Reader's Place: April 1, 2023

NATIONAL POETRY MONTH 

Look at this Blue …

Let hand that pummeled rest.

Let scowl rest, face relieve.

Let shoulders locked high, tight, recede.

Let feet cracked, worn, ease.

Let back, stiff, sore, bent open.

Let lungs swell breath like ocean.

Let all of us, all of us, all of us,

let all of us be unbroken.

Take heart. Earth hears every tremble touch. Feels each foot. Listens now.

Bring her justice, protection, peace.

…..

Allison Adelle Hedge Coke, Look at this Blue: A poem, 2022 (Catalog)

Deer Hit

The morning after

the tawny blur

in the windshield,

 

a sunny breeze

is stirring the woods

as I regard the damage –

 

a crumpled fender,

and one headlight

with an eyelash of fur.

 

Billy Collins, Musical Tables: Poems, 2022. (Catalog)

Black Fragments

I.

Leaning on the subway door      train rushing            between 59th street & queensboro plaza                        I think

we’re underwater              under Roosevelt       island           or something              pitch-black

oil over glass            window         suddenly the door disappears                I’m sucked into the pitch

…..

Rio Cortez, Golden Ax, 2022 (Catalog)

Saeed, or The Other One: I

 It started as a joke. The last word from the night’s last poem left my mouth and someone in the audience already had his hand raised. From the way he outpaced the applause, insisting on keeping his hand in the air while everyone around him clapped, I knew that – however it might be punctuated or phrased – his question was not going to be a question.

“There is so much pain in your work,” he said. “it’s beautiful,” he said. “Gutting,” he said. “Searing,” he said. “Brutal, no – bruising,” he said. “But the pain, there is so much pain. Do you think you need your pain in order to write?”

“Oh, honey,” I answered in a voice that was mine as much as it wasn’t, “you’ve got it all wrong. My pain needs me.” And then I did that thing I do with my eyebrows and the muscles around my mouth and the angle of my neck that says “trust me, whatever you think just happened, that was a joke.” And the audience laughed.

…..

Saeed Jones, Alive at the end of the world: Poems, 2022 (Catalog)

Filling the Page


At a dinner party

one of the husbands says

It must be easy writing poetry.

 

Can’t anything be a poem? He laughs.

 

You’re right, I way, slipping off his shoes

& pulling out his molars –

searching for any crevice to insert

a semicolon

before I drag him over what is known as


this white

& provocative

 space.

 
Kate Bear, And Yet: Poems, 2023 (Catalog)

 POETRY

 

Other than

cursing

 

poetry allows us

to say

 

the most

with the fewest

 

words


John Keene, Punks: New & Selected Poems, 2022 (Catalog)

Compiled by Ina Rimpau

Readers’ Place, NewsRobert Nealon