FAVORITE POEMS

[meganerd]

My god,
says the head
to the beating heart,

How many times
must I bury you?

Oh love,
says the heart,
blood mixed with
grave dirt.

At least once more.

— nathaniel orion g. k.

Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there. I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry;
I am not there. I did not die.

— Mary Elizabeth Frye

I went to the woods because
I wanted to live deliberately.
I wanted to live deep
and suck out all the marrow of life.
To put to rout all that was not life,
and not, when I had come to die,
discover that I had not lived.

— Henry David Thoreau

Tenderness and rot
share a border.
And rot is an
aggressive neighbor
whose iridescence
keeps creeping over.

No lessons
can be drawn
from this however.

One is not
two countries.
One is not meat
corrupting.

It is important
to stay sweet
and loving.

— Kay Ryan

This is how it works: They talk. You listen.
Let them go on at length about the harp lessons
and the cataloging of their regrets. Then, let them
begin their questions; most often they ask about the
minutia of the earth. They will ask you to detail
the habits of grass and trees. They will ask you to
tell them about the current cycle of cicadas:
the red eyes, the husks, the sacrament that is sleep.
Tell them of your latest visit to the psychiatrist.
Tell them how he diagnosed what you experience
to be a form of complicated grief. Over their brittle
laughter, protest: No, listen. I paid for that. Tell them
your husband left last winter. They knew that too.
Expect their shrugs. Allow them to continue:
Can you tell us again how it feels to be cold?
Can you remind us of the colors the leaves make
in autumn? How does it feel to want? Tell them about
that dream last night about the invasion. No, the one about
the fire. How there was a fire in the shape of men
marching the streets, how the bystanders threw themselves
headlong into the pageant, their burning hands destroying
all they touched until there was nothing left in the world
but you and ash. Ask them if death is like that.
They’ll say: Nothing gone stays gone here; you are never
alone in death. Listen, they’ll say, that’s the worst part of all.

— T.J. Jarrett

The Story of Ka

I was born when an African bracelet burst
and its stacked record beads scattered
like flakes of gold in the wind.

I hummed with the strays on the streets,
begging for a scrap of barbecued corn.

I made friends with seagulls,
spent summers chasing salt spray
near the coast of Greece.

I learned to watch war
with the volume down.

As for love, I saw it
hanging low on the branches
of a nearby tree.

— Nasha Gowanlock

In Which Huginn Has Fathered Children

When he's not teaching, he browses headlines,
typing with only two talon-like fingers,
as though centuries later,
he hasn't quite gotten the hang of being human.
In hushed tones on Skype he waits and
counts the heroic dead with Uncle Muninn,
whose Syria is burning,
who lives in London now,
and both have long developed a distaste for blood.

Why would a creature of the sky
choose to teach architecture —
the art of permanent grounding?
I linger at the edges of large auditoriums
or accompany him to exhibits and watch
students flock around him.
Their eyes follow his hand
extending, his fingers letting go —
as he explains the journey of the Hurva Synagogue,
not the rebuilt relic, but Khan's that never was,
and Jerusalem's lost Moroccan Quarter, now only
the vacant plaza of the Western Wall —
spaces translucent,
shimmering on the horizon of almostness,
untouched, toughed, empty spaces with old sky.
Do they remind him of Valhalla's halls?

I've seen that charm too,
in his leaning over the edge of my childhood bed
arms flapping to the rise in his voice as he narrated
his gold-spun tales sprinkled with impossible
details stolen from the heavens:
how Joan of Arc's hair blew in the wind or
which flowers adorned Netzahualcoyotl's garden or
how the sand refused to pierce the Rabia's knees and elbows
as she knelt before God in the desert
in wild withdrawal.

— Aiya Sakr

Questions for my Jinn Counterpart

Unseen sister of smokeless fire,
have you been sitting in the bowl of the sink, watching me shower,
marveling at the steam rising from the nape of my neck?
And when you touched the curve of my ass,
did the water droplet hurt, sizzling on your fingertips?
And when you lead your lower into my bed once I've left for work,
Do you linger at my vanity, watching yourself in the mirror
squeezing essence of jasmine onto your pulse points
and theirs? And where are the pulse points on your limbs of flame?
Did you likewise once anoint yourself with
essence of rose to sit by the Garden gates listening to Allah,
before the sudden fire cast you away with Adam and Eve?
And do you hate me for it/ And what does She sound like?
And though they be tender, your lover,
stroking you first and tracing those Turkish figs you call breasts,
fresh and swollen,
do you still freeze,
like me,
waiting for freeze-thaw to break you open,
or does fire more fluid than water,
not know the hardness of dry clay?

— Aiya Sakr