What I like: the bright colors and the sounds the words make as you read them.
Sales
Miguel might, if he speaks English, call the colors
of ukuleles stretching their necks from yards
of canvas duffel yoked across his shoulders,
auroral azul, cherry pop, or mojito green,
under this Pac Heights sky where the awful rich
snap their heels past shop windows, past goatskin bags
and spiked heels that bring them closer to heaven,
fibristic sheets of celadon paper from Zhejiang,
FIAT cremini, and Cinco de Mayo gelato.
Smiling past them, he passes with his happy load,
a display model whole and nude in his hand,
on sale to no one, uplifted like a Stratocaster
sacramental from mahogany forests in Paraguay.
Source: Poetry (June 2009).
The second is from Kim Addonizio, a poet who lives in Oakland, California who was won a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Pushcart Prize.
Why I like it: spring as a motif of creeping dread and paranoia. A bold choice.
Kim Addonizio
Watching that frenzy of insects above the bush of white flowers,
bush I see everywhere on hill after hill, all I can think of
is how terrifying spring is, in its tireless, mindless replications.
Everywhere emergence: seed case, chrysalis, uterus, endless manufacturing.
And the wrapped stacks of Styrofoam cups in the grocery, lately
I can’t stand them, the shelves of canned beans and soups, freezers
of identical dinners; then the snowflake-diamond-snowflake of the rug
beneath my chair, rows of books turning their backs,
even my two feet, how they mirror each other oppresses me,
the way they fit so perfectly together, how I can nestle one big toe into the other
like little continents that have drifted; my God the unity of everything,
my hands and eyes, yours; doesn’t that frighten you sometimes, remembering
the pleasure of nakedness in fresh sheets, all the lovers there before you,
beside you, crowding you out? And the scouring griefs,
don’t look at them all or they’ll kill you, you can barely encompass your own;
I’m saying I know all about you, whoever you are, it’s spring
and it’s starting again, the longing that begins, and begins, and begins.
No comments:
Post a Comment