Headpiece Filled With Straw

The Place I Want to Get Back To

By Mary Oliver

is where
in the pinewoods
in the moments between
the darkness

and first light
two deer
came walking down the hill
and when they saw me

they said to each other, okay,
this one is okay,
let's see who she is
and why she is sitting

on the ground, like that,
so quiet, as if
asleep, or in a dream,
but, anyway, harmless;

and so they come
on their slender legs
and gazed upon me
not unlike the way

I go out to the dunes and look
and look and look
into the faces of the flowers;
and then one of them leaned forward

and nuzzled my hand, and what can my life
bring me that could exceed
that brief moment?
For twenty years

I have gone every day to the same woods,
not waiting, exactly, just lingering.
Such gifts, bestowed,
can't be repeated.

If you want to talk about this
come to visit. I live in the house
near the corner, which I have named
Gratitude.

LINK: The Place I Want to Get Back To - Thirst. By Mary Oliver.

Breasts Like Martinis

By Jill McDonough

The bartender at Caesar's tells jokes we've heard a hundred times.
A shoelace walks into a bar, for example. I whisper
Sarah Evers told me that joke in sixth grade and Josey says
My brother Steve, 1982. A whore, a midget, a Chinaman,
nothing we haven't heard. Then a customer asks
Why are breasts like martinis? and they both start laughing.
They know this one, everybody knows this one, except
us. They don't even bother with the punch line. The bartender just says
Yeah, but I always said there should be a third one, on the back,
for dancing, dancing with the woman-shaped air behind the bar, his hand
on the breast on her back. So we figure three is too many,
one's not enough. Okay; we can do better than that. I like my breasts
like I like my martinis, we say: Small and bruised or big and dry. Perfect.
Overflowing. Reeking of juniper, spilling all over the bar.
When I have a migraine and she reaches for me, I say
Josey, my breasts are like martinis. She nods, solemn:
People should keep their goddamn hands off yours. How
could we tell these jokes to the bartender? We can't. He'll never know.
I say it after scrubbing the kitchen cabinets, and she gets it:
dirty and wet. Walking in the wind, Josey says My breasts
are like martinis and I hail a cab, know she means shaking, ice cold.

Listen to Jill McDonough read this poem.

Link: "Breasts Like Martinis" - By Jill McDonough - Slate Magazine.

Seriously sexy...

by Carol Ann Duffy (new British Poet Laureate)

Frau Freud

Ladies, for arguments sake, let us say

That I've seen my fair share of ding-a-ling, member and jock,

Of todger and nudger and percy and cock, of tackle,

Of three-for-a-bob, of willy and winky; in fact,

you could say, I'm as au fait with Hunt-the-Salami

as Ms M. Lewinsky – equally sick up to here

with the beef bayonet, the pork sword, the saveloy,

love-muscle, night-crawler, dong, the dick, prick,

dipstick and wick, the rammer, the slammer, the Rupert,

the shlong. Don't get me wrong, I've no axe to grind

with the snake in the trousers, the wife's best friend,

the weapon, the python – I suppose what I mean is,

ladies, dear ladies, the average penis is – not pretty...

the squint of its envious solitary eye...one's feeling of

pity...

Stuffed

I put two yellow peepers in an owl.

Wow. I fix the grin of crocodile.

Spiv. I sew the slither of an eel.

I jerk, kick-start, the back hooves of a mule.

Wild. I hold the red rag to a bull.

Mad. I spread the feathers of a gull.

I screw a tight snarl to a weasel.

Fierce. I stitch the flippers on a seal.

Splayed. I pierce the heartbeat of a quail.

I like her to be naked and to kneel.

Tame. My motionless, my living doll.

Mute. And afterwards I like her not to tell.

'It was my daughter who made me accept Poet's job' - News, Books - The Independent.

Carol Ann Duffy named as Poet Laureate

Carol Ann Duffy named as Poet Laureate - News, Books - The Independent.

