Rox Populi

"What Do Women Want?"

by Kim Addonizio

I want a red dress. I want it flimsy and cheap, I want it too tight, I want to wear it until someone tears it off me. I want it sleeveless and backless, this dress, so no one has to guess what's underneath. I want to walk down the street past Thrifty's and the hardware store with all those keys glittering in the window, past Mr. and Mrs. Wong selling day-old donuts in their café, past the Guerra brothers slinging pigs from the truck and onto the dolly, hoisting the slick snouts over their shoulders. I want to walk like I'm the only woman on earth and I can have my pick. I want that red dress bad.

How We Operate

Gomez.

Calm down
And get straight
It's not our eyes
It's how we operate

You're true
You are
I'd apologize but it won't go very far

Please come here
Come right on over
And when we collide we'll see what gets left over

A little joy
A little sorrow
And a little pride so we won't have to borrow
Wherever you lead, I'll follow

Turn me inside out and upside down
And try to see things my way
Turn a new page, tear the old one out
And I'll try to see things your way

Please come here
Please come on over
There is no line that you can't step right over
Without you well I'm left hollow
So can we decide to try a little joy tomorrow
'Cos baby tonight I'll follow

Turn me inside out and upside down
And try to see things my way
Turn a new page, tear the old one out
And I'll try to see things your way

The way that we've been speaking now
I swear that we'd be friends, I swear
'Cos all these little deals go down with
Little consequences, we share, we share

Turn me inside out and upside down
And try to see things my way
Turn a new page, tear the old one out
And I'll try to see things your way

And I'm gonna love you anyway
Try to see things your way
Try to see things your way

Posted in celebration of National Poetry Month

calles de los dolores y trastorno de tensión postraumática

by Barbara Jane Reyes

your methods are unacceptable :: beyond human restraint :: things get confused i know :: the heart’s a white sepulcher and no man guards its doors :: against the growing dark :: incessant blades beat air :: incessant blades :: what means are available to terminate :: gook names :: with extreme prejudice :: you may use those :: blades beat :: easier than learning their gook names :: your boys don’t know any better than :: gook names :: dead men hanging from trees so far from the known world :: how does it come to this :: being blown to hell :: incessant :: gook names :: in panic mode trigger finger instinct efficiency :: incessant blades beat air :: blades beat :: dead men hanging :: gook names :: no sin committed :: no dead men :: to forgive. Posted in celebration of National Poetry Month

The Conjugation of the Paramecium

by Muriel Rukeyser

This has nothing to do with propagating The species is continued as so many are (among the smaller creatures) by fission (and this species is very small next in order to the amoeba, the beginning one) The paramecium achieves, then, immortality by dividing

The Vulnerability of Order

 

by Martine Bellen

for Elaine Equi Caves, here, contain dead / live                 snakes, some keys, for instance,                 have holes or,                 the transgressive guardian, mind                 with wings beneath. She felt the urge to send musk-confects, Across the Straits of Gibraltar

Last Supper

by Charles Wright

I seem to have come to the end of something, but don’t know what, Full moon blood orange just over the top of the redbud tree. Maundy Thursday tomorrow,                          then Good Friday, then Easter in full drag, Dogwood blossoms like little crosses All down the street,                     lilies and jonquils bowing their mitred heads. Perhaps it’s a sentimentality about such fey things, But I don’t think so. One knows There is no end to the other world,                                     no matter where it is. In the event, a reliquary evening for sure, The bones in their tiny boxes, rosettes under glass.

Ask

Lyrics by Stephen Morrissey

Shyness is nice, and
Shyness can stop you
From doing all the things in life
You'd like to

Shyness is nice, and
Shyness can stop you
From doing all the things in life
You'd like to

So, if there's something you'd like to try
If there's something you'd like to try
ASK ME - I WON'T SAY "NO" - HOW COULD I ?

Coyness is nice, and
Coyness can stop you
From saying all the things in
Life you'd like to

So, if there's something you'd like to try
If there's something you'd like to try
ASK ME - I WON'T SAY "NO" - HOW COULD I ?

Spending warm Summer days indoors
Writing frightening verse
To a buck-toothed girl in Luxembourg

ASK ME, ASK ME, ASK ME
ASK ME, ASK ME, ASK ME

Because if it's not Love
Then it's the Bomb, the Bomb, the Bomb
the Bomb, the Bomb, the Bomb, the Bomb
That will bring us together

Heroic Simile

by Robert Hass

When the swordsman fell in Kurosawa's Seven Samurai in the gray rain, in Cinemascope and the Tokugawa dynasty, he fell straight as a pine, he fell as Ajax fell in Homer in chanted dactyls and the tree was so huge the woodsman returned for two days to that lucky place before he was done with the sawing and on the third day he brought his uncle.

