tgifreytag

Poem-a-day, April 24: vital information

Giving Blood

I need money for the taxi cab ride home to the reservation
    and I need a taxi
because all the Indians left this city last night while I was sleeping
and forgot to tell me
so I walk on down to the blood bank with a coupon that guarantees
me twenty bucks a pint
and I figure I can stand to lose three or four pints but the
white nurse says no
you can only give up one pint at a time and before you can do that
you have to clear
our extensive screening process which involves a physical examination
and interview
which is a pain in the ass but I need the money so I sit down
at a wooden desk
across from the white nurse holding a pen and paper and she asks me
my name and I tell her
Crazy Horse and she asks my birthdate and I tell her it was probably
June 25 in 1876 and then she asks my ethnic origin and I tell her I’m an
Indian or Native American
depending on your view of historical accuracy and she asks me
my religious preference and I tell her I prefer to keep my
     religion entirely independent
of my economic activities
and then she asks me how many sexual partners I’ve had and
I say one or two
depending on your definition of what I did to Custer and then
she puts aside her pen and paper
and gives me the most important question she asks me
if I still have enough heart
and I tell her I don’t know it’s been a long time but I’d like to
give it a try
and then she smiles and turns to her computer punches in my name
and vital information
and we wait together for the results until the computer prints
a sheet of statistics
and the white nurse reads it over a few times and tells me I’m
sorry Mr. Crazy Horse
but we’ve already taken too much of your blood
     and you won’t be eligible
to donate for another generation or two.

***

Hi Friends,

Today’s poem is by Sherman Alexie, from his first collection of poems and vignettes This Business of Fancydancing (1992).

April is National Poetry Month, and I am celebrating by emailing out my own eclectic selection of one poem per day for the duration of the month. You can learn more about National Poetry Month at www.poets.org, the website of the Academy of American Poets.

Enjoy.
Ellen

“Giving Blood” by Sherman Alexie was featured again for Poem-a-Day April 17, 2010.
Poet Sherman Alexie was also featured for Poem-a-Day April 27, 2009.

Poem-a-day, April 23: sweet thief

No more be grieved at that which thou hast done:
Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud,
Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun,
And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud.
All men make faults, and even I in this,
Authorizing thy trespass with compare,
Myself corrupting, salving thy amiss,
Excusing thy sins more than thy sins are;
For to thy sensual fault I bring in sense—
Thy adverse party is thy advocate—
And ‘gainst myself a lawful plea commence.
Such civil war is in my love and hate
That I an accessory needs must be
To that sweet thief which sourly robs from me.

***

Happy birth, and death, William Shakespeare.
April 23, 1564 – April 23, 1616 (approximate and up for debate)

Poems by William Shakespeare were also featured for Poem-a-Day April 23, 2007; Poem-a-Day April 23, 2009; and Poem-a-Day April 23, 2011.

Poem-a-(earth)day, April 22: footholds, foothills, swollen feet

Eagle Rock

This is the place where darkness gathers like a swarm,
as thick as hide, as soft.
This is where the dead lean like tallgrass,
eyelashes bleached and fluttering,
where the breast-high grass leans into the night.
This is where the skin of Buffalo Berries in the evening,
eveningyellow,
is not so sweet.

It is a place of burnt leaves, of quarrymint, of watercress.
It is a place of narrow footholds, and foothills, of swollen feet,
a place of cattails, gutted white and open.
It is a place of rattlesnake sheddings, like crisp honeycomb,
of ankledeep streams, and cold tongues.
A place where muscle-red pipestone teeth thrust from the earth,
gleam from centuries of Bison fur-rubbings,
and rain.

I am born here, was born here, will always be born here,
and here my hazel opals will ever shut,
and screaming like a wind, my bodyslick will slide, again
into the world.

And here, the moss will suck my cheekbones dry,
and they will flake and fall like lichen,
and I will die here, too.

This is where all my candles have been gathered, lit,
and in the dark are rocking, rock with me
in their arabesque of light.
This is the place where all I have stolen or hidden, I have gathered here.
This is where all of me is gathered.

***

Hi Friends,

“Eagle Rock” was written by Bly Pope and first published anonymously in the spring 2002 issue of my beloved Masque magazine. You can read more from Bly (and check out paintings from both Bly and his twin Rowan) at popebrothersart.com.

April is National Poetry Month, and I am celebrating by emailing out my own eclectic selection of one poem per day for the duration of the month. You can always learn more about National Poetry Month or sign up for a more official-like poem-a-day list at www.poets.org, the website of the Academy of American Poets.

