POEM OF THE DAY BY TOI DERRICOTTE

Sunday afternoons at Claire Carlyle's

My mother and father, light-
skinned, but too new

to make the upper cut,

were, nevertheless, welcomed
into the marble foyer

under an icebox-sized chandelier
to mix martinis with double-edged

men and women trained to outwit
and out-white the whites. Almost all

were light and straight-featured
enough to pass—some did,

some didn't.
Claire's brother Bob

passed. If seen weekdays,
he wasn't

to be spoken to. Light and dark
did the same—an inward

move to protect those
fortunate enough to choose.

But why did my mother

(who looked as white
as Loretta Young—and as beautiful!) see

Bob one weekday walking
toward her up Woodward

and cross
to the other side? Why,

when anyone would
only have seen

two white people?
It was something in my mother

not visible: in her

mind's eye
she was black and wore the robe

of it over her fine features; but

just in case

some inner misstep
might magnify and fix

them (the inner world

being vast and treacherous!)—

as if they were slaves running
for their lives.

-Toi Derricotte

POEM OF THE DAY BY TONY HOAGLAND

America


Then one of the students with blue hair and a tongue stud

Says that America is for him a maximum-security prison

Whose walls are made of RadioShacks and Burger Kings, and MTV episodes

Where you can’t tell the show from the commercials,

And as I consider how to express how full of shit I think he is,

He says that even when he’s driving to the mall in his Isuzu

Trooper with a gang of his friends, letting rap music pour over them

Like a boiling Jacuzzi full of ballpeen hammers, even then he feels

Buried alive, captured and suffocated in the folds

Of the thick satin quilt of America

And I wonder if this is a legitimate category of pain,

or whether he is just spin doctoring a better grade,

And then I remember that when I stabbed my father in the dream last night,

It was not blood but money

That gushed out of him, bright green hundred-dollar bills

Spilling from his wounds, and—this is the weird part—,

He gasped “Thank god—those Ben Franklins were

Clogging up my heart—

And so I perish happily,

Freed from that which kept me from my liberty”—

Which was when I knew it was a dream, since my dad

Would never speak in rhymed couplets,

And I look at the student with his acne and cell phone and phony ghetto clothes

And I think, “I am asleep in America too,

And I don’t know how to wake myself either,”

And I remember what Marx said near the end of his life:

“I was listening to the cries of the past,

When I should have been listening to the cries of the future.”

But how could he have imagined 100 channels of 24-hour cable

Or what kind of nightmare it might be

When each day you watch rivers of bright merchandise run past you

And you are floating in your pleasure boat upon this river

Even while others are drowning underneath you

And you see their faces twisting in the surface of the waters

And yet it seems to be your own hand

Which turns the volume higher?


-Tony Hoagland

POEM OF THE DAY BY MICHAEL ROBBINS

I Did This to My Vocabulary

The moon is my alibi. My tenders throw hissy fits.

My scalp’s at the foot of the precipice.

My lume is spento, there’s a creep in my cellar.

You can stand under my umbrella, Ella.

Who put pubic hair on my headphones?

Who put the ram in Ramallah?

I’m just sitting here spinning my spinning wheels—

where are the snow tires of tomorrow?

The llama is burning! My heart is an ovary!

Let’s chase dawn’s tail across state lines,

sing “Crimson and Clover” over and overy,

till wonders are taken for road signs.

My fish, fast and loose, shoot fish in a kettle.

The boys like the girls who like heavy metal.

On Sabbath, on Slayer, on Maiden and Venom,

on Motorhead, Leppard, and Zeppelin, and Mayhem . . .

-Michael Robbins

POEM OF THE DAY BY MICHAEL ROBBINS

We Have the Technology

By the sparklet of certain ciliates cesium

practices its cricket song.

Am I supposed to be impressed? My smoothie

comes with gps.

Take a left at that crustacean. You—yes, you,

with the crisis Isis eyes.

By Odin’s beard, this is snowier than usual. We can

always burn the first folio.

Go bug a dandelion. You’ll have

the elephant of surprise.


