Bodies, Flowerbeds: A Villanelle by Viola Allo

The earth, carved up, engraved with bodies,
this hollow vision of death: people resting
together, bodies beneath a bed of flowers.

We soften death into poems and stories.
The art of writing is just a way of wailing
for the earth, carved up, sculpted by bodies.

In Cameroon, hair from the dead is carried,
mixed with cam wood and kept; the living
remember bodies beneath beds of flowers.

What we seek through our endless studies
sits beyond death, but the path to it is sinking
into a carved-up earth, paved with bodies.

The sharp shovel of silence briefly remedies
the ear deaf to the voices of the dead, linking
it to slender-petaled tongues in a flowerbed.

A poem or a story is an etching of memories,
dignity in the fragile face of loss. Soothing
the earth, carved up, engraved with bodies,
we hum together beside a bed of flowers.

From: https://winningwriters.com/past-winning-entries/bodies-flowerbeds-a-villanelle

Date: 2014

By: Viola Allo (19??- )

Advertisements

My Brother My Wound by Natalie Diaz

He was calling in the bulls from the street.
They came like a dark river —
a blur of chest and hoof —
everything moving, under, splinter — hooked
their horns through the walls. Light hummed
the holes like yellow jackets. My mouth
was a nest torn empty.

Then, he was at the table.
Then, in the pig’s jaws —
he was not hungry. He was stop.
He was bad apple. He was choking.

So I punched my fists against his stomach.
Mars flew out
and broke open or bloomed —
how many small red eyes shut in that husk?

He said, Look. Look. And they did.

He said, Lift up your shirt. And I did.

He slid his fork beneath my ribs —
Yes, he sang. A Jesus side wound.
It wouldn’t stop bleeding.
He reached inside
and turned on the lamp —

I never knew I was also a lamp — until the light
fell out of me, dripped down my thigh, flew up in me,
caught in my throat like a canary.
Canaries really means dogs, he said.

He put on his shoes.
You started this with your mouth, he pointed.
Where are you going? I asked.
To ride the Ferris wheel, he answered,
and climbed inside me like a window.

From: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/56832/my-brother-my-wound

Date: 2014

By: Natalie Diaz (19??- )

When Giving is All We Have by Alberto Rios

One river gives
Its journey to the next.

We give because someone gave to us.
We give because nobody gave to us.

We give because giving has changed us.
We give because giving could have changed us.

We have been better for it,
We have been wounded by it—

Giving has many faces: It is loud and quiet,
Big, though small, diamond in wood-nails.

Its story is old, the plot worn and the pages too,
But we read this book, anyway, over and again:

Giving is, first and every time, hand to hand,
Mine to yours, yours to mine.

You gave me blue and I gave you yellow.
Together we are simple green. You gave me

What you did not have, and I gave you
What I had to give—together, we made

Something greater from the difference.

From: https://poets.org/poem/when-giving-all-we-have

Date: 2014

By: Alberto Rios (1952- )

You Turned Sixty by Candace Calsoyas

It might be 60,000 meals you’ve eaten, 60 years times 1000.
What would a garbage compacter do with all that
Would it be a pound of ash or decomposed peat, could it make oil, all that deadness that went into you to become only more dead

What did it make? Energy, laughter, struggle and kindness
(Along with many hours in the Loo)
What kind of plant did it grow, what kind of animal did it make?

A person who writes poetry but doesn’t like to read it—
Because then it all becomes the same, words

A person who likes to sing, preferably out of tune
Because that comes naturally

A person who likes to paint to see how internal brush strokes
inscribed in secret, walled chambers
Fly into thin air
To appear as color and line

A person who goes to non-western countries
To feel relief at not being rich

But whose likes are these, these ones at 60?
Not much of your mother’s or father’s
not much of former lovers, husband, or mother-in-law.
Whose likes are these?

These likes are yours and
Have brought you to sixty.
To another like: Witnessing
beauty and bounty in your eating
Before all becomes a very small mound of ash.

