Technique whittled to a spear prongs earth
as tabby night filters a soaped waterfall of recollected words
jammed in a shoe, prudently
It passes on a cloud
and can’t fit in the photo
that dissolves trusty leaves
that feather bright and soft, as if a picture’s jarred time
where unlit books ramble into dream, sleep’s pillion
levering The Anthology of Fireside Chats
away from the grate with an heirloom poker
or more exactly, some crimp heater sloughed by the street
Fill the chute’s leftovers, a mug’s trail of relenting principles
wired to ankle, currency lass in a jumper times the curfew
a ball of discomfort on a vintage beanbag
while daffodils recite – preamble: body-as-quest
tougher than a table of elements in pin-drop pause
Adjust the sigh track near a convocation of analysts
A remix swims over a screen
Talk: plastic
From: Ryan, Gig, ‘Post It’ in Cordite Poetry Review, 48.0: Constraint, 20 December 2020, p. [unnumbered].
(https://webarchive.nla.gov.au/awa/20141220030158/http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/14234/20141220-0000/cordite.org.au/poetry/constraint/post-it/index.html)
Date: 2014
by: Gig (Elizabeth Anne Martina) Ryan (1956- )
Post It by Gig (Elizabeth Anne Martina) Ryan
The Lovers by Timothy Liu
I was always afraid
of what might get
revealed in a psychic’s
spread—
Forgive me
for not knowing
how we were
every card in the deck.
From: https://www.rattle.com/the-lovers-by-timothy-liu/
Date: 2014
By: Timothy Liu (1965- )
My Soul by Omar al-Jaffal
My soul is a desert and my days are sands
And those thirsty Bedouins are my dreams
Last night
I rinsed my mind with geniality
And dyed my heart with departure
I left my fingers and took my bag.
From: https://www.middleeasteye.net/fr/node/59698
Date: 2014 (original in Arabic); 2017 (translation in English)
By: Omar al-Jaffal (1988- )
Translated by: Eman Shaban Morsi (19??- )
America, I Sing Back by Allison Adelle Hedge Coke
for Phil Young, my father, Robert Hedge Coke, Whitman, and Hughes
America, I sing back. Sing back what sung you in.
Sing back the moment you cherished breath.
Sing you home into yourself and back to reason.
Oh, before America began to sing, I sung her to sleep,
held her cradleboard, wept her into day.
My song gave her creation, prepared her delivery,
held her severed cord beautifully beaded.
My song helped her stand, held her hand for first steps,
nourished her very being, fed her, placed her three sisters strong.
My song comforted her as she battled my reason
broke my long held footing sure, as any child might do.
Lo, as she pushed herself away, forced me to remove myself,
as I cried this country, my song grew roses in each tear’s fall.
My blood veined rivers, painted pipestone quarries
circled canyons, while she made herself maiden fine.
Oh, but here I am, here I am, here, I remain high on each and every peak,
carefully rumbling her great underbelly, prepared to pour forth singing—
and sing again I will, as I have always done.
Never silenced unless in the company of strangers, singing
the stoic face, polite repose, polite, while dancing deep inside, polite
Mother of her world. Sister of myself.
When my song sings aloud again. When I call her back to cradle.
Call her to peer into waters, to behold herself in dark and light,
day and night, call her to sing along, call her to mature, to envision—
Then, she will make herself over. My song will make it so
When she grows far past her self-considered purpose,
I will sing her back, sing her back. I will sing. Oh, I will—I do.
America, I sing back. Sing back what sung you in.
Date: 2014
By: Allison Adelle Hedge Coke (1958- )
Mortality by Philip Hammial
When mother died
a man with a cloud took me for a beast.
When father died
I stood in a hole & spoke to a crowd.
When brother died
I had to get in behind the next one down.
When sister died
health was so sick you couldn’t buy money.
When I die
human shame will lose a friend.
From: http://www.softblow.org/philiphammial.html
Date: 2014
By: Philip Hammial (1976- )
Unification by Alexander Scalfano
I want to build a house
where only an ant can find me
ants have nothing
but pragmatic
hivemindy things to say:
more tunnels more soil
go in every direction
dead is everywhere
we are ant for we are many
hard water in the ground
carry the drink
prince of wings
queen of child
doors stairs skylights
I am nothing
use my body as a bridge.
From: http://www.jellyfishmagazine.org/9.0/scalfano.html
Date: 2014
By: Alexander Scalfano (19??- )
Big Weather by Jon Thompson
Low hum or high winds,
hard to say. Outsideness
looks cinematic, the world
putting on airs
with winter-stripped trees,
gospel-swaying back & forth
outside old-fashioned paned glass.
Winter-sharp branches
wave wildly, sough
a song not their own.
Wrens try out a call &
response in the
emptiness between
boughs then
wing away. What
is the weather?
It’s mainly a feeling,
a set of feelings, that
defines a day. A happening
that causes panic;
a happening instead of panic.
In the place of clouds,
an exilic grey mass is moving
eastward, pushing light out of the way.
There’s a travelling in the air,
an ideation & dispossession
that’s premonitory, a sense
of something coming, something
you have not agreed to. A quietness.
A waiting for catastrophe.
Or a waiting that does without it.
From: https://fortnightlyreview.co.uk/2014/05/jon-thompson-poems/
Date: 2014
By: Jon Thompson (19??- )
And This Is the Ballad of My Life by Abraham (Avrom) Sutzkever
And this is the ballad of my life: dipping bread
in salt at a banquet for my unseen guests from afar.
And when they are hailed on by clod of earth after clod of earth,
to meet them between long tree-lined streets once more.
And this is the ballad of my life: that I mumble
strange syllables before the people of silence.
And they, the unseen and heirs of the mists,
fill my living anxiety and contemplations.
And this is the ballad of my life: to be a witness that those
who lashed me with thongs just a moment ago and set
children on fire and cremated them with their grandfathers,
these same people should send off a swarm of diamonds.
A day at the conclusion of days approaches through tears,
the way a blooming cherry tree approaches at the end of night.
And this is the ballad of my life: to hear my critic–
the roaring oracular voice of forever.
Date: 1977 (original in Yiddish) 2014 (translation in English)
By: Abraham (Avrom) Sutzkever (1913-2010)
Translated by: Maia Evrona (19??- )
Guenivere in Prison by Theodora Goss
She clasped her hands, and she unclasped her hands.
She stood up, and she sat back down again.
She sighed and pushed back copper-colored strands
of hair, and sighed and listened to the rain.
The windows were barred; she stood and looked outside
between the bars, and saw the wet gray walls,
and wateched a lone bedraggled pigeon stride
the battlements, and trickling waterfalls
form from the turrets. The banners hung soaked and limp.
She set her white hands on the windowsill
and left them until they were cold and damp.
She closed her eyes. And then that pigeon stole,
boldly, while she snatched a somewhat rest,
two strands to make a copper-colored nest.
From: Goss, Theodora, Songs for Ophelia, 2020, Mythic Delirium Books: Roanoke, Virginia, p. [unnumbered].
(https://books.google.com.au/books?id=DA_cDwAAQBA)
Date: 2014
By: Theodora Goss (1968- )