-Michael Robbins

POEM OF THE DAY BY MARVIN BELL

The Book of the Dead Man (The Numbers)

Live as if you were already dead.
—Zen admonition

1. About the Dead Man and the Numbers

The dead man is outside the pale.
The dead man makes space for himself the way a soccer player moves to the place to be next.
The angles shift, the pace slows and picks up, it matters more, then less, then more, then less,
and others run by in both directions.
One of them may slow to stoke the embers of a failing thought.
For example, the dead man restores the poet's ambition to plumb the nature of existence.
Sometimes he, sometimes she, asks the dead man what it is to live as if one were already dead.
It's the feel of an impression in the earth, a volume in space, an airy drift upward.
It's downwind and upwind at the same time.
It's a resonance to wrap one's mind around, like a bandage beneath which the healing may happen.
It's the idea of turf beyond the neighborhood.
It's a cold flame in a hot season.
It's what you do facing the guns.

2. More About the Dead Man and the Numbers

Here we go, with what it takes.
The dead man wakes in a dream, lungs aching as if the night were a stairway or a hill.
Is he indoors or out, an insider in public or an outsider at home?
He hears a splash of tissue in a knee and a click as his shoulder slips the edge of an obstruction.
You would think he thinks himself awake, but the dead man does not.
He has a way of making the ephemeral last, the rusting slow, the leaf hang, the bullet hold up in midair.
In the waking world, there are too many of us to tell, the ushers are overwhelmed by the numbers
wanting a box seat.
The preacher offering a future world, the historian waxing nostalgic, and the dead man underwriting
them is what it takes.
How is it to be the dead man among shifting loyalties?
It means living in the interstices, swimming in the wake of the big boats, crossing the borders on
back roads.
It means taking the field with those whose lives are numbered.
It means finding space for when it will matter.

-Marvin Bell

(OTHERWISE) RIDICULOUS

The lone Bos primigenius on the hill at night,

do you suppose she ever wonders
in her laconic, bovine way
what the stars could possibly be?

Does the Tyto alba contemplate
the moon’s topography from his
hay loft perch or what mysteries might
lay on its darker side?

The Nephilia clavata centered in his jeweled web,

does he receive strange frequencies
(or just old radio transmissions)
on its taut wires and filaments?

What about the sleepless philosopher/poet
taking his thoughts out for a late-night
walk around the neighborhood?

Does the universe leave cryptic
fortune cookie clues and candid
little polaroids of the Bigger Picture
laying around for him to find
and piece together later?

Or is this semi-educated fool merely
adrift on a sea of his own imagining
in the leaky row-boat of his skull

and nothing but a kerosene lamp,
a stone jug of corn liquor
and an old typewriter on which
he may compose

such (otherwise) ridiculous
and impertinent

questions.

-Jason Ryberg, 2010

POEM OF THE DAY BY NTOZAKE SHANGE

My Father Is a Retired Magician (for ifa, p.t., & bisa) my father is a retired magician which accounts for my irregular behavior everythin comes outta magic hats or bottles wit no bottoms & parakeets are as easy to get as a couple a rabbits or 3 fifty cent pieces/ 1958 my daddy retired from magic & took up another trade cuz this friend of mine from the 3rd grade asked to be made white on the spot what cd any self-respectin colored american magician do wit such a outlandish request/ cept put all them razzamatazz hocus pocus zippity-do-dah thingamajigs away cuz colored chirren believin in magic waz becomin politically dangerous for the race & waznt nobody gonna be made white on the spot just from a clap of my daddy's hands & the reason i'm so peculiar's cuz i been studyin up on my daddy's technique & everythin i do is magic these days & it's very colored very now you see it/ now you dont mess wit me i come from a family of retired sorcerers/ active houngans & pennyante fortune tellers wit 41 million spirits critturs & celestial bodies on our side i'll listen to yr problems help wit yr career yr lover yr wanderin spouse make yr grandma's stay in heaven more gratifyin ease yr mother thru menopause & show yr son how to clean his room YES YES YES 3 wishes is all you get scarlet ribbons for yr hair benwa balls via hong kong a miniature of machu picchu all things are possible but aint no colored magician in her right mind gonna make you white i mean this is blk magic you lookin at & i'm fixin you up good/ fixin you up good n colored & you gonna be colored all yr life & you gonna love it/ bein colored/ all yr life/ colored & love it love it/ bein colored/ -NTOZAKE SHANGE

POEM OF THE DAY BY STEPHEN DOBYNS

Missed Chances

In the city of missed chances, the streetlights
always flicker, the second hand clothing shops
stay open all night and used furniture stores
employ famous greeters. This is where you
are sent after that moment of hesitation.
You were too slow to act, too afraid to jump,
too shy or uncertain to speak up. Do you recall
the moment? Your finger was raised, your mouth
open, and then, strangely, silence. Now you walk
past men and women wrapped in the memory
of the speeches they should have uttered-
Over my dead body. Sure, I'd be happy with
ten thousand. If you walk out, don't come back-
past dogs practicing faster bites, cowboys
with faster draws, where even the cockroach
knows that next time he'll jump to the left.
You were simply going to say, Don't go, or words
to that effect-Don't go, don't leave, don't walk
out of my life. Nothing fancy, nothing to stutter
about. Now you're shouting it every ten seconds.