From: http://phren-z.org/Winter2014/candace_calsoyas.html

Date: 2014

By: Candace Calsoyas (19??- )

A Moral Lesson About a Woman, Beautiful in Front and Frightful at the Back by Michel Beheim

Once I began happily to ride
early one morn.
It was May-time.
I came upon a green meadow.
With lilies, violets and roses
was it adorned in blissful bloom,
with flowers—even meadow-saffron.
I heard the song of many a bold bird:
mellifluously I heard sing
crested larks, larks, thrush and Dame Nightingale.
My youthful heart was bursting with joy
as I perceived the rich echo
of their sweet musical tones,
resounding so joyously.
I also saw flowers spring up:
yellow, red, blue and white.
On this green heather
I encountered an extremely beautiful woman.
I swear:
never on earth
had I seen such a blissful figure.
She was the fulfillment of every wish.
Going onto the field,
she plucked blossoms and roses.
Her glorious body was assiduously formed
like that of an angel.
Her hair was as golden as silk; her eyes were brown.
Her complexion gave off a soft gleam.
She had two, fair little cheeks,
rose red and lily white.
Her mouth cast fire like a ruby,
and her face was beautifully shaped.
Her beauty I must praise,
On her head she bore a wreath
made from seven flowers.
Her heart was fancy-free and rich in joy.
This beautiful woman greeted me,
whereupon my heart grew excessively gay.
With soft, sweet words,
she addressed me chastely.
I dismounted near this lovely woman
and bade her sit next to me.
Refined in manner, I proclaimed that I wished to become her servant.
My heart
was inflamed in love for her.
I imagined that she would be my bliss.
I spoke with clever and genteel words
until I had consummated my love with this fine lady.
I had so much pleasure with her!
No woman was ever as compliant as she to me.
Then night fell
and it was time for us to part.
She said: “I cannot abide any longer.
I must leave this heather.”
Thereupon we parted.
My joy and delight became great dismay.
I departed from my beloved.
She then turned around, revealing a wretched aspect.
The rear part of her body contained foul rottenness.
There I saw burrowing maggots
filthy worm-maws,
dead, putrefying flesh and pus-filled tissue.
Nothing ever smelled as bad.
I saw my fill of toads, adders, snakes
and impure serpents
hanging from her back.
Can you guess who this woman is?
I identify her as the world.
The wreath that she bore upon her head,
composed of seven flowers:
these blooms betoken the seven capital sins.
With these the world is garlanded beyond all measure;
shamelessly they gild the world.
The world is outwardly pleasing and refulgent, but inside hollow—
its beauty underpinned by vileness.
Whoever places trust in the world is deluded.
Its glories are fleeting and will be mocked.
O mankind, keep God forever before your eyes
and think, where your journey will end!

From: McDonald, William C., The World as Woman: Two Late Medieval Song-Poems on Frau Welt by Michel Beheim in Modern Philology, Vol. 114, No. 4 (May 2014), pp. 639-640.
(https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/674818)

Date: 1457 (original in German); 2014 (translation in English)

By: Michel Beheim (1416-c1472)

Translated by: William C. McDonald (19??- )

On Finding Julia, He Greeted Her Thus by Bálint Balassi

(Sung to the Turkish tune “Gerekmez bu Dünya sensuz”)

All the world to me is nothing
If I have thee not, my dearling,
Loveliness with lover meeting;
Health be to thy soul, my sweeting!

Joy thou art to my heart’s sadness,
Blessings of a heavenly witness,
Balm of soul’s desirous madness,
All God’s peace and all its gladness.

Precious fortress, fastness dearest,
Crimson rose of perfume rarest,
Violet daintiest and fairest,
Long be the life thou, Julia, bearest!

As a sunrise thine eyes’ dawning
Under coal-black brows a-burning
Fell upon mine own eyes’ yearning,
Thine, whose life is my life’s morning.

With thy love my heart’s afire,
Thou, the princess of my prayer,
Heart and soul and love entire,
Hail, my soul’s one last desire!

Finding Julia I, enchanted,
Greeted her as here presented,
Bowed in reverence unwonted,
But a smile was all she granted.

