Vegetarian Physics by David Clewell

The tofu that’s shown up overnight in this house is frightening
proof of the Law of Conservation: matter that simply cannot be
created or destroyed. Matter older than Newton,
who knew better than to taste it. Older than Lao-tzu,
who thought about it but finally chose harmonious non-interference.
I’d like to be philosophical too, see it as some kind of pale
inscrutable wisdom among hot dogs, the cold chicken,
the leftover deviled eggs, but I’m talking curdled
soybean milk. And I don’t have that kind of energy.

I’d rather not be part of the precariously metaphorical
wedding of modern physics and the ancient Eastern mysteries.
But still: whoever stashed the tofu in my Frigidaire
had better come back for it soon. I’m not Einstein
but I’m smart enough to know a bad idea when I see it
taking up space, biding its time.
Like so much that demands our imperfect attention
amid the particle roar of the world: going nowhere, fast.

From: Collins, Billy, Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry, 2003, Random House Trade Paperbacks: New York, p. 158.
(https://archive.org/details/poetry18000bill/)

Date: 1994

By: David Clewell (1955-2020)

Moon Sitting by Hui Yung

High mountain cascades froth.
This wild temple owns few lamps.
Sit facing the glitter
of the moon: out of season
heart of ice.

From: Seaton, Jerome P. and Maloney, Dennis (eds.), A Drifting Poet: An Anthology of Chinese Zen Poetry, 1994, White Pine Press: Fredonia, New York, p. 19.
(https://books.google.com.au/books/about/A_drifting_boat.html?id=cUNkAAAAMAAJ)

Date: 4^th century (original); 1994 (translation)

By: Hui Yung (332-414)

Translated by: Jerome P. Seaton (1941- )

Sonnet by Attipate Krishnaswami Ramanujan

Time moves in and out of me
a stream of sound, a breeze,
an electric current that seeks
the ground, liquids that transpire

through my veins, stems and leaves
toward the skies to make fog and mist
around the trees. Mornings brown
into evenings before I turn around

in the day. Postage stamps, words
of unwritten letters complete with commas,
misplaced leases and passports, excuses
and blame swirl through the night

and take me far away from home
as time moves in and out of me.

From: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=39000

Dater: 1994 (published)

By: Attipate Krishnaswami Ramanujan (1929-1993)

Journeybread Recipe by Lawrence Schimel

Even in the electric kitchen there was the smell of a journey.
—Anne Sexton, “Little Red Riding Hood”

1. In a tupperware wood, mix child and hood. Stir slowly. Add wolf.

2. Turn out onto a lightly floured path, and begin the walk home from school.

3. Sweeten the journey with candied petals: velvet tongues of violet, a posy of roses. Soon you will crave more.

4. Knead the flowers through the dough as wolf and child converse, tasting of each others flesh, a mingling of scents.

5. Now crack the wolf and separate the whites—the large eyes, the long teeth—from the yolks.

6. Fold in the yeasty souls, fermented while none were watching. You are too young to hang out in bars.

7. Cover, and, warm and moist, let the bloated belly rise nine months.

8. Shape into a pudgy child, a dough boy, lumpy but sweet. Bake half an hour.

9. Just before the time is up—the end in sight, the water broken–split the top with a hunting knife, bone-handled and sharp.

10. Serve swaddled in a wolfskin throw, cradled in a basket and left on a grandmother’s doorstep.

11. Go to your room. You have homework to be done. You are too young to be in the kitchen, cooking.

From: Datlow, Ellen and Winding, Terri (eds.), Black Thorn, White Rose, 2014, Open Rose Media: New York City, pp. [unnumbered].
(https://books.google.com.au/books?id=4SFEBAAAQBAJ)

Date: 1994

By: Lawrence Schimel (1971- )

Two Boys by Doug Anderson

They take the new machine gun out of its wrap
in pieces, the flat black barrel, the other
parts, delicate in their oil, plastic stock
like a toy until snapped onto the rest,
pressed against the shoulder of the corporal
with almost white blond hair. He looks around
for something to sight in on. With a grin
the other, darker one points to three
children dawdling to school along a paddy dike.
The first rounds are high and the gunner adjusts,
fires again, the children running now,
the rounds pluming in the wet paddies,
another click and all but one child has made
the safety of the treeline, the other splashing
into the new rice, and as the gunner sights in
on him, this eight year old, with wisdom perhaps
from the dead, yanks off his red shirt, becomes
the same color as the fields, the gunner lowering
the muzzle now, whispering a wistful, damn.

