Eating Poetry

‎"Poetry leads us to the unstructured sources of our beings, to the unknown, and returns us to our rational, structured selves refreshed. Having once experienced the mystery, plenitude, contradiction, and composure of a work of art, we afterward have a built-in resistance to the slogans and propaganda of oversimplification that have often contributed to the destruction of human life. Poetry is a verbal means to a nonverbal source. It is a motion to no-motion, to the still point of contemplation and deep realization." -- A. R. Ammons Poems, daily, curated by R. Mostly in English, alas. Submissions eagerly accepted!

[lipsticklesbia]

i will never stop thinking about this poem my greek professor showed us

[apoemaday]

Fog

by Carl Sandburg

The fog comes on little cat feet. It sits looking over harbor and city on silent haunches and then moves on.

[apoemaday]

The Wild Swans at Coole

by W. B. Yeats

The trees are in their autumn beauty,   The woodland paths are dry, Under the October twilight the water   Mirrors a still sky; Upon the brimming water among the stones   Are nine-and-fifty swans.

The nineteenth autumn has come upon me   Since I first made my count; I saw, before I had well finished, All suddenly mount And scatter wheeling in great broken rings   Upon their clamorous wings.

I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,   And now my heart is sore. All’s changed since I, hearing at twilight,   The first time on this shore, The bell-beat of their wings above my head,   Trod with a lighter tread.

Unwearied still, lover by lover, They paddle in the cold Companionable streams or climb the air;   Their hearts have not grown old; Passion or conquest, wander where they will,   Attend upon them still.

But now they drift on the still water,   Mysterious, beautiful;   Among what rushes will they build, By what lake’s edge or pool Delight men’s eyes when I awake some day   To find they have flown away?

[glumshoe]

I’ll never be able to reconcile Shel Silverstein’s art and stories with his appearance. He looked like he would gladly murder you with a shard of broken glass and then throw your body directly into a shark.

[sosungalittleclodofclay-deactiv]

you have odd notions about masculine faces.

[glumshoe]

real gentle-lookin’ sneer

[sosungalittleclodofclay-deactiv]

really gentle looking when not say, in the grainiest over inked newspaper photo you could find.

[glumshoe]

buddy it’s literally the photo he put on the back of The Giving Tree

[echomortis]

[viostormcaller]

KSJQLJWLEJDKENELNFLUEODJE

[makeuphall]

[apoemaday]

All Saints’ Day

by Connie Wanek

It happens that the world has run out of patience. Sleep coats a smashed pumpkin, and the wraith hanging in an immature maple

must be lowered, washed and dried, and spread again across the child’s bed. A north wind strips the popple of its costume, and flagellates

its bare limbs. The hills wear coarse gray, for penance, before they’re cowled in white. And all the candy energy abroad last night,

the candle flame that lit up a malicious grin, the brass of car horns, the pillowcases bulging with extorted chocolates–

all is surrendered. The soul is a cold cell in November, with one supernal window admitting a wan light accessible only to those

who have given up the ghost.

[eatingpoetry]

Lot’s Wife

And the just man trailed God's shining agent, over a black mountain, in his giant track, while a restless voice kept harrying his woman: "It's not too late, you can still look back

at the red towers of your native Sodom, the square where once you sang, the spinning-shed, at the empty windows set in the tall house where sons and daughters blessed your marriage-bed."

A single glance: a sudden dart of pain stitching her eyes before she made a sound... Her body flaked into transparent salt, and her swift legs rooted to the ground.

Who will grieve for this woman? Does she not seem too insignificant for our concern? Yet in my heart, I never will deny her, who suffered death because she chose to turn. By Anna Akhmatova

[eatingpoetry]

Refresh. Refresh. Refresh.

I’d give you another day dizzy  in its bracket for the reluctant circumference of a sad sad satellite’s antiquated orbital stoppage. You can’t jump with a lead foot, can’t anthropomorphize insect anticipation, can’t pixelate postcard nostalgia, can’t trace a boy’s tiny hand and call him king of anything that crosses your path, your past, your iconographic reluctance to let go the toehold of ordinary New York lasting so long at night, so lusty in traffic & another orphan absently kicking the underside of an orange plastic chair. Poems shouldn’t make you wait for them to finish. Like love, they should finish making you wait. By Noah Eli Gordon

[leebeeloves]

[eatingpoetry]

A Book Full of Pictures

Father studied theology through the mail And this was exam time. Mother knitted. I sat quietly with a book Full of pictures. Night fell. My hands grew cold touching the faces Of dead kings and queens. There was a black raincoat in the upstairs bedroom Swaying from the ceiling, But what was it doing there? Mother's long needles made quick crosses. They were black Like the inside of my head just then. The pages I turned sounded like wings. "The soul is a bird," he once said. In my book full of pictures A battle raged: lances and swords Made a kind of wintry forest With my heart spiked and bleeding in its branches. by Charles Simić

[eatingpoetry]

Sea Church

Give me a church made entirely of salt. Let the walls hiss and smoke when I return to shore. I ask for the grace of a new freckle on my cheek, the lift of blue and my mother’s soapy skin to greet me. Hide me in a room with no windows. Never let me see the dolphins leaping into commas for this water-prayer rising like a host of sky lanterns into the inky evening. Let them hang in the sky until they vanish at the edge of the constellations —  the heroes and animals too busy and bright to notice. By Aimee Nezhukumatahil