From: Ozsváth, Zsuzsanna and Turner, Frederick, Light Within the Shade: 800 Years of Hungarian Poetry, 2014, Syracuse University Press: Syracuse, New York, p. 9.
(https://books.google.com.au/books?id=l23iAwAAQBAJ)

Date: 1588-1589 (original in Hungarian); 2014 (translation in English)

By: Bálint Balassi (1554-1594)

Translated by: Zsuzsanna Ozsváth (1931- ) and Frederick Turner (1943- )

Bitter, As I Know Too Well… by Kata Szidónia Petrőczy

Bitter, as I know too well, was my beginning;
Bitter was the orphaned course of my upbringing;
Bitter, sad, would be the time of my wing-taking;
Bitter till I die my heart will go on aching.
Since my heart with sadness as in smoke is smothered,
I, as if a thing, to fate and chance being tethered,
To a cruelty self-renewing and unwithered;
Pain burns on in me, unlucky and unmothered.

From: Ozsváth, Zsuzsanna and Turner, Frederick (eds. and transls.), Light Within the Shade: Eight Hundred Years of Hungarian Poetry, 2014, Syracuse University Press: Syracuse, New York, p. 14.
(https://books.google.com.au/books?id=l23iAwAAQBAJ)

Date: 1681-1683 (original in Hungarian); 2014 (translation in English)

By: Kata Szidónia Petrőczy (1662-1708)

Translated by: Zsuzsanna Ozsváth (1931- ) and Frederick Turner (1943- )

I Must Be A God by Gregory Fraser

just look how the whole Atlantic sprays my feet with kisses
a god
or a matador at least
sidestepping month after month
charges of the two-horned moon

I might have been one of those unfortunates forced
to live below a sky without color or cloud
under a flaming cipher

or one of the innocents torn from their beds like crabmeat from shells

Something always clued me though
when to hide or run
and you see
I had the patience of a cathedral step

Were I a pebble I would disturb your window
sleep
bearing words of apologetic longing

I am not

Were I mud clinging to a bank afraid of drowning
I would cry out for chivalrous compassion

No
I must be a god

A nameless weight kin to love loss slows the blood of many

but look at the overjoy of thrashers
my state birds
rushing toward me

Even in my absence they hurtle toward the big bay
windows of my twice
mortgaged temple

and leave as offerings head feathers stuck to the glass!

From: http://32poems.com/poem/gregory-fraser/

Date: 2014

By: Gregory Fraser (19??- )

If I’m Early by Hugo (Hugh Anthony Mordaunt Vyner) Williams

Every other day I follow the route
of the Midland Railway
to where it cuts through
St. Pancras Old Church Cemetery.
I might go into the church
and heave a sigh or two
before continuing via a gate
set in the cemetery wall
to the Mary Rankin Wing
of St. Pancras Hospital.

As a young man, Thomas Hardy
supervised the removal of bodies
from part of the cemetery
to make way for the trains.
He placed the headstones
round an ash tree sapling,
now grown tall, where I stop sometimes
to look at the stones
crowding around the old tree
like children listening to a story.

From: https://www.tweetspeakpoetry.com/2015/01/20/poets-poems-hugo-williams-knew-bride/

Date: 2014

By: Hugo (Hugh Anthony Mordaunt Vyner) Williams (1942- )

What Are They Doing in the Next Room by Bruce Smith

Are they unmaking everything?
Are they tuning the world sitar?
Are they taking an ice pick to being?
Are they enduring freedom in Kandahar?

Sounds, at this distance, like field hollers,
sounds like they’ll be needing CPR.
Sounds like the old complaint of love and dollars.
Sounds like when Coltrane met Ravi Shankar

and the raga met the rag and hearing
became different and you needed CPR
after listening and tearing was tearing
and love was a binary star—

distant bodies eclipsing each other
with versions of gravity and light.
Sounds like someone’s trying to smother
the other—a homicide or a wedding night.

The television derives the half-full hours.
Time exists as mostly what’s to come.
Losing also is ours…
I meant that as a question.

Is I the insomniac’s question?
Are you a dendrite or a dream?
Between oblivion and affection,
which one is fear and which protection?

Are they transitive or in?
Are they process or product?
Are they peeling off the skin?
Are they Paris or the abducted?

They’re reading something after Joyce,
post modern stuff that can be read
but not understood except as voices
rising and falling from the dead.

Do they invent me
as I invent their faces?
I see surveillance gray wasted
with bliss at having thieved identities.

In the AM, when tú turns to usted,
the sun clocks in to overwrite the night
with hues and saturations and the red
hesitates for a second to be incarnate.

From: https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/what-are-they-doing-next-room

Date: 2014

By: Bruce Smith (1946- )