POEM OF THE DAY BY ANNE PORTER

Winter Twilight
On a clear winter's evening The crescent moon And the round squirrels' nest In the bare oak Are equal planets. -Anne Porter

POEM OF THE DAY BY CHARLES WRIGHT

Clear Night

Clear night, thumb-top of a moon, a back-lit sky.

Moon-fingers lay down their same routine

On the side deck and the threshold, the white keys and the black keys.

Bird hush and bird song. A cassia flower falls.

I want to be bruised by God.

I want to be strung up in a strong light and singled out.

I want to be stretched, like music wrung from a dropped seed.

I want to be entered and picked clean.

And the wind says “What?” to me.

And the castor beans, with their little earrings of death, say “What?” to me.

And the stars start out on their cold slide through the dark.

And the gears notch and the engines wheel.

-Charles Wright

POEM OF THE DAY BY MACGREGOR CARD

from Erotic Victor Sedatives
Candor is the brightest shield we'll ever know apart from privacy —Andrew Maxwell, "Sotto Voce" Among ourselves, the contrary, there is no 'land' so like the world that, in a suitable remoteness one can't tell the difference between atmosphere and strained enchantment Beings of imagination aren't compelled, at all, they aren't, that's easy, if there's any way they show 'a ranging disposition' someone's really present folks, and must be close, obscene, plants only rustle from extraordinary bare necessity— the deck, the moving painted tree, even when you hit the floor it hurts this other way, one sustenance in hand, a moving trap of shade is a variety of show-light, you? Among us faeries can hold property inside the ballet states, an entry in the field guide to locusts, with at least a glow that turns apart one splinter, and another, from decaying trees, all home, overlooked and natural, dead on as if the life we might set out to lead were made available to us in strongest attitude of opposition to the ordinary facts Straining like an anthem in its leather case without the notes of wild birds at all without an instrument, affirmative, and something else as contrary as poetry let's say one hundred years ago but so much more -Macgregor Card

POEM OF THE DAY BY JAMES TATE

Poem to Some of My Recent Poems

My beloved little billiard balls,

my polite mongrels, edible patriotic plums,

you owe your beauty to your mother, who

resembled a cyclindrical corned beef

with all the trimmings, may God rest

her forsaken soul, for it is all of us

she forsook; and I shall never forget

her sputtering embers, and then the little mound.

Yes, my little rum runners, she had defective

tear ducts and could weep only iced tea.

She had petticoats beneath her eyelids.

And in her last years she found ball bearings

in her beehive puddings, she swore allegiance

to Abyssinia. What should I have done?

I played the piano and scrambled eggs.

I had to navigate carefully around her brain’s

avalanche lest even a decent finale be forfeited.

And her beauty still evermore. You see,

as she was dying, I led each of you to her side,

one by one she scorched you with her radiance.

And she is ever with us in our acetylene leisure.

But you are beautiful, and I, a slave to a heap of cinders.

-James Tate

POEM OF THE DAY BY MINA LOY

Lunar Baedeker
A silver Lucifer serves cocaine in cornucopia To some somnambulists of adolescent thighs draped in satirical draperies Peris in livery prepare Lethe for posthumous parvenues Delirious Avenues lit with the chandelier souls of infusoria from Pharoah's tombstones lead to mercurial doomsdays Odious oasis in furrowed phosphorous--- the eye-white sky-light white-light district of lunar lusts ---Stellectric signs "Wing shows on Starway" "Zodiac carrousel" Cyclones of ecstatic dust and ashes whirl crusaders from hallucinatory citadels of shattered glass into evacuate craters A flock of dreams browse on Necropolis From the shores of oval oceans in the oxidized Orient Onyx-eyed Odalisques and ornithologists observe the flight of Eros obsolete And "Immortality" mildews... in the museums of the moon "Nocturnal cyclops" "Crystal concubine" ------- Pocked with personification the fossil virgin of the skies waxes and wanes---- -Mina Loy

POEM OF THE DAY BY DAVID LEHMAN

A QUICK ONE BEFORE I GO

There comes a time in every man's life
when he thinks: I have never had a single
original thought in my life
including this one & therefore I shall
eliminate all ideas from my poems
which shall consist of cats, rice, rain
baseball cards, fire escapes, hanging plants
red brick houses where I shall give up booze
and organized religion even if it means
despair is a logical possibility that can't
be disproved I shall concentrate on the five
senses and what they half perceive and half
create, the green street signs with white
letters on them the body next to mine
asleep while I think these thoughts
that I want to eliminate like nostalgia
0 was there ever a man who felt as I do
like a pronoun out of step with all the other
floating signifiers no things but in words

an orange T-shirt a lime green awning

-David Lehman

POEM OF THE DAY BY NORMAN DUBIE

A Fifteenth-Century Zen Master

for Stephen

A blind girl steps over the red staves

Of a tub. Steam rising from her shoulders and hair,

She walks across a dirt floor to you.

