"Do You Have Any Advice For Those of Us Just Starting Out?"

Give up dutifully sitting at your desk.  Leave
your house or apartment.  go out into the world.

It's all right to carry a note book but a cheap
one is best, with pages the color of weak tea
and on the front a kitten or a space ship.

Avoid any enclosed space where more than
three people are wearing turtlenecks.  Beware
any snow-covered chalet with deer tracks
across the muffled tennis courts.

Not surprisingly, libraries are a good place to write.
And the perfect place in a library is near an aisle
where a child a year or two old is playing as his
mother browses the ranks of the dead.

Often he will pull books from the bottom shelf.
The title, the author's name, the brooding photo
on the flap mean nothing.  Red book on black, gray
book on brown, he builds a tower.  And the higher
it gets, the wider he grins.

You who ask for advice, listen: When the tower
falls, be like that child.  Laugh so loud everybody
in the world frowns and says, "Shhhh."

Then start again.



Ron Koertge

Lost Childhood

Lost Childhood

How was it possible, I, a father
yet a child of my father?  I
grew panicky and thought
of running away but knew
I would be scorned for it
by my father.  I stood
and listened to myself
being called Dad.

How ridiculous it sounded,
but in front of me, asking
for attention--how could I,
a child, ignore this child's plea?
I lifted him into my arms
and hugged him as I would have
wanted my father to hug me,
and it was as though satisfying
my own lost childhood.


--David Ignatow

Hesitation

 Hesitation

I was on my way
home
from a jog

sweat pooling on my upper lip
and everything

As I crossed the street
two cyclists approached
the
      corner

                                              a boy in front
a girl pedaling behind him

and I hesitated,
unsure of whether to keep walking
or let them pass         in front of me

(The sidewalk
was not big enough for all of us)

Finally,
I paused,

let them pass--
     him
           then her
their bicycle wheels like spoked moons...

And to think that
I might have kept going

To think that
I might have
cut off their path

To think that
I might not have
let them
pass!



--Mariel Boyarsky

There Is Jazz Playing

There Is Jazz Playing

I have gone outside to walk the dog.
I have gone into the street,
into the dusk
that drifts
from the purple-gray sky.

I carry a retractable leash
and a plastic baggie.

I have left the house dark,
soft with overlapping shadows,

but I have left some jazz
on the stereo
even though nobody is home.

The dog and I approach the corner;
she squats.
In the dusk,
I can barely see
the stream of urine
from under her.

We are far from the dark room
where jazz is playing,

where I left some jazz on the stereo
like a plate of freshly baked cookies
left to cool on the stove
in a kitchen brimming with dusk.



--Mariel Boyarsky

Break

Break

We put the puzzle together piece
by piece, loving how one curved
notch fits so sweetly with another.
A yellow smudge becomes
the brush of a broom, and two blue arms
fill in the last of the sky.
We patch together porch swings and autumn
trees, matching gold to gold. We hold
the eyes of deer in our palms, a pair
of brown shoes. We do this as the child
circles her room, impatient
with her blossoming, tired
of the neat house, the made bed,
the good food. We let her brood
as we shuffle through the pieces,
setting each one into place with a satisfied
tap, our backs turned for a few hours
to a world that is crumbling, a sky
that is falling, the pieces
we are required to return to.

Dorianne Laux

Young

A thousand doors ago
when I was a lonely kid
in a big house with four
garages and it was summer
as long as I could remember,
I lay on the lawn at night,
clover wrinkling over me,
the wise stars bedding over me,
my mother's window a funnel
of yellow heat running out,
my father's window, half shut,
an eye where sleepers pass,
and the boards of the house
were smooth and white as wax
and probably a million leaves
sailed on their strange stalks
as the crickets ticked together
and I, in my brand new body,
which was not a woman's yet,
told the stars my questions
and thought God could really see
the heat and the painted light,
elbows, knees, dreams, goodnight.

--Anne Sexton

How It Will Happen, When

How It Will Happen, When

There you are, exhausted from another night of crying,
curled up on the couch, the floor, at the foot of the bed,
anywhere you fall you fall down crying, half amazed
at what the body is capable of, not believing you can cry
anymore. And there they are: his socks, his shirt, your
underwear, and your winter gloves, all in a loose pile
next to the bathroom door, and you fall down again.
Someday, years from now, things will be different:
the house clean for once, everything in its place, windows
shining, sun coming in easily now, skimming across
the thin glaze of wax on the floor. You'll be peeling
an orange or watching a bird leap from the edge of a rooftop
next door, noticing how, for instance, her body is trapped
in the air, only a moment before gathering the will to fly
into the ruff at her wings, and then doing it: flying.
You'll be reading, and for a moment you'll see a word
you don't recognize, a simple word like cup or gate or wisp
and you'll ponder like a child discovering language.
Cup, you'll say over and over until it begins to make sense,
and that's when you'll say it, for the first time, out loud: He's dead.
He's not coming back, and it will be the first time you believe it.

--Dorianne Laux