
real-
really
like a book you can’t put down, a stone
that plummets from a great height. Life’s
a “page-turner” alright.
But don’t worry
if you miss the finale
of your favorite show, you can
catch in on queue. Make room
for me and I’ll binge on this,
the final season with you.
Copyright © 2020 by Benjamin Garcia. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on March 27, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets.
If when my wife is sleeping and the baby and Kathleen are sleeping and the sun is a flame-white disc in silken mists above shining trees,— if I in my north room dance naked, grotesquely before my mirror waving my shirt round my head and singing softly to myself: "I am lonely, lonely, I was born to be lonely, I am best so!" If I admire my arms, my face, my shoulders, flanks, buttocks against the yellow drawn shades,— Who shall say I am not the happy genius of my household?
Copyright © 1962 by William Carlos Williams. Used with permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation. All rights reserved. No part of this poem may be reproduced in any form without the written consent of the publisher.
A.k.a.
the other gold.
Now that’s the stuff,
shredded or melted
or powdered
or canned.
Behold
the pinnacle of man
in a cheeto puff!
Now that’s the stuff
you’ve been primed for:
fatty & salty & crunchy
and poof—gone. There’s the proof.
Though your grandmother
never even had one. You can’t
have just one. You
inhale them puff—
after puff—
after puff—
You’re a chain smoker. Tongue
coated & coaxed
but not saturated or satiated.
It’s like pure flavor,
but sadder. Each pink ping
in your pinball-mouth
expertly played
by the makers who have studied you,
the human animal, and culled
from the rind
your Eve in the shape
of a cheese curl.
Girl,
come curl in the dim light of the TV.
Veg out on the verge of no urge
of anything.
Long ago we beached ourselves,
climbed up the trees then
down the trees,
knuckled across the dirt
& grasses & thorns & Berber carpet.
Now is the age of sitting,
so sit.
And I must say,
crouched on the couch like that,
you resemble no animal.
Smug in your Snuggie and snug
in your sloth, you look
nothing like a sloth.
And you are not an anteater,
an anteater eats ants
without fear
of diabetes. Though breathing,
one could say, resembles a chronic disease.
What’s real
cheese and what is cheese product?
It’s difficult to say
but being alive today
is real-
real-
really
like a book you can’t put down, a stone
that plummets from a great height. Life’s
a “page-turner” alright.
But don’t worry
if you miss the finale
of your favorite show, you can
catch in on queue. Make room
for me and I’ll binge on this,
the final season with you.
Copyright © 2020 by Benjamin Garcia. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on March 27, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets.