#barbara hamby

[metamorphesque]

Letter to a Lost Friend, Barbara Hamby

[apoemaday]

Letter to a Lost Friend

by Barbara Hamby

There must be a Russian word to describe what has happened between us, like ostyt, which can be used for a cup of  tea that is too hot, but after you walk to the next room, and return, it is too cool; or perekhotet, which is to want something so much over months and even years that when you get it, you have lost the desire. Pushkin said, when he saw his portrait by Kiprensky, “It is like looking into a mirror, but one that flatters me.” What is the word for someone who looks into her friend’s face and sees once smooth skin gone like a train that has left the station in Petersburg with its wide avenues and nights at the Stray Dog Cafe, sex with the wrong men, who looked so right by candlelight, when everyone was young and smoked hand-rolled cigarettes, painted or wrote all night but nothing good, drank too much vodka, and woke in the painful daylight with skin like fresh cream, books everywhere, Lorca on Gogol, Tolstoy under Madame de Sévigné, so that now, on a train in the taiga of  Siberia, I see what she sees  —  all my books alphabetized and on shelves, feet misshapen, hands ribbed with raised veins, neck crumpled like last week’s newspaper, while her friends are young, their skin pimply and eyes bright as puppies’, and who can blame her, for how lucky we are to be loved for even a moment, though I can’t help but feel like Pushkin, a rough ball of  lead lodged in his gut, looking at his books and saying, “Goodbye, my dear friends,” as those volumes close and turn back into oblong blocks, dust clouding the gold leaf that once shimmered on their spines.          

[contremineur]

Barbara Hamby, The tawdry masks of women

from here

[llovelymoonn]

favourite poems of december

torrin a. greathouse ekphrasis on nude selfie as portrait of saint sebastian

snehal vadher hello flowers and cigarettes

robert pinsky death and the powers: a robot pageant

wendy barker taking a language

cindy juyoung ok terms and conditions

carl phillips this far in

christian wiman hard night: “the ice storm”

cathy linh che split: “the german word for dream is traume”

linda hogan when the body

david trinidad the late show: “a regret”

omotara james my mother’s nerves are shot--

marie howe the good thief: “death, the last visit”

kaveh akbar portrait of the alcoholic floating in space with severed umbilicus

donald britton in the empire of the air: “italy”

snehal vadher figures in a windswept language

jane wong after preparing the alter, the ghosts feast feverishly

ofelia zepeda ocean power: “deer dance exhibition”

lucille clifton good woman: poems and a memoir, 1969-1980: “the lost baby poem”

emily pérez dworzec

ouyang jianghe mother, kitchen (tr. austin woerner)

cathy linh che i walked through the trees, mourning

sam willets tourist

ed bok lee whorled: “if in america”

dan gerber marriage

matthew rohrer poem written with issa [“a friend emails”]

richard siken crush: “litany in which certain things are crossed out”

april bernard anger

claudia rankine citizen: “you are in the dark, in the car...”

barbara hamby letter to a lost friend

joy harjo everybody has a heartache: a blues

cathy linh che go forget your father

kofi

[heavensghost]

Barbara Hamby, from ‘Letter to a Lost Friend’.

[soracities]

how lucky we are to be loved / for even a moment

Barbara Hamby, from ‘Letter to a Lost Friend’

[bostonpoetryslam]

Music could not save you, nor the words that gather in my mouth like angry flames of hope. I have swallowed your eyes, lived on them for years, made them into coins for beggars, for bankers in their mausoleums of flesh.

Barbara Hamby, “The Hunter,” from The Alphabet of Desire

[niramish]

Letter to a Lost Friend

There must be a Russian word to describe what has happened              between us, like ostyt, which can be used for a cup of  tea that is too hot, but after you walk to the next room,              and return, it is too cool; or perekhotet, which is to want something so much over months              and even years that when you get it, you have lost the desire. Pushkin said, when he saw his portrait by Kiprensky,              “It is like looking into a mirror, but one that flatters me.” What is the word for someone who looks into her friend’s face              and sees once smooth skin gone like a train that has left the station in Petersburg with its wide avenues and nights              at the Stray Dog Cafe, sex with the wrong men, who looked so right by candlelight, when everyone was young              and smoked hand-rolled cigarettes, painted or wrote all night but nothing good, drank too much vodka, and woke              in the painful daylight with skin like fresh cream, books everywhere, Lorca on Gogol, Tolstoy under Madame de Sévigné,              so that now, on a train in the taiga of  Siberia, I see what she sees — all my books alphabetized and on shelves,              feet misshapen, hands ribbed with raised veins, neck crumpled like last week’s newspaper, while her friends              are young, their skin pimply and eyes bright as puppies’, and who can blame her, for how lucky we are to be loved              for even a moment, though I can’t help but feel like Pushkin, a rough ball of  lead lodged in his gut, looking at his books              and saying, “Goodbye, my dear friends,” as those volumes close and turn back into oblong blocks, dust clouding              the gold leaf that once shimmered on their spines.

- Barbara Hamby