Eyesight poem – A. R. Ammons poems | Poetry Monster
It was May before my attention came to spring and my word I said to the southern slopes I’ve missed it, it came and went before I got right to see: don’t worry, said the mountain, try the later northern slopes or if you can climb, climb into spring: but said the mountain it’s not […]
Design poem – A. R. Ammons poems | Poetry Monster
The drop seeps whole from boulder-lichen or ledge moss and drops, joining, to trickle, run, fall, dash, sprawl in held deeps, to rush shallows, spill thin through heights, but then, edging, to eddy aside, nothing of all but nothing’s curl of motion spent. Poetry Monster – Home A few random poems: External links Bat’s […]
Crowride poem – A. R. Ammons poems | Poetry Monster
When the crow lands, the tip of the sprung spruce bough weighs so low, the system so friction-free, the bobbing lasts way past any interest in the subject. Poetry Monster – Home A few random poems: External links Bat’s Poetry Page – more poetry by Fledermaus Talking Writing Monster’s Page – Batty Writing – […]
Called Into Play poem – A. R. Ammons poems | Poetry Monster
Fall fell: so that’s it for the leaf poetry: some flurries have whitened the edges of roads and lawns: time for that, the snow stuff: & turkeys and old St. Nick: where am I going to find something to write about I haven’t already written away: I will have to stop short, look down, look […]
An Improvisation For Angular Momentum poem – A. R. Ammons poems | Poetry Monster
Walking is like imagination, a single step dissolves the circle into motion; the eye here and there rests on a leaf, gap, or ledge, everything flowing except where sight touches seen: stop, though, and reality snaps back in, locked hard, forms sharply themselves, bushbank, dentree, phoneline, definite, fixed, the self, too, then caught real, clouds […]
After Yesterday poem – A. R. Ammons poems | Poetry Monster
After yesterday afternoon’s blue clouds and white rain the mockingbird in the backyard untied the drops from leaves and twigs with a long singing. Poetry Monster – Home A few random poems: External links Bat’s Poetry Page – more poetry by Fledermaus Talking Writing Monster’s Page – Batty Writing – the bat’s idle chatter, […]
Vestiges poem – A. Van Jordan poems
I would like to swim in the Atlantic, to swim with someone who understood why my fear of drowning plays less dire than my fear of bones, walking the ocean floor. I would like to sync my stroke with a beloved. I’d like to stand on deck on a boat and jump in the sea […]
Un Chien Andalou (An Andalusian Dog) poem – A. Van Jordan poems
Because a razor cuts across a frame of film, I wince, squinting my eye, and because my day needs assembly to make sense of the scenes anyway, making a story from some pieces of truth, I go outside to gather those pieces. Thousands of moments spooling out frames of mistakes in my day. As if […]
The Flash Reverses Time poem – A. Van Jordan poems
When I’m running across the city on the crowded streets to home, when, in a blur, the grass turns brown beneath my feet, the asphalt steams under every step and the maple leaves sway on the branches in my wake, and the people look, look in that bewildered way, in my direction, I imagine walking […]
Que Sera Sera poem – A. Van Jordan poems
In my car, driving through Black Mountain, North Carolina, I listen to what sounds like Doris Day shooting heroin inside Sly Stone’s throat. One would think that she fights to get out, but she wants to stay free in this skin. Fresh, The Family Stone’s album, came out in ’73, but I didn’t make sense […]
Old Boy poem – A. Van Jordan poems
If one rainy night you find yourself leaving a phone booth, and you meet a man with a lavender umbrella, resist your desire to follow him, to seek shelter from the night in his solace. Later, don’t fall victim to the Hypnotist’s narcotic of clarity, which proves a curare for the heart; her salve is […]
Einstein Defining Special Relativity poem – A. Van Jordan poems
INSERT SHOT: Einstein’s notebook 1905—DAY 1: a theory that is based on two postulates (a) that the speed of light in all inertial frames is constant, independent of the source or observer. As in, the speed of light emitted from the truth is the same as that of a lie coming from the lamp of […]
