Find and share the perfect poems.
Only today did I notice the abyss
in abysmal and only because my mind
was generating rhymes for dismal,
and it made of the two a pair,
to which much later it joined
baptismal, as—I think—a joke.
I decided to do nothing with
the rhymes, treating them as one does
the unfortunately frequent appearance
of the “crafts” adults require children
to fashion from pipe cleaners
and plastic beads. One is not permitted
to simply throw them away,
but can designate a drawer
that serves as a kind of trash can
never emptied. I suppose one day
it will be full, and then I will know
it is time to set my child free.
The difficulty is my mind leaks
and so it will never fill, despite
the clumps of language I drop in,
and this means my mind can never
be abandoned in the woods
with a kiss and a wave
and a little red kerchief
tied under its chin.
It was the military coming together on paper under glass to shine on me! they called me damp thing it was my name coming together under orders nothing would go unlaminated they said they said under orders after death all things must shine
This tree has a small LED display It is glowing and it can show you words and it can show you pictures and it can melt from one choice to another and you are looking at it and it wants you to share the message but it can't see that you are the only one around and that everyone else is hibernating which you love You are so happy and alone with the red and yellow lights It's a nice day to be in nature and to read up on the very bland ideas this tree has about how to live This tree says grow stronger and this tree says fireworks effect This tree is the saddest prophet in history but you don't tell it that You are trying to show it respect which gets tiresome but then it flashes a snake at you It's a kind of LED tree hybrid joke and you could just kiss it for trying For failing But it can't see you and it starts to cry
The lack of a single-word infinitive
in our language is what is killing me
this morning
A single word for all
infinitives is what God is doing tonight
This is just one of many acts
to have passed through the garden
Previously on this show they put
a peacock back together wrong
after its demise
Something
there was in the syntax
Poor bird could feel it in his bones
If she lays out two spoons (two real spoons) and two forks (two real forks), will he come then to take part in a meal that is wholly imaginary? The food was never real, the food was never really real and so to send them to bed without, to send them to bed without a meal, hardly meant anything.
These things may fit inside a thimble: a pinch of salt, a few drops of water, the tip of a woman's ring finger. I will give you a thimble, says Wendy. I will give you a thimble so that you will know the weight of my heart. A thimble may protect against pricks, pin pricks, needle pricks, Tinkerpricks, but not hooks, never hooks. When he stabs his hook into you, you will see that his eyes are the blue of forget-me-nots—but that is Hook and not Peter—Peter who will forget you, whose eyes are the color of vague memories, the color not of sky, but of the semblance of sky, the color of brittle-mindedness, of corpse dressings, of forgetting.
20 November
Dear Editor:
Please consider the enclosed poems for publication. They are from my manuscript, X = Pawn Capture, a lyrical study of the history of chess as my grandfather misrepresented it to me because he loved to tell his stories or, if you like the sound of this better, because I was too young to comprehend his indifference to me. In any case I preferred more my grandmother's understanding of a story, how her calendar was full of images of needles and flames and rushes of wheat, all standing for the way a young girl was left to fend for herself when the Romans decided to make a saint of her. We would sit in front of the stove while something proceeded though its permutations in order to be consumed by evening, and she'd speak of Saint Panacea's stepmother, Margherita di Locarno Sesia, who stabbed the little girl with a spindle because she was so pure, and I would imagine Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair, and castles of stone hewn out of quarries and bright-stepping horses with braided manes.
While the ashy length of my grandfather's cigar would measure the evening's disappointments by increments, the part of my brain built for learning and memory was focused on the strength of the hair follicle required for a healthy man to climb a high tower braced only by the golden length of her hair. If I could have transferred these thoughts to that part of the brain that processes motivation and emotion, or reading or language, I could write how Rapunzel felt as she supported the king's son's weight up the tower, only partially reeling from the stress on the outer root sheath and the dermal papilla. And all the unhappiness that follows in that story is because her mother, one enchanted evening, was hungry for wild ferns.
Thank you for your consideration, and for reading. I have enclosed an SASE, and look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
Amy Newman
And those other females who managed to slip the collar
for a moment or two of life were branded “bad.”
–Clarrisa Pinkola Estés, from Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype
The secret nests in my marrow.
At the striptease I appear pirouette
and prey.
Later,
I might show you
what it means to be consumed.
The pashadom and papacy come
to gush and forever satellite spatter,
no matter,
in the end you will find them
covered in a fine mist,
tasting of me.
What they do not know— beyond the veil
I lay with the wolf
& the wolf
is me.
Find me in a forest of tupelo,
cypress & black gum,
at midrib,
lobe, and blade.
Even a leaf can have teeth.
Human acts can be cannibalistic.
I am here
picking all of the wildflowers.