Pan with Us (by Robert Frost)

Pan with Us
by Robert Frost
[from A Boy’s Will (1913)]

Pan came out of the woods one day—
His skin and his hair and his eyes were gray,
The gray of the moss of walls were they—
     And stood in the sun and looked his fill
     At wooded valley and wooded hill.

He stood in the zephyr, pipes in hand,
On a height of naked pasture land;
In all the country he did command
     He saw no smoke and he saw no roof. 
     That was well! And he stamped a hoof.

His heart knew peace, for none came here
To this lean feeding save once a year
Someone to salt the half-wild steer,
     Or homespun children with clicking pails
     Who see so little they tell no tales.

He tossed his pipes, too hard to teach
A new-world song, far out of reach,
For a sylvan sign that the blue jay’s screech
     And the whimper of hawks beside the sun
     Were music enough for him, for one.

Times were changed from what they were:
Such pipes kept less of power to stir
The fruited bough of the juniper
     And the fragile bluets clustered there
     Than the merest aimless breath of air.

They were pipes of pagan mirth,
And the world had found new terms of worth.
He laid him down on the sun-burned earth
     And raveled a flower and looked away—
     Play? Play?—What should he play?


*

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Flees so the phantom meadow (by Emily Dickinson)

Emily Dickinson 

[1858]

Flees so the phantom meadow
Before the breathless Bee—
So bubble brooks in deserts
On Ears that dying lie—
Burn so the evening spires
To eyes that Closing go—
Hangs so distant Heaven—
To a hand below.   



*

The Seesaw of Undertow (by Krysia Jopek)

photo of Krysia Jopek by Steve Yau


The Seesaw of Undertow

A. Have I once again miraculously turned the corner of belief, climbed out? And for how long this time before the trap-door snare descends to snap the neck back under the forest? So terrifying and cruel the way it just happens, and no one has even spoken a word.

Now I will be capable of caring for my fellow human, the garden, the seedlings, myself, write again, or doodle philosophically or only in bare color.

But, first, what should I wear to accept the marvel of upright vertical? Can I afford [justify] new shoes? No one will recognize the entirety of the trauma, it can be assumed.

B. Things were very sketchy for a while, you should know. If only I could have thrown the dies upwards to tell you, spell out the odd, unexpected destruction: go no further. The aft self-imposed chaos [an amputation], and the chronic, ever-defiant desire for explanation, the strange beauty of a logic that doesn’t exist.

The gadgets have multiplied while the others were left for dead, sleeping. Strangely some may provide a sense of solace that we are all in this together for a fraction of a second, repentant and brave.

C. I have sewn the holes in the tablecloths that tell the history of the village and its awkward inhabitants: a gossamer thin in the spring just-budded leaves, that astounding inch-worm, chartreuse green from a year ago before so much ice and snow.

I am writing, oddly, to ask you to help me remember [not forget] those pages in the book I tore out and folded, so that you could know and tell me in your own version, your unusual interpretation of the facts.

Maybe sing a background song that is soothing but upbeat—and coax like sudden sunlight over the majestic teal–its constant grandeur yet shifting metronome [through the one hundred and forty four windows], its waves pulsating the distant [key of ] sea.



(c) 2013 by Krysia Jopek

Krysia Jopek’s poems have appeared in Columbia Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, The Wallace Stevens Journal, Phoebe, Murmur, Windhover, and Artists & Influence. She has written reviews of poetry for The American Book Review and a review of literary criticism for The Wallace Stevens Journal. Maps and Shadows, her first novel (Aquila Polonica 2010), won a Silver Benjamin Franklin award in 2011 in the category of Historical Fiction. The Glass House of Forgetting, her second novel (literary fiction), is forthcoming.

Distrustful of the Gentian (by Emily Dickinson)

Emily Dickinson 

[1858]

Distrustful of the Gentian—
And just to turn away,
The fluttering of her fringes
Child my perfidy—
Weary for my————
I will singing go—
I shall not feel the sleet—then—
I shall not fear the snow.  



*

The Trial by Existence (by Robert Frost)

The Trial by Existence
by Robert Frost
[from A Boy’s Will (1913)]

Even the bravest that are slain
Shall not dissemble their surprise
On waking to find valor reign,
Even as on earth, in paradise;
And where they sought without the sword
Wide fields of asphodel fore’er,
To find that the utmost reward
Of daring should be still to dare.

The light of heaven falls whole and white
And is not shattered into dyes,
The light forever is morning light;
The hills are verdured pasturewise;
The angel hosts with freshness go,
And seek with laughter what to brave–
And binding all is the hushed snow
Of the far-distant breaking wave.