A Tempest in a Teacup poem – A. Van Jordan poems | Poetry Monster
Prospero Assume, just for a moment, I am denied a job in the factory of my dreams under the fluorescent lights of a porcelain white foreman. It’s orderly and neat. I feed my family. No one questions my face. I raised my son in my likeness, so he would never go unseen, bobbing on […]
A Tempest in a Teacup poem – A. Van Jordan poems | Best Poems
Prospero Assume, just for a moment, I am denied a job in the factory of my dreams under the fluorescent lights of a porcelain white foreman. It’s orderly and neat. I feed my family. No one questions my face. I raised my son in my likeness, so he would never go unseen, bobbing on a […]
You Can Have It by Philip Levine
You Can Have It by Philip Levine My brother comes home from work and climbs the stairs to our room. I can hear the bed groan and his shoes drop one by one. You can have it, he says. The moonlight streams in the window and his unshaven face is whitened like the face of […]
Wisteria by Philip Levine
Wisteria by Philip Levine The first purple wisteria I recall from boyhood hung on a wire outside the windows of the breakfast room next door at the home of Steve Pisaris. I loved his tall, skinny daughter, or so I thought, and I would wait beside the back door, prostrate, begging to be taken in. […]
Where We Live Now by Philip Levine
Where We Live Now by Philip Levine 1 We live here because the houses are clean, the lawns run right to the street and the streets run away. No one walks here. No one wakens at night or dies. The cars sit open-eyed in the driveways. The lights are on all day. 2 At home […]
What Work Is by Philip Levine
What Work Is by Philip Levine We stand in the rain in a long line waiting at Ford Highland Park. For work. You know what work is–if you’re old enough to read this you know what work is, although you may not do it. Forget you. This is about waiting, shifting from one foot to […]
Waking In March by Philip Levine
Waking In March by Philip Levine Last night, again, I dreamed my children were back at home, small boys huddled in their separate beds, and I went from one to the other listening to their breathing — regular, almost soundless — until a white light hardened against the bedroom wall, the light of Los Angeles […]
Told by Philip Levine
Told by Philip Levine The air lay soffly on the green fur of the almond, it was April and I said, I begin again but my hands burned in the damp earth the light ran between my fingers a black light like no other this was not home, the linnet settling on the oleander the […]
They Feed They Lion by Philip Levine
They Feed They Lion by Philip Levine Out of burlap sacks, out of bearing butter, Out of black bean and wet slate bread, Out of the acids of rage, the candor of tar, Out of creosote, gasoline, drive shafts, wooden dollies, They Lion grow. Out of the gray hills Of industrial barns, out of rain, […]
Then by Philip Levine
Then by Philip Levine A solitary apartment house, the last one before the boulevard ends and a dusty road winds its slow way out of town. On the third floor through the dusty windows Karen beholds the elegant couples walking arm in arm in the public park. It is Saturday afternoon, and she is waiting […]
The New World by Philip Levine
The New World by Philip Levine A man roams the streets with a basket of freestone peaches hollering, “Peaches, peaches, yellow freestone peaches for sale.” My grandfather in his prime could outshout the Tigers of Wrath or the factory whistles along the river. Hamtramck hungered for yellow freestone peaches, downriver wakened from a dream of […]
The Helmet by Philip Levine
The Helmet by Philip Levine All the way on the road to Gary he could see where the sky shone just out of reach and smell the rich smell of work as strong as money, but when he got there the night was over. People were going to work and back, the sidewalks were lakes […]
The Distant Winter by Philip Levine
The Distant Winter by Philip Levine from an officer’s diary during the last war I The sour daylight cracks through my sleep-caked lids. “Stephan! Stephan!” The rattling orderly Comes on a trot, the cold tray in his hands: Toast whitening with oleo, brown tea, Yesterday’s napkins, and an opened letter. “Your asthma’s bad, old man.” […]
