Raising the Titanic

Raising the Titanic

by Robert Hedin

I spent the winter my father died down in the basement,

under the calm surface of the floorboards, hundreds

of little plastic parts spread out like debris

on the table. And for months while the snow fell

and my father sat in the big chair by the Philco, dying,

I worked my way up deck by deck, story by story,

from steerage to first class, until at last it was done,

stacks, deck chairs, all the delicate rigging.

And there it loomed, a blazing city of the dead.

Then painted the gaping hole at the waterline

and placed my father at the railings, my mother

in a lifeboat pulling away from the wreckage.

Luciferin

Luciferin

by Dean Young

"They won't attack us here in the Indian graveyard."

I love that moment. And I love the moment

when I climb into your warm you-smelling

bed-dent after you've risen. And sunflowers,

once a whole field and I almost crashed,

the next year all pumpkins! Crop rotation,

I love you. Dividing words between syl-

lables! Dachshunds! What am I but the inter-

section of these loves? I spend 35 dollars on a CD

of some guy with 15 different guitars in his shack

with lots of tape delays and loops, a good buy!

Mexican animal crackers! But only to be identified

by what you love is a malformation just as

embryonic chickens grow very strange in zero

gravity. I hate those experiments on animals,

varnished bats, blinded rabbits, cows

with windows in their flanks but obviously

I'm fascinated. Perhaps it was my early exposure

to Frankenstein. I love Frankenstein! Arrgh,

he replies to everything, fire particularly

sets him off, something the villagers quickly

pick up. Fucking villagers. All their shouting's

making conversation impossible and now

there's grit in my lettuce which I hate

but kinda like in clams as one bespeaks

poor hygiene and the other the sea.

I hate what we're doing to the sea,

dragging huge chains across the bottom,

bleaching reefs. Either you're a rubber/

gasoline salesman or like me, you'd like

to duct tape the vice president's mouth

to the exhaust pipe of an SUV and I hate

feeling like that. I would rather concentrate

on the rapidity of your ideograms, how

only a biochemical or two keeps me

from becoming the world's biggest lightning bug.

We Never Know

We Never Know

by Yusef Komunyakaa

He danced with tall grass

for a moment, like he was swaying

with a woman. Our gun barrels

glowed white-hot.

When I got to him,

a blue halo

of flies had already claimed him.

I pulled the crumbled photograph

from his fingers.

There's no other way

to say this: I fell in love.

The morning cleared again,

except for a distant mortar

& somewhere choppers taking off.

I slid the wallet into his pocket

& turned him over, so he wouldn't be

kissing the ground.

Dreamwood

Dreamwood

by Adrienne Rich

In the old, scratched, cheap wood of the typing stand

there is a landscape, veined, which only a child can see

or the child's older self, a poet,

a woman dreaming when she should be typing

the last report of the day. If this were a map,

she thinks, a map laid down to memorize

because she might be walking it, it shows

ridge upon ridge fading into hazed desert

here and there a sign of aquifers

and one possible watering-hole. If this were a map

it would be the map of the last age of her life,

not a map of choices but a map of variations

on the one great choice. It would be the map by which

she could see the end of touristic choices,

of distances blued and purpled by romance,

by which she would recognize that poetry

isn't revolution but a way of knowing

why it must come. If this cheap, mass-produced

wooden stand from the Brooklyn Union Gas Co.,

mass-produced yet durable, being here now,

is what it is yet a dream-map

so obdurate, so plain,

she thinks, the material and the dream can join

and that is the poem and that is the late report.

I dwell in Possibility – (466)

I dwell in Possibility – (466)

by Emily Dickinson

I dwell in Possibility –

A fairer House than Prose –

More numerous of Windows –

Superior – for Doors –

Of Chambers as the Cedars –

Impregnable of eye –

And for an everlasting Roof

The Gambrels of the Sky –

Of Visitors – the fairest –

For Occupation – This –

The spreading wide my narrow Hands

To gather Paradise –

Infant Sorrow

Infant Sorrow

by William Blake

My mother groand! my father wept.

Into the dangerous world I leapt:

Helpless, naked, piping loud; 

Like a fiend hid in a cloud.

Struggling in my fathers hands: 

Striving against my swaddling bands: 

Bound and weary I thought best

To sulk upon my mothers breast.

The Man Moves Earth

The Man Moves Earth

by Cathy Song

The man moves earth

to dispel grief.

He digs holes

the size of cars.

In proportion to what is taken

what is given multiplies—

rain-swollen ponds

and dirt mounds

rooted with flame-tipped flowers.

He carries trees like children

struggling to be set down.

Trees that have lived

out their lives,

he cuts and stacks

like loaves of bread

which he will feed the fire.

The green smoke sweetens

his house.

The woman sweeps air

to banish sadness.

She dusts floors,

polishes objects

made of clay and wood.

In proportion to what is taken

what is given multiplies—

the task of something

else to clean.

Gleaming appliances

beg to be smudged,

breathed upon by small children

and large animals

flicking out hope

as she whirls by,

flap of tongue,

scratch of paw,

sweetly reminding her.

The man moves earth,

the woman sweeps air.

Together they pull water

out of the other,

pull with the muscular

ache of the living,

hauling from the deep

well of the body

the rain-swollen,

the flame-tipped,

the milk-fed—

all that cycles

through lives moving,

lives sweeping, water

circulating between them

like breath,

drawn out of leaves by light.