wishes for sons
i wish them cramps.
i wish them a strange town
and the last tampon.
I wish them no 7-11.
i wish them one week early
and wearing a white skirt.
i wish them one week late.
later i wish them hot flashes
and clots like you
wouldn’t believe. let the
flashes come when they
meet someone special.
let the clots come
when they want to.
let them think they have accepted
arrogance in the universe,
then bring them to gynecologists
not unlike themselves.
Lucille Clifton
Source: punch-in-the-face-poetry
Their Sex Life
One failure on
Top of another
A.R. Ammons
Source: punch-in-the-face-poetry
Unwritten Law
Lived to see you throwing
Me aside. That fought
Liked netted fish inside me. Saw you throbbing
In my syrups. Saw you sleep. And lived to see
That all that flushed down
The refuse. Done?
It lives in me.
You live in me. Malignant.
Love, you ever want me, don’t.
Louise Glück
Source: punch-in-the-face-poetry
Mermaid Song
for Aya at fifteen
Damp-haired from the bath, you drape yourself
upside down across the sofa, reading,
one hand idly sunk into a bowl
of crackers, goldfish with smiles stamped on.
I think they are growing gills, swimming
up the sweet air to reach you. Small girl,
my slim miracle, they multiply.
In the black hours when I lie sleepless,
near drowning, dread-heavy, your face
is the bright lure I look for, love’s hook
piercing me, hauling me cleanly up.
Kim Addonizio
Source: clavicola
Threads
Fire painted the scars on my stomach,
My navel has shut like a fan.
I tug dead skin off like threads
Of balsa wood.
My lips are filigreed with ash.
I am filled with you.
Your name, etched by a candle’s
Warm, pliant red wax,
Coats each flake of my skin.
My scars weave up,
Spelling your name
Over my pores
And blades of hair.
New skin licks the scabs off,
And I mold you in again.
Esté Yarmosh
Source: clavicola
Hour Between Dog & Wolf
I.
Before the only unbroken mirror, cobalt kimono
undone, embroidered sea at my feet: I’m the self-portrait of my father.
Eyes deep as ravines, night-lined ribcage,
even the rage is his,
this dusk between both of me.
II.
In a hour colored tourmaline, I mistake your guitar
for a body in sleep and smash you into effigy,
splinter your way back into my skin.
With silk-wrapped fists, I shadowbox your incessant reflection
and break myself back open.
Saeed Jones
Source: vinylpoetry.com
Love in the Orangery
When you see a seventy-pound octopus squeeze
through a hole the size of a half-dollar coin, you
finally understand that everything you learn about
the sea will only make people you love say You lie.
There are land truths that scare me: a purple orchid
that only blooms underground. A German poet
buried in the heart of an oak tree. The lighthouse man
who used to walk around the streets at night
with a lighted candle stuck into his skull. But winters
in Florida—all the street corners have sad fruit
tucked into the curb, fallen from orangery truckers
who take corners too fast. The air is sick with citrus
and yet you love the small spots of orange in walls
of leafy green as we drive. Your love is a concrete canoe
that floats in the lake like a lead balloon, improbable
as a steel wool cloud, a metal feather. This is the truth:
I once believed nothing on earth could make me say magic.
You believe in the orange blossom tucked behind my ear.
Source: clavicola
It Is Not So Much That I Miss You
It is not so much that I miss you
as the remembering
which I suppose is a form of missing
except more positive,
like the time of the blackout
when fear was my first response
followed by love of the dark.
Source: poetryfoundation.org
Aubade
I know my leaving in the breakfast table mess.
Bowl spills into bowl: milk and bran, bread crust
crumbled. You push me back into bed.
More “honey” and “baby.”
Breath you tell my ear circles inside me,
curls a damp wind and runs the circuit
of my limbs. I interrogate the air,
smell Murphy’s Oil Soap, dog kibble.
No rose. No patchouli swelter. And your mouth—
sesame, olive. The nudge of your tongue
behind my top teeth.
To entirely finish is water entering water.
Which is the cup I take away?
More turning me. Less your arms reaching
around my back. You ask my ear
where I have been and my body answers,
all over kingdom come.
Amber Flora Thomas
Source: clavicola
If I Was President
If I was President
The first thing I would do
is call Mumia Abu-Jamal.
No,
if I was president
the first thing I would do
is call Leonard Peltier.
No,
if I was president
the first person I would call
is that rascal
John Trudell.
No,
the first person I’d call
is that other rascal
Dennis Banks.
I would also call
Alice Walker.
I would make a conference call.
And I would say this:
Yo, you troublemakers,
it is time to let all of us
out of prison.
Pack up your things:
Dennis and John,
collect Alice Walker
If you can find her:
In Mendocino, Molokai, Mexico or
Gaza,
& head out to the prisons
where Mumia and Leonard
are waiting for you.
They will be traveling
light.
Mumia used to own a lot
of papers
but they took most of those
away from him.
Leonard
will probably want to drag along
some of his
canvases.
Alice
who may well be
shopping
in New Delhi
will no doubt want to
dress up for the occasion
in a sparkly shalwar kemeez.
My next call is going to be
to the Cubans
all five of them;
so stop worrying.
For now, you’re my fish.
I just had this long letter
from Alice and she has begged me
to put an end
to her suffering.
What? she said.
You think these men are the only ones who suffer
when Old Style America locks them up
& throws away
the key?
I can’t tell you, she goes on,
the changes
this viciousness
has put me through,
and I have had a child to raise
& classes to teach
& food to buy
and just because
I’m a poet
it doesn’t mean
I don’t have to
pay the mortgage
or the rent.
Yet all these years,
nearly thirty or something
of them
I have been running around
the country
and the world
trying to arouse justice
for these men.
Tonsillitis
hasn’t stopped me.
Migraine,
hasn’t stopped me.
Lyme disease
hasn’t stopped me.
And why?
Because
knowing the country
that I’m in,
as you are destined to learn
it too,
I know wrong
when I see it.
If that chair you’re sitting in
could speak
you would have it moved
to another room.
You would burn it.
So, amigos,
pack your things.
Alice and John and Dennis
are on their way.
They are bringing prayers from Nilak Butler and Bill Wapepah;
they are bringing sweet grass and white sage
from Pine Ridge.
I am the president
at least until the Corporations
purchase the next election,
and this is what I choose
to do
on my first day.
Alice Walker
Source: poemhunter.com
