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.

"A youth in apparel that glittered" - Stephen Crane

A youth in apparel that glittered

Went to walk in a grim forest.

There he met an assassin

Attired all in garb of old days;

He, scowling through the thickets,

And dagger poised quivering,

Rushed upon the youth.

"Sir," said this latter,

"I am enchanted, believe me,

To die, thus,

In this medieval fashion,

According to the best legends;

Ah, what joy!"

Then took he the wound, smiling,

And died, content.

Action - Gösta Ågren

Every victory concludes

itself.  What remains is the way,

the same way again.  It is

possible to learn

knowledge, to conceal that

wild, nameless bird

beneath a name.  It is easy

to realise one's dreams

if one sacrifices them. And

the years, the years go by.  Yet

you must act now.

More profound than all that you do

is all that you are.  The most profound

is all that you must do

in order to be able to remain

who you are.

Grab Ass - C.L. Bledsoe

I wonder if you're dead and buried in a short

coffin, beef-jerky muscles wasted on meth

and misanthropy, daddy's money long spent.

Was the aroma of Ben Gay and rot in the air

while all the ex-footballers cum used car

salesmen wept quietly in their hand-

kerchiefs thinking about the glory days? I wonder

if your cheerleader wife stayed when you lost

your hair. When you got inside her, was there

anything there? Did you even win your blond

medal? What a waste you were. Timmy,

you hated me because I saw through you

to the void where your soul should've been,

and I knew, no matter how fast you ran,

you'd never outpace it. But all I had to do was wait

to get past you. Timmy, I hated you because you ruled

the world from the inside, because you always won

even when you needed to learn how to lose.

Brinkwomanship - Leontia Flynn

When they come for you no bigger than a piece of fruit,

weighing no more and no less than a water biscuit,

this will be my excuse:

that I hoped you were just testing yourself

as I might subtly and irresistibly

poke at a sensitive tooth. That is, not morbidly,

but out of a curiosity

to locate the exact, minute, sensory transition -- between

merely knowing the definition

of pain, and knowing the meaning.

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.