What You Left Out by Laura Scott

The first time I heard it, its notes went through me
like milk through water, clouding into my bones
so I knew the end before it had even begun.

I sat and listened as you told me the story of the old man
and his three daughters, how he loved them all
but only one of them was good—the one who asked

for a rose instead of a dress, who talked of salt
instead of gold, who stood still and said nothing
while her sisters ran up and down flights of words.

And as the story drew itself around me, I saw her
sitting at a table, dragging her nail across the yolk,
rucking its film up into creases until it split

and the yellow pumped out into the white: that’s when
it all went wrong, the beast threw back his head
and roared until the leaves shook on the trees,

the meat wouldn’t cure and the fish started to rot
as soon as they left the sea, the kingdom split
into a thousand pieces and blew back into the old man’s eyes

like sand. And I waited for you to tell me about the mother—
how she loved this daughter best of all, how she stroked her hair
when she carried her back to the house at the end of the day.

From: https://www.therialto.co.uk/pages/2015/11/04/what-you-left-out/

Date: 2014

By: Laura Scott (19??- )

Vigil by Lisa Hilton

Sweetly, tell it sweetly. When the inner tides stir me,
I spend the first minutes memorizing the lover,
her chest in waves, her cheeks, edgeless. The precipice

of the balcony from which my feet hang over
the clematis vines, these nocturnal devotions.
Coming toward me, a prologue, a flying orchestra

of spring birds gathering on the banks of the creek.
To what are they praying? To what do they give such praise?
The landscape will change soon, filled with gold

light. When the inner tides stir me, the first minutes
are turmoil, memorizing the lover, being inarched
to night. What the birds tell me, they tell sweetly:

I am the hull of a boat, washed up to an island shore,
looking sideways at what is vertical in the landscape:
the dawn breaking in the space between trees.

From: https://www.thrushpoetryjournal.com/november-2014-lisa-hiton.html

Date: 2014

By: Lisa Hilton (1974- )

Pomegranate by Diane Gage

Every day on my walk I would touch
a pomegranate tree, think of Persephone
and Demeter and my own mother,
her mournful fondness for my girlhood.
Was my sunny husband, like Persephone’s,
a dark Lord? Not in manner, perhaps, but

in secrets held and guarded. And in my choice,
however natural, Demeter’s betrayal.
How I love the smooth burgundy leather
of a pomegranate! And the long slow work
of consuming its bright blood-red seeds.
How refuse such an offer, whatever the cost?

It’s been a long time since my life
was close to my mother’s. She died,
my husband and I divorced, someone
chopped down the pomegranate tree.
For years I have walked past the bare spot,
but this soft spring morning I saw shoots

with small leaves, new signs of life.
We’ve had a winter of remarkable rains.
I thought I had moved beyond that old story
but my daily rounds brought me back
to the place where its mystery emerges
trembling, again, on the brink of breath.

From: https://silverbirchpress.wordpress.com/2014/10/11/pomegranate-poem-by-diane-gage-mythic-poetry-series/

Date: 2014

By: Diane Gage (19??- )

Song for An Asian American Radical: Yuri Kochiyama by David Mura

I open the door
and there she stands hectoring me

about Malcolm X.
Says impatiently there’s no time

for sumiye or sake,
exigencies of meter, rhyme.

She’s so tiny, I’m so
unknowing, the fractions enormous,

all those years of fires
in Philly, Detroit, Oakland, Harlem, Watts.

Behind her the night
stalks its stars beyond history

and I know if I shut
this door each time she vanishes farther

till nothing remains
but silence and sleep.

Reader you may think
in the end I’ll let her in.  Don’t

count on it.  That’s
why she keeps knocking

night after night.

From: https://apogeejournal.org/2014/06/24/david-mura-on-the-last-incantations/

Date: 2014

By: David Mura (1952- )

In a Foreign Country by Jules Supervielle

Have these faces come from my memory
and have these gestures touched earth, or sky?
Is this man alive as he seems to believe
with his voice, and this smoke on his lips?
Chairs, tables, unfeeling wood, you I can touch
in this snowy country whose language I do not know.
Stove, with your warmth whispering to my hands,
who is this man before you who resembles me
even in my past, knowing what I think,
touching when I touch you and filling my silence,
who then rises, opens the door, and disappears,
leaving this emptiness behind where I have no place.

From: https://fortnightlyreview.co.uk/2014/11/supervielle/

Date: 192? (original in French); 2014 (translation in English)

By: Jules Supervielle (1884-1960)

Translated by: Ian Seed (19??- )

Untitled by James Baldwin

Lord,
when you send the rain,
think about it, please,
a little?

Do
not get carried away
by the sound of falling water,
the marvelous light
on the falling water.

I
am beneath that water.
It falls with great force
and the light

Blinds
me to the light.

