Langston Hughes - Genius Child

This is a song for the genius child.
Sing it softly, for the song is wild.
Sing it softly as ever you can --
Lest the song get out of hand.

Nobody loves a genius child.

Can you love an eagle,
Tame or wild?

Wild or tame,
Can you love a monster
Of frightening name?

Nobody loves a genius child.

Kill him -- and let ( Read more... )

For The Dead

Adrienne Rich

I dreamed I called you on the telephone
to say: Be kinder to yourself
but you were sick and would not answer

The waste of my love goes on this way
trying to save you from yourself

I have always wondered about the left-over
energy, the way water goes rushing down a hill
long after the rains have stopped

or the fire you want to go ( Read more... )

War is no longer declared:

just continued.

I want. To know it's all still real. For my eyes to not feel so tired. For LS to call me, or talk to me on Tuesday, to stop looking so scared and worried when she looks at me. For Luke to not go away. For someone to understand. To take back everything I said in the Gmail conversation. To not have been so ( Read more... )

A cultural evening on my own. Locked door at the library, catching glimpses of the reading going on inside. 't Bonte Palet which I recognised from last year, I think that's where Kitty photographed Anna de Bruyckere and that other man. Seeing two guys I was sure I recognised, and after a while they walked to the tiny stage and played Santana on ( Read more... )

everyone is just recycling pain

Oh, come on
Come on
Come on Eileen

In beschrijvingen die ik kwijt moet als details van een verhaal dat je niet wil vergeten (je schrijft de namen op in je hoofd, de stambomen en het verraad) verlies ik mezelf niet in wat mensen bezighoudt: hoe ik voor ik slaap denk aan afwijzing en verbeeldingskracht, hoe mijn vrienden ( Read more... )

Civil War
Leigh Stein

I apologize for getting off on danger, but
I can’t tell you any more
about my transitory fantasies involving the two of us
being consumed by prairie fire, because remember
last time? when I said I wanted to take the bones
of your hands and make them into a heart shaped brooch
for my new tweed jacket?

You totally freaked out
and I was ( Read more... )

My Husband Discovers Poetry

Diane Lockward

Because my husband would not read my poems,
I wrote one about how I did not love him.
In lines of strict iambic pentameter,
I detailed his coldness, his lack of humor.
It felt good to do this.

Stanza by stanza, I grew bolder and bolder.
Towards the end, struck by inspiration,
I wrote about my old boyfriend,
a boy I ( Read more... )

The Sound
by Kim Addonizio

Marc says the suffering that we don't see
still makes a sort of sound - a subtle, soft
noise, nothing like the cries of screams that we
might think of - more the slight scrape of a hat doffed
by a quiet man, ignored as he stands back
to let a lovely woman pass, her dress
just brushing his coat. Or else it's like a crack
in an old ( Read more... )

Misgivings
William Matthews

"Perhaps you'll tire of me," muses
my love, although she's like a great city
to me, or a park that finds new
ways to wear each flounce of light
and investiture of weather.
Soil doesn't tire of rain, I think,

but I know what she fears: plans warp,
planes explode, topsoil gets peeled away
by floods. And worse than what we can't
( Read more... )

Ginsberg
Julia Vinograd

No blame. Anyone who wrote Howl and Kaddish
earned the right to make any possible mistake
for the rest of his life.
I just wish I hadn't made this mistake with him.
It was during the Vietnam war
and he was giving a great protest reading
in Washington Square Park
and nobody wanted to leave.
So Ginsberg got the idea, "I'm going to ( Read more... )