Poems

Manntje, Manntje, Timpe Te,
Buttje, Buttje inne See,
myne Fru de Ilsebill
will nich so, as ik wol will.

It vanished, got no notice and nothing. Posted one yesterday.

They Feed They Lion By Philip Levine

Out of burlap sacks, out of bearing butter,

Out of black bean and wet slate bread,

Out of the acids of rage, the candor of tar,

Out of creosote, gasoline, drive shafts, wooden dollies,

They Lion grow.

                           Out of the gray hills

Of industrial barns, out of rain, out of bus ride,

West Virginia to Kiss My Ass, out of buried aunties,

Mothers hardening like pounded stumps, out of stumps,

Out of the bones’ need to sharpen and the muscles’ to 
stretch,   

They Lion grow.

                          Earth is eating trees, fence posts,

Gutted cars, earth is calling in her little ones,

“Come home, Come home!” From pig balls,

From the ferocity of pig driven to holiness,

From the furred ear and the full jowl come

The repose of the hung belly, from the purpose

They Lion grow.

                          From the sweet glues of the trotters

Come the sweet kinks of the fist, from the full flower

Of the hams the thorax of caves,

From “Bow Down” come “Rise Up,”

Come they Lion from the reeds of shovels,

The grained arm that pulls the hands,

They Lion grow.

                           From my five arms and all my hands,

From all my white sins forgiven, they feed,

From my car passing under the stars,

They Lion, from my children inherit,

From the oak turned to a wall, they Lion,

From they sack and they belly opened

And all that was hidden burning on the oil-stained earth

They feed they Lion and he comes.

Because the birds sculpted the air with their song — 

I sent that flash across the sea. Candle in a paper lantern,

the flame rose and dipped.

I’ve been hiding from my father.

Fog-damp pall over the city. I ink this bruise onto paper.

Years ago, in Highland Park, we’d picnic in the backyard.

We slept in the living room. I clung to my beautiful mother.

Flipped the pillow and pressed against its coolness.

I held grudges like tiny fists of sand, then, let go.

I kissed the fog and sky and the ocean’s cobalt hue.

You. I hadn’t yet met you.

Murky alphabet — 

I falter the letter, I elide the gaps. If the opalescent dew meant anything,

it meant that one day I’d be lifted above my feelings.

You’d become less than a feeling, the way every lover I’ve known

no longer hurts me. Those old charges detonated.

Here and now, I make room for joy. Birds ribbon the air with their singing.

Bird voices riot up. The planes with their hulking engines — 

they fly too. The jags of each cliff head —  Your lips — I uninterrupt.

I charley horse and miracle ride your absence. The whipped froth of the ocean.

Puddle of salt water, shivering wound. Seaweed, we sing of losses.

Cold under this blanket, I wait for my alarm to sing.

I’ve polished this anger and now it’s a knife. I’m hardened as a hunter ornamenting his cave

with the bones of the dead. I’m so sick of history dragging behind me.

Today, I don’t want to be sad. But my father has retreated into silence and the lashes

across his back have not healed, and my mother tells me he could have killed

himself that night and we’d be blamed. Call the police, she said.

We stood barefoot on the street, listening to him throw things

against the garage walls, detonations of only what we could imagine.

I hurl stones into the ether. I wash my hands in ink.

The lost in the fog body borne of matter, history-less, untethered.

Better to be alive and bewildered. At least I can name the thing.

To love my father is to love his wounds.

In times like these, we present our hurts like old toys we polish up

to show each other who we used to be.

Elder Sister by Sharon Olds from In The Dead and the Living: Poems by Sharon Olds. Alfred A. Knopf, 2001.

A Small Needful Fact by Ross Gay

Is that Eric Garner worked


for some time for the Parks and Rec.


Horticultural Department, which means,


perhaps, that with his very large hands,


perhaps, in all likelihood,


he put gently into the earth


some plants which, most likely,


some of them, in all likelihood,


continue to grow, continue


to do what such plants do, like house


and feed small and necessary creatures,


like being pleasant to touch and smell,


like converting sunlight


into food, like making it easier


for us to breathe.