From: https://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2010/sep/22/poetry-two-boys-doug-anderson/#

Date: 1994

By: Doug Anderson (1943- )

Dusting by Marilyn Nelson

Thank you for these tiny
particles of ocean salt,
pearl-necklace viruses,
winged protozoans:
for the infinite,
intricate shapes
of submicroscopic
living things.

For algae spores
and fungus spores,
bonded by vital
mutual genetic cooperation,
spreading their
inseparable lives
from equator to pole.

My hand, my arm,
make sweeping circles.
Dust climbs the ladder of light.
For this infernal, endless chore,
for these eternal seeds of rain:
Thank you. For dust.

From: https://www.ct.gov/cct/cwp/view.asp?a=2162&q=275616

Date: 1994

By: Marilyn Nelson (1946- )

Perth by Ee Tiang Hong

The city has no centre, focal landmark,
no Place de la Concorde, Padang Merdeka, Tien An Men,
no particular square, terrace, public park.

On important days citizens do not converge,
as elsewhere, for a common purpose — they feel
no urge to (there’s no compulsion);

would rather windsurf, sprawl on beach, go bush,
or some place else, even overseas (if it’s
not too far, not too expensive).

Alternatively, might as well stay home,
weed, mow the lawn, try a new recipe, barbecue,
lounge, have a beer, watch tv (Love you Perth).

Of course. Or else. Yet sometimes,
for a while, I’d rather be away
from family, neighbours, visiting friends;

be all alone, to daydream, diverge, de-centred,
but no looking back to brood, and not too far ahead,
just the opposite foreshore, Bassendean.

And the Swan, quiet, deathly pale at evening.

From: http://www.softblow.org/eetianghong.html

Date: 1994

By: Ee Tiang Hong (1933-1990)

Noonday Game, South Africa by Ralph Nixon Currey

Once it was buffalos,
Rhinos and hippos
By whom this noonday
Game was played;
Now it’s the cars of human beings
That nose each other
Out of the shade.

From: Currey, R.N., Collected Poems, 2001, David Philip & James Currey: Oxford & Cape Town, p. 19.
(https://books.google.com.au/books?id=vkivkL-OohwC)

Date: 1994

By: Ralph Nixon Currey (1907-2001)

At Last It’s Come by Sulpicia

At last it’s come, and to be said to hide this kind of love
would shame me more than rumors that I’d laid it bare.
Won over by the pleading of my Muse, Cytherea
delivered him to me. She placed him in my arms.
Venus has fulfilled what she promised: Let my joys be told
by one who is said to have no joy of her own.
I would hate to keep what I’ve written under seal where none
could read me sooner than my lover, for pleasure
Likes a little infamy; discretion is nothing but a tedious pose.
Let it be known I have found a fitting partner.

From: Rayor, Diane J. and Batstone, William W. (eds.), Latin Lyric and Elegaic Poetry: An Anthology of New Translations, 1995, Routledge: New York, p. 84.

Date: 1^st century BCE (original in Latin); 1994 (translation in English)

By: Sulpicia (1^st century BCE)

Translated by: Mary Maxwell (19??- )

Bastille by Pierre Martory

You let your shirt hang down
putting on airs of cuffs
at the edge of ending night
like the end of a java with double ritournelles
or the way the canaries in the cage of still-closed mornings
were singing that it mattered little
to them that their windows were open
the stones the paving stones the door-frames the armatures
the window-frames the sheets of the bed clothes in their colors
were beating the dawn along with us
better drums than your belly
better drumsticks than my fingers
and the trees and the roofs the river and its bridges
the clear distances of the city the factories without smoke
bathed as at their birth stammered
a trial hello
that only ended however
in this word round as a doubloon
placed on the edge of that day
by a considerate friend
the sun on your arms naked against my cheeks
hello I said to you
the day of quatorz’juillet.

From: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/detail/41039

Date: 1994 (original in French); 2000 (translation in English)

By: Pierre Martory (1920-1998)

Translated by: John Ashbery (1927- )