"Cinderella" Sylvia Plath

The prince leans to the girl in scarlet heels,

Her green eyes slant, hair flaring in a fan

Of silver as the rondo slows; now reels

Begin on tilted violins to span

The whole revolving tall glass palace hall

Where guests slide gliding into light like wine;

Rose candles flicker on the lilac wall

Reflecting ( Read more... )

"Wing" Kimberly Johnson

1.

Immediate beginning:

loosen, loosen the body,

curve the arm, the air

saturated, down-pressing, dull.

Hollow the bones.

2.

Of numbers

--which ascend by increase--

avail the tongue:  Zero

is the ground.  One is the body.

Two is the wing extended.

Three is the circling path.

Four is the arrow heavenward.

( Read more... )

"Empty Spaces" Amrita Pritam (trans. DH Tracy and Mohan Tracy); source is this post at gid_hanasheh .

There were two kingdoms only:

the first of them threw out both him and me.

The second we abandoned.

Under a bare sky

I for a long time soaked in the rain of my body,

he for a long time rotted in the rain of his.

Then like a poison he drank the ( Read more... )

"The Book of Isaiah" part IV, by Anne Carson

When Isaiah came back in from the desert centuries had passed.

There was nothing left of Isaiah but a big forehead.

The forehead went rolling around the nation and spoke to people who leapt to their feet

and fled.

If the nation had taken Isaiah to court he could have proven his ( Read more... )

"The Walls Do Not Fall" part 1, by HD (Hilda Doolittle)

the bone frame was made for

no such shock knit within terror,

yet the skeleton stood up to it:

the flesh?  it was melted away,

the heart burnt out, dead ember,

tendons, muscles shattered, outer husk dismembered,

yet the frame held:

we passed the flame:  we wonder

what saved us?  ( Read more... )

"Autonomy" AR Ammons

I am living without you because

of a terror, a farfetched

notion that I

can't live without you

which I must narrow down & quell,

for how can I live

worthy of you, in the

freedom of your limber engagements,

in the casual uptakes of you

sweetest compliances

if stricken in your presence

by what ( Read more... )

"Book of Isaiah" part III, by Anne Carson

Isaiah walked for three years in the valley of vision.

In his jacket of glass he crossed deserts and black winter mornings.

The icy sun lowered its eyelids against the glare of him.

God stayed back.

Now Isaiah had a hole in the place where his howl had broken off.

All the while ( Read more... )

"The Gift" (excerpt) by HD (Hilda Doolittle ( Read more... )

"In Praise of Dying" Diane di Prima

If there is a light that has weight, space ceases to be a consideration.

The only time that matters.  And if light exists only as texture,

as the last recourse of brick?

The tick of light, the sweep of its second hand ray upon ray, THE

HUM OF ITS MOTOR.

Creation takes place in a void that is no void.  ( Read more... )

"Track" Diane di Prima

1

abundance, what a lie, not even enough for the ones I didn't love.  the

juice of all those balls pumped into me, the loves a cup of coffee ends.

and what about the knees I didn't particularly want to touch, the

awakings that might as well have been solo

what I worship in junkies:  they don't waste themselves.

( Read more... )