Winter on Winnebago                                                     


                                                        

Just when you think
you’ll never be done with it,

the ice pulls back, leaving
what’s left, shard and stub.

Just when you think
you’ve forgotten the sound, the smell,

the sun, lusty and warm
starts to thaw. Just when you think

the ice—long deep and rutted,
fish moving like slugs

below—starts to crack and shift,
drift away. And sometimes,

the daggered ice, driven by wind and flow,
shoves ashore, pushes into juddered heaps.

Needles thrust and surge, clatter
like shattered glass. The fox, already

mated, stops her midnight weeping.






                                   Karla Huston


















...

to remember or not

 

                          White Bread Blues: Sonnet for a Long-ago Love

                          Now is the age when memory is sweetest
                       The heart going to the time when wearing pearls
                      was magic before it was cause for grief
                    played over and over and over
                 The same befores and afters, the same
               first the love, then the pearls, then the grief.
             Grief then, had all the all time charm.
           In the end, now, when treasured companion
        of the heart is memory of love and pearls,
      when longest debate over lovely lust
    is cause for warmest regard
   when sheer possession of memory sweeps all argument aside
  makes equal the foolish and the fine,
there grief and pearls and love abide.

                           Mary Norbert Korte

....

Trenching

Unexpectedly they arrived

by mail—baby saplings

wrapped in woodsy moss

ready to be planted, watered,

nourished there and then—

but we were packed

to go away that day,

headed south

for a few weeks of fun.

I examined labels

attached to tender stems—

tiny rhododendrons

mixed with wee azaleas

destined to be

all the spring colors I imagined—

deep rose reds,

bright, bright whites,

pinks, lavender—

and as instructions read,

a shallow trench I dug,

laid the saplings on their sides,

covered roots with coarse

peat and dirt

to hold them

until my return. That was

the best that I could do

like our mother—

when she put us

in the Cromwell

Children’s Home.




             Alice Azure




















...

a quiet bit of lunacy

I Feel Like Seeing the Moon                         












 Back to bed,
tell others,
can’t find it.

My eye breaks free
and stares straight up
for nothing.

That the ceiling were nothing.
My eye can’t
stand on it.

I feel like seeing
the moon, like seeing
the fingernail-of-a moon.

Chewed off, left
for the man to clean,
went the smallest

part of me
to the heavens
with the gold leaf.

It’s over
murals on buildings,
stomachs on bicycles,

their tacos and ice.
I’ve got it
in fingertips

that walk a triangle
from eye to here
to brain,

in my warmed-over
heart-like
mental state, in same.








                      Claire Becker


























.

a la espanol

                                                            






                                                          Hombres necios que acusáis

a la mujer sin razón,

sin ver que sois la ocasión

de lo mismo que culpáis:

    si con ansia sin igual

solicitáis su desdén,

¿por qué quereis que obren bien

si las incitáis al mal?

    Combatís su resistencia

y luego, con gravedad,

decís que fue liviandad

lo que hizo la diligencia.

    Parecer quiere el denuedo

de vuestro parecer loco,

al niño que pone el coco

y luego le tiene miedo.

    Queréis, con presunción necia,

hallar a la que buscáis,

para pretendida, Thais,

y en la posesión, Lucrecia

    ¿Qué humor puede ser más raro

que el que, falto de consejo,

el mismo empaña el espejo

y siente que no esté claro?

    Con el favor y el desdén

tenéis condición igual,

quejándoos, si os tratan mal,

burlándoos, si os quieren bien.

    Opinión, ninguna gana:

pues la que más se recata,

si no os admite, es ingrata,

y si os admite, es liviana

    Siempre tan necios andáis

que, con desigual nivel,

a una culpáis por crüel

y a otra por fácil culpáis.

    ¿Pues cómo ha de estar templada

la que vuestro amor pretende,

si la que es ingrata, ofende,

y la que es fácil, enfada?

    Mas, entre el enfado y pena

que vuestro gusto refiere,

bien haya la que no os quiere

y quejaos en hora buena.

    Dan vuestras amantes penas

a sus libertades alas,

y después de hacerlas malas

las queréis hallar muy buenas.

    ¿Cuál mayor culpa ha tenido

en una pasión errada:

la que cae de rogada

o el que ruega de caído?

    ¿O cuál es más de culpar,

aunque cualquiera mal haga:

la que peca por la paga

o el que paga por pecar?