Valentine

By Carol Ann Duffy

Not a red rose or a satin heart.

I give you an onion.
It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.
It promises light
like the careful undressing of love.

Here.
It will blind you with tears
like a lover.
It will make your reflection
a wobbling photo of grief.

I am trying to be truthful.
Not a cute card or a kissogram.

I give you an onion.
Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips,
possessive and faithful as we are,
for as long as we are.

Take it.
Its platinum loops shrink to a wedding-ring, if you like.

Lethal.
Its scent will cling to your fingers,
cling to your knife.

Theory Theory: A Designer's View*

By Thomas Erickson

Theory weary, theory leery,

why can't I be theory cheery?

I often try out little bits

wheresoever they might fit.

(Affordances are very pliable,

though what they add is quite deniable.)

The sages call this bricolage,

the promiscuous prefer menage...

A savage, I, my mind's pragmatic

I'll keep what's good, discard dogmatic.

Add the reference to my paper,

watch my cited colleagues caper,

I cite you, you cite me,

we've got solidarity.

(GOMS and breakdowns, social network,

use those terms, now don't you shirk!)

Clear concepts clad in fancy clothes,

bid farewell to lucid prose.

The inner circle understands

but we overlook the hinterlands

Dysfunctional we are, it's true,

but as long as we're a happy crew,

if strangers stare and outsiders goggle,

or students struggle, their minds a'boggle

(Dasein, throwness, ontology

ethnomethodology)

A pity 'bout that learning curve

but who's to blame if they lack verve?

A ludic take on structuration,

perhaps this causes consternation?

 

I see four roles that theories play:

They divide the world, come what may,

into nice neat categories,

enabling us to tell our stories.

(Info scent sure is evocative,

and cyborg theory's quite provocative)

Our talk in turn makes common ground,

where allies, skeptics may be found.

Prediction's theory's holy grail,

most that seek it seem to fail.

 

The world is messy, fuzzy, sticky,

theoretically 'tis all quite tricky.

Theories keep it at a distance,

cov'ring up the awkward instance.

(Objects, agents, actor networks,

banish life with all its quirks)

But when edges grate and things don't mesh,

that is when I think my best.

So let not theory serve as blinders,

welcome disruptions as reminders!

 

Oddly now, I'm theory cheery

I find I have a theory theory!

Neither holy grail, nor deep disgrace,

theory's useful in its place,

(Framing, talking, predicting, bonding,

evoking discourse--Others responding)

Like goals and methods, plans and actions,

theory's situated, not pure abstraction.

So make your theory a public way,

where passers by may pause and stay.

* Written upon reading a commentary for a special issue of JCSCW on Theory (Version 5)

Theory Theory, by Thomas Erickson.

Neonatology

by Elizabeth Alexander

Is
funky, is
leaky, is
a soggy, bloody crotch, is
sharp jets of breast milk shot straight across the room,
is gaudy, mustard-colored poop, is
postpartum tears that soak the baby’s lovely head.

Then everything dries and disappears
Then everything dries and disappears

Neonatology
is day into night into day,
light into dark into light, semi-
and full-fledged, hyperconscious,
is funky, is funny: the baby farts,
we laugh. The baby burps, we smile, say “Yes.”
The baby poops, his whole body stiffens,
then steam heat floods the pipes.
He slashes his nose with nails we cannot bear to trim,
takes a nap, and the wounds disappear.
The spirit lives in your squirts and coos.
Your noises and fluids are what you do.

Neonatology
is what we cannot see: you speak to the birds,
the birds speak back, is solemn,
singing, funky, frightening,
buckets of tears on the baby’s lovely head, is
spongy.

“One day you’ll forget the baby,” Mother says,
“as if he were a pocketbook, a bag of groceries,
something you leave on a kitchen counter-top.
I left you once, put on my coat and hat,
remembered my pocketbook, the top and bottom locks,
got all the way to the elevator before I realized.

It only happens once.”

