After the ashes of the fatherland and the fallen heights of relatives, that the Thuringian land bore from the hostile sword, if I spoke of wars of wars lived through in unfortunate strife, to what tears should I, a captured woman, be drawn first? What remains for me to weep? This people pressed by death or the sweet race family ruined by various vicissitudes? For the father falling first, the uncle following him each relative fixed a sad wound in me. A last brother remained, but by execrable fate the sand pressed me equally to his tomb. With all those extinct (alas the rough guts of the one grieving!) you who were the one left, Hamalafred, you lie dead. Do I Radegund seek such after long times? that your page brought this to speak to the sad one? I waited so long for such a gift from my loving one and you send me this act of your military service? You direct these silken sheepskins to me now to my thought so that, while I draw threads, I the sister have communication with love? Did your care thus counsel powerful grief? Did the first and last messenger give this? Did we rush elsewhere with ample tears in our desires? It was not for the one desiring to be given bitter sweets. I am twisted by solicitous sense, anxious in my bosom: is such fever of the spirit healed by these waters? I did not deserve to see him alive nor to be at his burial, I am pierced by your funeral rites with higher losses. Why do I yet remind you of these things, dear surrogate-son Artachis, to add with my weepings to what you must weep? I ought rather to bring solace to my relative, but sorrow for the dead compels me to speak bitter things. He was not close to me from distant consanguinity, but was a near relative from the brother of my father. For Bertharius was my father, Hermenedfred was his: we were born from brothers, but we are not in the same world. Or you, dear nephew, give me back the peaceful close relation and be mine in love what he was before, and I ask that you often seek me with messages to the monastery and that that place be your help with God, that with your pious mother this perennial care may give you back honor on the starry throne. Now may the lord give you both to be happy in broad present health and future salvation.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 105th birthday.
Margaret Tait Scots 1918 – 1999
One day I Lit a fire At which I Boiled eggs Made tea Dried my shoes And I sat On a stool Watching The sticks catch and flame Quite a while It seemed, Until the whole pile I’d gathered had all burnt away.
Flame Is a thing I Always wonder about. It seems to be made of colour only. I don’t know what else it’s made of.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 95th birthday.
Anne Sexton American 1928 – 1974
You always read about it: the plumber with the twelve children who wins the Irish Sweepstakes. From toilets to riches. That story.
Or the nursemaid, some luscious sweet from Denmark who captures the oldest son’s heart. from diapers to Dior. That story.
Or a milkman who serves the wealthy, eggs, cream, butter, yogurt, milk, the white truck like an ambulance who goes into real estate and makes a pile. From homogenized to martinis at lunch.
Or the charwoman who is on the bus when it cracks up and collects enough from the insurance. From mops to Bonwit Teller. That story.
Once the wife of a rich man was on her deathbed and she said to her daughter Cinderella: Be devout. Be good. Then I will smile down from heaven in the seam of a cloud. The man took another wife who had two daughters, pretty enough but with hearts like blackjacks. Cinderella was their maid. She slept on the sooty hearth each night and walked around looking like Al Jolson. Her father brought presents home from town, jewels and gowns for the other women but the twig of a tree for Cinderella. She planted that twig on her mother’s grave and it grew to a tree where a white dove sat. Whenever she wished for anything the dove would drop it like an egg upon the ground. The bird is important, my dears, so heed him.
Next came the ball, as you all know. It was a marriage market. The prince was looking for a wife. All but Cinderella were preparing and gussying up for the event. Cinderella begged to go too. Her stepmother threw a dish of lentils into the cinders and said: Pick them up in an hour and you shall go. The white dove brought all his friends; all the warm wings of the fatherland came, and picked up the lentils in a jiffy. No, Cinderella, said the stepmother, you have no clothes and cannot dance. That’s the way with stepmothers.
Cinderella went to the tree at the grave and cried forth like a gospel singer: Mama! Mama! My turtledove, send me to the prince’s ball! The bird dropped down a golden dress and delicate little slippers. Rather a large package for a simple bird. So she went. Which is no surprise. Her stepmother and sisters didn’t recognize her without her cinder face and the prince took her hand on the spot and danced with no other the whole day.
As nightfall came she thought she’d better get home. The prince walked her home and she disappeared into the pigeon house and although the prince took an axe and broke it open she was gone. Back to her cinders. These events repeated themselves for three days. However on the third day the prince covered the palace steps with cobbler’s wax and Cinderella’s gold shoe stuck upon it. Now he would find whom the shoe fit and find his strange dancing girl for keeps. He went to their house and the two sisters were delighted because they had lovely feet. The eldest went into a room to try the slipper on but her big toe got in the way so she simply sliced it off and put on the slipper. The prince rode away with her until the white dove told him to look at the blood pouring forth. That is the way with amputations. They just don’t heal up like a wish. The other sister cut off her heel but the blood told as blood will. The prince was getting tired. He began to feel like a shoe salesman. But he gave it one last try. This time Cinderella fit into the shoe like a love letter into its envelope.
