Category: Poetry

“Cretaceous bird, your giant claw no lime” — Edna St. Vincent Millay

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“Cretaceous bird, your giant claw no lime”

by

Edna St. Vincent Millay

from Epitaph for the Race of Man

Cretaceous bird, your giant claw no lime
From bark of holly bruised or mistletoe
Could have arrested, could have held you so
Through fifty million years of jostling time;
Yet cradled with you in the catholic slime
Of the young ocean’s tepid lapse and flow
Slumbered an agent, weak in embryo,
Should grip you straitly, in its sinewy prime.
What bright collision in the zodiac brews,
What mischief dimples at the planet’s core
For shark, for python, for the dove that coos
Under the leaves?—what frosty fate’s in store
For the warm blood of man,—man, out of ooze
But lately crawled, and climbing up the shore?

Gerhard Rühm’s The Folded Clock (Book acquired, drifted through, last week or the week before, end of 2025)

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I dug/was perplexed by Gerhard Rühm’s Cake and Prostheses a few years ago, so when I got my soft pink hands on The Folded Clock, (translated like C & P by Alexander Booth), I was intrigued. Publisher Twisted Spoon describes The Folded Clock as a collection of “number poems, comprising typewriter ideograms, typed concrete poetry, collages of everyday paper ephemera and scraps, and a wide variety of literary forms where the visual pattern created on the page underpins the thematic meaning.”

Rühm seems to identify Kurt Schwitters as his artistic precursor, or an artistic precursor. Like Cake and Prostheses, the pieces in The Folded Clock defy easy categorization — Is it a script or a poem or art? is probably the wrong question.

Passing eyes over the text is probably not the way to go; Rühm’s asking you to engage. As Joseph Schreiber puts it in his review at Rough Ghosts, you might follow Rühm’s directions and “allow yourself to read aloud and, there are you are, from the very beginning, not simply reading but actively engaging with the poem.”

I don’t really like numbers that much, at least not in a mob, a gang, a swarm. I tried and didn’t work out. Not just with this book but in general. I can’t count sheep, I guess.

I had a better time with Rühm’s forays into music and letters and collages; I enjoyed whatever psychotic version of minesweeper or Sudoku this piece is:

“Identification Tags” — Tom Clark

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“Identification Tags”

by

Tom Clark

Ghosts do wear sheets but not for sleeping.

Sometimes people die while still alive
and then come back to life
but only partially. You can read the signs
around the eyes, which get
a dusty look like burned out hundred watt bulbs.

When they pass one another on the streets
there is a soft noise, as of muslin touching.

reserved for those who have been mutilated in the war

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“October”

by

Tom Clark

The rain falls like dirty string
on the tomb
of the human race

The girl with the red scarf
and the sassy face throws
her flowers on the wet leaves

Her name is Marie
I met her last Tuesday
on the Métro

You know how it is in the springtime
A man just can’t say no
especially when he is sitting in the seat

reserved for those who have been mutilated in the war

A previously unpublished Dream Song by John Berryman

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“The applause of the world comes to an empty heart”

by

John Berryman

The applause of the world comes to an empty heart,
sure the man is thinking now of something else,
something else, a fearless end
‘I have lost, of course, the fear of death’, BUT.
Messages enchant me, as from Ireland
I am an old middle-aged man about to do his best

I love old men
The bartender did just call me ‘my friend’
I say the wonder is these busy caves
explored by men, & then by men, & then
by cold & dismal
engineers, are so costless

Deep in the angels let the good coat come
& I will wheedle home, who misséd you,
I can’t fix him. He’ll go down there apart,
that would be the wicked part of him that falls.
Henry has in Ireland no friend.
Alone, in the half-dark

Read five more previously-unpublished Dream Songs at Conjunctions. The poems are collected in the forthcoming volume Only Sing: 152 Uncollected Dream Songs, edited by Shane McCrae.

 

“Fladry” — Ed Skoog

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“Fladry”

by

Ed Skoog

Fladry: a line of rope mounted along the top of a fence, from
which are suspended strips of fabric or colored flags that will flap
in a breeze, intended to deter wolves from crossing the fence-line.