And from a cliff top is proclaimed
The gathering of the souls for birth,
The trial by existence named,
The obscuration upon earth.
And the slant spirits trooping by
In streams and cross- and counter-streams
Can but give ear to that sweet cry
For its suggestion of what dreams!

And the more loitering are turned
To view once more the sacrifice
Of those who for some good discerned
Will gladly give up paradise.
And a white shimmering concourse rolls
Toward the throne to witness there
The speeding of devoted souls
Which God makes His especial care.

And none are taken but who will,
Having first heard the life read out
That opens earthward, good and ill,
Beyond the shadow of a doubt;
And very beautifully God limns,
And tenderly, life’s little dream,
But naught extenuates or dims,
Setting the thing that is supreme.

Nor is there wanting in the press
Some spirit to stand simply forth,
Heroic in its nakedness,
Against the uttermost of earth.
The tale of earth’s unhonored things
Sounds nobler there than ‘neath the sun;
And the mind whirls and the heart sings,
And a shout greets the daring one.

But always God speaks at the end:
“One thought in agony of strife
The bravest would have by for friend,
The memory that he chose the life;
But the pure fate to which you go
Admits no memory of choice,
Or the woe were not earthly woe
To which you give the assenting voice.”

And so the choice must be again,
But the last choice is still the same;
And the awe passes wonder then,
And a hush falls for all acclaim.
And God has taken a flower of gold
And broken it, and used therefrom
The mystic link to bind and hold
Spirit to matter till death come.

‘Tis of the essence of life here,
Though we choose greatly, still to lack
The lasting memory at all clear,
That life has for us on the wrack
Nothing but what we somehow chose;
Thus are we wholly stipped of pride
In the pain that has but one close,
Bearing it crushed and mystified.


*

Three Untitled from Fuck Poetry (by Cheryl A Townsend)

Self Portrait – (c) 2013 by Cheryl A Townsend

 

UNTITLED 41109

 

Sex is sex is sex is sex

and love is just the aftertaste

singing a cappella orgasms

there’s the lost & found of morbid lust

you can’t possibly train for this marathon

and having won it – honeybunny

well that’s just the worst part

UNTITLED 41209

 

Blast my night with your

insipid spasms & whines

it’s cool enough now not to matter

and I don’t care whose name you call

or if you even kiss me afterwards

it’s not about any of that shit

really – it’s just the fitting

the yours and mine and sometimes ours

it’s about the whole fucking night

baybee

it’s about the hole – fucking – nite


 

UNTITLED 41309

 

Ho Ho the mistletoe

and Christmas is many

months ago gone

but kiss me sheepishly

anyway beneath that

dried up swag

glide your boozey tongue

across my wind-chapped lips

I’ll even spray a little

pine-scented freshener

under my arms

for the perfect noel

effect    

These poems originally appeared in Fuck Poetry, a limited edition (and now out of print) anti-censorship anthology published by Crisis Chronicles Press.  They were written in 2009 and are (c) 2011 by Cheryl A Townsend, used with permission.

Cheryl A Townsend is a photographer who used to write poetry. She is the gallery director for The Box Gallery in Akron and heads up the Women’s Art Recognition Movement (W.A.R.M.). She’s been known for many things.

A sepal – petal – and a thorn (by Emily Dickinson)

Emily Dickinson 

[1858]

A sepal — petal — and a thorn
Upon a common summer’s morn—
A flask of Dew—A Bee or two—
A Breeze—a’caper in the trees—
And I’m a Rose!




*

Little Girls (by Yasamin Safarzadeh)

 

Little Girls 

On a Summer’s day–

when, slowly, the river ate at our sin,

passed the purging our pores emit

in sediments that run the river’s green–

Hiding behind the glimmer of a spider’s thread,

an epiphany hung itself down from the eaves.

The sunlight illuminates tangents from our pasts

off bodies of leaves.

And we begin to remember

forgetting to know that memories are finicky.

Today we are wantons to spectacle’s tall tales.

I start by calling air,

and ravel you in pre-pubescence.

Our eyes lock and fingers stick,

that whatever we touch

would lead us back to each other.

You are sun-kissed everglades,

and I,

the harvest moon.

There is a bigness in us,

but, we sway to different gods.

Hating each other for misunderstandings and impatience.

Today, though

we drown

Bodies floating downriver.

Blue with delirium

This day, we are close like childhood

when the color pink was lifeblood

and roller skates an identity.

Your freckles lay themselves on my face,

off your alabaster.

Pulling reminiscence from our features.

You stand in the mists of history’s empires,

both of us from some ether

            that waits for creation.

Both of us from maps

that are hand drawn,

and hold tall myths.

The two of us living today

with the lies we learned

            from after school sitcoms

            where every episode ended happily.


