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Here's a poem by George Bilgere. Scorcher In the summer twilight, a couple of hours after dinner, we like to take a walk. The birds have turned in. The air has finally cooled, but the crickets and katydids are getting so worked up that the lightning bugs catch fire a few feet above the lawn, just where we left them when we were kids. Now and then we pass another couple from one of the green, old, more or less identical streets of our neighborhood as they move through the atmosphere, mystical and obscure, their voices softly registering the news... Continue reading

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This is one by David Shumate. Shooting the Horse I unlatch the stall door, step inside, and stroke the silky neck of the old mare like a lover about to leave. I take an ear in hand, fold it over, and run my fingers across her muzzle. I coax her head up so I can blow into those nostrils. All part of the routine we taught each other long ago. I turn a half turn, pull a pistol from my coat, raise it to that long brow with the white blaze and place it between her sleepy eyes. I clear... Continue reading

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Piano Dreams Sometimes I'm Bobby Short at the Carlyle Hotel where fur-tipped women trip in from the cold on the thick padded arms of their men. They sparkle with new snow and old money. But it's me they want to see. Leaning into the keys, I play Autumn in New York, Misty and I've Got You Under My Skin. The golden women tilt their heads with a faraway look in their eyes, and run jeweled fingers tenderly over crystal champagne rims. I launch into You do Something to Me and they raise their glasses and drink. Sometimes I'm back in... Continue reading

A poem by Michael Heffernan. Puttanesca Before I gave up wondering why everything was a lot of nothing worth losing or getting back, I took out a jar of olives, a bottle of capers, a container of leftover tomato sauce with onions, put a generous portion of each in olive oil just hot enough but not too hot, along with some minced garlic and a whole can of anchovies, until the mixture smelled like a streetwalker's sweat, then emptied it onto a half pound of penne, beautifully al dente, under a heap of grated pecorino romano in a wide bowl... Continue reading

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There is a dramatic and thrilling ballad from years ago that I heard sung for the first time this weekend. Although there seem to be a number of variations, below is one version of it from poets.org. The audio version was from Prairie Home Companion, and you can listen to it here. It's just wonderful. Enjoy. Lord Randall by Anonymous "Oh where ha'e ye been, Lord Randall my son? O where ha'e ye been, my handsome young man?" "I ha'e been to the wild wood: mother, make my bed soon, For I’m weary wi' hunting, and fain wald lie down."... Continue reading

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I just waited so long between things that now I have a very large pile to sort. For now - a poem. This one is by Faith Shearin. Shopping My husband and I stood together in the new mall which was clean and white and full of possibility. We were poor so we liked to walk through the stores since this was like walking through our dreams. In one we admired coffee makers, blue pottery bowls, toaster ovens as big as televisions. In another, we eased into a leather couch and imagined cocktails in a room overlooking the sea. When... Continue reading

because there's been talk of babies at work. The Alien I'm back again scrutinizing the Milky Way of your ultrasound, scanning the dark matter, the nothingness, that now the heads say is chockablock with quarks & squarks, gravitons & gravitini, photons & photinos. Our sprout, who art there inside the spacecraft of your ma, the time capsule of this printout, hurling & whirling towards us, it's all daft on this earth. Our alien who art in the heavens, our Martian, our little green man, we're anxious to make contact, to ask questions about the heavendom you hail from, to discuss... Continue reading

A poem by Mary Oliver. Starlings in Winter Chunky and noisy, but with stars in their black feathers, they spring from the telephone wire and instantly they are acrobats in the freezing wind. And now, in the theater of air, they swing over buildings, dipping and rising; they float like one stippled star that opens, becomes for a moment fragmented, then closes again; and you watch and you try but you simply can't imagine how they do it with no articulated instruction, no pause, only the silent confirmation that they are this notable thing, this wheel of many parts, that... Continue reading

Every Day, the Pregnant Teenagers assemble at my desk, backpacks jingling, beepers on their belts like hand grenades, and inside, their babies swirl like multicolored pinwheels in a hurricane. The girls raise too-big smocks, show me the stretched-tight skin from under which a foot or hand thumps, knocks, makes the belly wobble. A girl strokes her invisible child, recites all possible names, as if a name might carry laundry down the street or fix a Chevrolet. I measure months with a paper tape, maneuver the cold stethoscope that lifts a fetal heart-swoosh into air. Then, shirts billowing like parachutes, the... Continue reading

This one is by E. E. Cummings. I carry your heart with me i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)i am never without it(anywhere i go you go, my dear;and whatever is done by only me is your doing,my darling) i fear no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true) and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you here is the deepest secret nobody knows (here is the root of the root and the bud of the... Continue reading

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Patriotism My country is this dirt that gathers under my fingernails when I am in the garden. The quiet bacteria and fungi, all the little insects and bugs are my compatriots. They are idealistic, always working together for the common good. I kneel on the earth and pledge my allegiance to all the dirt of the world, to all of that soil which grows flowers and food for the just and unjust alike. The soil does not care what we think about or who we love. It knows our true substance, of what we are really made. I stand my... Continue reading

Fireflies And these are my vices: impatience, bad temper, wine, the more than occasional cigarette, an almost unquenchable thirst to be kissed, a hunger that isn't hunger but something like fear, a staunching of dread and a taste for bitter gossip of those who've wronged me—for bitterness— and flirting with strangers and saying sweetheart to children whose names I don't even know and driving too fast and not being Buddhist enough to let insects live in my house or those cute little toylike mice whose soft grey bodies in sticky traps I carry, lifeless, out to the trash and that... Continue reading

Cherishing What Isn't Ah, you three women whom I have loved in this long life, along with the few others. And the four I may have loved, or stopped short of loving. I wander through these woods making songs of you. Some of regret, some of longing, and a terrible one of death. I carry the privacy of your bodies and hearts in me. The shameful ardor and the shameless intimacy, the secret kinds of happiness and the walled-up childhoods. I carol loudly of you among trees emptied of winter and rejoice quietly in summer. A score of women if... Continue reading

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