In the city of missed chances, it is always just past
sunset and the freeways are jammed with people
driving to homes they regret ever choosing,
where wives or helpmates have burned the dinner,
where the TV's blown a fuse and even the dog,
tied to a post in the backyard, feels confused,
uncertain, and makes tentative barks at the moon.
How easy to say it-Don't go, don't leave, don't
disappear. Now you've said it a million times.
You even stroll over to the Never-Too-Late
Tattoo Parlor and have it burned into the back
of your hand, right after the guy who had
Don't shoot, Madge, printed big on his forehead.

Then you go town to the park, where you discover
a crowd of losers, your partners in hesitation,
standing nose to nose with the bronze statues
repeating the phrases engraved on their hearts-
Let me kiss you. Don't hit me. I love you-
while the moon pretends to take it all in.
Let's get this straight once and for all:
is that a face up there or is it a rabbit, and if
it's a face, then why does it hold itself back,
why doesn't it take control and say, Who made
this mess, who's responsible? But this is no time
for rebellion, you must line up with the others,
then really start to holler, Don't go, don't go-
like a hammer sinking chains into concrete,
like doors slamming and locking one after another,
like a heart beats when it's scared half to death.

-Stephen Dobyns

ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES GLENN BECK GO “SOMETHING-SOMETHING”