We lay on the bed and we rode the grey waves,
apricot juice in a glass in your hand,
single color in this grey light like November.
It is April. We rock.

Then the miracle which is always a miracle happens in many stages,

then the mouth which opens,
the bluebell
that sings.

I was just pregnant,
am no longer pregnant,
see myself in my memory
in overalls, sensible shoes.

Shockingly vital, mammoth giblet,
the second living thing to break free
of my body in fifteen minutes.

The midwife presents it on a platter.
We do not eat, have no Tupperware
to take it home and sanctify a tree.

Instead, we marvel at my cast-off meat,
the almost-pulsing slab, bloody mesa,
what lived moments ago and now has died.

Now I must take the baby to my breast.
There is no mother here but me.
The midwife discards the placenta.

What do you make of this rain, little one,
night rain that your parents have loved all their lives?

From 2 to 3 “The Streets of San Francisco” comes on each night,
and I watch Karl Malden stop crime, and listen

to the mouse squeak of your suckling, behold your avid jaws,
your black eyes: otter, oscelot,

my whelp, my cub, my seapup.
In the days before you smile at me

or call me Mama or love me,
love is all tit, all wheat-smelling milk, humid crook of the arm

where your warm, damp head seems to  live.
I pretend your clasping my finger means you love me

Dreamt the baby
was born again,
arrived this time in a Moses basket,
had a crone’s face,
a Senegalese head wrap,
a pendulous lower lip.

“I’d walked across the bridge
with the Savarin Coffee sign
from Harlem to the Bronx
to a frame shop just past the open market.
You were maybe two months old, I’m sure,
a), because the day was very hot, and
b), because I rolled you in the pram and not the stroller.
I was having the Japanese woodcuts framed,
the ones by Daddy’s dresser.
Something must have struck you funny,
and right in the middle of the shop you laughed,
loudly, a real laugh. I never told you?
I must have told you. That was the first time
I heard you laugh.”

Mamma Zememesh, I dreamt your sister’s names.
They floated around me as objects, satellites:

Zayd

Ntutu

Yeshareg

Asefash

Moulounesh

a spinning, turning, turning, spin.

I think the baby needs to eat. The baby’s hungry.
Look! He’s making sucking noises. Look!
His fist is in his mouth.
Why does the baby sleep all day? How
does the baby sleep at night? Three feedings? Huhn.
You need to let that baby cry.
You need to pick that baby up.
You need to put that baby down.
Kiss the baby too much, he’ll get heartburn.
What are those bumps on the baby’s face?
Why is the baby crying so?
That baby needs to eat, and now.

I dream the OB-Gyn is here
to spend the night with us. He wears
his white coat and his stethescope
to bed, looks like a loaf
of whole wheat bread. Goodnight, we say,
and shut our eyes.
The next day
he’s up early, jolly. “Time
to have this baby! Tally ho!” And so we do.

All of my aunties chatting like crows on a line,
all of my aunties on electric breast pumps,
the double kind, one for each exhausted tit.

Mommy, the baby’s head popped off! A tiny head,
white, wet, bloodless, heartbeat still on the soft spot.
She tells me, Stick it back on, Girl. Don’t be afraid.

You can’t show your children you’re afraid.

A paraffin seam bubbles on his scalp.
A pink cicatrix lines his lovely neck.

Giving birth is like jazz, something from silence,
then all of it. Long, elegant boats,
blood-boiling sunshine, human cargo,
a hand-made kite —

Post-partum.
No longer a celebrity, pregnant lady, expectant.
It has happened; you are here,
from flushed and floating, lush and curled.
Now you are the pink one, the movie star.
It has happened. You are here,

and you sing, mewl, holler, peep,
swallow the light and bubble it back,
shine, contain multitudes, gleam. You

are the new one, the movie star,
and birth is like jazz,
from silence and blood, silence
then everything,

jazz.

Link: Elizabeth Alexander | Poems.