USDA National Wildlife Research Center

I am weak and edible. Some human quality
stays weird, alien to the wild, outsiders,
bad sport with spooky habits not just fladry—
other enchantments against order, house paint,
yard art, border fences and the tunnels under borders,
the amen, the wedding ring, the flavored condom.
The wolves are back. I’ve seen them, seen the fladry
ranchers tie, red flags’ flutter to puzzle or annoy,
folk-work tendered back from wood-shadow,
more each year, abjured with clover.
What I like most about the first shot of bourbon
is how it feels like letting go of a grudge.
In the dream, I kill my friend and bury him
lime in the church basement between sump pump
and broken fireplace. On my knees I tile
red stone back to mosaic. Soldiers beat me up
and called me names in my own language,
this one, the one Whitman used to soothe
the dying, limbless, the bleeding, the infected.
Beat me with fists slight more stone
than the shape that holds this pencil.
A house is held together by shapes.
And yet in the ongoing negotiations between
the world where I hold my son and
famine, bombings, hate, prosperity—
two notes, octaves apart
attenuate what’s hidden inside your body
to the invisible. It might help remembering
shadows and not hours. Infinity
also has the contour of a children’s game.
Infants remember fladry, safe in the car seat grasping,
grasping. Some forces are enormous and move
against you, and when you pretend they aren’t
there, surge. Some swing on a hinge
which at night sounds like don’t look back,
don’t look back. Anyone can tie fladry.
See it out riding. I go out at French-horn dawn,
boots in mud, string fladry at intervals,
each tongue labeling the field, calling
beyond language. And if fladry bears
the conditions of a spell, redness of the flag,
the measure between them, it’s flapping
which charms the wolf away, for a term.
Warnings to keep the flock from the wolf’s belly.
Messages for ourselves. See it from there,
turn overall and plaid flannel; we would
tear our own fur to cross these lines.

“6/21” — Adrienne Rich

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“Fathers” — Grace Paley

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“Fathers”

by

Grace Paley

Fathers are
more fathering
these days they have
accomplished this by
being more mothering

what luck for them that
women’s lib happened then
the dream of new fathering
began to shine in the eyes
of free women and was irresistible

on the New York subways
and the mass transits
of other cities one may
see fatherings of many colors
with their round babies on
their laps this may also
happen in the countryside

these scenes were brand new
exciting for an old woman who
had watched the old fathers
gathering once again in
familiar army camps and com-
fortable war rooms to consider
the necessary eradication of
the new fathering fathers
(who are their sons) as well
as the women and children who
will surely be in the way.

“The Charm of 5:30” — David Berman

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“The Charm of 5:30”

by

David Berman

It’s too nice a day to read a novel set in England.

We’re within inches of the perfect distance from the sun,

the sky is blueberries and cream,

and the wind is as warm as air from a tire.

Even the headstones in the graveyard

           seem to stand up and say “Hello! My name is…”

It’s enough to be sitting here on my porch,

thinking about Kermit Roosevelt,

following the course of an ant,

or walking out into the yard with a cordless phone

           to find out she is going to be there tonight.

On a day like today, what looks like bad news in the distance

turns out to be something on my contact, carports and

white courtesy phones are spontaneously reappreciated

           and random “okay”s ring through the backyards.

This morning I discovered the red tints in cola

                     when I held a glass of it up to the light

and found an expensive flashlight in the pocket of a winter coat

                     I was packing away for summer.

It all reminds me of that moment when you take off your

sunglasses after a long drive and realize it’s earlier

and lighter out than you had accounted for.

You know what I’m talking about,

and that’s the kind of fellowship that’s taking place in town, out in

the public spaces. You won’t overhear anyone using the words

“dramaturgy” or “state inspection” today. We’re too busy getting along.

It occurs to me that the laws are in the regions and the regions are

in the laws, and it feels good to say this, something that I’m almost

sure is true, outside under the sun.

Then to say it again, around friends, in the resonant voice of a

nineteenth-century senator, just for a lark.

There’s a shy looking fellow on the courthouse steps, holding up

a placard that says “But, I kinda liked Clinton.” His head turns slowly

as a beautiful girl walks by, holding a refrigerated bottle up against

her flushed cheek.

She smiles at me and I allow myself to imagine her walking into

town to buy lotion at a brick pharmacy.

When she gets home she’ll apply it with great lingering care

before moving into her parlor to play 78 records and drink gin-and-tonics

beside her homemade altar to James Madison.

In a town of this size, it’s certainly possible that I’ll be invited over

one night.

In fact I’ll bet you something.

Somewhere in the future I am remembering today. I’ll bet you

I’m remembering how I walked into the park at five thirty,

my favorite time of day, and how I found two cold pitchers

of just poured beer, sitting there on the bench.

I am remembering how my friend Chip showed up

with a catcher’s mask hanging from his belt and how I said

great to see you, sit down, have a beer, how are you,

and how he turned to me with the sunset reflecting off his

contacts and said, wonderful, how are you.

“Dogleg” — Kay Ryan

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“Dogleg”

by

Kay Ryan

Birds' legs
do of course
all dogleg
giving them
that bounce.
But these are
not normal odds
around the house.
Only two of 
the dog's legs
dogleg and 
two of the cat's.
Fifty-fifty: that's
as bad as it 
gets usually,
despite the 
fear you feel
when life has
angled brutally.