Enjoy.
Ellen

Poems in honor of Earth Day were also featured for Poem-a-Day April 21, 2007; Poem-a-Day April 22, 2009; Poem-a-Day April 22, 2010; and Poem-a-Day April 22, 2011.

Poem-a-day, April 21: a different kind of blood

Secrecy

Secrecy flows through you,
a different kind of blood.
It’s as if you’ve eaten it
like a bad candy,
taken it into your mouth,
let it melt sweetly on your tongue,
then allowed it to slide down your throat
like the reverse of uttering,
a word dissolved
into its glottals and silibants,
a slow intake of breath—

And now it’s in you, secrecy.
Ancient and vicious, luscious
as dark velvet.
It blooms in you,
a poppy made of ink.

You can think of nothing else.
Once you have it, you want more.
What power it gives you!
Power of knowing without being known,
power of the stone door,
power of the iron veil,
power of the crushed fingers,
power of the drowned bones
crying out from the bottom of the well.

***

Hi Friends,

Today’s poem, written by the prolific Canadian poet and novelist Margaret Atwood, comes from the August 28, 2006 issue of The New Yorker.

Challenge for the day: find me another poem that gets away with as many clichés as Atwood pulls here. I’m sure it’s out there; I just can’t think of it at this moment. Or, if you disagree, make an argument for why Atwood doesn’t actually pull off some or all of the cliché images in “Secrecy.”

As a reminder, April is National Poetry Month, and I am celebrating by emailing out my own eclectic selection of one poem per day for the duration of the month. If you missed any poem-a-days from earlier, you can catch up here at meetmein811.blogspot.com or at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/poemaday_tgifreytag.

You can also always learn more about National Poetry Month or sign up for a more official-like poem-a-day list at www.poets.org, the website of the Academy of American Poets.

Enjoy.
Ellen

Poem-a-day, April 20: lips like a bad ventriloquist’s

Everything I Needed to Know

Ashes, Ashes, we fall on our asses
because the teacher has us. Rodeo
clowns make about as much sense, but then they
don’t graduate from kindergarten
early either. Neither did they have
for their teacher Mrs. Cunningham, whose
grave countenance no kid had the word for:
Her is no bull sitter. Her is squeezing
in chair, knees together. Her is a locked
jaw with lips like a bad ventriloquist’s.
Kind of like a lady Clutch Cargo. Or
like the bride of a Nordic Frankenstein,
motherless but blonde, beautiful, and big.
Nobody here knows she has another
occupation but me. I’m her little
Picasso, her baby ham, and cunning.
“Quit staring, Karl Curtis,” she says, looking
right at me. She knows for a split
second she disappeared and does not want
to reveal her secret identity
underneath. I know she knows I draw some
very naked ideas. Later, when
we go around and tell in tones like the
xylophone’s, girls always first, what it is
you want to be when you grow up, I say
Zorro because a poet needs a mask.

***

Hello Friends,

Today’s poem is an example of one of the older poetic forms, the abecedarius (or abecedarium), in which each line begins with a successive letter of the alphabet. “Everything I Needed to Know” comes from Karl Elder‘s Mead, a collection of 26 abecedariums of 26 lines each (and 10 syllables per line throughout), which I believe was first published in the Winter 2003 issue of The Beloit Poetry Journal.

Many variations of the abecedarius form have been developed over the centuries, the most prominent of which is the acrostic (a poem in which the first letter of each line spells a word vertically). To learn more about the abecedarius, I highly recommend Matthea Harvey’s article “Don Dada on the Down Low Getting Godly in His Game: Between and Beyond Play and Prayer in the Abecedarius” from the Spring 2006 issue of American Poet magazine. The title of Harvey’s article comes from perhaps my favorite contemporary abecedarius, the track “Alphabet Aerobics” by the Bay Area hip-hop group Blackalicious from their 1999 album A2G — which you can listen to here (lucky you! just hit the play button, then select track 8).

Lastly, today’s poem-a-day is dedicated to Kevin Perry, with whom I have fond memories of writing abecedariums after school at Galloway.

Enjoy.
Ellen

Poem-a-day, April 19: imitating spring

Parsley

1. The Cane Fields

There is a parrot imitating spring
in the palace, its feathers parsley green.
Out of the swamp the cane appears

to haunt us, and we cut it down. El General
searches for a word; he is all the world
there is. Like a parrot imitating spring,

we lie down screaming as rain punches through
and we come up green. We cannot speak an R—
out of the swamp, the cane appears

and then the mountain we call in whispers Katalina.
The children gnaw their teeth to arrowheads.
There is a parrot imitating spring.