(c) 2013 by Yasamin Safarzadeh, all rights reserved

Yasamin Safarzadeh, born and raised in Los Angeles, California, has travelled the nation in search of diversities of American culture.  Along the way she organized multifarious art shows and collaborated with countless artists, in both developing the aforementioned and enhancing their knowledge base.

 

Ms. Safarzadeh funded her way to and from the East coast by constructing massive canvases and then live-action painting on said canvasses at multitudes of music festivals.

 

Now, back home, in Los Angeles, she is working to acquire her teaching credentials while keeping afloat in the flood of artists and hustlers that dwell in LA.

Still working to be published and performing, Yasamin has not limited the means by which she will satisfy her appetite and enthusiasm for art and for creating accessibility to the thing in her community. Her two chapbooks are available on Google books and a select poem for women’s history month is archived at the Library of Congress in Sacramento.

City of Bridges (by J.E. Stanley)

J.E. Stanley at Jim’s Coffeehouse & Diner in Elyria, Ohio — photo by JB 

 

City of Bridges
by J.E. Stanley

I am the Keeper of Bridges
in the City of Bridges.
The Travelers always ask
where the bridge will take them.
I tell them Heaven.
I tell them Hell.
I tell them the Void
and there’s no turning back.
I always lie.
They always believe.

If it’s late October
and the snow falls early,
I might tell them that the bridge
will take them to May
and the pure breezes of spring.
I’ll say that it’s a long walk,
but there’s a diner at the halfway point
with pie and coffee,
shelter and cigarettes.

I may promise that the world
of their dreams lies on the other side,
then tell them that the journey will change them
and their dreams will lose all meaning.

If it is a lost child, I might say,
“The bridge will take you home.”

I never reveal the truth:
that this is the City of Bridges

where Bridge

leads to Bridge

leads to Bridge. . .

 

* * * * *

“City of Bridges” comes from the chapbook Rapid Eye Movement — (c) 2011 by J.E. Stanley — published by Crisis Chronicles Press.  The poem originally appeared in Sybil’s Garage and The 2010 Rhysling Anthology: The Best Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Poetry of 2009.

 

J.E. Stanley is an accountant and on again/off again guitarist from the grayscale suburban wilderness of Northeastern Ohio where he is lucky enough to hang out with the Deep Cleveland Poets and the Cleveland Speculators. His other books include Selected Regions of the Moon (NightBallet Press), Dark Intervals (vanZeno Press), Dissonance (Deep Cleveland Press) and, co-authored with Joshua Gage, Intrinsic Night (Sam’s Dot Publishing). His work has appeared in Amaze, Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, Cinema Spec, the Deep Cleveland Junkmail Oracle, Paper Crow, The Rhysling Anthology, Scifaikuest, Sein und Werden, Star*Line, Sybil’s Garage and numerous other mainstream and genre publications. He continues to assert that, winged or not, Man was always meant to fly; the moon and stars were just put there as incentives.

Affirmations [2] – Key of S (by Krysia Jopek)

photo of Krysia Jopek by Steve Yau


Affirmations [2] – Key of S

I have wrapped the fallen in the requisite white cloths and written a sentence for each in permanent ink that even the torrential rains couldn’t disturb.

 

You will tell me: what it was like there stuck above glass waiting for the silk sandfall to slip sane-ness [sameness] again.  It must have hurt very much, which is why you do not talk.

 

So you invented a chain of catharsis, a different fence, safe, for becoming someone brave. Tiny dramas  that found you noble in behavior and thought, a team player on your own team for once, an origami uniform with the most unusual font [fountain]. I know.

 

I have such secrets stitched in the hem of my too-long skirt. There is a danger of stumbling into stone, so I pick up the fabric and tip chin back to sky. 

 

There are pens, too, sewn into the borders. Sometimes they are heavy. Sometimes they sprout sudden blackbird wings, musical notes. You have seen [heard] them and looked away to grant me some privacy, and I must thank you for that.

 

The sun has poked its head, made its grand entrance, bells and whistles, bagpipes and gamelan. The children have lined up for the parade, ready to catch candy, their own surprise.

 

Like you, I shall be human again.

 

You must tell the others I am coming, that I am on the way not spoken, the way not broken, the way the sun came back. You must speak of the silk that was stuck, how it still slips through the hourglass.

(c) 2013 by Krysia Jopek

Krysia Jopek’s poems have appeared in Columbia Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, The Wallace Stevens Journal, Phoebe, Murmur, Windhover, and Artists & Influence. She has written reviews of poetry for The American Book Review and a review of literary criticism for The Wallace Stevens Journal. Maps and Shadows, her first novel (Aquila Polonica 2010), won a Silver Benjamin Franklin award in 2011 in the category of Historical Fiction. The Glass House of Forgetting, her second novel (literary fiction), is forthcoming.