Today’s poem is Miniver Cheevy by Edwin Arlington Robinson
thanks to Jilly at The PoetHut
dedicated to Kris S.
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phone: 70 425 Poems
Episode 7c: What Hands Can Say
These awkward words
lips only wish
they had the guts
to speak. Phrases
that cannot slip
across the teeth,
tied, as they are
to nearby brain
cells, which fire
constant volleys
of cold ideas,
and remind you
of all the folks
these words would hurt.
Those awkward words,
what hands can say,
residing close
to the body,
the hips and thighs
and by the heart,
hands that harbor
no quid-pro-quo
with these neurons,
nor memories,
nor sense of right.
So they can speak,
painful, hopeful
realities.
What awkward words
must certainly
follow “I’ve quit”
or “I’m leaving?”
Lips long to say:
in another time,
a different place,
where lives were not
tangled in cells
of promises,
I would want to
love you. There. Spoke.
Those words only
brave hands can say.
–
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phone: 70 425 Poems
Episode 7b: Dot Dot Dot Dash Dash Dash
This week’s discussion is about how and why poems encode messages in poems.
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phone: 70 425 Poems
Episode 7a: What’s behind the incident?
Today’s Poem is “Incident” by Amiri Baraka
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Episode 6c: Indistinguishable Trees
On his way to work, long
impenetrable crusts
cover the earth, which crews
patch as soon as they crack.
He peeks before changing
lanes in the side rearview,
sees the sun rise, and then
looking forward, mistakes
The horizon and light
for one. For a moment,
two suns, ahead and behind.
For a moment, still time.
But soon he spots drivers
in the far lanes across
medians of iron,
weeds and degrees, headed
Towards their rising. For them,
a clear, prosperous day.
For him, and those like him,
there’s no sun ahead, none.
On the return trek, still
into opposites, to
barefoot women, angry
kin, confused boys with lines
etched in pulp round their eyes,
he blends in with the sky
and the rising night, these
indistinguishable trees.
–
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phone: 70 425 Poems
Episode 6a: Digging
Today’s poem is “Digging” by Seamus Heaney, from Death of a Naturalist
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Episode 5c: Once, Every Few Months
You are the antidote
to this poison.
Not the poison
only lolled by your lips.
I could never hope
to sip that balsam kiss.
Instead the poison
of your soft pupils,
the strands of hair
that pat the back
of your neck, and the sweet
curve of your hips.
Even more potent
the poison of thoughts
I imagine you keep hid
in your hearth,
keep alive in a notebook
or a box
you keep locked up,
that could not be unlatched
by a house, or kids,
or his ever boring kiss.
Talking to you,
hearing what a bore
you’ve become, how contented
is the antidote to my imagination,
fantasy built over months
of sleeping late,
dressing you up
as my confidant,
undressing you
as my own flesh.
–
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phone: 70 425 Poems
Episode 5a: Apologies and Adoration
Today’s poem is “For My Niece Sidney, Age Six” by Amy Gerstler
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phone: 70 425 Poems
Episode 4c: Eredità
Daddy, with your ruddy complexion,
which I found
only after your passing,
in a description by the US military
of a young private, an official account
of rising the ranks
only to be torn down
due to questions of honor,
loyalty and honesty.
Daddy, the picture I carry of you
younger than me,
thin faced and tight lipped,
whitewashed by the cellulose
of time, by my memory
of you ordering a book which said
our family crescent was British
and working in an office
which bleached your complexion.
Daddy, only in dying could you tell me
I was Italian, through Brooklyn,
through Ellis Island,
part of an immigrant tradition;
your love of opera,
adoration of the Dodgers,
the secret sauce of your lasagna,
all of it passing in that last gasp
to your son through pale lips.
–
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phone: 70 425 Poems
Episode 4b: Prose, Poetry, the Sentence and the Line
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phone: 70 425 Poems
