Depression, Too, Is a Kind of Fire - Taylor Mali

I’m an idiot because once

before we were married she asked me whether I knew

that we would not be having children

if we did get married, and I said yes.

And because she knew I was lying,

she asked if I was really okay with that.

And because I’m an idiot I said yes again.

And once during a fight, not married

more than two years, she said she felt like my first wife,

and I, like an idiot, assured her that she was.

She worked out at the gym five times a week

and smoked as many packs of ultra lights,

and I’m an idiot because when I asked her why,

She said, Because I hate myself and I want to die.

And I laughed and said something I don’t recall,

something completely and utterly insufficient.

From the roof of our apartment,

I saw 40 or 50 people jump from the towers

on a Tuesday morning—we used to be able to see them to the south,

just as, to the north, we can still see

(and by “we” I guess I mean now just me)

the Empire State Building,

which still steeps me in gratitude

because I’m an idiot—

out of the smoke with arms flailing.

And I swear I saw a perfect swan.

And I was going to write a poem

about how fire is the only thing

that can make a person jump out a window.

And maybe I’m an idiot for thinking I could have saved her—

call me her knight in shattered armor—

could have loved her more,

or told the truth about children.

But depression, too, is a kind of fire.

And I know nothing of either.

LENS - Andrea Gibson

I’ve been practicing gratitude.

I’ve been skipping entire weeks.

Practicing a wider lens. Listening

for the bully’s heartbeat

Hearing it in my own chest.

I’ve been remembering the time I cried

in a cloud of tear gas at a peaceful protest.

How I decided I was too soft to last,

and then I decided to be softer.

I’ve been remembering way way back

to the moment they told me Jesus walked on water.

How I knew whatever I’d grow up to believe

I would never try to wrestle a miracle

away from anyone’s reason to live.

I’ve been remembering how I wrestled a miracle

away from your reason to live.

If only shame could wash me clean,

but that is never how healing works.

Nobody ever won anything from anyone

thinking the whole world was out of their league.

I’m sorry you know

what I look like when no one is looking.

I don’t expect anyone to believe

in justice and forgiveness at the same time.

If it’s any consolation

I feel like a ferris wheel in a snowbank

twenty years after they shut down the park.

If it’s any consolation I’ve been living in my head

whenever anyone tells me I have a good heart.

And I think about you. I think about you. 

Survival Poem #17 - Marty McConnell

because this is what you do. get up.

blame the liquor for the heaviness. call in late

to work. go to the couch because the bed

is too empty. watch people scream about love

on Jerry Springer. count the ways

it could be worse. it could be last week

when the missing got so big

you wrote him a letter

and sent it. it could be yesterday, no work

to go to, whole day looming.

it could be last month

or the month before, when you still

thought maybe. still carried plans

around with you like talismans.

you could have kissed him last night.

could have gone home with him, given in,

cried after, softly, face to the wall, his heavy arm

around you, hand on your stomach, rubbing.

shower. remember your body. water

hotter than you can stand. sit

on the shower floor. the word

devastated ringing the tub. buildings

collapsed into themselves. ribs

caving toward the spine. recite

the strongest poem you know. a spell

against the lonely that gets you

in crowds and on three hours’ sleep.

wonder where the gods are now.

get up. because death is not

an alternative. because this is what you do.

air like soup, move. door, hallway, room.

pants, socks, shoes. sweater. coat. cold.

wish you were a bird. remember you

are not you, now. you are you

a year from now. how does that

woman walk? she is not sick or sad.

doesn’t even remember today.

has been to Europe. what song

is she humming? now. right now.

that’s it.

New World - Louise Glück

As I saw it,

all my mother's life, my father

held her down, like

lead strapped to her ankles.

She was

buoyant by nature;

she wanted to travel,

go to theater, go to museums.

What he wanted

was to lie on the couch

with the Times

over his face,

so that death, when it came,

wouldn't seem a significant change.

In couples like this,

where the agreement

is to do things together,

it's always the active one

who concedes, who gives.

You can't go to museums

with someone who won't

open his eyes.

I thought my father's death

would free my mother.

In a sense, it has:

she takes trips, looks at

great art. But she's floating.