At the wedding ceremony the two sisters came to curry favor and the white dove pecked their eyes out. Two hollow spots were left like soup spoons.
Cinderella and the prince lived, they say, happily ever after, like two dolls in a museum case never bothered by diapers or dust, never arguing over the timing of an egg, never telling the same story twice, never getting a middle-aged spread, their darling smiles pasted on for eternity. Regular Bobbsey Twins. That story.
We present this work in honor of the Moroccan holiday, Green March Day.
Ikram Abdi Moroccan 21st century
You washed from the colors of the rainbow You stare woefully in the strangeness of your face Bored of the daily that ambushes you But there you go And the broken steps of time you ascend To inhabit the cities of your suspended strangeness To rest on a cold soil
We present this work in honor of the 40th anniversary of the poet’s death.
Ana Cristina Cesar Brazilian 1952 – 1983
I don’t even need to marry I get all I need from him I won’t leave here anymore I really doubt it This subject of women has come to an end The cat ate it and enjoyed himself He dances just like a barrel organ The writer no longer exists But also doesn’t have to become a god Someone’s at the house Do you think he can stand it? Mr. Tenderness is knocking I couldn’t care less Conspiring: I answer back again Trap: dying to know She’s strange Also you lie too much He’s stalking me Who did you sell your time to? I don’t really know: I slept with that klutz It makes no sense at all But what about the gig? He’s being a good boy I think it’s an act Don’t even start
It might end, this night, with a translucent fog covering the tops of the cypresses, like last night. Or it might end with a pale morning, crowned with a laurel wreath of terror and with an urge to run away, like the morning of that one summer night. Where does the road home start from? From the last house that I escaped from? Or from the last hurriedly booked hotel room?
I remember clearly: his hand was around my neck. The cloudy look in his eyes. The moon was alone outside, with no poems to praise its illusory beauty. I remember, at the same time, the delicate light flowing into the room through the open windows. We were in our room. We were together and his hand was around my neck, on that night and the other nights like it throughout the years, his hand pressing on my soul.
The road winds through the trees. There are scattered farms on each side of the road, and I see ducks and other farm animals here and there. When my heart starts to pound at the heights, I close my eyes. I remember my eyes clouding over from the pain. The scene in front of me is extravagantly beautiful. My eyes drink in the greenery at every bend, until I forget the hands that choked me one summer night. I feel dizzy from the extravagant beauty of the road as it ascends toward Bouisse, and I forget.
They say that children with iron deficiency will peel the lead paint off the walls and eat it. What about souls with love deficiency? They feed on the bark of trees—every single one, the trees on the road as well as the forest trees. Souls that are hungry for love touch trees, get close to them and embrace them. I did this every time, in every trip I took after becoming free of him, and from his hand and the frying pan. Every time I stopped the rental car and get out to embrace the trees.
A life can completely change between one night and another.
Tonight, it is Christmas night and time is passing lightly, carrying the smell of warm mulled wine, fragrant with cinnamon and lemon slices. Lovers, regardless of their different colors and ages, are decorating the night. Lovers, children, old people, women with their short skirts and transparent black stockings. Santa Claus hanging on the walls, in a pose that gives the impression that he is about to ascend toward windows to sneak inside the houses to pass out his presents. Celebrations are everywhere and the night is dancing with its light, like a carol I can’t quite place. The night is heavy with Arabic words in the back streets of Toulouse and the big Algerian flag that is flapping high from the balcony of one of the apartments.
Things happen, in the night stained with light.
“It was my favorite frying pan.”
I repeated this sentence in front of the judge, in front of the people in the courthouse. And a few months earlier I had repeated to the policeman at the police station and a few hours before that, that night, I repeated it to my neighbor Lamia when I fled to her house.
“It was my favorite frying pan—it never sticks.”
I repeated the same sentence for days while looking through my tears to the dented frying pan. I held on to it, clung to it with a shaky hand, with a heavy head and a bruised and scratched up body. I carried it as a guilty verdict, I carried it as an accusation, as a life buoy.
The day I kissed him for the first time on the beach, secretly behind the rock of lovers, I didn’t know that I would choose him out of all men to be my husband. I also didn’t know that he would beat me whenever I said no to him. I didn’t know that the word “no” sends him into an insane rage. And I didn’t know that my favorite frying pan would become his weapon. That night when I shook the hungry bird of desire off of me and dared to tell him no, my life flipped upside down. In the beginning, he strangled me and tried to pin me on the bed under him. I don’t know how I kicked him and slipped away from him. I frantically gasped for air. I don’t know why I ran to the kitchen. We stood there almost naked. Looking at each other silently. I looked with my eyes for something, anything, and when I saw the bread knife he had already beaten me to the frying pan. The blows that hit my head reverberated like the blows of a sledge hammer. The darkness of the night covered me as I surrendered and let my body collapse on the kitchen floor. A thousand stars exploded in a supernova inside my head before I passed out.
