Give me hunger,
O you gods that sit and give
The world its orders.
Give me hunger, pain and want,
Shut me out with shame and failure
From your doors of gold and fame,
Give me your shabbiest, weariest hunger!
But leave me a little love,
A voice to speak to me in the day end,
A hand to touch me in the dark room
Breaking the long loneliness.
In the dusk of day-shapes
Blurring the sunset,
One little wandering, western star
Thrust out from the changing shores of shadow.
Let me go to the window,
Watch there the day-shapes of dusk
And wait and know the coming
Of a little love.
I am the people—the mob—the crowd—the mass.
Do you know that all the great work of the world is done through me?
I am the workingman, the inventor, the maker of the world’s food and
clothes.
I am the audience that witnesses history. The Napoleons come from me and
the Lincolns. They die. And then I send forth more Napoleons and
Lincolns.
I am the seed ground. I am a prairie that will stand for much plowing.
Terrible storms pass over me. I forget. The best of me is sucked out and
wasted. I forget. Everything but Death comes to me and makes me work
and give up what I have. And I forget.
Sometimes I growl, shake myself and spatter a few red drops for history to
remember. Then—I forget.
When I, the People, learn to remember, when I, the People, use the lessons
of yesterday and no longer forget who robbed me last year, who played me
for a fool—then there will be no speaker in all the world say the name:
“The People,” with any fleck of a sneer in his voice or any far-off smile of
derision.
The mob—the crowd—the mass—will arrive then.
It’s about Ball fits
the ball, mitt, but
the bat, not all
and the mitt. the time.
Ball hits Sometimes
bat, or it ball gets hit
hits mitt. (pow) when bat
Bat doesn’t meets it,
hit ball, and sails
bat meets it. to a place
Ball bounces where mitt
off bat, flies has to quit
air, or thuds in disgrace.
ground (dud) That’s about
or it the bases
fits mitt. loaded,
about 40,000
Bat waits fans exploded.
for ball
to mate. It’s about
Ball hates the ball,
to take bat’s the bat,
bait. Ball the mitt,
flirts, bat’s the bases
late, don’t and the fans.
keep the date. It’s done
Ball goes in on a diamond,
(thwack) to mitt, and for fun.
and goes out It’s about
(thwack) back home, and it’s
to mitt. about run.
Copyright Credit: May Swenson, “An Analysis of Baseball” from May Swenson: Collected Poems (Library of America, 2013). Used with the permission of the Literary Estate of May Swenson.
It’s true: I almost never
smile, but that doesn’t mean
I’m not in love: my heart
is that black violin
played slowly. You know that
moment late in the solo
when the voice
is so pure you feel
the blood in it: the wound
between rage
and complete surrender. That’s
where I’m smiling. You just
can’t see it—the sound
bleeding perfectly
inside me. The first time
I killed a vampire I was
sad: I mean
we were almost
family.
But that’s
so many lives
ago. I believe
in the cry that cuts
into the melody, the strings
calling back the forgotten world.
When I think of the madness
that has made me and the midnight
I walk inside—all day long:
when I think of that
one note that breaks
what’s left of what’s
human in me, man,
I love everything
Copyright Credit: Tim Seibles, “Blade, Unplugged” from Fast Animal. Copyright © 2012 by Tim Seibles. Used with the permission of Etruscan Press, www.etruscanpress.org.
Dog knows when friend will come home
because each hour friend’s smell pales,
air paring down the good smell
with its little diamond. It means I miss you
O I miss you, how hard it is to wait
for my happiness, and how good when
it arrives. Here we are in our bodies,
ripe as avocados, softer, brightening
with latencies like a hot, blue core
of electricity: our ankles knotted to our
calves by a thread, womb sparking
with watermelon seeds we swallowed
as children, the heart again badly hurt, trying
and failing. But it is almost five says
the dog. It is almost five.
Copyright Credit: Nomi Stone, “Waiting for Happiness” from Tin House (Summer 2018). Copyright © 2018 by Nomi Stone. Used with the permission of the author.
making promises they can’t keep.
For you, Grandmother, I said I would pull
each invading burr and thistle from your skin,
cut out the dizzy brittle eucalypt,
take from the ground the dark oily poison–
all to restore you happy and proud,
the whole of you transformed
and bursting into tomorrow.
But where do I cut first?
Where should I begin to pull?
Should it be the Russian thistle
down the hill where backhoes
have bitten? Or African senecio
or tumbleweed bouncing
above the wind? Or the middle finger
of my right hand? Or my left eye
or the other one? Or a slice
from the small of my back, a slab of fat
from my thigh? I am broken
as much as any native ground,
my roots tap a thousand migrations.
My daughters were never born, I am
as much the invader as the native,
as much the last day of life as the first.
I presumed you to be as bitter as me,
to tremble and rage against alien weight.
Who should blossom? Who should receive pollen?
Who should be rooted, who pruned,
who watered, who picked?
Should I feed the white-faced cattle
who wait for the death train to come
or comb the wild seeds from their tails?
Who should return across the sea
or the Bering Strait or the world before this one
or the Mother Ground? Who should go screaming
to some other planet, burn up or melt
in a distant sun? Who should be healed
and who hurt? Who should dry
under summer’s white sky, who should shrivel
at the first sign of drought? Who should be remembered?
Who should be the sterile chimera of earth and of another place,
alien with a native face,
native with an alien face?
Wendy Rose, “Women Like Me” from Itch Like Crazy. Copyright © 2002 by Wendy Rose. Used by permission of The University of Arizona Press.
The dark scissors of his legs
cut the moon’s
raw silk, highways of wind
torn into lanes, his feet
pushing down the shadow
whose patterns he becomes
while trucks, one by one,
pass him by,
headlights pouring
from his pace, his eyes
cracked as the Hudson
wraps street lamps
in its rippled blue shells,
the summer’s thin, thin veins
bursting with dawn,
he, now suddenly free,
from the air, from himself,
his heart beating far, far
behind him
Copyright Credit: Agha Shahid Ali, “The Jogger on Riverside Dr.” from The Half-Inch Himalayas. Copyright © 2013 by Agha Shahid Ali. Used with the permission of Wesleyan University Press.
It's not that the octopus wouldn't love you—
not that it wouldn't reach for you
with each of its tapering arms:
you'd be as good as anyone, I think,
to an octopus. But the creatures of the sea,
like the sea, don't think
about themselves, or you. Keep on floating there,
cradled, unable to burn. Abandon
yourself to the sway, the ruffled eddies, abandon
your heavy legs to the floating meadows
of seaweed and feel
the bloom of phytoplankton, spindrift, sea-
spray, barnacles. In the dark benthic realm, the slippery neckton
glide over
the abyssal plains and as you float you can feel
that upwelling of cold, deep water touch
the skin stretched over
your spine. You can feel
fished for and slapped. No, it's not that the octopus
wouldn't love you. If it touched,
if it tasted you, each of its three
hearts would turn red.
Will theologians of any confession refute me?
Not the bluecap salmon. Not its dotted head.
Copyright Credit: Mary Szybist, “The Lushness of It” from Incarnadine. Copyright © 2012 by Mary Szybist. Used with the permission of Graywolf Press.
Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month’s newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