El General has found his word: perejil.
Who says it, lives. He laughs, teeth shining
out of the swamp. The cane appears

in our dreams, lashed by wind and streaming.
And we lie down. For every drop of blood
there is a parrot imitating spring.
Out of the swamp the cane appears.

2. The Palace

The word the general’s chosen is parsley.
It is fall, when thoughts turn
to love and death; the general thinks
of his mother, how she died in the fall
and he planted her walking cane at the grave
and it flowered, each spring stolidly forming
four-star blossoms. The general

pulls on his boots, he stomps to
her room in the palace, the one without
curtains, the one with a parrot
in a brass ring. As he paces he wonders
Who can I kill today. And for a moment
the little knot of screams
is still. The parrot, who has traveled

all the way from Australia in an ivory
cage, is, coy as a widow, practising
spring. Ever since the morning
his mother collapsed in the kitchen
while baking skull-shaped candies
for the Day of the Dead, the general
has hated sweets. He orders pastries
brought up for the bird; they arrive

dusted with sugar on a bed of lace.
The knot in his throat starts to twitch;
he sees his boots the first day in battle
splashed with mud and urine
as a soldier falls at his feet amazed—
how stupid he looked!—at the sound
of artillery. I never thought it would sing
the soldier said, and died. Now

the general sees the fields of sugar
cane, lashed by rain and streaming.
He sees his mother’s smile, the teeth
gnawed to arrowheads. He hears
the Haitians sing without R’s
as they swing the great machetes:
Katalina, they sing, Katalina,

mi madle, mi amol en muelte. God knows
his mother was not a stupid woman; she
could roll an R like a queen. Even
a parrot can roll an R! In the bare room
the bright feathers arch in a parody
of greenery, as the last pale crumbs
disappear under the blackened tongue. Someone

calls out his name in a voice
so like his mother’s, a startled tear
splashes the tip of his right boot.
My mother, my love in death.
The general remembers the tiny green sprigs
men of his village wore in their capes
to honor the birth of a son. He will
order many, this time, to be killed

for a single, beautiful word.

***

Hello Friends,

I attended a Love & Justice Progressive Seder last night, hosted by the fabulous Sarah Garmisa (thank you, Sarah). As we imitated spring with sprigs of parsley dipped in bowls of salt water, bowls of tears, my mind jumped to another “Parsley,” this Rita Dove poem, one might also describe as dipped in salt water or tears.

Dove includes this endnote: On October 2, 1957, Rafael Trujillo (1891-1961), dictator of the Dominican Republic, ordered 20,000 blacks killed because they could not pronounce the letter “r” in perejil, the Spanish word for parsley.

Rita Dove became only the second African American poet ever to receive the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry in 1987 (the other being Gwendolyn Brooks, 1950) and the first African American appointed poet laureate of the United States under President Clinton in 1993. She currently teaches at the University of Virginia.

For another famous poem about a Central American dictator and his parrot, see Carolyn Forsché’s “The Colonel.”

Enjoy.
Ellen

P.S. Section 1 of “Parsley” liberally follows a poetic form I introduced y’all to earlier this month; do you remember which one?

Poem-a-day, April 18: 60 of 244

(Blind) Fiddler Jones

The earth keeps some vibration going
There in your heart, and that is you.
And if the people find you can fiddle,
Why, fiddle you must, for all your life.
What do you see, a harvest of clover?
Or a meadow to walk through to the river?
The wind’s in the corn; you rub your hands
For beeves hereafter ready for market;
Or else you hear the rustle of skirts
Like the girls when dancing at Little Grove.
To Cooney Potter a pillar of dust
Or whirling leaves meant ruinous drouth;
They looked to me like Red-Head Sammy
Stepping it off, to “Toor-a-Loor.”
How could I till my forty acres
Not to speak of getting more,
With a medley of horns, bassoons and piccolos
Stirred in my brain by crows and robins
And the creak of a wind-mill—only these?
And I never started to plow in my life
That some one did not stop in the road
And take me away to a dance or picnic.
I ended up with forty acres;
I ended up with a broken fiddle—
And a broken laugh, and a thousand memories,
And not a single regret.

***

Hi Friends,

Today’s poem is from Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology (1915), a series of 244 free verse monologues from the graveyard of a fictional Midwestern town.