When I chose him, like when I was choosing the frying pan, I didn’t know that I was kissing the beast that would break me like a wild horse. The frog didn’t become a prince but I became a porcupine shorn of its quills, unable to defend itself.
When I woke up later that night I couldn’t believe that I was still alive. I also couldn’t believe that he was able to just go to sleep after what happened. I rushed to my neighbor Lamia. I left my son with her. The blood running from my nose was hot and I could barely stand up from the headache. But still I left the house and went to the police station. I didn’t take anything with me but my body and the frying pan that he hit me with. The frying pan became an extension of my right hand. It was like a strange new organ that I added to my body, to help me balance as I dragged myself inside the police station vestibule.
The policeman groaned and asked me: Who’s the son of a bitch that did this to you?
My father arrived, his face the color of an unripe mango, neither green nor yellow. My brother joined us. In the police station, they all wanted to take the frying pan out of my hand. The policeman, my father, my brother. But I didn’t let them, I held onto it tight. I know I looked crazy, I saw how they all looked at me when I grabbed a glass of water with my left hand and drank it without letting go of the frying pan.
Things happen, in the night stained with light. I felt his hands around my neck, strangling me. It was a brief, strange moment, in the moonlight stealing in from the open window. The child had sneaked early in the night to sleep between us, that hot night in August. Desire was hovering above us like a hungry bird. Desire was like a necessity, like a need that we had to satisfy: like for food, water and sleep. In the beginning I used the presence of the child between us in the bed as an excuse. I wondered to myself whether I really wanted that. I tried to avoid the matter entirely by using the child as an excuse. But he carried him gently making sure not to wake him up and put him in his bed in the next room. The bed is ours, he whispered with a hoarse voice. “But I don’t feel right, he might wake up at any moment.” He didn’t answer me. He barely kissed me when he lifted my dress touching the dew of my sweaty legs. I didn’t close my eyes as I usually do, but I looked at him instead. I wasn’t able to see the expression on his face. I realized that I didn’t want to satisfy the desire of the blind bird. I didn’t want this anymore. In the beginning I hesitated but when he succeeded in unzipping my dress I pushed him and said “no.” He got close to me but I pushed him and stood; I backed up until I felt the cool of the wall against my back.
“No—no, I don’t want you,” I said. The “no” came out shakily so I said again in a confident voice, “I don’t want you.” I felt his hand pressing more around my neck and I could hardly breathe. It occurred to me to knee him between his legs.
Things happen, in the night stained with light. Today I am free. I left him the child and I left. I am free of the darkness of pain, of the hammer of pain, of the frying pan.
But still I remember my swollen head and the blue bruises on my body. I remember the dented frying pan.
We present this work in honor of the 160th anniversary of the poet’s death.
Maria White Lowell American 1821 – 1853
Here blooms the legend fed with time and chance, Fresh as the morning, though in centuries old; The whitest lily in the shield of France, With heart of virgin gold.
Along this square she moved, sweet Joan of Arc, With face more pallid than a day-lit star, Half seen, half doubted, while before her dark Stretched the array of war.
Swift furled the battle-smoke of lying breath From off her path, as if a wind had blown, And showed no faithless king, but righteous death On the low, wooden throne.
He would reward her; she who meekly wore Alike her gilded mail and peasant gown, Meekily recieved once earthly honor more, – The formless, fiery crown.
A white dove trembled up the heated air, And in the opening zenith found its goal; Soft as a downward feather fell a prayer For each repentant soul.
We present this work in honor of the 30th anniversary of the poet’s death.
Henriette Hardenberg German 1894 – 1993
Like rare animals they move up and down And lie deep at the bottom of the sea; Moon-colored is the stone, like a wound Set in flowering plumage.
I fear this hidden motion, Like wind held up in branches; So few fingers, in figures, Will excite thoughts in me.
The sea divides so that I can reach it – In swaying underbrush of crystal night – This hand, extended flat yet softly sunk, There before my pallid face.
I don’t know whether the little bones, Rinsed by the sea, will drift and mingle, Or if, wrapped in clouds, They will reach up for music and dance.
I know that dreams without fragrance, Like dead fingers rigid in the joints, Do not give shrouded magic For which the living call in sleep.
We present this work in honor of the 15th anniversary of the poet’s death.
Tahereh Saffarzadeh Persian 1936 – 2008
A lone tree I am in this far reaching desert on this sorrowful plain I have no soul mate no one whose steps tread in unison with mine the friendly murmur of streams the happy rush of springs die in a space far away and my ear fills with parched strains of solitude In this desert I have terrifying companions; hail of pain, cloud of fear, and wild downpour of sorrows within me howls the clamor of wolves of loneliness. In this darkness of night my heart does not quicken with thoughts of tomorrow.
Poets Corner 