“One Art” — Elizabeth Bishop

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“One Art”

by

Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

“Poem” — Langston Hughes

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“Poem”

by

Langston Hughes

I loved my friend.
He went away from me. 
There’s nothing more to say. 
The poem ends, 
Soft as it began,—
I loved my friend. 

“Two for the Road” — John Ashbery

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“Two for the Road”

by

John Ashbery

Did you want it plain or frosted? (Plain vanilla or busted?)

I bet you’ve been writing again. She reached under her skirt. Why don’t you let a person see it? Naw, it’s no good. Just some chilblains that got lodged in my fingertips. Who said so? I’ll tell you if it’s any good or not, if you’ll stop covering it with your hand.

For Pete’s sake-

We had forgotten that it was noon, the hour when the ravens emerge from the door beside the huge clock face and march around it, then back inside to the showers. Oh, where were you going to say let’s perform it?

I thought it was evident from my liquor finish steel.

Oh right, you can certainly have your cocktail, it’s my shake, my fair shake. Dust-colored hydrangeas fell out of the pitcher onto the patio.

Darned if someone doesn’t like it this way and always knows it’s going to happen like this when it does. But let me read to you from my peaceful new story:

“Then the cinnamon tigers arose and there was peace for maybe a quarter of a century. But you know how things always turn out. The dust bowl slid in through the French doors. Maria? it said. Would you mind just coming over here and standing for a moment. Take my place. It’ll only be for a minute. I must go see how the lemmings are doing. And that is how she soiled herself and brought eternal night upon our shy little country.”

“Born Yesterday” — Tom Clark

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“Born Yesterday”

by

Tom Clark

The concept of evil, as long ago 
Symbolized by the devil, has evolved 
Over centuries into the concept 
Of men, as delineated by (let's 
Call her) Naima, Halloween night 
At Fertile Grounds, where she stood 
Demurely chatting with Ayman, the handsome 
Proprietor (think Omar Sharif 
With soul and twinkle) at closing time, 
As I poked my ancient nose in and said 
"Trick or treat." Ayman offered a knuckle 
Bump solidarity hello—alone there 
By the counter with lovely young Naima, 
Who, when I said, What's new, smiled 
Ever so sweetly and said, "Men are evil!" 
Feeling it ungracious to disagree 
I didn't, for a moment. But then—
Well, solidarity is solidarity. 
"What about Ayman?" I said. "Ayman 
Doesn't look evil to me." Naima 
Fixed upon Ayman a glance of great 
Critical probity, smiled and said, "Hmm," 
A moment passed, pregnant, perhaps 
With reconsideration. Exceptions 
Prove rules are basically dumb, 
And really, that's the trouble, after all, 
With generalization. And what of love? 
"Isn't love," I ventured, "a matter of 
Recognizing someone has flaws 
And trying to help them limit the damage?" 
More thought. "Yes, that's exactly what it is," 
Naima said. And to myself I said, 
One point for a draw, quit while you're not losing. 
I fell out the door, squeezing between raindrops. 
Two ten-year-old girls walked past, one with horns, 
The other peeping from a full body cast. 
You forgot your treat, Ayman called out, 
Holding up a bag of old pastries 
From the "Born Yesterday" basket.

“Frankenstein,” a poem by John Gardner

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“Frankenstein”

by

John Gardner

(August 26th, 17—)

The myth is unchained: it staggers north,
insane. A ghost of lightning glows
in its eyes; its slow hands close in wrath
like child’s hands seizing flowers.

I hunt it, cavernous with hate—
my brain’s projection: speculum
of my dim soul, life-eating heart—
to tear it limb from limb

and lash it again to the bloodstained table
at Ingolstadt, beyond dark hallways,
sealed against night, where the busy smell of
death consumes like flies.

I made it giant. All its parts
of blood, bone, flesh must stand more plain
than life. Teased frail organic bits,
the mechanic dust of pain,

and so at last set loose my image,
mysterious as before, a monster
tottering now toward love, now rage.
He watched me like a stranger.

Make no mistake: I was not afraid,
not overawed, though I watched him kill
and stood like stone. I understood
his mind by a spinal chill.

But he bawled the woes of rejected things.
I could not say for a fact he lied
though I’d fathomed the darkest pits of his brains
and carved each scar on his hide.

And so he taught me nothing. He was.
Usurped my name, split off—raves home-
ward now by his own inscrutable laws
to his own disintegration,

staggering north. Outside my power,
beyond my understanding. And I,
who made him, cringe at my blood’s words:
None more strange than I.

“My heart, being hungry” — Edna St. Vincent Millay

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Ozymandias — Alasdair Gray

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Ozymandias, 2017 by Alasdair Gray (1934-2019)