#david rivard

[llovelymoonn]

favourite poems of february

avery r. young peestain

claudine toutoungi future perfect

david rivard bewitched playground: "not guilty"

brian kim stefans the future is one of place

lisa gill post-traumatic rainstorm

clare pollard pinocchios

rebecca lindenberg love, an index: "catalogue of ephemera"

etel adnan the arab apocalypse: "xxxvi"

stanley moss god breaketh not all men's hearts alike: "a blind fisherman"

robert browning an epistle containing the strange medical experience of karshish, the arab physician

tom sleigh beirut tank

khaled mattawa ismailia eclipse: "date palm trinity"

mark levine unemployment (3)

lucia cherciu butter, olive oil, flour

reginald shepherd fata morgana: "you, therefore"

john updike claremont hotel, southwest harbour, maine

bruce smith the other lover: "february sky"

johnny cash forever words: the unknown poems: "don't make a movie about me"

eamon grennan what light there is & other poems: "jewel box"

eduardo c. corral in colorado my father scoured and stacked dishes

thomas mccarthy the beginning of colour

divya victor curb: "blood / soil"

henneh kyereh kwaku in praise

joanna fuhrman to a new era: "lavender"

rosemary catacalos sight unseen

sam willetts digging

megan fernandes winter

jaswinder bolina the plague on tv

juan felipe herrera notes on the assemblage: "almost livin' almost dyin'"

kofi

[allyourprettywords]

“Ghosts on the Road,” David Rivard

A bookkeeping man, tho one sure to knock on wood, and mostly light

at loose ends—my friend who is superstitiously funny, & always sarcastic—save once,

 after I’d told him about Simone’s first time walking—a toddler,

almost alone, she’d gripped her sweater, right hand clutched

chest-high, reassured then, she held on to herself so, so took a few

quick steps— oh, he said, you know what? Leonard Cohen, when he was 13,

after his father’s out-of-the-blue heart attack, he slit one of the old man’s

ties, & slipped a message into it, then buried it in his backyard—

73 now, he can’t recall what he wrote—(threadbare heartfelt prayer perhaps,

or complaint)— his first writing anyway. The need to comfort

ourselves is always strongest at the start, they say—

do you think that’s true? my friend asked. I don’t, he said,

I think the need gets stronger, he said, it just gets stronger.

[bostonpoetryslam]

No poem will ever capture the changefulness of being, in spite of our wishing one would.

David Rivard, “On Complexity,” as featured by the Poetry Society of America

[othellho]

David Rivard, "Iron Rising Out of Iron"

[vouchsafes]

Because at heart

it’s just that simple

maybe. I wanted to be

held, that’s all. When I say

the word “world”

I mean love of course.

When I say “then”

I mean now. Always.

- By Then by David Rivard

[jshoulson]

Today’s Poem

Lucky Day Still --David Rivard

Lucky day still spent wrestling the private problems and obsessions encountered first in your youth but played out now within the spectacle of public aging (tho, strangely, as you age you feel less & less seen by the young, a citizen active in frequencies of light waves increasingly invisible—not even boring to 15-year-olds). Of course, some problems you once had really have vanished—you can sense that as your daughter lays out the tactics crucial to "pre-gaming," her teen friends setting out to get toasted or stoned before house parties, parties at which they've been warned not to drug or drink— no longer a worry for you (except as relates, of course, to your daughter)—you can drink & drug somewhat "it would seem" to your heart's content. Not your style, you say? Not any longer? Still, the urge to lift or get lifted from self-conscious woes hasn't gone away totally, has it? Wanting to be free of your self has always been a mission big in your church—evangelically so! You got in a way (the wrong way) your wish— your skin certainly got looser on you—baggy, rounder, wrinkled—prescriptions for departure—the rigging's untuned, & no milk bath full of rose hips can compensate (so your friend likes to say), no fish oil omega-3 in gel capsules manufactured by entrepreneurial ex-hippies no wifely fruit smoothies or mod boots will cure jowls now or allow for glamour without the costume.

[jshoulson]

Today’s Poem

Common --David Rivard

The American common is no collective or princedom but privacies of need & pleasure as they intersect in public spaces, tho the insufferable powers that be breed their plots behind our backs, thinking us witless, seemingly blind to their afflicted intentions, just a bunch of demographic motormouths & screw-ups to be targeted by commodities traders & search engines— a marketing niche for every need, stereotypes tagged by algorithms—here is a typical team of baton twirlers in an airport bar, each of them clad in foxy red track suits & tuned-in to the dollhouse stimulations of pigeon-talking sales reps; there is a previously undetected aggregation of retirees, evangelical camp kids, kickass bowlers, and mothy nuns in starched wimples, for whom the news of the day means the aging boy-man Hugh Grant's fear of double chins—neither of these or any other data dump entirely false, but so narrow-minded sometimes as to lose sight of us entirely: the midtown lady in Capris, a four-square surgeon off-duty & headed out to play poker, the plumber fly-fishing by the river— a sky of twilight slate now—not a word written on it.

[jshoulson]

Today’s Poem

Common --David Rivard

The American common is no collective or princedom but privacies of need & pleasure as they intersect in public spaces, tho the insufferable powers that be breed their plots behind our backs, thinking us witless, seemingly blind to their afflicted intentions, just a bunch of demographic motormouths & screw-ups to be targeted by commodities traders & search engines— a marketing niche for every need, stereotypes tagged by algorithms—here is a typical team of baton twirlers in an airport bar, each of them clad in foxy red track suits & tuned-in to the dollhouse stimulations of pigeon-talking sales reps; there is a previously undetected aggregation of retirees, evangelical camp kids, kickass bowlers, and mothy nuns in starched wimples, for whom the news of the day means the aging boy-man Hugh Grant's fear of double chins—neither of these or any other data dump entirely false, but so narrow-minded sometimes as to lose sight of us entirely: the midtown lady in Capris, a four-square surgeon off-duty & headed out to play poker, the plumber fly-fishing by the river— a sky of twilight slate now—not a word written on it.