Lives of the Poets by Kim Addonizio
One stood among the violets listening to a bird. One went to the toilet and was struck by the moon. One felt hopeless until a trumpet crash, and then lo, he became a diamond. I have a shovel. Can I turn it into a poem? On my stove I’m boiling some milk thistle. I hope it will turn into a winged thesis before you stop reading. Look, I’m topless! Listen: approaching hooves! One drowned in a swimming pool. One removed his shoes and yearned off a bridge. One lives with Alzheimer’s in a state facility, spittle in his white beard. It turns out words are no help. But here I am with my shovel digging like a fool beside the spilth and splosh of the ungirdled sea. I can’t stop. The horses are coming, the thieves. I still haven’t found lasting love. I still want to hear viols in the little beach hotel that’s torn down and gone. I want to see again the fish schooling and glittering like a veil where the waves shove against the breakwater. Gone is the girl in her white slip testing the chill with one bare foot. It’s too cold, but she goes in, so carefully, oh.
Other poems I enjoyed this week: (Read the full poem in the link)
"What did I know, what did I know of love’s austere and lonely offices?"
"Even after she cut into my shoulder Coldly, with a scalpel, resetting my clavicle, Tying it down with borrowed ligament and screwing it Into place, even after she sutured me shut, Sewing the two banks of skin across the thin blood river, Watching me sleep the chemical sleep Until tender and hazy I awoke —"
"You were never meant to be human You must be the grass You must grow wildly over the graves"
"The mountain's immense green and brown triangle reflects on itself in lakewater, doubling its shape and colour there, its stillness something drastic, an aspect of dread—as if a lover tried to remember that loved other body by looking in the mirror."
"Praise to the goddess of the internet search, who returns with her basket of grain, 67,000 helpful suggestions to everything we request: how to solve a Rubik’s Cube, what to do when you’re bored, how old is the earth, how to clear cache, what animal am I, why do we dream, where are you now, come back."
Recommended Listening:
Links of the Week: