Why Are Your Poems so Dark?
~ Linda Pastan
Isn’t the moon dark too,
most of the time?
And doesn’t the white page
seem unfinished
without the dark stain
of alphabets?
When God demanded light,
he didn’t banish darkness.
Instead he invented
ebony and crows
and that small mole
on your left cheekbone.
Or did you mean to ask
“Why are you sad so often?”
Ask the moon.
Ask what it has witnessed.
Bread and Stars
~ Oktay Rifat
translated from the Turkish by Sidney Wade and Efe Murad
Bread is in my lap,
Stars are far, far away.
I am eating bread looking at the stars.
I am so engrossed, don’t even ask—
Sometimes I get mixed up and instead of bread
I eat stars.
We Hear
~ James A. Clark
Every day,
ever-changing:
baby wails,
toddler screeches,
dish shatters,
husband shouts,
wife shrieks,
children whoop,
teenage music,
Pomp and Circumstance,
party laughter,
midnight movie,
Amazing Grace,
ticking clock,
ticking clock,
ticking clock.
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Bread
~ Steve Klepetar
My grandfather tore his bread,
sloshed it around brown gravy,
bent over his plate,
but my grandmother buttered hers
with light, demure dabs,
and If I could find their graves,
I’d pour out red libations, feel
their bodies buried deep in mine.