Like some child's balloon

that gets lost the minute

it isn't held.

Or like an astronaut

who somehow loses the ship

and has to drift in space

knowing, however long it lasts,

this is what's left of being alive: she's free

in that sense.

Without relation to earth.

Semi Semi Dash - Jillian Weise

The last time I saw Big Logos he was walking

to the Quantum Physics Store to buy magnets.

He told me his intentions. He was wearing

a jumpsuit with frayed cuffs. I thought the cuffs

got that way from him rubbing them against

his lips but he said they got that way

with age. We had two more blocks to walk.

“Once I do this, what are you going to do?”

he asked. “I wish you wouldn’t do it,” I said.

Big Logos bought the magnets and a crane

delivered them to his house. After he built

the 900-megahertz superconductor, I couldn’t go

to his house anymore because I have all kinds

of metal in my body. I think if you love someone,

you shouldn’t do that, build something like that,

on purpose, right in front of them.

Breakfast - Jacques Prévert (translation by Lawrence Ferlinghetti)

He put the coffee

In the cup

He put the milk

In the cup of coffee

He put the sugar

In the café au lait

With the coffee spoon

He stirred

He drank the café au lait

And he set down the cup

Without a word to me

He lit

A cigarette

He made smoke-rings

With the smoke

He put the ashes

In the ash-tray

Without a word to me

Without a look at me

He got up

He put

His hat upon his head

He put his raincoat on

Because it was raining

And he left

In the rain

Without a word

Without a look at me

And I       I took

My head in my hand

And I cried.

A Simple Story - Gwen Harwood

A visiting conductor

     when I was seventeen,

took me back to his hotel room

     to cover the music scene.

I'd written a composition.

     Would wonders never cease –

here was a real musician

     prepared to hold my piece.

He spread my score on the counterpane

     with classic casualness,

and put one hand on the manuscript

     and the other down my dress.

It was hot as hell in The Windsor.

     I said I'd like a drink.

We talked across gin and grapefruit,

     and I heard the ice go clink

as I gazed at the lofty forehead

     of one who led the band,

and guessed at the hoarded sorrows

     no wife could understand.

I dreamed of a soaring passion

     as an egg might dream of flight,

while he read my crude sonata.

     If he'd said, ‘That bar's not right,’

or, ‘Have you thought of a coda?’

     or, ‘Watch that first repeat,’

or, ‘Modulate to the dominant’

     he'd have had me at his feet.

But he shuffled it all together,

     and said, ‘That's lovely, dear,’

as he put it down on the washstand

     in a way that made it clear

that I was no composer.

     And being young and vain,

removed my lovely body

     from one who'd scorned my brain.

I swept off like Miss Virtue

     down dusty Roma Street,

and heard the goods trains whistle

     WHO? WHOOOOOO? in aching heat.

It's Good To Be Here - Alden Nowlan

I'm in trouble, she said

to him. That was the first

time in history that anyone

had ever spoken of me.

It was 1932 when she

was just fourteen years old

and men like him

worked all day for

one stinking dollar.

There's quinine, she said.

That's bullshit, he told her.

Then she cried and then

for a long time neither of them

said anything at all and then

their voices kept rising until

they were screaming at each other

and then there was another long silence and then

they began to talk very quietly and at last he said

well, I guess we'll just have to make the best of it.

While I lay curled up,

my heart beating,

in the darkness inside her.

Habits - Nikki Giovanni

i haven’t written a poem in so long

i may have forgotten how

unless writing a poem

is like riding a bike

or swimming upstream

or loving you

it may be a habit that once acquired

is never lost

but you say i’m foolish

of course you love me

but being loved of course

is not the same as being loved because

or being loved despite

or being loved

if you love me why

do i feel so lonely

and why do i always wake up alone

and why am i practicing

not having you to love

i never loved you that way

One Art - Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;

so many things seem filled with the intent

to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:

places, and names, and where it was you meant

to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or

next-to-last, of three loved houses went.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,

some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.

I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident

the art of losing’s not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Rainy Morning - Louise Glück

You don't love the world.

If you loved the world you'd have

images in your poems.

