poem of the week

Poem of the Week, by Carole Satyamurti

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Life on Mir
– Carole Satyamurti  (Note: Mir was the former Russian space station)

       
They took small fish, to observe
the effects of weightlessness in water.

Goldfish, ordinary on earth, were now
miraculous, their glitter precious currency,
their tiny mouths’ O and O a greeting.

So that when they died some men wept,
feeling, as if for the first time,
how grave a life is. Any life at all.

—
For more information on Carole Satyamurti, please click here: http://www.poetrypf.co.uk/carolesatyamurtibiog.html

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Poem of the Week, by Mark Irwin

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Woolworth’s
– Mark Irwin (for Gerald Stern)

Everything stands wondrously multicolored
and at attention in the always Christmas air.
What scent lingers unrecognizably
between that of popcorn, grilled cheese sandwiches,

malted milkballs, and parakeets? Maybe you came here
in winter to buy your daughter a hamster
and were detained by the bin

of Multicolored Thongs, four pair
for a dollar. Maybe you came here to buy
some envelopes, the light blue par avion ones

with airplanes, but caught yourself, lost,
daydreaming, saying it’s too late over the glassy
diorama of cakes and pies. Maybe you came here

to buy a lampshade, the fake crimped
kind, and suddenly you remember
your grandmother, dead

twenty years, floating through the old
house like a curtain. Maybe you’re retired,
on Social Security, and came here for the Roast

Turkey Dinner, or the Liver and Onions,
or just to stare into a black circle
of coffee and to get warm. Or maybe

the big church down the street is closed
now during the day, and you’re homeless and poor,
or you’re rich, or it doesn’t matter what you are

with a little loose change jangling in your pocket,
begging to be spent, because you wandered in
and somewhere between the bin of animal crackers

and the little zoo in the back of the store
you lost something, and because you came here
not to forget, but to remember to live.

—
For more information on Mark Irwin, please click here: http://www.markirwinauthor.com/
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Poem of the Week, by Aria Dominguez

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The Things I Cannot See
– Aria Dominguez

The corner store went up in flames, and he talked about it for weeks.
An armada of fire engines, lights flashing: a two year-old’s dream.
The smoke, the steam, the frozen spray coating
the trees, bushes, and house next door.

Then the shell was demolished, yet more excitement.
Crane, wrecking ball, backhoe, dump trucks,
construction workers directing traffic
in yellow safety vests.

All year, every time we drove by the vacant lot.
he pointed out, There’s where the building burned down!
He wouldn’t let me forget the fire I fear, how easy it could be
to find myself out in the cold watching our life blaze into ashes.

At the end of summer, a construction fence went up
as hard hatted surveyors measured and planned.
One day we passed the site to find it crawling with machines,
excavation of the foundation begun.

Momma! he screamed with what seemed overmuch fervor,
even for diggers in action. He shrieked, Where are the plants?
The plants are gone! Indeed, the neck-high weeds blanketing the property
had been ground up under the metal tracks of the equipment.

I told him the plants were to be replaced with a new building,
thinking he would be excited to watch it go up. But he began to sob,
No, make them put the plants back. I loved those plants.
They were green and had pretty flowers. Put them back!

I tried to explain that they were just weeds. I tired to explain
that many in the neighborhood have no cars
and nowhere else to walk for food. People often say
he is a kid you can explain things to, but there was no explaining this.

All I could do was pull over and hold him as he wept for the death
of flowers sown by the wind, the loss
of green growing for the sake of being green, the emptiness
of the earth left to do what it will.

—
Aria Dominguez is a Minneapolis poet and photographer. For more information on some of her work, please click here for information on the Powderhorn 365 Project: http://www.powderhorn365.com/index.php?/categories/54-Aria-Dominguez
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Poem of the Week, by W.S. Merwin

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Little Horse
– W.S. Merwin

You come from some other forest
do you
little horse
think how long I have known these
deep dead leaves
without meeting you

I belong to no one
I would have wished for you if I had known how
what a long time the place was empty
even in my sleep
and loving it as I did
I could not have told what was missing

what can I show you
I will not ask you if you will stay
or if you will come again
I will not try to hold you
I only hope you will come with me to where I stand
often sleeping and waking
by the patient water
that has no father nor mother

—
For more information on W.S. Merwin, please click here: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/w-s-merwin
—
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Poem of the Week, by Gerard Manley Hopkins

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Spring and Fall: to a Young Child
– Gerard Manley Hopkins

Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow’s springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

—
For more information on Gerard Manley Hopkins, please click here: http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/284
—
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Poem of the Week, by Ece Temelkuran

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Squirrel
– Ece Temelkuran (translated from the Turkish by Deniz Perin)

Truthfully, I ruminated when I came down from the tree.
Had sorrow made me say all these things?
Had someone been with me, they would say at once
that I was ‘deeply wounded.’
I would like to show them
the squirrel that flickers in and out of sight, small as a crumb
but still able to animate the dark forest.

