POEM OF THE DAY BY IRIS APPELQUIST

it was a normal day 


full of bees we killed an hour saying a lot of nothing trying to say something and the weather was perfect. 
the children were getting hurt it wasn’t too sunny or hot or anything like that and the clover pulled at our bees inside it was painful for a minute saying all that nothing over and through all the something like honey seeping out. sappy children with their contusions and tantrums they brought perfect purple blossoms even with tears and the leaves broken it was such a beautiful day for crying in the park and i can’t lie it seemed like your bees were really fat loud flies and my bees were bees.


-Iris Appelquist

POEM OF THE DAY BY BRANDON WHITEHEAD

FIRE SNAKE

Grampa (or not) Woody, who rode
the old trails from Tahlequah
to the stone bones of the Rocky's,
listened to the storyteller
tell the tale of how Coyote
stole fire from three witches,
three witches with three black
nails that gave the chipmunks
their three black stripes,
and how Coyote finally hid fire
in wood for the people to use.

Woody smiles a crooked brown
smile, just like Coyote.

Later, while tending his rattlesnakes
-snakes that cannot hear their own rattle-
Woody tells me another part
of that tale that few knew
-like the paths he took-

How the running Coyote
came across brother Snake,
who said he could hide the fire
in his den under the earth.

"It's worth a try..." Said Coyote,
but Snake, who in those days
had a magnificent pelt of soft fur,
burned with fire instead,
and became the hairless, hard-scaled one
with the shaking tail,
shaking to escape the fire
to this day.

On the western plains of Kansas
they are using the fire to burn off
last year's crop, Coyote's gift
and Snake's bane, a miles-long
ribbon of fire, curling,
shaking a thousand tails.

Somewhere Snake watches, terrified,
envious of his failed bravery
and his lost innocence, transfixed.

To this day, only witches
and snakes know
the real secret of fire:

We all want to hold it,
but forget we have to burn.


-Brandon Whitehead

POEM OF THE DAY BY BILLY COLLINS

Reading An Anthology Of Chinese Poems
Of The Sung Dynasty, I Pause To Admire
The Length And Clarity Of Their Titles


It seems these poets have nothing
up their ample sleeves
they turn over so many cards so early,
telling us before the first line
whether it is wet or dry,
night or day, the season the man is standing in,
even how much he has had to drink.

Maybe it is autumn and he is looking at a sparrow.
Maybe it is snowing on a town with a beautiful name.

"Viewing Peonies at the Temple of Good Fortune
on a Cloudy Afternoon" is one of Sun Tung Po's.
"Dipping Water from the River and Simmering Tea"
is another one, or just
"On a Boat, Awake at Night."

And Lu Yu takes the simple rice cake with
"In a Boat on a Summer Evening
I Heard the Cry of a Waterbird.
It Was Very Sad and Seemed To Be Saying
My Woman Is Cruel--Moved, I Wrote This Poem."

There is no iron turnstile to push against here
as with headings like "Vortex on a String,"
"The Horn of Neurosis," or whatever.
No confusingly inscribed welcome mat to puzzle over.

Instead, "I Walk Out on a Summer Morning
to the Sound of Birds and a Waterfall"
is a beaded curtain brushing over my shoulders.

And "Ten Days of Spring Rain Have Kept Me Indoors"
is a servant who shows me into the room
where a poet with a thin beard
is sitting on a mat with a jug of wine
whispering something about clouds and cold wind,
about sickness and the loss of friends.

How easy he has made it for me to enter here,
to sit down in a corner,
cross my legs like his, and listen.


-Billy Collins

A SWEET LITTLE HALLOWEEN POEM FROM GEORGE WALLACE.

TRICK OR TREAT AMERICA
OPEN UP YOUR BIG FAT MOUTH
trick or treat america open up your mouth spit it out you are not earth's only miracle you are also a great big fucking pain in the Ass and a launching pad of terrible ambitions unbalanced egg cream the moon and planets make way for you & your super-ego men your beauty castaways your ecstatic frack-happy legal thieves O god you are an awkward nation with your sidewalk soup and your belly side up your fist full mountain dew put up or shut up open me first and your dreams your dreams! Your dreams die here on your blacktop highway on your trail of tears you ripped off the Indians you left em for dead you been and Look what you gave back beercans tossed from the gravy train -- america your football helmets crash pads crop dusters and charlton heston your easy terms and no deposit oh drugstore carnival oh panty raids and unrepentant capitalism when i have said i love you i did not lie i love you open twentyfour hours i love you bald headed as a bassett hound and your pagan love song I love your neighbors yes and your Soupy sales & magic tricks roadrunner ain’t got nothing on you & your apple farms poolhalls and palm trees jazzified in the new Orleans creole night o FUCK it america all your glory’s gone up your nostrils but what the shit, it’s Halloween! my favorite pagan holiday! I forgive y ou I love you I god bless You! Trick or treat Ding Dong Hand over the candy Motherfucker!


-George Wallace

POEM OF THE DAY BY GEORGE WALLACE

WARHOL SOUP 
hey waiter waiter what’s this jellyfish doing in my Warhol soup -- why 
I’ll tell you mister it's doing the watusi it’s doing the backstroke it’s 
doing the merengue & the fly

it’s meditating like a fuck bunny from mars it’s a devil in disguise & it’ll 
screw you up with its silkscreen elvis & its angular ass & tits with its 
wingtips & its long sharp teeth

but waiter waiter what’s this marilyn doing in my Warhol soup -- why 
you don’t know what you’re messing with mister it’s doing the ‘i tease 
you’ it’s doing the ‘turn me on dead man’

it’s doing the i use, you you use me -- the i suck you, i eat you, then i 
spit you out like snake meat on a cold plate

but waiter waiter what’s this mushroom cloud doing in my Warhol soup -- 
why listen up mister it’s doing the edie it’s doing the joe

it’s doing the heroin freak the hedonist rag it’s doing the candy darling 
the nico the ultraviolet & the lou reed too -- & if i told you once i told 
you a thousand times

a spoonful of that long hard darkness will get you all tangled up & 
wishing you could throw that bitches broth away but you can’t


-GEORGE WALLACE

POEM OF THE DAY BY JACKIE TREIBER

"Spa Psychic"

You will have a vision of your true love
in the fumes of toxic nail polish.
A child’s face will manifest
in a post-sauna mirage.
The glyph that eventually leads
you down a light path
will appear in a mud mask spread.
The pains of your future lost limb
will be transmuted in the hot rock
stone massage of now.
You are not your muscles--
but a cloud of impressions:
blue in the shade, violet when you lie
white when you’re being read.
No longer a Hanged Man--
spurred black boots on a wire
but a pre-life soldier
waiting in the hotsprings
of psychic disorder.


-Jackie Treiber

POEM OF THE DAY BY HARLEY ELLIOT

REPORT ON THE FOURTH

Alone in the house on
the fourth of july bang
one hundred and five all around

no shade the orioles bang and
sparrows droop panting in the trees
and the bang and the beer
marches bang bang from the refrigerator

a dripping line of bottles
along the living room floor
bang the policemen doze like sweating birds

one man bang bang one man
is arrested in drunken slow motion
while trying to get a bang

a drink of water from a
filling station air hose
bang on the fourth of july.

-Harley Elliott