Enjoy.
Ellen

Poem-a-day, April 17: always divided

Teachers

Pain is in this dark room like many speakers
of a costly set though mute
as here the needle and the turning

the night lengthens it is winter
a new year

what I live for I can seldom believe in
who I love I cannot go to
what I hope is always divided

but I say to myself you are not a child now
if the night is long remember your unimportance
sleep

then toward morning I dream of the first words
of books of voyages
sure tellings that did not start by justifying

yet at one time it seems
had taught me

***

Hello Friends,

“Teachers” is from The Carrier of Ladders (1970) by W.S. Merwin, one of the most punctuation-free poets.

When The Carrier of Ladders won the Pulitzer Prize in 1971, Merwin donated 100% of the prize money (all $1,000) to anti-war efforts.

Enjoy.
Ellen

Poems by W.S. Merwin were also featured for Poem-a-Day April 7, 2007; Poem-a-Day April 9, 2009; and Poem-a-Day April 16, 2010.

Poem-a-day, April 16: slow heat

Warming Her Pearls

Next to my own skin, her pearls. My mistress
bids me wear them, warm them, until evening
when I’ll brush her hair. At six, I place them
round her cool, white throat. All day I think of her,

resting in the Yellow Room, contemplating silk
or taffeta, which gown tonight? She fans herself
whilst I work willingly, my slow heat entering
each pearl. Slack on my neck, her rope.

She’s beautiful. I dream about her
in my attic bed; picture her dancing
with tall men, puzzled by my faint, persistent scent
beneath her French perfume, her milky stones.

I dust her shoulders with a rabbit’s foot,
watch the soft blush seep through her skin
like an indolent sigh. In her looking-glass
my red lips part as though I want to speak.

Full moon. Her carriage brings her home. I see
her every movement in my head…Undressing,
taking off her jewels, her slim hand reaching
for the case, slipping naked into bed, the way

she always does…And I lie here awake,
knowing the pearls are cooling even now
in the room where my mistress sleeps. All night
I feel their absence and I burn.

***

Hi Friends,

Today’s (hot) poem is from the UK’s Carol Ann Duffy, in her 1987 collection Selling Manhattan.

April is National Poetry Month, and I am celebrating by emailing out my own eclectic selection of one poem per day for the duration of the month. As always, you can learn more about National Poetry Month or sign up for a more official-like poem-a-day list at www.poets.org, the website of the Academy of American Poets.

Enjoy.
Ellen

Poem-a-day, April 15: Because I could not stop (for death)

Belarusian I

even our mothers have no idea how we were born
how we parted their legs and crawled out into the world
the way you crawl from the ruins after a bombing
we couldn’t tell which of us was a girl or a boy
we gorged on dirt thinking it was bread
and our future
a gymnast on a thin thread of the horizon
was performing there
at the highest pitch
bitch

we grew up in a country where
first your door is stroked with chalk
then at dark a chariot arrives
and no one sees you anymore
but riding in those cars were neither
armed men nor
a wanderer with a scythe
this is how love loved to visit us
and snatch us veiled

completely free only in public toilets
where for a little change nobody cared what we were doing
we fought the summer heat the winter snow
when we discovered we ourselves were the language
and our tongues were removed we started talking with our eyes
when our eyes were poked out we talked with our hands
when our hands were cut off we conversed with our toes
when we were shot in the legs we nodded our heads for yes
and shook our heads for no and when they ate our heads alive
we crawled back into the bellies of our sleeping mothers
as if into bomb shelters
to be born again

and there on the horizon the gymnast of our future
was leaping through the fiery hoop
of the sun

***

Hi Friends,

I was so blown away by today’s poem from the official poem-a-day email of the Academy of American Poets that I just couldn’t stop myself from sharing it with you right away (even if it does throw off my poem-a-day schedule for the month).

“Belarusian I” is written by Valzhyna Mort, a 26-year-old poet of the anti-communist revolutions in Eastern Europe. Born and raised in Minsk, Belarus, Valzhyna Mort writes in traditional Belarusian (a backlash to Soviet attempts to extinguish the language and replace it with Russian). Although I’ve never had the privilege of hearing her myself, she is known for her extraordinary performance readings of her work in both Belarusian and English.

In her most recent translation project, Mort collaborated with the wife-husband pair Elizabeth Oehlkers Wright (accomplished German translator) and Franz Wright (Pulitzer Prize-winning poet). Just released by Copper Canyon Press, Factory of Tears (2008) is the first bilingual Belarusian-English book of poetry ever published in the United States.

Adding to list of things to do before I die: meet Valzhyna Mort.

As always, enjoy.
Ellen

Poet Valzhyna Mort was also featured for Poem-a-Day April 8, 2011.