When Will I Be Home?
When will I be home? I don’t know.
In the mountains, in the rainy night,
The Autumn lake is flooded.
Someday we will be back together again.
We will sit in the candlelight by the West window.
And I will tell you how I remembered you
Tonight on the stormy mountain.
Li Shang-Yin
For Keeps
Sun makes the day new.
Tiny green plants emerge from earth.
Birds are singing the sky into place.
There is nowhere else I want to be but here.
I lean into the rhythm of your heart to see where it will take us.
We gallop into a warm, southern wind.
I link my legs to yours and we ride together,
Toward the ancient encampment of our relatives.
Where have you been? they ask.
And what has taken you so long?
That night after eating, singing, and dancing
We lay together under the stars.
We know ourselves to be part of mystery.
It is unspeakable.
It is everlasting.
It is for keeps.
~ Joy Harjo
Reading the Obituary Page
In starched dresses
with ribbons
in miniature jackets
and tiny ties
we would circle
the chairs
at birthday parties and
when the music
stopped, lunge
to be seated. One
by one we were welcomed
to hard ground
and empty air.
~ Linda Pastan
There once was a young man from Lyme
Who married three wives at a time
When asked, “Why a third?”
He replied, “One’s absurd,
And bigamy, sir, is a crime!”
There once was a fellow named Brian
Who was bitten one day by a lion.
He went on the prowl
And he started to growl,
But other than that he’s just fion.
~Mary Volk
A burleycue baby named Heath
Displayed what she wore underneath.
But the morons who viewed her
Thought she ought to be nuder
So she showed them the skin of her teeth.
There’s a pretty young lady named Sark,
Afraid to get laid in the dark,
But she’s often manhandled
By the light of a candle
In the bushes of Gramercy Park.
There once was a poet from Hexameter
Whose mistress kept calling him amateur.
She said, “Your technique
Is too rough and antique,
And your rhythm’s a jerky pentameter.
A young strong boxer named Louis,
Buggered a dastardly Jewess,
He said with a sigh
As his engine went dry,
‘I wonder where all of my goo is?’
When the judge, with his wife having sport,
Proved suddenly two inches short,
The good woman declined,
And the judge had her fined
By proving contempt of the court.
Sentimental Moment or Why Did the Baguette Cross the Road?
Don’t fill up on bread
I say absent-mindedly
The servings here are huge
My son, whose hair may be
receding a bit, says
Did you really just
say that to me?
What he doesn’t know
is that when we’re walking
together, when we get
to the curb
I sometimes start to reach
for his hand.
~ Robert Hershon
Poem after Bouncing the Rent Check and Waking with a Hangover, while Searching for My Car Keys Twenty Minutes before a Very Important Interview
A sudden jolt.
And the Ferris wheel rolls free
of its axle —- a blackened
screaming circle
tumbling over the pier.
This is the story
of your life: disaster,
one after another,
as relentless as debt,
as sudden as a hiccup.
Even now the wires
inside your walls
are frayed and sparking
like a tiny Fourth of July.
Even now the woman you love
is testing the feel
of her ringless finger.
There is no point in preparation.
There is no point in anything.
If it has to, disaster will enter
through drafty cracks
or simply run faster than you.
So open the door
and give it a drink.
Say that it’s kept you
waiting.
~ Charles Rafferty
Inventory
Four be the things I am wiser to know:
Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe.
Four be the things I’d been better without:
Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.
Three be the things I shall never attain:
Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.
Three be the things I shall have till I die:
Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye.
~ Dorothy Parker
Male Beauty
I bought a bag of hard green pears today.
I came home and sat in our room
listening to music for hours,
solo piano, things from France, from the beginning
of the century.
When we were very young, your forgiveness
humiliated me. I knew
you would be asleep when I got back.
It is night outside
and raining. It is the same night
that fills the ruins.
You are naked, drowsy, lost. Stay like that.
In my favorite recordings,
you can hear the pianist breathing.
~ Richie Hofmann
Thinking of Work
A brief storm
blew the earth clean.
There was much
to do: sun to put up,
clouds to put out,
blue to install,
limbs to remove,
grass to implant.
(The grass failed.
We ordered new grass.)
A limb had cracked
in half in the short storm,
short with its feeling.
We saw its innards,
all the hollow places.
Something flew out of
the window and then
the window flew out of the window.
~ James Shea
little prayer
let ruin end here
let him find honey
where there was once a slaughter
let him enter the lion’s cage
& find a field of lilacs
let this be the healing
& if not let it be
~ Danez Smith