I think you are not her grandfather.

You watch with her a pink man

Who has avoided taxes for two winters—

He is being judged by roosters

And has been chased this far into the countryside. Above him

Burning sacks of bat dung are arranged

In the purple branches of the thistle trees.

The river is indifferent to him.

And so are we.

You tell your mistress the burning bags of shit

Are like inert buddhas

Dissolving in a field of merit.

She giggles. A front tooth is loose.

With the river bottom clear as the night air,

The bargeman sings through the hungry vapors

Rising now like white snakes behind him.

You told his wife that Lord Buddha made wasps

From yellow stalks of tobacco with a dark spit.

Down in the cold bamboo a starving woman

Has opened a small pig—

The old moons climb from its blue glistening stomach,

Or is it light

From the infinitely receding sacks of shit?

Master, where is the difference?


-Norman Dubie

POEM OF THE DAY BY LINDA PASTAN

Vertical
Perhaps the purpose of leaves is to conceal the verticality of trees which we notice in December as if for the first time: row after row of dark forms yearning upwards. And since we will be horizontal ourselves for so long, let us now honor the gods of the vertical: stalks of wheat which to the ant must seem as high as these trees do to us, silos and telephone poles, stalagmites and skyscrapers. but most of all these winter oaks, these soft-fleshed poplars, this birch whose bark is like roughened skin against which I lean my chilled head, not ready to lie down. -Linda Pastan

"SNOWFLAKES"

True night having finally arrived and settled in

for this leg of our long cross-country haul;
all cold, black infinitudes and Lovecraftian
expanses of time, the headlights of the truck
barely illuminating the road ahead,
no signs of civilization anywhere and I'd swear
the wind has been alternately whispering
and roaring its bleak sermon for days now.

And somehow I'm still working on
the same foot-long truck stop sub,
still nursing on the same twenty-some-odd-ounce
cup of cold truck stop mud (funny how
with the right amount of faux-dairy creamer stuff
it tastes faintly of burnt popcorn).

But at least that low-hanging cloud cover
has finally rolled on and the stars have all come out
and there's a guy on the radio now going on and on
about the various health benefits that come from
consuming coral calcium deposits ("marine grade,"
by the way) which apparently include (but are,
by no means, limited to) curing any and all forms of cancer,
living to a hundred and twenty years of age and,
most amazingly, the ability to grow a new brain.

And on that last, ringing note (and vivid mental image)
we seem to have arrived at "one of those moments, "
where, who knows, maybe the planets and the stars
are aligned just right; one of those moments
when it's perfectly appropriate and all right
to ask of the night, the stars, the spirits of your ancestors
or whoever may be sitting next to you 'what's it all about?'
As in the big 'it.' The very 'it' from which all rivers
and roads issue forth and eventually, inevitably return to
and within which all the myriad archetypes
and things are contained and are each,
in their own way, ultimately about (aren't they?).

And it feels, somehow, like we started out
on this trip weeks ago, months even,
the whole thing a grainy late, late show
starring some second-rate Hope and Crosby,
Laurel and Hardy, Mutt and Jeff,
Kerouac and Cassidy, but, probably more like
the 21^st Century American answer to
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern; a couple of
luckless chuckle-heads suddenly thrown
by wild circumstance on to the road
with little more than the clothes on their backs
and the coins in their pockets,
more than just a little bit out of their depth
and out of step with the various machinations
at work around them.

But, now it's starting to feel
like maybe the wind is finally settling down
(for a little while, anyway)
and the stars are burning even brighter
all around us in the cold night sky,
yes, like fireflies,
like Christmas lights.

And there, to our right,
by the side of the road, a giant cross
comes looming, more than a little ominously, into view,
a hundred feet tall (at least) and all stage-lit
to properly announce the Judeo-Christian
All-Father's wrathful return to earth.

And now some British-sounding news-guy
on some other (shall we say more "standardized"
and "accountable") radio program is reporting
"live, from around the world (Greenwich Mean Time),"
recapping a few of the day's major headlines-

"Astronomers say they've found
a miniature version of our own solar system
only five thousand light years away,"

"In Israel, a woman believed to be
the world's oldest person celebrated
her one hundred and twentieth
birthday, today,"

"and for the first time in living memory
snowflakes are falling
on Baghdad."

Hey, man,

did he just say

snowflakes?


