battlescars from childhood
there's no one to believe


Joel Didrikson, Michael Kentoff and Deborah Anger, 2008

Above is a promo photo for an evening of poetry and music sponsored by 32 Poems Friday May 9, 2008 at The Writer's Center in Bethesda, Maryland. Readings by Sandra Beasley and Bernadette Geyer. Music by The Caribbean. The fun is free and starts at 8pm.


Untitled
-- by Grace Paley

Life is as risky
as it is branchy

treetop and twigtip
are only the beginning

then comes the westwind to lean
and the northwind to turn

then the sunshine implores
and up all of us go

we are like any
greengrowing machinery

riding the daylight route
to darkness


City Afternoon
-- John Ashbery

A veil of haze protects this
Long-ago afternoon forgotten by everybody
In this photograph, most of them now
Sucked screaming through old age and death.

If one could seize America
Or at least a fine forgetfullness
That seeps into our outline
Defining our volumes with a stain
That is fleeting too

But commemorates
Because it does define, after all:
Gray garlands, that threesome
Waiting for the light to change.
Air lifting the hair of one
Upside down in the reflecting pool.


The End Of The Library
-- by Weldon Kees
When the coal
Gave out, we began
Burning the books, one by one;
First the set
Of Bulwer-Lytton
And then the Walter Scott.
They gave a lot of warmth.
Toward the end, in
February, flames
Consumed the Greek
Tragedians and Baudelaire,
Proust, Robert Burton
And the Po-Chu-i. Ice
Thickened on the sills.
More for the sake of the cat,
We said, than for ourselves,
Who huddled, shivering,
Against the stove
All winter long.


-- back May 12ish.