John loves the world. He has

a motto: judge not

lest ye be judged. Don't

argue this point

on the theory it isn't possible

to love what one refuses

to know: to refuse

speech is not

to suppress perception.

Look at John, out in the world,

running even on a miserable day

like today. Your

staying dry is like the cat's pathetic

preference for hunting dead birds: completely

consistent with your tame spiritual themes,

autumn, loss, darkness, etc.

We can all write about suffering

with our eyes closed. You should show people

more of yourself; show them your clandestine

passion for red meat.

I Am Not Yours - Sara Teasdale

I am not yours, not lost in you,

Not lost, although I long to be

Lost as a candle lit at noon,

Lost as a snowflake in the sea.

You love me, and I find you still

A spirit beautiful and bright,

Yet I am I, who long to be

Lost as a light is lost in light.

Oh plunge me deep in love -- put out

My senses, leave me deaf and blind,

Swept by the tempest of your love,

A taper in a rushing wind.

I Feel Safe When You Lie - Derrick Brown

In somno securitas.

She slid into bed

easy as a knitting needle

into the spine of a hare.

I threw a bag of chalk into the air

across her body

while she slept.

Little rabbit.

I lit black lights into action

watched the frenzied prints emerge

from her breasts, neck, and thighs,

souvenirs of desire.

I breathed across her tight, sand-tanned stomach.

Chalk dust blew into her nose and she awoke.

I asked her

If the man made love to her with all his might?

Did it feel the same?

Did his beads of sweat fall upon the necklace I worked for?

Did he extend the milky antennae of her legs into the air?

Did you tune in God on the meat hook channel?

She said:

“My dear.

Slow, jealous detective,

Come sleep by me.

These prints are yours

And always yours.

They simply will not wash away.

You have had your head in other people’s hands for so long

you forget what your own touch looked like.”

The faders of twilight approached.

I curled into her with my arms,

dead across her ribs,

feeling the rate of her heartbeat increase

as she wonders if I can feel a lie through her nightgown.

It is a feeling I get

when ice-skating through the rising crackles of sunshine.

In sleep, there is safety.

If You Forget Me - Pablo Neruda

I want you to know

one thing.

You know how this is:

if I look

at the crystal moon, at the red branch

of the slow autumn at my window,

if I touch

near the fire

the impalpable ash

or the wrinkled body of the log,

everything carries me to you,

as if everything that exists,

aromas, light, metals,

were little boats

that sail

toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,

if little by little you stop loving me

I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly

you forget me

do not look for me,

for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,

the wind of banners

that passes through my life,

and you decide

to leave me at the shore

of the heart where I have roots,

remember

that on that day,

at that hour,

I shall lift my arms

and my roots will set off

to seek another land.

But

if each day,

each hour,

you feel that you are destined for me

with implacable sweetness,

if each day a flower

climbs up to your lips to seek me,

ah my love, ah my own,

in me all that fire is repeated,

in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,

my love feeds on your love, beloved,

and as long as you live it will be in your arms

without leaving mine

Escapist's Song - Theodore Spencer

The first woman I loved, he said--

Her skin was satin and gold.

The next woman I loved, he said--

Her skin was satin and gold.

The third woman I loved, he said--

Was made in a different mold.

She was deeper than me, and said so;

She was stronger than me, and said so;

She was wiser than me, and proved it;

I shivered, and grew cold.

The fourth woman I loved, he said--

Her skin was satin and gold.

Void - Louise Glück

I figured out why you won’t buy furniture.

You won’t buy furniture because you’re depressed.

I’ll tell you what’s wrong with you: you’re not

gregarious. You should

look at yourself; the only time you’re totally happy

is when you cut up a chicken.

Why can’t we talk about what I want to talk about?

Why do you always change the subject?

You hurt my feelings. I do not mistake

reiteration for analysis.

You should take one of those chemicals,

maybe you’d write more.

Maybe you have some kind of void syndrome.

You know why you cook? Because

you like control. A person who cooks is a person who likes

to create debt.

Actual people! Actual human beings

sitting on our chairs in our living room!

I’ll tell you what: I’ll learn

bridge.

Don’t think of them as guests, think of them

as extra chickens. You’d like it.

If we had more furniture

you’d have more control.