    Pues ¿para quée os espantáis

de la culpa que tenéis?

Queredlas cual las hacéis

o hacedlas cual las buscáis.

    Dejad de solicitar,

y después, con más razón,

acusaréis la afición

de la que os fuere a rogar.

    Bien con muchas armas fundo

que lidia vuestra arrogancia,

pues en promesa e instancia

juntáis diablo, carne y mundo.












Mexican nun
























.

a most holy indictment

      

       

     

You Men (English)

    Silly, you men-so very adept
at wrongly faulting womankind,
not seeing you're alone to blame
for faults you plant in woman's mind.

    After you've won by urgent plea
the right to tarnish her good name,
you still expect her to behave--
you, that coaxed her into shame.

    You batter her resistance down
and then, all righteousness, proclaim
that feminine frivolity,
not your persistence, is to blame.

    When it comes to bravely posturing,
your witlessness must take the prize:
you're the child that makes a bogeyman,
and then recoils in fear and cries.

    Presumptuous beyond belief,
you'd have the woman you pursue
be Thais when you're courting her,
Lucretia once she falls to you.

    For plain default of common sense,
could any action be so queer
as oneself to cloud the mirror,
then complain that it's not clear?

    Whether you're favored or disdained,
nothing can leave you satisfied.
You whimper if you're turned away,
you sneer if you've been gratified.

    With you, no woman can hope to score;
whichever way, she's bound to lose;
spurning you, she's ungrateful--
succumbing, you call her lewd.

    Your folly is always the same:
you apply a single rule
to the one you accuse of looseness
and the one you brand as cruel.

    What happy mean could there be
for the woman who catches your eye,
if, unresponsive, she offends,
yet whose complaisance you decry?

    Still, whether it's torment or anger--
and both ways you've yourselves to blame--
God bless the woman who won't have you,
no matter how loud you complain.

    It's your persistent entreaties
that change her from timid to bold.
Having made her thereby naughty,
you would have her good as gold.

    So where does the greater guilt lie
for a passion that should not be:
with the man who pleads out of baseness
or the woman debased by his plea?

    Or which is more to be blamed--
though both will have cause for chagrin:
the woman who sins for money
or the man who pays money to sin?

    So why are you men all so stunned
at the thought you're all guilty alike?
Either like them for what you've made them
or make of them what you can like.

    If you'd give up pursuing them,
you'd discover, without a doubt,
you've a stronger case to make
against those who seek you out.

    I well know what powerful arms
you wield in pressing for evil:
your arrogance is allied
with the world, the flesh, and the devil!






                          Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz


























...

an edward abbey poem

How strange and wonderful is our home, our earth,
With its swirling vaporous atmosphere
Its flowing and frozen climbing creatures,
The croaking things with wings that hang on rocks
And soar through fog, the furry grass, the scaly seas. . .
How utterly rich and wild. . .
Yet some among us have the nerve,
The insolence, the brass, the gall to whine
About the limitations of our earthbound fate
And yearn for some more perfect world beyond the sky.
We are none of us good enough
For the world we have.
















....

love poetry with a purpose

 

    THE ENCOUNTER                                                                

enchanted by this strange proximity

Longing, and mystery, and delight…
as if from the swaying blackness
of some slow-motion masquerade
onto the dim bridge you came.

And night flowed, and silent there floated
into its satin streams
that black mask’s wolf-like profile
and those tender lips of yours.

And under the chestnuts, along the canal
you passed, luring me askance.
What did my heart discern in you,
how did you move me so?

In your momentary tenderness,
or in the changing contour of your shoulders,
did I experience a dim sketch
of other — irrevocable — encounters?

Perhaps romantic pity
led you to understand
what had set trembling that arrow
now piercing through my verse?

I know nothing. Strangely
the verse vibrates, and in it, an arrow…
Perhaps you, still nameless, were
the genuine, the awaited one?

But sorrow not yet quite cried out
perturbed our starry hour.
Into the night returned the double fissure
of your eyes, eyes not yet illumed.

For long? For ever? Far off
I wander, and strain to hear
the movement of the stars above our encounter
and what if you are to be my fate…

Longing, and mystery, and delight,
and like a distant supplication….
My heart must travel on.
But if you are to be my fate…

                  Vladimir Nabokov

...