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

A Little Tooth

A Little Tooth

Your baby grows a tooth, then two,
and four, and five, and then she wants some meat
directly from the bone. It's all

over: she'll learn some words, she'll fall
in love with cretins, dolts, a sweet
talker on his way to jail. And you,

your wife, get old, flyblown, and rue
nothing. You did, you loved, your feet
are sore. It's dusk. Your daughter's tall.

--Thomas Lux

The Pope's Penis

The Pope's Penis

It hangs deep in his robes, a delicate
clapper at the center of a bell.
It moves when he moves, a ghostly fish in a
halo of silver seaweed, the hair
swaying in the dark and the heat--and at night
while his eyes sleep, it stands up
in praise of God.

--Sharon Olds

Sex Without Love

Sex Without Love

How do they do it, the ones who make love
without love? Beautiful as dancers,
gliding over each other like ice-skaters
over the ice, fingers hooked
inside each other's bodies, faces
red as steak, wine, wet as the
children at birth whose mothers are going to
give them away. How do they come to the
come to the come to the God come to the
still waters, and not love
the one who came there with them, light
rising slowly as steam off their joined
skin? These are the true religious,
the purists, the pros, the ones who will not
accept a false Messiah, love the
priest instead of the God. They do not
mistake the lover for their own pleasure,
they are like great runners: they know they are alone
with the road surface, the cold, the wind,
the fit of their shoes, their over-all cardio-
vascular health--just factors, like the partner
in the bed, and not the truth, which is the
single body alone in the universe
against its own best time.

--Sharon Olds

Bearhug

Bearhug

Griffin calls to come and kiss him goodnight
I yell ok. Finish something I'm doing,
then something else, walk slowly round
the corner to my son's room.
He is standing arms outstretched
waiting for a bearhug. Grinning.

Why do I give my emotion an animal's name,
give it that dark squeeze of death?
This is the hug which collects
all his small bones and his warm neck against me.
The thin tough body under the pyjamas
locks to me like a magnet of blood.

How long was he standing there
like that, before I came?

--Michael Ondaatje

Some Like Poetry

Some Like Poetry

Some--
thus not all.  Not even the majority of all but the minority.
Not counting schools, where one has to,
and the poets themselves,
there might be two people per thousand.

Like--
but one also likes chicken soup with noodles,
one likes compliments and the color blue,
one likes an old scarf,
one likes having the upper hand,
one likes stroking a dog.

Poetry--
but what is poetry.
Many shaky answers
have been given to this question.
But I don't know and don't know and hold on to it
like to a sustaining railing.

--Wislawa Szymborska
Translated by Regina Grol 

Saturday At The Canal

Saturday At The Canal

I was hoping to be happy by seventeen.
School was a sharp check mark in the roll book,
An Obnoxious tuba playing at noon because our team
Was going to win at night.  The teachers were
Too close to dying to understand.  The hallways
Stank of poor grades and unwashed hair.  Thus,
A friend and I sat watching the water on Saturday,
Neither of us talking much, just warming ourselves
By hurling large rocks at the dusty ground
And feeling awful because San Francisco was a postcard
On a bedroom wall.  We wanted to go there,
Hitchhike under the last migrating birds
And be with people who knew more than three chords
On a guitar.  We didn't drink or smoke,
But our hair was shoulder length, wild when
The wind picked up and the shadows of
This loneliness gripped loose dirt.  By bus or car,
By the sway of train over a long bridge,
We wanted to get out.  The years froze
As we sat on the bank.  Our eyes followed the water,
White-tipped but dark underneath, racing out of town.

--Gary Soto

There Are Those Who Love to Get Dirty

There Are Those Who Love To Get Dirty


There are those who love to get dirty
    and fix things.
They drink coffee at dawn,
    beer after work,

And those who stay clean,
    just appreciate things,
At breakfast they have milk
    and juice at night.

There are those who do both,
    they drink tea.

--Gary Snyder