Category: ain’t that the truth

Schuyler poem (even his titles look like mine).

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Poem (The day gets slowly started)

 

The day gets slowly started.
A rap at the bedroom door,
bitter coffee, hot cereal, juice
the color of sun which
isn’t out this morning. A
cool shower, a shave, soothing
Noxzema for razor burn. A bed
is made. The paper doesn’t come
until twelve or one. A gray shine
out the windows. “No one
leaves the building until
those scissors are returned.”
It’s that kind of a place.
Nonetheless, I’ve seen worse.
The worried gray is melting
into sunlight. I wish I’d
brought my book of enlightening
literary essays. I wish it
were lunch time. I wish I had
an appetite. The day agrees
with me better than it did, or,
better, I agree with it. I’ll
slide down a sunslip yet, this
crass September morning.

“I like brown beverages and…” (poem) (mine).

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I like brown beverages and

stripping coriander with a friend

on the hot September stoop.

I like four books in a pile

with biggest on the bottom

and making spicy beans

and maybe even Loretta Lynn.

I like it when someone comes back

from a trip and they look a little

better than when they left.

I like the way one hand on my chest

and one on my back bookends

my heart and keeps it in.

Words to live by (Chris Kardambikis).

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written at the summer sideyard & since then stationed on my refrigerator. & now you too can have this friendly reminder on your fridge, these words of wisdom, this clever counsel, to guide you through your future beverage selections, just save the pdf, click on print, and enjoy a future of smart hydration…

Tomato poems! In honor of the last day of summer (Guillermo Saavedra).

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On the Tomato

Brief Vaudevillian Hypotheses Apropos of This Androgynous Fruit

 

1

Behold the hero of the vegetable patch

a modest American marvel

with the face of a Chinese lantern.

2

Sheer light made of water:

a fleeting heart, pumping

muted cries of jubilation.

3

Her fancy dress, her festive

fantasy of red confirms a doubt:

she’s a lady tossed in the salad by mistake.

16

A tomato rots: here lies

a misfortune greater

than the fall of an empire.

39

Voluptuous little flag:

he makes every dry spell

fresh.

41

To sink one’s finger into

its soft flesh: a crime or copulation

as vague as your idea of bliss.

44

A tomato crosses the river

on a moonless night:

becomes a plum.

55

(Mark Twain)

A salad can be an anthem to joy

but the proof

is in the tomato.

60

To bite into a tomato thinking

of nothing: so the peak

of summer will burst in your mouth.

64

Columbus’s was egg

and prophecy: America

is a tomato under sail.

66

A tomato was raised

by two elderly lemons:

now it’s a sweet tangerine.

75

And yet, there is no more

voracious love than that of salt

searching for it on the plate.

97

The taste of tomato

remembered: the damp

face of a barefoot child.

 

 

translated from the Spanish by Cindy Schuster

poem inspired by the photograph (mine).

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girl you have way too many

jackets & too many of those

 

girly bows as headgear but rest

assured i’ll hold a broken down

 

umbrella over us as our hairs

grow big & frazzled and the spittle

 

of the rain delivered on the wind

strums our faces like a set of bitten

 

teenage fingernails touching

grandpa’s heirloom fiddle