Gangrene by Philip Levine
Gangrene by Philip Levine Vous êtes sorti sain et sauf des basses calomnies, vous avey conquis les coeurs. Zola, J’accuse One was kicked in the stomach until he vomited, then made to put back into his mouth what they had brought forth; when he tried to drown in his own stew he was recovered. “You […]
Noon by Philip Levine
Noon by Philip Levine I bend to the ground to catch something whispered, urgent, drifting across the ditches. The heaviness of flies stuttering in orbit, dirt ripening, the sweat of eggs. There are small streams the width ofa thumb running in the villages of sheaves, whole eras of grain wakening on the stalks, a roof […]
Making Light Of It by Philip Levine
Making Light Of It by Philip Levine I call out a secret name, the name of the angel who guards my sleep, and light grows in the east, a new light like no other, as soft as the petals of the blown rose in late summer. Yes, it is late summer in the West. Even […]
Making It Work by Philip Levine
Making It Work by Philip Levine 3-foot blue cannisters of nitro along a conveyor belt, slow fish speaking the language of silence. On the roof, I in my respirator patching the asbestos gas lines as big around as the thick waist of an oak tree. “These here are the veins of the place, stuff inside’s […]
Magpiety by Philip Levine
Magpiety by Philip Levine You pull over to the shoulder of the two-lane road and sit for a moment wondering where you were going in such a hurry. The valley is burned out, the oaks dream day and night of rain that never comes. At noon or just before noon the short shadows are gray […]
Mad Day In March by Philip Levine
Mad Day In March by Philip Levine Beaten like an old hound Whimpering by the stove, I complicate the pain That smarts with promised love. The oilstove falls, the rain, Forecast, licks at my wound; Ice forms, clips the green shoot, And strikes the wren house mute. May commoner and king, The barren bride and […]
M. Degas Teaches Art & Science At Durfee Intermediate School–Detroit, 1942 by Philip Levine
M. Degas Teaches Art & Science At Durfee Intermediate School–Detroit, 1942 by Philip Levine He made a line on the blackboard, one bold stroke from right to left diagonally downward and stood back to ask, looking as always at no one in particular, “What have I done?” From the back of the room Freddie shouted, […]
Late Moon by Philip Levine
Late Moon by Philip Levine 2 a.m. December, and still no mon rising from the river. My mother home from the beer garden stands before the open closet her hands still burning. She smooths the fur collar, the scarf, opens the gloves crumpled like letters. Nothing is lost she says to the darkness, nothing. The […]
Late Light by Philip Levine
Late Light by Philip Levine Rain filled the streets once a year, rising almost to door and window sills, battering walls and roofs until it cleaned away the mess we’d made. My father told me this, he told me it ran downtown and spilled into the river, which in turn emptied finally into the sea. […]
Last Words by Philip Levine
Last Words by Philip Levine If the shoe fell from the other foot who would hear? If the door opened onto a pure darkness and it was no dream? If your life ended the way a book ends with half a blank page and the survivors gone off to Africa or madness? If my life […]
Philip Levine – Philip Levine
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Philip Levine – Philip Levine
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Philip Levine – Philip Levine
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In The New Sun by Philip Levine
In The New Sun by Philip Levine Filaments of light slant like windswept rain. The orange seller hawks into the sky, a man with a hat stops below my window and shakes his tassels. Awake in Tetuan, the room filling with the first colors, and water running in a tub. * A row of sparkling […]
In A Vacant House by Philip Levine
In A Vacant House by Philip Levine Someone was calling someone; now they’ve stopped. Beyond the glass the rose vines quiver as in a light wind, but there is none: I hear nothing. The moments pass, or seem to pass, and the sun, risen above the old birch, steadies for the downward arch. It is […]