EXAGGERATION - Scarriet Editors

You must know I’m not usually excitable,

But how long must I be calm and pleasantly glad?

I have read about love. It was sad.

The man paced outside the window. The woman

Covered her arms in folds of crimson and myrtle.

The tradition arrived every night this year.

Every woman attended. This is no exaggeration;

They crowded, they pushed ahead—even the dearest woman.

I affected learning. I thought this decision up in my own mind.

The poetry readings, seminars; failures in oak,

Scratches, graffiti, partly undressed tables, inside and outside the mind.

I affected poetry. It did no good. I was too calm;

I went on in hushed tones about my childhood;

Stood near her by the window, even laughed.

It wouldn’t do to repeat it now, even if I could.

There is a need to exaggerate, even without drama or poems,

To not flag, to make oneself happy; to pretend a woman’s figure

Will make one happy, and this is all a man needs.

Life is dull. We exaggerate. And so it proceeds.

FLIGHT - J.E. Foerster

As a child I tossed

all my imaginary friends

out the window of a fast moving train

because I wanted to feel my fist

break open as I freed them,

as each of their bodies

whipped against the siding,

their insides: snow

dispersing into wind,

their little heads rolling

across the yellow plains.

Because I believed they would return.

But none have since.

Not even the ones I didn’t love.

The More Loving One - W. H. Auden

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well

That, for all they care, I can go to hell,

But on earth indifference is the least

We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn

With a passion for us we could not return?

If equal affection cannot be,

Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am

Of stars that do not give a damn,

I cannot, now I see them, say

I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,

I should learn to look at an empty sky

And feel its total dark sublime,

Though this might take me a little time.

Straw House, Straw Dog - Richard Siken

               1

I watched TV.         I had a Coke at the bar.       I had four dreams in a row

where you were burned, about to burn, or still on fire.

               I watched TV.          I had a Coke at the bar. I had four Cokes,

four dreams in a row.

Here you are in the straw house, feeding the straw dog. Here you are

               in the wrong house, feeding the wrong dog. I had a Coke with ice.

I had four dreams on TV.          You have a cold cold smile.

               You were burned, you were about to burn, you’re still on fire.

Here you are in the straw house, feeding ice to the dog, and you wanted

               an adventure, so I said          Have an adventure.

The straw about to burn, the straw on fire. Here you are on the TV,

               saying Watch me, just watch me.

               2

Four dreams in a row, four dreams in a row, four dreams in a row,

               fall down right there. I wanted to fall down right there but I knew

you wouldn’t catch me because you’re dead.          I swallowed crushed ice

pretending it was glass and you’re dead. Ashes to ashes.

You wanted to be cremated so we cremated you and you wanted an adventure

               so I ran          and I knew you wouldn’t catch me.

You are a fever I am learning to live with, and everything is happening

               at the wrong end of a very long tunnel.

               3

I woke up in the morning and I didn’t want anything, didn’t do anything,

               couldn’t do it anyway,

just lay there listening to the blood rush through me and it never made

               any sense, anything.

And I can’t eat, can’t sleep, can’t sit still or fix things and I wake up and I

wake up and you’re still dead, you’re under the table, you’re still feeding

               the damn dog, you’re cutting the room in half.

Whatever.           Feed him whatever.           Burn the straw house down.

               4

I don’t really blame you for being dead but you can’t have your sweater back.

               So, I said, now that we have our dead, what are we going to do with them?

There’s a black dog and there’s a white dog, depends on which you feed,

               depends on which damn dog you live with.

               5

Here we are

               in the wrong tunnel, burn O burn, but it’s cold, I have clothes

all over my body, and it’s raining, it wasn’t supposed to. And there’s snow

               on the TV, a landscape full of snow, falling from the fire-colored sky.

But thanks, thanks for calling it          the blue sky

               You can sleep now, you said. You can sleep now. You said that.

I had a dream where you said that. Thanks for saying that.

               You weren’t supposed to.

What I Learned from My Mother - Julia Kasdorf

I learned from my mother how to love

the living, to have plenty of vases on hand

in case you have to rush to the hospital

with peonies cut from the lawn, black ants

still stuck to the buds. I learned to save jars

large enough to hold fruit salad for a whole

grieving household, to cube home-canned pears

and peaches, to slice through maroon grape skins

and flick out the sexual seeds with a knife point.

I learned to attend viewings even if I didn’t know

the deceased, to press the moist hands

of the living, to look in their eyes and offer

sympathy, as though I understood loss even then.

I learned that whatever we say means nothing,

what anyone will remember is that we came.

I learned to believe I had the power to ease

awful pains materially like an angel.

Like a doctor, I learned to create

from another’s suffering my own usefulness, and once

you know how to do this, you can never refuse.

To every house you enter, you must offer

healing: a chocolate cake you baked yourself,

the blessing of your voice, your chaste touch.

When a Friend (for Ellis Settle, 1924-93) - Stephen Dobyns

When a friend dies, part

of oneself splits off

and spins into the outer dark.

No use calling it back.

No use saying I miss you.

Part of one's body has been riven.

One recollects gestures,

mostly trivial. The way

he pinched a cigarette,

the way he crouched on a chair.

Now he is less than a living flea.

Where has he gone, this person

whom I loved? He is vapor now;

he is nothing. I remember

talking to him about the world.

What a rich place it became

within our vocabulary. I did not

love it half so much until

he spoke of it, until it was sifted

through the adjectives of our discussion.

And now my friend is dead.

His warm hand has been reversed.

His movements across a room

have been erased. How I wish

he was someplace specific. He

is nowhere. He is absence.

When he spoke of the things

he loved - books, music, pictures,

the articulation of idea -

his body shook as if a wire

within him suddenly surged.

In passion, he filled the room.

Where has he gone, this friend

whom I loved? The way he shaved,

the way he cut his hair, even

the way he squinted when he talked,

when he embraced idea, held it -

all vanished. He has been reduced

to memory. The books he loved,

I see them on my shelves. The words

he spoke still group around me. But

this is chaff. This is the container

now that heart has been scraped out.

He is defunct now. His body is less

than cinders; less than a sentence

after being whispered. He is the zero

from which a man has vanished. He

was the smartest, most vibrant,

like a match suddenly struck, flaring;

now he is sweepings in a roadway.

Where is he gone? He is nowhere.

My friends, I knew a wonderful man,

these words approximate him,

as chips of stone approximate

a tower, as wind approximates a song.

remains - Charles Bukowski

things are good as I am not dead yet

and the rats move in the beercans,

the papersacks shuffle like small dogs,

and her photographs are stuck onto a painting

by a dead German and she too is dead

and it took 14 years to know her

and if they give me another 14

I will know her yet . . .

her photos stuck over the glass

neither move nor speak,

but I even have her voice on tape,

and she speaks some evenings,

her again

so real she laughs

says the thousand things,

the one thing I always ignored;

this will never leave me:

that I had love

and love died;

a photo and a piece of tape

is not much, I have learned late,

but give me 14 days or 14 years,

I will kill any man

who would touch or take

whatever's left.

The Uses of Sorrow - Mary Oliver

(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)

Someone I loved once gave me

a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand

that this, too, was a gift.