Planting A Sequoia

By Dana Gioia

All afternoon my brothers and I have worked in the orchard,
Digging this hole, laying you into it, carefully packing the soil.
Rain blackened the horizon, but cold winds kept it over the Pacific,
And the sky above us stayed the dull gray
Of an old year coming to an end.

In Sicily a father plants a tree to celebrate his first son's birth--
An olive or a fig tree--a sign that the earth has one more life to bear.
I would have done the same, proudly laying new stock into my father's orchard,
A green sapling rising among the twisted apple boughs,
A promise of new fruit in other autumns.

But today we kneel in the cold planting you, our native giant,
Defying the practical custom of our fathers,
Wrapping in your roots a lock of hair, a piece of an infant's birth cord,
All that remains above earth of a first-born son,
A few stray atoms brought back to the elements.

We will give you what we can--our labor and our soil,
Water drawn from the earth when the skies fail,
Nights scented with the ocean fog, days softened by the circuit of bees.
We plant you in the corner of the grove, bathed in western light,
A slender shoot against the sunset.

And when our family is no more, all of his unborn brothers dead,
Every niece and nephew scattered, the house torn down,
His mother's beauty ashes in the air,
I want you to stand among strangers, all young and emphemeral to you,
Silently keeping the secret of your birth.

Link: Planting A Sequoia by Dana Gioia.

For the Boy in Bayou Blue Who Spoke in Tongues

By Jack Bedell

When he was twelve, he made the national news
to his parents’ delight and filled the pews
of the Living World with gaggles of girls and
tourists eager to hear the sermon he’d planned
for A Current Affair. His long, curly hair
and sparkly eyes glowed when he’d share
his witness with the congregation. He’d shout
and swoon and lash his tongue while rows fell out
rolling in ecstasy around his raised
pulpit. It pleased the deacons when the crazed,
fainting crowds filled their baskets with money,
but no one wondered when his eyes rolled a funny
white back into his head if he were reading from
cards inside his skull, or if the Spirit would come
and improvise the whole show for him
while his mouth spewed syllables like phlegm.

from At the Bone House (Texas Review Press) © 1998 by Jack B. Bedell.

Yo Jack! If you should find this, I just have to say I seem to remember a version of this poem from back in the day, and I loved it back then too! I just had to run with it!

Chris

Link: storySouth / Poetry by Jack Bedell.

Mrs Schofield's GCSE

By Carol Ann Duffy

The poem Carol Ann Duffy penned in response to her work being removed from a GCSE curriculum

 

You must prepare your bosom for his knife,

said Portia to Antonio in which

of Shakespeare's Comedies? Who killed his wife,

insane with jealousy? And which Scots witch

knew Something wicked this way comes? Who said

Is this a dagger which I see? Which Tragedy?

Whose blade was drawn which led to Tybalt's death?

To whom did dying Caesar say Et tu? And why?

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark - do you

know what this means? Explain how poetry

pursues the human like the smitten moon

above the weeping, laughing earth; how we

make prayers of it. Nothing will come of nothing:

speak again. Said by which King? You may begin.

 

Link: Poem: Mrs Schofield's GCSE, by Carol Ann Duffy | Books | The Guardian.

Living in America

by Anne Stevenson

'Living in America,'
the intelligent people at Harvard say,
'is the price you pay for living in New England.'

Californians think
living in America is a reward
for managing not to live anywhere else.

The rest of the country?
Could it be sagging between two poles,
tastelessly decorated, dangerously overweight?

No. Look closely.
Under cover of light and noise
both shores are hurrying towards each other.

San Francisco
is already half way to Omaha.
Boston is nervously losing its way in Detroit.

Desperately the inhabitants
hope to be saved in the middle.
Pray to the mountains and deserts to keep them apart.

 

 

"Living in America" by Anne Stevenson, from Anne Stevenson: Selected Poems. © American Poets Project, 2008.  (buy now) 

Link: The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor | Living in America by Anne Stevenson.