February 2012
28 posts
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Angling
by Robert Lowell
Withdrawn to a third your size, and frowning doubts,
you stare in silence through the afterdinner,
when wine takes our liberty and loosens tongues──
fair-face, ball-eyes, profile of a child,
except your eyelashes are always blacked,
each hair colored and quickened like tying a fly.
If a word amuses you, the room includes your voice,
you are audible; none can catch you...
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Poppies
by Henri Cole
Waking from comalike sleep, I saw the poppies,
with their limp necks and unregimented beauty.
Pause, I thought, say something true: It was night,
I wanted to kiss your lips, which remained supple,
but all the water in them had been replaced
with embalming compound. So I was angry.
I loved the poppies, with their wide-open faces,
how they carried themselves, beckoning to me...
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The Act
There were the roses, in the rain.
Don’t cut them, I pleaded.
They won’t last, she said
But they’re so beautiful
where they are.
Agh, we were all beautiful once, she
said,
and cut them and gave them to me
in my hand.
- William Carlos Williams
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A New Year’s Resolution List, AKA A Shaman Made Me...
I recently enlisted the services of a Shaman who performed a cleansing ritual on me. It was quite intense. At the end of the ritual I was instructed to ask for the things I want in life. It was requested that I do this out loud, and then I was motioned to ritualistically raise my fragrant oil-covered hands towards the sky while putting these requests into the universe. (Mind you, I was asked to do...