From: https://kenanmalik.com/2017/01/19/let-america-be-america-again/

Date: 2014 (published)

By: James Baldwin (1924-1987)

Scrutiny and resistentialism# at a supermarket in the west hills of Portland by Talal Gedeon

Under scalpel white light
every skin transluces
like esca-lit# anglerfish skin
in the stygian# sea and
it’s anybody’s surgery#
at the Market of Choice.

No luscious forefathers#
in this land of bacon thick and thin
and shining cereal dispensers
and packaged everything.

In this land of the beef-witted,
of hawks and zafties#
and California widows,#
the juiciest bits# are
wrapped in cellophane.

And tonight,
while rope-bound asparaguses gleam,
a lone old lady
extends a veiny little hand,
cops a stern feel
of organic avocadoes,
and whispers her valuations.

#Resistentialism: the seemingly spiteful countenance of inanimate objects.

#Esca: the fleshy appendage that protrudes from the forehead of anglerfish. The esca acts as a lure, and in the case of anglerfish from the bathypelagic zone, often emits light.

#Stygian: dark and/or relating to the river Styx.

#Surgery: a time for seeing inside of things, evaluating, and deciding what is needed and what is not.

#Luscious forefathers: such as Walt Whitman, Garcia Lorca, Allen Ginsberg, & Co. (cf. A Supermarket in California, by Allen Ginsberg).

#Zafty: a person very easily imposed upon.

#California-widow: a woman whose husband is away from her for some time.

#Juicy bits: such as—Luke’s Honeyed Ham With Water Added, Red’s Prime Roast Beef, Oregon Jack’s Bleu D’Auvergne, Hardy Harry’s Medium Raclette, Francine’s Natural Chicken & Turkey Breasts, et cetera, et cetera!

From: http://oregonpoeticvoices.org/poet/484/

Date: 2014

By: Talal Gedeon (19??- )

Francesca Says More by Olena Kalytiak Davis

that maiden thump was book on floor, but
does it really matter who kissed who
first or then who decided to go further?
lower? faster? naturally, we took
turns on top. now here, now there, and up
and down…once it started no one even thought to think to stop.
so, we have holes inside our souls,
but mustn’t we begin by filling others’?
god gave us lips and hands and parts
that cannot possibly be saved for prayer. nor by.
i will not name name, claim fame by how well
or who i fucked or why, it happens all the time.
and it’s you, white pilgrim, whom next galehot seeks.
fuck. we didn’t read again for weeks.

From: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/12/08/you-and-me-both

Date: 2014

By: Olena Kalytiak Davis (1963- )

Saint’s Day Triolet: Saint Valentine by Deborah Paredez

You’re flush with hearts and I’m forced to fold
this hand and swear off another luckless match.
How we’ve found ways to love each other, cajoled
our cindered hearts, flushed and forced to fold
upon themselves like Saint Valentine ensouled
with seizure, skin a whirring bee swarm, a hatched
flush of doves. My heart, how I’m forced to fold
my hands in prayer for another struck match.

From: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/56997/saints-day-triolet-saint-valentine

Date: 2014

By: Deborah Paredez (1970- )

What On Earth!? by Π. O (Peter Oustabasidis)

Every S is a P.
This S is not a P. S must be a P.
S is not a P. (If something exists it must be
a Tree). A Tree is a Tree.
Either its a Tree, or its not a Tree.
It can’t ‘be’, and ‘not-be’.
Hot things grow — cold things don’t —
Wet things drain off; and the Earth
gets drunk. If it rains tomorrow: P, i will wear
a raincoat (Q) ////////////// PPPPPPPPP//////////////: Q!
Someone sees smoke, and shouts ‘Fire!’.
Shoes, ships, cabbages, and Gaia.
‘therefore’, and ‘in as much as’ i speak
the Truth, the cloud (on the horizon)
looks like ‘cotton wool’. A fish, is a fish.
A fin is a fin. Hesperus is Phosphorus.
Phosphorus not Hesperus. Hesperus and Phosphorus.
/// PPPP ///// Q! A possum curls up on a Tree.
Post hoc ergo propter hoc the Sun is
larger than the Earth. A flower is a flower,
a seed is a seed. (Why don’t they
just put down that parrot, and call it quits?!).
How do you do a Rule of Thumb?
The Theory-‘T’, predicts observation ‘O’.
— ‘O’ is observed, therefore ‘T’ is True. (6 to
the power 2); the Earth is hotting up.
Count out the Sums: A is True
because B isn’t. B makes ‘sense’, cos C doesn’.

From: O, Π, “What on Earth!?” in N-Scribe, Volume 9, 2014, p. 16.
(https://arts.darebin.vic.gov.au/-/media/Arts/Files/Programs-and-opportunities/Programs/n-Scribe/n-Scribe-issue-9.ashx)

Date: 2014

By: Π. O (Peter Oustabasidis) (1951- )