#who put this brain inside of me

Ode to the Unbroken World, Which Is Coming
Thomas Lux

It must be coming, mustn’t it? Churches
and saloons are filled with decent humans.
A mother wants to feed her daughter,
fathers to buy their children things that break.
People laugh, all over the world, people laugh.
We were born to laugh, and we know how to be sad;
we dislike injustice and cancer,
and are not unaware of our terrible errors.
A man wants to love his wife.
His wife wants him to carry something.
We’re capable of empathy, and intense moments of joy.
Sure, some of us are venal, but not most.
There’s always a punchbowl, somewhere,
in which floats a…
Life’s a bullet, that fast, and the sweeter for it.
It’s the same everywhere: Slovenia, India,
Pakistan, Suriname—people like to pray,
or they don’t,
or they like to fill a blue plastic pool
in the back yard with a hose
and watch their children splash.
Or sit in cafes, or at table with family.
And if a long train of cattle cars passes
along West Ridge
it’s only the cattle from East Ridge going to the abattoir.
The unbroken world is coming,
(it must be coming!), I heard a choir,
there were clouds, there was dust,
I heard it in the streets, I heard it
announced by loudhailers
mounted on trucks.

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More Thomas Lux: A Little Tooth · Postcard to Baudelaire · Henry Clay’s Mouth

Today in: 

2020: What Kind of Times Are These, Adrienne Rich
2019:Conversation with Phillis Wheatley #2, Tiana Clark
2018:Love Poem, Denise Levertov
2017:Young Wife’s Lament, Brigit Pegeen Kelly
2016:For the Confederate Dead, Kevin Young
2015:Awaking in New York, Maya Angelou
2014:when you have forgotten Sunday: the love story, Gwendolyn Brooks
2013:Scrambled Eggs and Whiskey, Hayden Carruth
2012:My Place, Franz Wright
2011:from The Wild Geese, Wendell Berry
2010:Love After Love, Derek Walcott
2009:To This May, W.S. Merwin
2008:Father, Ted Kooser
2007:from Little Sleep’s-Head Sprouting Hair in the Moonlight, Galway Kinnell
2006:Crusoe in England, Elizabeth Bishop
2005:Dream Song 1, John Berryman

A Metaphor
J. Estanislao Lopez 

Imagine you raise a glass of iced water
to your lips, and, feeling a strange touch,
you look into the glass to find a dead gnat
floating at the surface. You see, there are
metaphors everywhere about the presence
of evil. But metaphors are misread.
We discover later in life, too late to change it,
that evil is not signified by the gnat
(the gnat is the casualty), but by the water,
which we raise to our lips every single day.

–

Today in:

2021:Ode to the Unbroken World, Which Is Coming, Thomas Lux
2020: What Kind of Times Are These, Adrienne Rich
2019: Conversation with Phillis Wheatley #2, Tiana Clark
2018: Love Poem, Denise Levertov
2017: Young Wife’s Lament, Brigit Pegeen Kelly
2016: For the Confederate Dead, Kevin Young
2015: Awaking in New York, Maya Angelou
2014: when you have forgotten Sunday: the love story, Gwendolyn Brooks
2013: Scrambled Eggs and Whiskey, Hayden Carruth
2012: My Place, Franz Wright
2011: from The Wild Geese, Wendell Berry
2010: Love After Love, Derek Walcott
2009: To This May, W.S. Merwin
2008: Father, Ted Kooser
2007: from Little Sleep’s-Head Sprouting Hair in the Moonlight, Galway Kinnell
2006: Crusoe in England, Elizabeth Bishop
2005: Dream Song 1, John Berryman

Meditations in an Emergency
Cameron Awkward-Rich

I wake up & it breaks my heart. I draw the blinds & the thrill of rain breaks my heart. I go outside. I ride the train, walk among the buildings, men in Monday suits. The flight of doves, the city of tents beneath the underpass, the huddled mass, old women hawking roses, & children all of them, break my heart. There’s a dream I have in which I love the world. I run from end to end like fingers through her hair. There are no borders, only wind. Like you, I was born. Like you, I was raised in the institution of dreaming. Hand on my heart. Hand on my stupid heart.

==

Today in: 

2021: How the Trees on Summer Nights Turn into a Dark River, Barbara Crooker
2020:Ash, Tracy K. Smith
2019:Under Stars, Dorianne Laux
2018:Afterlife,Natalie Eilbert
2017:There Are Birds Here, Jamaal May
2016:Poetry, Richard Kenney
2015:Dreaming at the Ballet, Jack Gilbert
2014:Vocation, Sandra Beasley
2013:Near the Race Track, Brigit Pegeen Kelly
2012:from Ask Him, Raymond Carver
2011:Sweet Star Chisel, Dearest Flaming Crumbs in Your Beard Lord, John Rybicki
2010:Rain Travel, W.S. Merwin
2009:Goodnight, Li-Young Lee
2008:Bearhug, Michael Ondaatje
2007:Meditation at Lagunitas, Robert Hass
2006:Autumn, Rainer Maria Rilke
2005:On Turning Ten, Billy Collins