Haiku II

Haiku II by Fred Slusher

Every morning 
Days of unfettered glory 
Night’s a dram of tears

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Poem for the Day: August 26th, 2021

I For One by Franz Wright

I for one never asked 
for my youth back; when I was young 
I was always afraid. 
Like somebody in a war 

with no allegiance 
I was terrified 
of everyone. 
But now 

now I am amazed 
and grateful every day. 
I don’t know how that happened. 
I am so glad 

there is no fear, 
and finally I can 

ask no second life.

Poem for the Day: August 25th, 2021

Dorothy Wordsworth by Jennifer Chang

The daffodils can go fuck themselves. 
I’m tired of their crowds, yellow rantings 
about the spastic sun that shines and shines
and shines. How are they any different 

from me? I, too, have a big messy head 
on a fragile stalk. I spin with the wind. 
I flower and don’t apologize. There’s nothing 
funny about good weather. Oh, spring again, 

the critics nod. They know the old joy,
that wakeful quotidian, the dark plot 
of future growing things, each one 
labeled Narcissus nobilis or Jennifer Chang. 

If I died falling from a helicopter, then 
this would be an important poem. Then 
the ex-boyfriends would swim to shore 
declaiming their knowledge of my bulbous 

youth. O, Flower, one said, why aren’t you 
meat? But I won’t be another bashful shank. 
The tulips have their nervous joie-de-vivre,
the lilacs their taunt. Fractious petals, stop 

interrupting me with your boring beauty. 
All the boys are in the field gnawing raw 
bones of ambition and calling it ardor. Who 
the hell are they? This is a poem about war.

Original Poem: Last Night I Dreamed of Snakes

Last Night I Dreamed of Snakes by Fred Slusher

Some people believe the only way you can
know God is to prove to him that you’re not
afraid to die.

They were writhing, 

wriggling their way through 

darkened halls & hidden 

crevices. I am a small world 

made large every night.

And the guns, they don’t work. 

My great-grandfather held snakes 

in church, offered them up to God. 

My, how they danced together. 

Strange language, dancing to the beat 

of impending eternity, to a sound only 

they could hear. Holding death that close 

just has to be holy—a desecrated lullaby. 

Some people believe the only way you can 

know God is to prove to him that you’re not 

afraid to die. In the dream, I’m going under

once again. Silence is an art of the most 

hallowed & hollow solemnity. Oh faithless

love, oh desert, oh fracture, oh quake, please  

caress the fear from my windows where 

layers of shadows ensconce me in 

false protections, mirages & mists & secret 

songs taught only in the dark. There is this fear, 

this shroud covering me. There is this sway, 

this truth. There is this serpent slivering its

way out of reach. There is this enormity. 

There is this heresy. There is this 

sorrow. There is this cataclysm 

raining on the living. There is this 

violence that lives in the soul & chokes it 

just so. There is this madness flickering 

like a lit match in a dry barn. There is this 

burning. There is this roof that’s corpsing 

itself into a glorious & effervescent ruin. 

There is this scream that imbibes blood like 

water.

Poem for the Day: August 24th, 2021

Make Out Sonnet by F. Douglas Brown

The first time I saw two men kissing, I was six,
Living in 1970s L.A. My mom took care 
Of an elderly woman who found herself in a fix 
And moved into a complex of all men, bare
Chested men, with cutoff jeans and tinted glasses. 
My mother’s friend gave me chocolates that matched 
Her skin—this must be heaven. These sons’ asses 
Peeked out beneath their shorts, but watched 
Over her better than mom. Took donations for heat, 
A sofa and a new wig—all changed her mood. 
They even did her laundry. They did sweet 
Better than honey. Did family better than blood. 
And between duties, two men always off alone 
So desire, like the dishes, could also get done.

Poem for the Day: August 23rd, 2021

To The Young Who Want to Die by Gwendolyn Brooks

Sit down. Inhale. Exhale. 
The gun will wait. The lake will wait. 
The tall gall in the small seductive vial
will wait will wait:
will wait a week: will wait through April. 
You do not have to die this certain day. 
Death will abide, will pamper your postponement. 
I assure you death will wait. Death has 
a lot of time. Death can 
attend to you tomorrow. Or next week. Death is 
just down the street; is most obliging neighbor; 
can meet you any moment. 

You need not die today. 
Stay here—through pout or pain or peskyness. 
Stay here. See what the news is going to be tomorrow. 

Graves grow no green that you can use. 
Remember, green’s your color. You are Spring.

I have a deep and abiding love for Gwendolyn Brooks and her poetry. So much of her work reads like prayer, and nowhere is this more evident than in the line You need not die today. Sometimes, I feel like life kicks us so squarely in the face that it would be easier to lie down and die. And it would be. Death is patient and eager to those who would embrace its precepts. But life…life has so much to offer us. And so we go back to Brooks: You need not die today. You need not die today. You need not die today. You need not die today. You need not die today. You need not die today. You need not die today.

Poem for the Day: August 22nd, 2021

*Don’t Call Us Dead: Poems* by Danez Smith

little prayer by Danez Smith

let ruin end here 

let him find honey 
where there was once a slaughter 

let him enter the lion’s cage 
& find a field of lilacs 

let this be the healing 
& if not  let it be

Poem for the Day: August 21st, 2021

Portland, 1968 by Louise Glück

You stand as rocks stand 
to which the sea reaches 
in transparent waves of longing; 
they are marred, finally; 
everything fixed is marred. 
And the sea triumphs, 
like all that is false, 
all that is fluent and womanly. 
From behind, a lens 
opens for your body. Why 
should you turn? It doesn’t matter 
who the witness is, 
for whom you are suffering, 
for whom you are standing still.

Louise Glück. Unknown Author. Public Domain.

Note: Louise Glück was the recipient of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature. Her collection of poetry, The Wild Iris (1993), won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

Original Poem: Arms of the Deep

Love is not a cat chasing shadows on the floor.
Fred Slusher, “Arms of the Deep”

Lull me into oblivion. My attention span 
is limited. Infinity, space, time—
your voice in my ear, bottom lip on my lobe—
turning love into cherries into wine. 
Creamsicle daylight is wasting away 
while we wait for the song to finish playing. 
When you were mine life was always 
a game sweetly played, vollied to & fro like 
the king’s severed head; no throne. 
Fade to black. Next reel, please.
Pleas to be real with me remain ignored. 
Love is not a cat chasing shadows on the floor. 
I feel you watching me caressing my own crooks 
in the dark. Elbows, not thieves, though 
everything of value has been stolen at one time or 
another. Dear lover, take this rambling lullaby 
& pitch it into the sea where memory goes to 
sleep in the steadfast arms of the 
deep.

Poem for the Day: August 20th, 2021

Never by Stephen Dobyns

The day I learned my wife was dying 
I went to read about volcanic eruptions,
earthquakes, fire, bloody war, and murder. 
I wanted to discover the most awful, because 

I knew her death would be worse than that;
and even crueler would be her absence, not 
for a day or a year. It meant not coming back.
That was what I couldn’t imagine. How many 

days in Never? How many times would we 
hear a car and think, That’s her, or hear 
the phone ring and feel suddenly happy, 
only to grasp it was basically nobody, 

and each burst of knowing would be one 
little death, and they will happen all day.