[eatingpoetry]

Vulnerability Study

your face turning from mine to keep from cumming 8 strawberries in a wet blue bowl baba holding his pants up at the checkpoint a newlywed securing her updo with grenade pins a wall cleared of nails for the ghosts to walk through By Solmaz Sharif

[eatingpoetry]

Among Women

What women wander? Not many. All. A few. Most would, now & then, & no wonder. Some, and I’m one, Wander sitting still. My small grandmother Bought from every peddler Less for the ribbons and lace Than for their scent Of sleep where you will, Walk out when you want, choose Your bread and your company. She warned me, “Have nothing to lose.” She looked fragile but had High blood, runner’s ankles, Could endure, endure. She loved her rooted garden, her Grand children, her once Wild once young man. Women wander As best they can. By Marie Ponsot

[eatingpoetry]

Sci-Fi

There will be no edges, but curves. Clean lines pointing only forward. History, with its hard spine & dog-eared Corners, will be replaced with nuance, Just like the dinosaurs gave way To mounds and mounds of ice. Women will still be women, but The distinction will be empty. Sex, Having outlived every threat, will gratify Only the mind, which is where it will exist. For kicks, we'll dance for ourselves Before mirrors studded with golden bulbs. The oldest among us will recognize that glow— But the word sun will have been re-assigned To the Standard Uranium-Neutralizing device Found in households and nursing homes. And yes, we'll live to be much older, thanks To popular consensus. Weightless, unhinged, Eons from even our own moon, we'll drift In the haze of space, which will be, once And for all, scrutable and safe. by Tracy K Smith

[eatingpoetry]

Macha

All my feelings are different and this one is the most Of all places here where women once retired from the men for fear of boring them I am so bloody in my own bath of wild hairs that I couldn't possibly join you tonight for that colonial thing Heroin or whore Babylon or Bethlehem No matter what I'm followed by mosquitos Flitting dicks who want me to teach them about themselves But everything I know is contained in capsules of macha that break down in my bloodstream And I wouldn't recommend it for the fairer sex who should buck up and study up on their condition I used to feel sick for all my sloth but not anymore In wanting to please I have sinned In leaning in I have sinned In breaking in two I feel sin So Vete ya A haircut and a hard cock is all I need To govern a family My rod cutting them down supplicant on the ground For I was the first real white girl ever born in this country of flat skulls That's why I'm so cocky with my staff and my rule rock hard and inconsistent with my favor The mouths of L'Age d'Or sucked well at my pre-war stockings before cocktail hour Bells rang and trays of mosquitos were served with tarts We hadn't meant to kill them with La Macha which includes but is not limited to: a goddess religion unfaultering at the altar of shade an erotics of object-identification and compassion extending beyond the grave My sister and I drank mournfully but afterwards we still danced all night wearing quite literally bedazzled bustiers and veils of a dead boy's smoke que mala after beating their macho dead in ultra-feminine swoops How do they want us to think of them now our brothers haviing left so little charisma behind on the internet to aggrandize Such small mosquitos And though we are mourning we are still so macha as we chip the thin teeth of traitors and huff the scent of babies and slap each other on the asses and father seven times and punish the bull with its own marbled horns But though we're cocky we are still martyrs My sister says quita la macha and I'm like why It's okay to make up slogans in the spirit of revolution and she's like ok but after you systematically destroy machismo you must put his teeth to gnash at your engorged breasts for any sort of catagenesis to occur and I'm like that could be hot But it isn't the new love conceived by and for macha or is it? idk idk either i really dk So we taught our brothers all these methods of cameo that they may take a small symbol of macha to wear around their necks to the part of culture where the money used to be kept May they remember the strength of their mother's biceps as they show mercy to their fathers who are teleological till the end of supremacy which is the beginning of macha Kiss the black lips that feed you the corn hips that rock you and blight the prayers after you've said them Santa Mala Madre de Mala ruega por nosotros pecadores ahora y en la ahora de nuestra muerte Hand me my beads War without end Amén By Monica McClure

[eatingpoetry]

Cambridge

It is still raining and the yellow-green cotton fruit looks silly round a window giving out on winter trees with only three drab leaves left. The hot plate works, it is the sole heat on earth, and instant coffee. I put on my warm corduroy pants, a heavy maroon sweater, and wrap myself in my old maroon bathrobe. Just like Pasternak in Marburg (they say Italy and France are colder, but I’m sure that Germany’s at least as cold as this) and, lacking the Master’s inspiration, I may freeze to death before I can get out into the white rain. I could have left the window closed last night? But that’s where health comes from! His breath from the Urals, drawing me into flame like a forgotten cigarette. Burn! this is not negligible, being poetic, and not feeble, since it’s sponsored by the greatest living Russian poet at incalculable cost. Across the street there is a house under construction, abandoned to the rain. Secretly, I shall go to work on it. By Frank O'Hara

[eatingpoetry]

This Be the Verse

They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had And add some extra, just for you. But they were fucked up in their turn By fools in old-style hats and coats, Who half the time were soppy-stern And half at one another’s throats. Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can, And don’t have any kids yourself. By Philip Larkin