Juan's Song - By Louise Bogan

When beauty breaks and falls asunder
I feel no grief for it, but wonder.
When love, like a frail shell, lies broken,
I keep no chip of it for token.
I never had a man for friend
Who did not know that love must end.
I never had a girl for lover
Who could discern when love was over.
What the wise doubt, the fool believes--
Who is it, then, that love deceives?

-Louise Bogan

Come to Fade

Sadness can fade into time.
Sadness can fade if you let it.
Sadness can be jealousy.
Sadness can be lost in the light of a clear moon night.
Solace comes in time.
Solace can bloom if you let it.
Solace can be forgetfulness.
Solace comes in the night of a clear moonlight.
Sadness fades.
Solace might come.
Maybe now.

-Matthew Argalas

Lake on the Hill - James Longenbach

Often I walk the dog at night.

Once around the block, maybe twice,

And sometimes we head up to the reservoir.

If it's snowing, I put a little coat on the dog,

Booties if they've salted the street.

Everything you need is up there.

You can see for miles and you've got a lake,

Not large, the water black and still.

Emptiness where the city ends and farmland begins,

Lights of the houses below, and if you're quiet—

Sounds you couldn't actually hear.

Clock ticking on the wall, pipes,

A nightstand with a lamp, a desk, pencils in a cup—

Then it's time for the dog to go home,

Have a biscuit, go to bed.

Sometimes there's a kid with a skateboard,

No cars, they close the gates at dusk.

Not really a lake: it's lined with concrete,

The opposite of an island

But it beckons, as islands do.

I like arriving or leaving.

Thimble, Block, Brigantine—

When I burned my journals some of it caught

Immediately, a brown stain

Spreading from the center of each page.

Some was stubborn: gray scraps

Rising like messages in the air.

Jealousy

Images - Richard Aldington

I

Like a gondola of green scented fruits
Drifting along the dank canals of Venice,
You, O exquisite one,
Have entered into my desolate city.

II

The blue smoke leaps
Like swirling clouds of birds vanishing.
So my love leaps forth toward you,
Vanishes and is renewed.

III

A rose-yellow moon in a pale sky
When the sunset is faint vermilion
In the mist among the tree-boughs
Art thou to me, my beloved.

IV

A young beech tree on the edge of the forest
Stands still in the evening,
Yet shudders through all its leaves in the light air
And seems to fear the stars—
So are you still and so tremble.

V

The red deer are high on the mountain,
They are beyond the last pine trees.
And my desires have run with them.

VI

The flower which the wind has shaken
Is soon filled again with rain;
So does my heart fill slowly with tears,
O Foam-Driver, Wind-of-the-Vineyards,
Until you return.

sorrows

sorrows
by Lucille Clifton

who would believe them winged

who would believe they could be

beautiful    who would believe

they could fall so in love with mortals

that they could attach themselves

as scars attach and ride the skin

sometimes we hear them in our dreams

rattling their skulls    clicking

their bony fingers

they have heard me beseeching

as I whispered into my own

cupped hands   enough    not me again

but who can distinguish

one human voice

amid such choruses

of desire

Psychoanalysis: An Elegy

Psychoanalysis: An Elegy   by Jack Spicer

What are you thinking about? I am thinking of an early summer. I am thinking of wet hills in the rain Pouring water. Shedding it Down empty acres of oak and manzanita Down to the old green brush tangled in the sun, Greasewood, sage, and spring mustard. Or the hot wind coming down from Santa Ana Driving the hills crazy, A fast wind with a bit of dust in it Bruising everything and making the seed sweet. Or down in the city where the peach trees Are awkward as young horses, And there are kites caught on the wires Up above the street lamps, And the storm drains are all choked with dead branches. What are you thinking? I think that I would like to write a poem that is slow as a summer As slow getting started As 4th of July somewhere around the middle of the second stanza After a lot of unusual rain California seems long in the summer. I would like to write a poem as long as California And as slow as a summer. Do you get me, Doctor? It would have to be as slow As the very tip of summer. As slow as the summer seems On a hot day drinking beer outside Riverside Or standing in the middle of a white-hot road Between Bakersfield and Hell Waiting for Santa Claus. What are you thinking now? I’m thinking that she is very much like California. When she is still her dress is like a roadmap. Highways Traveling up and down her skin Long empty highways With the moon chasing jackrabbits across them On hot summer nights. I am thinking that her body could be California And I a rich Eastern tourist Lost somewhere between Hell and Texas Looking at a map of a long, wet, dancing California That I have never seen. Send me some penny picture-postcards, lady, Send them. One of each breast photographed looking Like curious national monuments, One of your body sweeping like a three-lane highway Twenty-seven miles from a night’s lodging In the world’s oldest hotel. What are you thinking? I am thinking of how many times this poem Will be repeated. How many summers Will torture California Until the damned maps burn Until the mad cartographer Falls to the ground and possesses The sweet thick earth from which he has been hiding. What are you thinking now? I am thinking that a poem could go on forever.

Small Talk by Eleanor Lerman

Small Talk
by Eleanor Lerman

It is a mild day in the suburbs
Windy, a little gray. If there is
sunlight, it enters through the
kitchen window and spreads
itself, thin as a napkin, beside
the coffee cup, pie on a plate

What am I describing?
I am describing a dream
in which nobody has died

These are our mothers:
your mother and mine
It is an empty day; everyone
else is gone. Our mothers
are sitting in red chairs
that look like metal hearts
and they are smoking
Your mother is wearing
sandals and a skirt. My
mother is thinking about
dinner. The bread, the meat

Later, there will be
no reason to remember
this, so remember it
now: a safe day. Time
passes into dim history.

And we are their babies
sleeping in the folds of
the wind. Whatever our
chances, these are the
women. Such small talk
before life begins