Churchgoing

by Marilyn Nelson

The Lutherans sit stolidly in rows; only their children feel the holy ghost that makes them jerk and bobble and almost destroys the pious atmosphere for those whose reverence bows their backs as if in work. The congregation sits, or stands to sing, or chants the dusty creeds automaton. Their voices drone like engines, on and on, and they remain untouched by everything; confession, praise, or likewise, giving thanks. The organ that they saved years to afford repeats the Sunday rhythms song by song, slow lips recite the credo, smother yawns, and ask forgiveness for being so bored.

Pledge

by Elizabeth Powell

Republic, your cool hands On my schoolgirl shoulders. Not sure what allegiances meant Until the vows were held by heart, By memory, by rote, by benign betrothal. Republic, you were mine, I knew Because of Mother's religious pamphlets: Lindsay for Mayor. McGovern for President. How to Register Voters. I didn't ever want to go to school On Saturdays. The baby-sitter said If Nixon won, I'd have to go. Me, Your most cherished child bride. I wanted a white communion dress Like the ones the Catholic girls wore. Republic, you know I wanted to play Cards with Mother. Mother smoking Marlboros, watching Watergate all week. Citizen Mother all consumed at that confessional. I liked the name Betsy Ross. I liked the idea of sewing flags. I liked the tattered textbook about the colonies. So tender, so tender. My Republic, I am pledged by my childish troth So strangely to you. Posted in celebration of National Poetry Month.

California Plush

by Frank Bidart

The only thing I miss about Los Angeles



is the Hollywood Freeway at midnight, windows down and

radio blaring

bearing right into the center of the city, the Capitol Tower

on the right, and beyond it, Hollywood Boulevard

blazing



--pimps, surplus stores, footprints of the stars



--descending through the city

                   fast as the law would allow



through the lights, then rising to the stack

out of the city

to the stack where lanes are stacked six deep



              and you on top; the air

              now clean, for a moment weightless



                        without memories, or

                        need for a past.

All She Wrote

by Harryette Mullen


Forgive me, I’m no good at this. I can’t write back. 
I never read your letter. I can’t say I got your note. 
I haven’t had the strength to open the envelope. 
The mail stacks up by the door. Your hand’s illegible. 
Your postcards were defaced. Wash your wet hair? 
Any document you meant to send has yet to reach me. 
The untied parcel service never delivered. 
I regret to say I’m unable to reply to your 
unexpressed desires. 
I didn’t get the book you sent. By the way, 
my computer was stolen. 
Now I’m unable to process words. I suffer from aphasia. 
I’ve just returned from Kenya and Korea. 
Didn’t you get a card from me yet? 
What can I tell you? I forgot what I was going to say. 
I still can’t find a pen that works and then I broke my pencil. 
You know how scarce paper is these days. 
I admit I haven’t been recycling. 
I never have time to read the Times. 
I’m out of shopping bags to put the old news in. 
I didn’t get to the market. I meant to clip the coupons. 
I haven’t read the mail yet. 
I can’t get out the door to work, so I called in sick. 
I went to bed with writer’s cramp. 
If I couldn’t get back to writing, I thought I’d catch up 
on my reading. 
Then Oprah came on with a fabulous author plugging her best selling book.


Posted in celebration of National Poetry Month

Purgatory

by Maxine Kumin

And suppose the darlings get to Mantua,

suppose they cheat the crypt, what next? Begin

with him, unshaven. Though not, I grant you, a

displeasing cockerel, there's egg yolk on his chin.

His seedy robe's aflap, he's got the rheum.

Poor dear, the cooking lard has smoked her eye.

Another Montague is in the womb

although the first babe's bottom's not yet dry.

She scrolls a weekly letter to her Nurse

who dares to send a smock through Balthasar,

and once a month, his father posts a purse.

News from Verona? Always news of war.

  Such sour years it takes to right this wrong!

  The fifth act runs unconscionably long.

Posted in celebration of National Poetry Month.

Baseball and Writing

by Marianne Moore

Fanaticism?  No.  Writing is exciting

and baseball is like writing.

   You can never tell with either

      how it will go

      or what you will do;

   generating excitement--

   a fever in the victim--

   pitcher, catcher, fielder, batter.

	Victim in what category?

Owlman watching from the press box?

	To whom does it apply?

	Who is excited?  Might it be I?

Her Kind

by Anne Sexton

I have gone out, a possessed witch,

haunting the black air, braver at night;

dreaming evil, I have done my hitch

over the plain houses, light by light:

lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.

A woman like that is not a woman, quite.

I have been her kind.

I have found the warm caves in the woods,

filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,

closets, silks, innumerable goods;

fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:

whining, rearranging the disaligned.

A woman like that is misunderstood.

I have been her kind.

I have ridden in your cart, driver,

waved my nude arms at villages going by,

learning the last bright routes, survivor

where your flames still bite my thigh

and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.

A woman like that is not ashamed to die.

I have been her kind.

Posted in celebration of National Poetry Month.