GLENN BECK/ILLUMINATI/SCIENTOLOGY/GLENN BECK/FATHER A FORMER PSY-OPS AGENT/OPUS-DEI/MOTHER'S “MYSTERIOUS DEATH”/GLENN BECK/SATANIC BLOOD ORGY IN BASEMENT OF FAMILY BUSINESS/OVERTHROW OF U.S.GOVERNMENT/ ILLUMINATI/ BOHEMIAN GROVE/GLENN BECK/BUILDING 7/SAIPAN SEX SLAVE CAMP/COCAINE ENEMA /GLENN BECK/ MEGA CHURCH/MONSTROUS GODCOCK/MK-ULTRA/FOX NEWS/JIM JONES /CANNIBAL SPERM/ GLENN BECK/RAPE, RAPE, MURDER, ARSON AND RAPE / MORMONS /INNER CIRCLE/PLOT AGAINST THE POOR AND MIDDLE CLASS/DRUGS/BAPHOMET/BLOOD SACRIFICE/ TRI- LATERAL COMMISSION/GLENN BECK/MIND-CONTROL/ FATHER A FORMER PSY-OPS AGENT/OPUS-DEI/MOTHER'S MYSTERIOUS DEATH/GLENN BECK/SATANIC BLOOD ORGY/OVERTHROW OF U.S.GOVERNMENT/ ILLUMINATI/BOHEMIAN GROVE/GLENN BECK/ BUILDING 7/SAIPAN SEX SLAVE CAMP/DENIAL OF 1990 RAPE AND MURDER /DRUGS/ ELDERS OF ZION OBSESSION/MORMON CHILD PORN/GLENN BECK/SECRET COMMUNIST/ FOX NEWS/JIM JONES/CANNIBAL SPERM/ GLENN BECK/RAPE, RAPE, MURDER, ARSON AND RAPE / MORMONS/INNER CIRCLE/PLOT AGAINST THE POOR AND MIDDLE CLASS/DRUGS /BAPHOMET/BLOOD SACRIFICE/ TRI-LATERAL COMMISSION/GLENN BECK/SECRET PLOT TO DESTROY AMERICA/PUPPET OFGEORGE SOROS/GLENN BECK /BLACK HELICOPTERS /FATHER’S POSSIBLE INVOLVEMENT WITH CATTLE MUTILATIONS /UFO’S/ ILLUMINATI/ BOHEMIAN GROVE /GLENN BECK/ BUILDING 7/SAIPAN SEX SLAVE CAMP/COCAINE ENEMA PARTY/GLENN BECK /MEGACHURCH SEX SCANDAL COVER-UP/MONSTROUS GODCOCK/ MK-ULTRA/FOX NEWS/JIM JONES/CANNIBAL SPERM/ GLENN BECK/RAPE, RAPE, MURDER, ARSON AND RAPE /GLENN BECK /ILLUMINATI /SCIENTOLOGY /GLENN BECK/FATHER A FORMER PSY-OPS AGENT/ OPUS-DEI/MOTHER'S “MYSTERIOUS DEATH”/GLENN BECK/ SATANIC BLOOD ORGY/ OVERTHROW OF AMERICA/ HATRED OF U.S.GOVERNMENT / ILLUMINATI/ BOHEMIAN GROVE/GLENN BECK /CONSPIRACY/IN LEAGUE WITH SOROS/ BLOOD SACRIFICE /TRI-LATERAL COMMISSION /GLENN BECK/ SECRET PLOT TO DESTROY AMERICA/PUPPET OF GEORGE SOROS/GLENN BECK/BLACK WATER “BUDDIES”/BLACK HELICOPTERS /CATTLE MUTILATIONS/UFO’S/ILLUMINATI/BOHEMIAN GROVE/”GLENN BECK DID COCAINE IN MY BATHROOM”/FRONT FOR COMMUNIST BILLIONAIRE/FATHER WORKING FOR COVERT ONE WORLD SHADOW GOVERNMENT /SECRET CONSERVATIVE ELITE CONTROLLING MEDIA /GLENN BECK/ PHONY LIBERAL MEDIA/PLOT AGAINST THE POOR AND MIDDLE CLASS /DRUGS/ BAPHOMET /BLOOD SACRIFICE /TRI-LATERAL COMMISSION/GLENN BECK/ MIND-CONTROL/ FATHER A FORMER PSY-OPS AGENT/ OPUS- DEI/MOTHER'S “MYSTERIOUS DEATH”/GLENN BECK /”SATANIC BLOOD ORGY”/ OVER THROW OF U.S.GOVERNMENT /WORLD BANK/GLENN BECK /”PHOTOS HE DOESN’T WANT YOU TO SEE”/FATHER’S HISTORY WITH MK-ULTRA/FOX NEWS/JIM JONES/ CANNIBAL SPERM/ GLENN BECK/RAPE, RAPE, MURDER, ARSON AND RAPE /GLENN BECK /ILLUMINATI /SCIENTOLOGY/GLENN BECK/FATHER A FORMER PSY-OPS AGENT/ OPUS-DEI/MOTHER'S “MYSTERIOUS DEATH” WON’T ANSWER QUESTIONS/GLENN BECK/PROSTITUTES/GAMBLING ADDICTION/REFUSAL TO REVEAL FINANCIAL BACKERS FOR RALLY/ MEGACHURCH SEX SCANDAL COVER-UP/ MONSTROUS GAY GODCOCK RELIGION/ MK-ULTRA AND BECK, SR. / FOX NEWS CONSPIRACY/JIM JONES AND GLENN BECK’S FATHER/HE WHO SHALL NOT BE NAMED/ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES GLENN BECK GO “SOMETHING-SOMETHING”

CHARLES SIMIC SITTING IN THE CHEAP SEATS OF MY DREAMS

It would appear to be
either a rundown vaudevillian/
burlesque theater, Poughkeepsie
or Buffalo, NY, circa 19-twenty-something,

or maybe an old, black and white,
“recorded live before a studio
audience” style television program;

part “Honeymooners,”
“Days Of Our Lives,” and
German expressionist cinema
consisting almost entirely of various
stock caricatures and other tragi-comic
grotesqueries of the perverse
simultaneously hurling out hyper-dramatic
dialogue to no one in particular.

They orate, pontificate
and gesticulate, magnificently,
without ever seeming to be aware
of each other’s existence.

One of them is dressed as a World War I
Prussian Military commander, complete with
tall, shiny boots, walrussy handle bar
and singularly spiked helmet.

Another is, most likely, supposed to be
somebody’s booga-booga idea of an ancient
tribal shaman or witchdoctor.

Still another, wearing a bra and panties
and a thin silk cord running from his neck to the heel
of the high-heel shoe on his only remaining foot,
masturbates, dreamily, into the long shadow
of his nightly near-death excursion.

A chorus of mutts and street urchins
waits, attentively, for its cue (or a scrap
of food to fight over, perhaps).

