Trojan Poetry 120: "Poem Written with an Arrowhead in My Mouth" by Timothy Donnelly

Poem Written with an Arrowhead in My Mouth
By Timothy Donnelly

          Again the sound of quartz pounding quartz
     into Neolithic spear points
to be hafted onto shafts with tree-resin glue
         and a twine made of fibers harvested from dead plants
     comforts me as it keeps me
awake nights, leaving me feeling equally
          provided for and covered in blood.

          Again history’s blistery tongue in my ear blurts
     the cave of the belly goes
deeper than thought, and is less wholesome:
          the vapors of the breath condense there, sour
     by the hour on the walls, advancing
into pools whose surfaces strobe in archaic code
          and whose depths cradle my kind of salamander.

          At what point in the mud does an act of what
     might be called independence become
possible is the question
          on all of our limbs, not minds, not yet, although
     we’re getting there bit by bit, and then
we’ll plateau for a period before gliding back
          down into the huddle, dragging everything with us.

          And when the future arrives in its vehicles
     to poke through the mineralized
forms we leave behind, will we all be one to its eye,
          or will it make a difference who
     among us tried to stop ourselves, or tried to stop those
in charge, or whether any of us put their young
          to sleep at the end, and if with poison, or with song?

http://www.nereview.com/vol-40-no-1-2019/poem-written-with-an-arrowhead-in-my-mouth/

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Trojan Poetry 119: "Enemies" by Wendell Berry

Enemies
By Wendell Berry

If you are not to become a monster,
you must care what they think.
If you care what they think,

how will you not hate them,
and so become a monster
of the opposite kind? From where then

is love to come—love for your enemy
that is the way of liberty?
From forgiveness. Forgiven, they go

free of you, and you of them;
they are to you as sunlight
on a green branch. You must not

think of them again, except
as monsters like yourself,
pitiable because unforgiving.

Wendell Berry, "Enemies" from Entries: Poems. Copyright © 1994 by Wendell Berry. 


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Trojan Poetry 118: "Southern Gothic" by Rickey Laurentiis

Southern Gothic 

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By Rickey Laurentiis

About the dead having available to them

all breeds of knowledge,

some pure, others wicked, especially what is

future, and the history that remains 

once the waters recede, revealing the land 

that couldn’t reject or contain it, and the land 

that is not new, is indigo, is ancient, lived 

as all the trees that fit and clothe it are lived, 

simple pine, oak, grand magnolia, he said 

they frighten him, that what they hold in their silences 

silences: sometimes a boy will slip 

from his climbing, drown but the myth knows why,

sometimes a boy will swing with the leaves.

Source: Poetry (November 2012)

Trojan Poetry 117: "Heart to Heart " by Rita Dove and "Open Your Heart" by Madonna

Heart to Heart

By Rita Dove

It's neither red

nor sweet.

It doesn't melt

or turn over,

break or harden,

so it can't feel

pain,

yearning,

regret.

It doesn't have

a tip to spin on,

it isn't even

shapely—

just a thick clutch

of muscle,

lopsided,

mute. Still,

I feel it inside

its cage sounding

a dull tattoo:

I want, I want—

but I can't open it:

there's no key.

I can't wear it

on my sleeve,

or tell you from

the bottom of it

how I feel. Here,

it's all yours, now—

but you'll have

to take me,

too.

Rita Dove, "Heart to Heart" from American Smooth. Copyright © 2004 by Rita Dove

Trojan Poetry 116: "The Honey Bear" by Eileen Myles

Robyn's song "Honey": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IxdQ...

The Honey Bear

By Eileen Myles

Billie Holiday was on the radio

I was standing in the kitchen

smoking my cigarette of this

pack I plan to finish tonight

last night of smoking youth.

I made a cup of this funny

kind of tea I’ve had hanging

around. A little too sweet

an odd mix. My only impulse

was to make it sweeter.

Ivy Anderson was singing

pretty late tonight

in my very bright kitchen.

I’m standing by the tub

feeling a little older

nearly thirty in my very

bright kitchen tonight.

I’m not a bad looking woman

I suppose     O it’s very quiet

in my kitchen tonight        I’m squeezing

this plastic honey bear      a noodle

of honey dripping into the odd sweet

tea. It’s pretty late

Honey bear’s cover was loose

and somehow honey      dripping down

the bear’s face   catching

in the crevices beneath

the bear’s eyes    O very sad and sweet

I’m standing in my kitchen     O honey

I’m staring at the honey bear’s face.

Eileen Myles, “The Honey Bear” from Maxfield Parrish: Early & New Poems. Copyright © 1995 by Eileen Myles.

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Trojan Poetry 115: "Please Don't" by Tony Hoagland

Please Don’t
by Tony Hoagland

tell the flowers–they think
the sun loves them.
The grass is under the same
simple-minded impression

about the rain, the fog, the dew.
And when the wind blows,
it feels so good
they lose control of themselves

and swobtoggle wildly
around, bumping accidentally into their
slender neighbors.
Forgetful little lotus-eaters,

solar-powered
hydroholics, drawing nourishment up
through stems into their
thin green skin,

high on the expensive
chemistry of mitochondrial explosion,
believing that the dirt
loves them, the night, the stars–

reaching down a little deeper
with their pale albino roots,
all Dizzy
Gillespie with the utter
sufficiency of everything.

They don’t imagine lawn
mowers, the four stomachs
of the cow, or human beings with boots
who stop to marvel

at their exquisite
flexibility and color.
The persist in their soft-headed

hallucination of happiness.
But please don’t mention it.
Not yet. Tell me
what would you possibly gain

from being right?


Tony Hoagland, "Please Don’t" from Application for Release from the Dream. Copyright © 2015 by Tony Hoagland.

Trojan Poetry 114: "Wasps' Nest" by Michael Schmidt

Wasps' Nest
By Michael Schmidt

It was the fruit I wanted, not the nest.
The nest was hanging like the richest fruit
against the sun. I took the nest

and with it came the heart, and in my hand
the kingdom and the queen, frail surfaces,
rested for a moment. Then the drones

awoke and did their painful business.
I let the city drop upon the stones.
It split to its deep palaces and combs.

It bled the insect gold,
the pupa queens like tiny eyes
wriggled from their sockets, and somewhere

the monarch cowered in a veil of wings
in passages through which at evening
the labourers had homed,

burdened with silence and the garden scents.
The secret heart was broken suddenly.
I, to whom the knowledge had been given,

who was not after knowledge but a fruit,
remember how a knot of pains
swelled my hand to a round nest;

blood throbbed in the hurt veins
as if an unseen swarm mined there.
The nest oozed bitter honey.

I swaddled my fat hand in cotton.
After a week pain gave it back to me
scarred and weakened like a shrivelled skin.

A second fruit is growing on the tree.
Identical—the droning in the leaves.
It ripens. I have another hand.

Michael Schmidt, "Wasps’ Nest" from New and Collected Poems. Copyright © 2010 by Michael Schmidt.