The Colonel

[This post first ran on April 3, 2005. It is re-posted today to remind you to hop on over to this weekend's Blog-a-thon for Amnesty International, hosted by Amanda and Jessie at Pandagon. Go. Read. Comment. Give.]

WHAT YOU HAVE HEARD IS TRUE. I was in his house. His wife carried a tray of coffee and sugar. His daughter filed her nails, his son went out for the night. There were daily papers, pet dogs, a pistol on the cushion beside him. The moon swung bare on its black cord over the house. On the television was a cop show. It was in English. Broken bottles were embedded in the walls around the house to scoop the kneecaps from a man's legs or cut his hands to lace. On the windows there were gratings like those in liquor stores. We had dinner, rack of lamb, good wine, a gold bell was on the table for calling the maid. The maid brought green mangoes, salt, a type of bread. I was asked how I enjoyed the country. There was a brief commercial in Spanish. His wife took everything away. There was some talk of how difficult it had become to govern. The parrot said hello on the terrace. The colonel told it to shut up, and pushed himself from the table. My friend said to me with his eyes: say nothing. The colonel returned with a sack used to bring groceries home. He spilled many human ears on the table. They were like dried peach halves. There is no other way to say this. He took one of them in his hands, shook it in our faces, dropped it into a water glass. It came alive there. I am tired of fooling around he said. As for the rights of anyone, tell your people they can go fuck themselves. He swept the ears to the floor with his arm and held the last of his wine in the air. Something for your poetry, no? he said. Some of the ears on the floor caught this scrap of his voice. Some of the ears on the floor were pressed to the ground.

From The Country Between Us by Carolyn Forché.

Sunken Waltz

washed my face in the rivers of empire
made my bed from a cardboard crate
down in the city of quartz*

no news, no new regrets
tossed a Susan B. over my shoulder
and prayed it would rain and rain
submerge the whole western states
call it a last fair deal
With an American seal
and corporate hand shake

take the story of carpenter Mike
dropped his tools and his keys and left
and headed out as far as he could
past the cities and gated neighborhoods
he slept 'neath the stars
wrote down what he dreamt
and he built a machine
for no one to see
then took flight, first light
of new morning

Sunken Waltz by Joey Burns, presented here in celebration of National Poetry Month.

For Amy...

who I believe, buried deep beneath her nonsensical, moralizing rhetoric, has an itsy-bitsy, teenie-tiny point.

The mark of Cain won't sprout
from a soldier who shoots
at the head of a child
on a knoll by the fence
around a refugee camp--
for beneath his helmet,
conceptually speaking,
his head is made of cardboard.
On the other hand,
the officer has read The Rebel;
his head is enlightened,
and so he does not believe,
in the mark of Cain.
He's spent time in museums,
and when he aims
his rifle at a boy
as an ambassador of Culture,
he updates and recycles
Goya's etchings
and Guernica.

Culture by Aharon Shabtai, posted in celebration of National Poetry Month.

Gravity's Angel

I don't generally enjoy performance art because I think most of it is pretentious crap. It's one of the many long-term effects of having seen Karen Finley do the "Yam Jam" back in the 80s. I could also work in a Camille Paglia reference here, but I'm too lazy. Figure it out yourself.

An exception to my aversion to performance artists is Laurie Anderson. This following ditty, which I present here now as part of our National Poetry Month celebration, is one of favorite Anderson pieces:

You can dance. You can make me laugh. You've got x-ray eyes.
You know how to sing. You're a diplomat. You've got it all.
Everybody loves you.
You can charm the birds out of the sky. but I, I've got one thing.
You always know just what to say. And when to go.
But I've got one thing. You can see in the dark.
But I've got one thing: I loved you better.

Last night I woke up. Saw this angel. He flew in my window.
And he said: Girl, pretty proud of yourself, huh?
And I looked around and said: Who me?
And he said: The higher you fly, the faster you fall. He said:
Send it up. Watch it rise. See it fall. Gravity's rainbow.
Send it up. Watch it rise. See it fall. Gravity's angel.
Why these mountains? Why this sky? This long road. This ugly train.
Well he was an ugly guy. With an ugly face.
An also ran in the human race.
And even God got sad just looking at him. And at his funeral
all his friends stood around looking sad. But they were really
thinking of all the ham and cheese sandwiches in the next room.
And everybody used to hang around him. And I know why.
They said: There but for the grace of the angels go I.
Why these mountains? Why this sky?
Send it up. Watch it rise. See it fall. Gravity's rainbow.
Send it up. Watch it rise. See it fall. Gravity's angel.

Well, we were just laying there.
And this ghost of your other lover walked in.
And stood there. Made of thin air. Full of desire.
Look. Look. Look. You forgot to take your shirt.
And there's your book. And there's your pen, sitting on the table.
Why these mountains? Why this sky? This long road? This empty room?
Why these mountains? Why this sky? This long road? This empty room?

Gravity's Angel by Laurie Anderson, from Mister Heartbreak.

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

by William Butler Yeats, offered here in celebration of National Poetry Month.