1465: Memorial Day | Gregory Orr [28 May 2012|08:46pm] exceptindreams "Memorial Day" Gregory Orr 1 After our march from the Hudson to the top of Cemetery Hill, we Boy Scouts proudly endured the sermons and hot sun while Girl Scouts lolled among graves in the maple shade. When members of the veterans’ honor guard aimed their bone-white rifles skyward and fired, I glimpsed beneath one metal helmet the salmon-pink flesh of Mr. Webber’s nose, restored after shrapnel tore it. 2 Friends who sat near me in school died in Asia, now lie here under new stones that small flags flap beside. It’s fifth-grade recess: war stories. Mr. Webber stands before us and plucks his glass eye from its socket, holds it high between finger and thumb. The girls giggle and scream; the awed boys gape. The fancy pocket watch he looted from a shop in Germany ticks on its chain. On this day in... 2011: Weekend, no poem 2010: "Memory" by Conchitina Cruz 2009: "Everlasting" by Michael Mastrofrancesco 2008: "Checkout Girl" by Paul Durcan And to yell “God,” when I don’t believe in Him,/And even if I did believe in Him/I wouldn’t have told him about the war/As you don’t tell a child about grown-ups’ horrors. satellite

1464: Wedged | Hal Sirowitz [25 May 2012|07:58pm] exceptindreams "Wedged" Hal Sirowitz You were the one who followed me into the elevator & asked for my phone number, she said. I didn't lead you on. In fact, I tried discouraging you. I told you I had lots of problems. I was used to being alone. But now that you've wedged yourself into my life, don't think leaving me will be as smooth as our first elevator ride. It'll be like walking up a flight of stairs. On this day in... 2011: "Writing" by Brendan Ogg 2010: "To Levitate" by Cathryn Essinger 2009: "What Did I Learn in the Wars?" by Yehuda Amichai 2008: "Invictus" by William Ernest Henley I'm sitting (head swimming) in the armchair thinking/rhythm understatement rhyme. 2, satellite

1463: Wherever You Are | Jeffrey Harrison [24 May 2012|07:33pm] exceptindreams "Wherever You Are" Jeffrey Harrison When I kissed you in the hall of the youth hostel we fell into the linen closet laughing twenty years ago and I still remember though not very often the taste of cheap wine in your mouth like raspberries the freckle between your breasts and the next day when we went to Versailles I hardly saw anything because I was looking at you the whole time your face I can't quite remember then I kissed you good-bye and you got on a train and I never saw you again just one day and one letter long gone explaining never mind but sometimes I wonder where you are probably married with children like me happy with a new last name a whole life having nothing to do with that day but everybody has something like it a small thing they can't help going back to and it's not even about choices and where your life might have gone but just that it's there far enough away so it can be seen as just something that happened almost to someone else an episode from a movie we walk out of blinded back into our lives On this day in... 2011: "Racist Poem" by Bill Knott 2010: "Sideshow" by Lauren Wheeler 2009: "Safe Sex" by John Boland 2008: Weekend, no poem We were the ones who pushed/the tiny carrots back down, hoping that they were able/to reconnect to the ground. 1, satellite

1463: Watching the Sword Swallower | Karrie Waarala [23 May 2012|02:55pm] exceptindreams "Watching the Sword Swallower" Karrie Waarala His long throat works like the corn snake I watched devour a field mouse last spring. Snake snatched that poor mouse by the head and I couldn’t help but cry a little at those bitty back legs kicking and scrambling and finally just giving in to the hungry ripples pulling it down into that snake’s belly. Those damn Hudson boys spotted me sniffling and I ain’t lived it down since. I stare hard at the stage, figure there’s gotta be a trick, but he just slides blade after blade right on down and they’re sharp, too, the barker held out a hair for the swallower to slice before tipping back his head and gulping down danger. I need to know how he does that, keep trying to ask Pop but he’s too busy talking crop prices with Mr. Granger, keeps shrugging me off his sleeve. So I shimmy through the crowd and right up close until I can see the swallower’s tilted-up face reflected in the sword’s slick edge, see the fevered glint in his eye and smooth twist of his wrist, feel the audience wrinkle up with nerves until they burst with clapping as he pulls the weapon free, grinning and puffed up on the noisy awe of the crowd pushing me against the stage, and all of a sudden I don’t feel so bad for that mouse. The swallower musta seen my feelings on my face because he barks out a ragged laugh and winks at me as a snake of something fierce uncoils itself in my belly. I want to be gargantuan, a death-defying wonder painted on flapping canvas signs, a spectacle to behold. I want a crowd curled up in my hands, the Hudson boys staring up at the sharp edges of my daring, just once I want to be the most dangerous thing I know. On this day in... 2011: "At the Public Market Museum: Charleston, South Carolina" by Jane Kenyon 2010: Weekend, no poem 2009: "The Loneliness of the Military Historian" by Margaret Atwood 2008: "A Special Theory of Relativity" by Alan Bold There were never strawberries/like the ones we had/that sultry afternoon 1, satellite