And way in the back,
in the darkest and cheapest of cheap seats,
the lone, cigar smoking audience member
smacks out a slow and clamorous

CLAP!

CLAP!

CLAP!

CLAP!

-Jason Ryberg, 2010

POEM OF THE DAY BY MINA LOY

Moreover, the Moon ---
Face of the skies preside over our wonder. Fluorescent truant of heaven draw us under. Silver, circular corpse your decease infects us with unendurable ease, touching nerve-terminals to thermal icicles Coercive as coma, frail as bloom innuendoes of your inverse dawn suffuse the self; our every corpuscle become an elf. -Mina Loy

DRUNK DIRECTING TRAFFIC AT THE INTERSECTION OF TIME AND SPACE

No sooner had I lowered myself

down into that dark well

of ghost echos and distant whale squeak

than I was the poor boy of every

sad blues and honky-tonk song,

thumb out, on the Lost Highway

and a long, long way from home,

a lonesome stranger trying to

hitch a ride to ever-stranger lands

(and other Parts Unknown, as well).

I was Hank and Lefty,

Kerouac and Cassidy,

Quixote and Sancho.

I wore the fabled hubcap

diamond-star halo and red shoes

that were the envy of every angel

(and devil alike).

I made mid-night raids

on The Garden of Earthly Delights.

I stole Death’s pale, raggedy horse

and sold it to a traveling gypsy circus.

I directed traffic at the intersection

of Time and Space.

I rode bitch between a mega-church minister

and a street-corner preacher.

I got drunk on nine kinds of hellfire

and nearly died in a duel

over a one-legged ballerina.

If not for the alarm clock

pinching my ear with its

sharp, bony fingers,

I might not have ever

made it back.

-Jason Ryberg, 2010

POEM OF THE DAY BY ELIZABETH GOLD

Wild Turkey

I tell you I saw this once—tangle
of typewriters piled up
on a city street like a pyre

waiting to be lit, levers still
half lifted as if trying to hail
a cab. Oh, they were beautiful,

these discarded messengers
of the machine age, their names,
Olivetti, Royal, Underwood, picked out

in gold, and I almost rescued one,
hefting it from its nest of empty
whiskey bottles—Wild Turkey,

they were, flock decimated
by the light of burning midnight
oil, but ghosts, I think, prefer

the company of ghosts, that’s why
we seldom see them, but we hear them,
sometimes, typing away at that life

sentence, bars rising with the press
of fingertips on the keys, unlocking
the words: send help.

-Elizabeth Gold

POEM OF THE DAY BY BARBARA GOLDBERG

The Fullness Thereof

The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein.
—Psalm 24

i.
In the beginning a riot of color, burnt umber, magenta,
madder red. Vast expanses of indigo. There was thunder
and the absence of thunder. There was heat, Earth shifting,
hills swelling, ridges rising. Then came the fingerlings,
the frogs, and dark-eyed juncos. Possum and hawk
and fox. There were buffalo, mountain lions. There were
slender legs of spiders and dragonflies. Mosquitoes trapped
on salmon-colored salamanders’ flickering tongues. Black
bears lumbering through the underbrush. Speckled eggs,
beavers, fire ants. Night crawlers wriggling below, crows
cawing above, there was Earth and the fullness thereof.

ii.
We forded the river, the one named Euphrates, the highest
mountain, we called it Mount George, the one we crossed
over, Mount Spotswood. We numbered the trout and catfish,
the brooks they swam in. We tracked all species of fowl.
We blazed trails in the forest and left distinguishing marks.
The winnowing down of daylight, that was good. Once
two geese swooped in. He swam up and down the pond
fixing his amber eye on me. She tucked her head beneath
one wing. Stars were our faithful companions, and we drank
to their health, as we did to the King and the rest of the Royal
Family. In this way we cleared the path to today.

iii.
It’s hard to think of home without the hawthorn and the scat
of deer and mole. It’s hard to think of fall without the sight
of scurrying squirrels packing nuts into their cheeks, fearing
humans less than winter. It’s hard to think of me without my
hound, my hound, heaven’s staunchest ally. It’s hard to live
on this land without hearing sounds of all sorts of creatures, all
digging out toward light, or burrowing within, breathing deeply
of the darkening night. To love a place is to love where you are,
to know it is beyond compare, the air, the scent, it might as well
be skin, it is to touch, be touched by everything in the surround,
to feel at one yet fully other in this diverse dominion.

-Barbara Goldberg