Her soul is surely the picture
of this tranquil elation that quivers and rests inside me.
The squirrel was drawing my path toward the forest.

—
For more information on Ece Temelkuran, please click here.

 

Poem of the Week, by Tony Hoagland

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The Word
– Tony Hoagland

Down near the bottom
of the crossed-out list
of things you have to do today,

between “green thread”
and “broccoli” you find
that you have penciled “sunlight.”

Resting on the page, the word
is as beautiful, it touches you
as if you had a friend

and sunlight were a present
he had sent you from some place distant
as this morning—to cheer you up,

and to remind you that,
among your duties, pleasure
is a thing,

that also needs accomplishing
Do you remember?
that time and light are kinds

of love, and love
is no less practical
than a coffee grinder

or a safe spare tire?
Tomorrow you may be utterly
without a clue

but today you get a telegram,
from the heart in exile
proclaiming that the kingdom

still exists,
the king and queen alive,
still speaking to their children,

—to any one among them
who can find the time,
to sit out in the sun and listen.
—
For more information about Tony Hoagland, please click here:
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Poem of the Week, by Taha Muhammad Ali

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Meeting at an Airport
– Taha Muhammad Ali

You asked me once,
on our way back
from the midmorning
trip to the spring:
“What do you hate,
and who do you love?”

And I answered,
from behind the eyelashes
of my surprise,
my blood rushing
like the shadow
cast by a cloud of starlings:
“I hate departure…
I love the spring
and the path to the spring,
and I worship the middle
hours of morning.”
And you laughed…
and the almond tree blossomed
and the thicket grew loud with nightingales.

…A question
now four decades old:
I salute that question’s answer;
and an answer,
as old as your departure;
I salute that answer’s question…

…And today,
it’s preposterous,
here we are at a friendly airport
by the slimmest of chances,
and we meet.
Ah, Lord!
we meet.
And here you are
asking—again,
it’s absolutely preposterous—
I recognized you
but you didn’t recognize me.
“Is it you?!”
But you wouldn’t believe it.
And suddenly
you burst out and asked:
“If you’re really you,
What do you hate
and who do you love?!”

And I answered—
my blood
fleeing the hall,
rushing in me
like the shadow
cast by a cloud of starlings:
“I hate departure,
and I love the spring,
and the path to the spring,
and I worship the middle
hours of morning.”

And you wept,
and flowers bowed their heads,
and doves in the silk of their sorrow stumbled.

—
For more information on Taha Muhammad Ali, please click here: http://www.poetryinternational.org/piw_cms/cms/cms_module/index.php?obj_id=3181
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Poem of the Week, by Mary Szybist

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Girls Overheard While Assembling a Puzzle
– Mary Szybist

Are you sure this blue is the same as the
blue over there? This wall’s like the
bottom of a pool, its
color I mean. I need a
darker two-piece this summer, the kind with
elastic at the waist so it actually
fits. I can’t
find her hands. Where does this gold
go? It’s like the angel’s giving
her a little piece of honeycomb to eat.
I don’t see why God doesn’t
just come down and
kiss her himself. This is the red of that
lipstick we saw at the
mall. This piece of her
neck could fit into the light part
of the sky. I think this is a
piece of water. What kind of
queen? You mean
right here? And are we supposed to believe
she can suddenly
talk angel? Who thought this stuff
up? I wish I had a
velvet bikini. That flower’s the color of the
veins in my grandmother’s hands. I
wish we could
walk into that garden and pick an
X-ray to float on.
Yeah. I do too. I’d say a
zillion yeses to anyone for that.

—
For more information on Mary Szybist, please click here: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/mary-szybist
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Poem of the Week, by Li-Young Lee

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From Blossoms
– Li-Young Lee

From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

—
For more information on Li-Young Lee, please click here: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/li-young-lee