1462: An Almost Made Up Poem | Charles Bukowski [22 May 2012|02:45pm] exceptindreams "An Almost Made Up Poem" Charles Bukowski I see you drinking at a fountain with tiny blue hands, no, your hands are not tiny they are small, and the fountain is in France where you wrote me that last letter and I answered and never heard from you again. you used to write insane poems about ANGELS AND GOD, all in upper case, and you knew famous artists and most of them were your lovers, and I wrote back, it' all right, go ahead, enter their lives, I' not jealous because we' never met. we got close once in New Orleans, one half block, but never met, never touched. so you went with the famous and wrote about the famous, and, of course, what you found out is that the famous are worried about their fame –– not the beautiful young girl in bed with them, who gives them that, and then awakens in the morning to write upper case poems about ANGELS AND GOD. we know God is dead, they' told us, but listening to you I wasn' sure. maybe it was the upper case. you were one of the best female poets and I told the publishers, editors, "her, print her, she' mad but she' magic. there' no lie in her fire.” I loved you like a man loves a woman he never touches, only writes to, keeps little photographs of. I would have loved you more if I had sat in a small room rolling a cigarette and listened to you piss in the bathroom, but that didn' happen. your letters got sadder. your lovers betrayed you. kid, I wrote back, all lovers betray. it didn' help. you said you had a crying bench and it was by a bridge and the bridge was over a river and you sat on the crying bench every night and wept for the lovers who had hurt and forgotten you. I wrote back but never heard again. a friend wrote me of your suicide 3 or 4 months after it happened. if I had met you I would probably have been unfair to you or you to me. it was best like this. On this day in... 2011: Weekend, no poem 2010: Weekend, no poem 2009: "Strawberries" by Edwin Morgan 2008: "Other Lives and Dimensions and Finally a Love Poem” by Bob Hicok I repeat your name, each time different/into sand, into moonlight.//Far off, the lake crumbles at its edges,/the sky holds out its arms. 2, satellite

1461: Parents | William Meredith [21 May 2012|01:39pm] exceptindreams "Parents" William Meredith What it must be like to be an angel or a squirrel, we can imagine sooner. The last time we go to bed good, they are there, lying about darkness. They dandle us once too often, these friends who become our enemies. Suddenly one day, their juniors are as old as we yearn to be. They get wrinkles where it is better smooth, odd coughs, and smells. It is grotesque how they go on loving us, we go on loving them The effrontery, barely imaginable, of having caused us. And of how. Their lives: surely we can do better than that. This goes on for a long time. Everything they do is wrong, and the worst thing, they all do it, is to die, taking with them the last explanation, how we came out of the wet sea or wherever they got us from, taking the last link of that chain with them. Father, mother, we cry, wrinkling, to our uncomprehending children and grandchildren. On this day in... 2011: "Sunworshippers" by Cathy Song 2010: "Turning Twenty-Three" by Anne Michaels and "Birthday Poem" by Erin Murphy 2009: "Ithaca" by Constantine P. Cavafy 2008: "Lying" by Constance Merritt the taste of mint everywhere like clean, green rain 1, satellite

Wild Goose Chase [22 May 2012|04:04pm] leannethrax Well I do not love to ramble around. No I don’t , I don’t. And if that makes me a home loving man, Then I am. I am. For I end up in a circular path, On a pilgrimage leading straight back. To where I know that I’ll drop my guitar. I’ll abandon my car on the highway, Don’t send me away. Don’t send me upon this wild goose chase For freedom. For money. For love. From Portland west to Portland east Yes indeed, oh indeed. Albuquerque and Montreal And that’s not all, that’s not all. Cleveland Tucson and buffalo  Oh no, oh no. San Francisco and Chicago Oh no, oh no. For I end up in a circular path, On a pilgrimage leading straight back. To where I know that I’ll drop my guitar. I’ll abandon my car on the highway, Don’t send me away. Don’t send me upon this wild goose chase For freedom. For money. For love. And I do not love to ramble around No I don’t, I don’t. satellite

1460: Gratitude | Barbara Crooker [18 May 2012|09:59pm] exceptindreams "Gratitude" Barbara Crooker This week, the news of the world is bleak, another war grinding on, and all these friends down with cancer, or worse, a little something long term that they won’t die of for twenty or thirty miserable years— And here I live in a house of weathered brick, where a man with silver hair still thinks I’m beautiful. How many times have I forgotten to give thanks? The late day sun shines through the pink wisteria with its green and white leaves as if it were stained glass, there’s an old cherry tree that one lucky Sunday bloomed with a rainbow: cardinals, orioles, goldfinches, blue jays, indigo buntings, and my garden has tiny lettuces just coming up, so perfect they could make you cry: Green Towers, Red Sails, Oak Leaf. For this is May, and the whole world sings, gleams, as if it were basted in butter, and the air’s sweet enough to send a diabetic into shock— And at least today, all the parts of my body are working, the sky’s clear as a china bowl, leaves murmur their leafy chatter, finches percolate along. I’m doodling around this page, know sorrow’s somewhere beyond the horizon, but still, I’m riffing on the warm air, the wingbeats of my lungs that can take this all in, flush the heart’s red peony, then send it back without effort or thought. And the trees breathe in what we exhale, clap their green hands in gratitude, bend to the sky. On this day in... 2011: "It Is In the Leaving" by Nicole Blackman 2010: "I'm in Love" by Charles Bukowski 2009: "The Applicant" by Sylvia Plath 2008: Weekend, no poem who told you that this or that would last forever?/did no one ever tell you that you will never/in the world/feel at home in the world? 5, satellite

1459: Credo | Donna Hilbert [17 May 2012|09:24pm] exceptindreams "Credo" Donna Hilbert I believe in the Tuesdays and Wednesdays of life, the tuna sandwich lunches and TV after dinner. I believe in coffee with hot milk and peanut butter toast, Rose wine in summer and Burgundy in winter. I am not in love with holidays, birthdays—nothing special— and weekends are just days numbered six and seven, though my love dozing over TV golf while I work the Sunday puzzle might be all I need of life and all I ask of heaven. On this day in... 2011: "Where I Wander" by Levi Yitzchak 2010: "Lovers Fall Like Stones Back Onto the Ground" by Cyril Wong 2009: Weekend, no poem 2008: Weekend, no poem We will never be/remembered for the time we attempted/the waltz on the balcony, as the stars/blinked drowsily, the moon like a frozen yawn. satellite

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