-Jason Ryberg, 2011

POEM OF THE DAY BY KIM ADDONIZIO

My Heart
That Mississippi chicken shack. That initial-scarred tabletop, that tiny little dance floor to the left of the band. That kiosk at the mall selling caramels and kitsch. That tollbooth with its white-plastic-gloved worker handing you your change. That phone booth with the receiver ripped out. That dressing room in the fetish boutique, those curtains and mirrors. That funhouse, that horror, that soundtrack of screams. That putti-filled heaven raining gilt from the ceiling. That haven for truckers, that bottomless cup. That biome. That wilderness preserve. That landing strip with no runway lights where you are aiming your plane, imagining a voice in the tower, imagining a tower. -Kim Addonizio

POEM OF THE DAY BY SHERMAN ALEXIE

Grief Calls Us to the Things of This World

The morning air is all awash with angels

—Richard Wilbur, “Love Calls Us to the Things of This World”

The eyes open to a blue telephone

In the bathroom of this five-star hotel.

I wonder whom I should call? A plumber,

Proctologist, urologist, or priest?

Who is blessed among us and most deserves

The first call? I choose my father because

He’s astounded by bathroom telephones.

I dial home. My mother answers. “Hey, Ma,”

I say, “Can I talk to Poppa?” She gasps,

And then I remember that my father

Has been dead for nearly a year. “Shit, Mom,”

I say. “I forgot he’s dead. I’m sorry—

How did I forget?” “It’s okay,” she says.

“I made him a cup of instant coffee

This morning and left it on the table—

Like I have for, what, twenty-seven years—

And I didn’t realize my mistake

Until this afternoon.” My mother laughs

At the angels who wait for us to pause

During the most ordinary of days

And sing our praise to forgetfulness

Before they slap our souls with their cold wings.

Those angels burden and unbalance us.

Those fucking angels ride us piggyback.

Those angels, forever falling, snare us

And haul us, prey and praying, into dust.

-Sherman Alexie

POEM OF THE DAY BY SUZANNE BUFFAM

The New Experience

I was ready for a new experience.

All the old ones had burned out.

They lay in little ashy heaps along the roadside

And blew in drifts across the fairgrounds and fields.

From a distance some appeared to be smoldering

But when I approached with my hat in my hands

They let out small puffs of smoke and expired.

Through the windows of houses I saw lives lit up

With the otherworldly glow of TV

And these were smoking a little bit too.

I flew to Rome. I flew to Greece.

I sat on a rock in the shade of the Acropolis

And conjured dusky columns in the clouds.

I watched waves lap the crumbling coast.

I heard wind strip the woods.

I saw the last living snow leopard

Pacing in the dirt. Experience taught me

That nothing worth doing is worth doing

For the sake of experience alone.

I bit into an apple that tasted sweetly of time.

The sun came out. It was the old sun

With only a few billion years left to shine.

-Suzanne Buffam

POEM OF THE DAY BY JAY WRIGHT

What Is Good

Out of the water call

my luminous breath,

into the bird, intending serpent, red,

who shakes himself, white,

out of that forest body, black.

Red gourd head spirit of the bush,

your breath is speech;

your speech is ordinary, pure.

I take you from the blue

glass of my sacred windows,

I ring you cold upon my father’s weights.

I would cook and save you

in my body’s house alone, light

you in the useless prism of my own desires.

I hold you in the yellow

parchment of my soul’s hand.

Once I took your body for the shape

of all I walked upon, your god’s voice

for the second of all my light.

But now I count my sins against

the ordinary syntax of my days.

Bird of the hard wood,

I would transcend the dog

and fox of my father’s prayers,

the corn, the monkey, lion and the seed

cut crudely by the cross in gold,

the black figures of a Christian death.

Bird, so you would change,

and flutter in my mother’s eyes.

And in my mother’s eyes

still bodies have rhythms of their own.

The light of dead hearts, my governors,

leads my body to a stillness.

I speak of stillness, and you see

I still grip your rhythm to my body.

Rhythm of my shade, an elephant skin.

Rhythm of my hat, the llama’s hair.

Rhythm of my coat, the cactus’ beard.

Rhythm of my trousers, silkworm web.

Rhythm of my shoes, pig hips.

Rhytm of my seat, the heart of a tree.

Rhythm of my hands in the beads.

Rhythm of my hands in the cleansing water,

of my eye in the perfect form of stillness,

the perfect light of my mother’s ecstasy.

Composed, I am saved

by my mother’s reason,

my neighbors’ needs,

my will to go beyond the stillness

of my gods’ dreams.

Luminous breath,

teach me compassion for this

my complex body.

-Jay Wright