What Do Women Want

I want a red dress.
I want it flimsy and cheap,
I want it too tight, I want to wear it
until someone tears it off me.
I want it sleeveless and backless,
this dress, so no one has to guess
what's underneath. I want to walk down
the street past Thrifty's and the hardware store
with all those keys glittering in the window,
past Mr. and Mrs. Wong selling day-old
donuts in their café, past the Guerra brothers
slinging pigs from the truck and onto the dolly,
hoisting the slick snouts over their shoulders.
I want to walk like I'm the only
woman on earth and I can have my pick.
I want that red dress bad.
I want it to confirm
your worst fears about me,
to show you how little I care about you
or anything except what
I want. When I find it, I'll pull that garment
from its hanger like I'm choosing a body
to carry me into this world, through
the birth-cries and the love-cries too,
and I'll wear it like bones, like skin,
it'll be the goddamned
dress they bury me in.

-- Kim Addonizio [Claudia Dunne]

Two Tramps In Mud Time

A Further Range Out of the mud two strangers came

And caught me splitting wood in the yard,

And one of them put me off my aim

By hailing cheerily "Hit them hard!"

I knew pretty well why he had dropped behind

And let the other go on a way.

I knew pretty well what he had in mind:

He wanted to take my job for pay.

Good blocks of oak it was I split,

As large around as the chopping block;

And every piece I squarely hit

Fell splinterless as a cloven rock.

The blows that a life of self-control

Spares to strike for the common good,

That day, giving a loose to my soul,

I spent on the unimportant wood.The sun was warm but the wind was chill.

You know how it is with an April day

When the sun is out and the wind is still,

You're one month on in the middle of May.

But if you so much as dare to speak,

A cloud comes over the sunlit arch,

A wind comes off a frozen peak,

And you're two months back in the middle of March.A bluebird comes tenderly up to alight

And turns to the wind to unruffle a plume,

His song so pitched as not to excite

A single flower as yet to bloom.

It is snowing a flake; and he half knew

Winter was only playing possum.

Except in color he isn't blue,

But he wouldn't advise a thing to blossom.The water for which we may have to look

In summertime with a witching wand,

In every wheelrut's now a brook,

In every print of a hoof a pond.

Be glad of water, but don't forget

The lurking frost in the earth beneath

That will steal forth after the sun is set

And show on the water its crystal teeth.The time when most I loved my task

The two must make me love it more

By coming with what they came to ask.

You'd think I never had felt before

The weight of an ax-head poised aloft,

The grip of earth on outspread feet,

The life of muscles rocking soft

And smooth and moist in vernal heat.Out of the wood two hulking tramps

(From sleeping God knows where last night,

But not long since in the lumber camps).

They thought all chopping was theirs of right.

Men of the woods and lumberjacks,

They judged me by their appropriate tool.

Except as a fellow handled an ax

They had no way of knowing a fool.

Nothing on either side was said.

They knew they had but to stay their stay

And all their logic would fill my head:

As that I had no right to play

With what was another man's work for gain.

My right might be love but theirs was need.

And where the two exist in twain

Theirs was the better right--agreed.

But yield who will to their separation,

My object in living is to unite

My avocation and my vocation

As my two eyes make one in sight.

Only where love and need are one,

And the work is play for mortal stakes,

Is the deed ever really done

For Heaven and the future's sakes.

--Robert Frost

Post-Punk Homecoming

After the manager embezzled

the proceeds and bought himself
a shiny foreign car, we uncovered
bills from every collection agency
in town and panicked one night
when the lights went out
in our shady, rented house.

We took off in different
directions. I couldn't account
for most of my clothes. I sat
in the yard, at home with my dad,
shucking corn as an act of contrition,
and I conceded again and again
that yes, we’d been lucky, and no,

I couldn't say precisely how
we got so dumb,
because everything we did
was big and bright and very loud,
and everyone applauded.

--Mariette Landry

Ulysses

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Matched with and aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vexed the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honoured of them all;

And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life. Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this grey spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle -
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and through soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me -
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads -you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,

Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

--Lord Alfred Tennyson

Band-Aids

I have a Band-Aid on my finger,

One on my knee, and one on my nose,

One on my heel, and two on my shoulder,

Three on my elbow, and nine on my toes.

Two on my wrist, and one on my ankle,

One on my chin, and one on my thigh,

Four on my belly, and five on my bottom,

One on my forehead, and one on my eye.

One on my neck, and in case I might need ‘em

I have a box full of thirty-five more.

But oh! I do think it’s sort of a pity

I don’t have a cut or a sore!

He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

Had I the heaven's embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,

I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams

When You Are Old

When you are old and gray and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face among a crowd of stars.

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

The Fugitive Poets of Fenway Park

The Chilean secret police
searched everywhere
for the poet Neruda: in the dark shafts
of mines, in the boxcars of railroad yards,
in the sewers of Santiago.
The government intended to confiscate his mouth
and extract the poems one by one like bad teeth.
But the mines and boxcars and sewers were empty.

I know where he was. Neruda was at Fenway Park,
burly and bearded in a flat black cap, hidden
in the kaleidoscope of the bleachers.
He sat quietly, chomping a hot dog
when Ted Williams walked to the crest of the diamond,
slender as my father remembers him,
squinting at the pitcher, bat swaying in a memory of trees.

The stroke was a pendulum of long muscle and wood,
Ted's face tilted up, the home run
zooming into the right field grandstand.
Then the crowd stood together, cheering
for this blasphemer of newsprint, the heretic
who would not tip his cap as he toed home plate
or grin like a war hero at the sportswriters
surrounding his locker for a quote.

The fugitive poet could not keep silent,
standing on his seat to declaim the ode
erupted in crowd-bewildering Spanish from his mouth:

Praise Ted Williams, raising his sword
cut from the ash tree, the ball
a white planet glowing in the atmosphere
of the right field grandstand!

Praise the Wall rising
like a great green wave
from the green sea of the outfield!

Praise the hot dog, pink meat,
pork snouts, sawdust, mouse feces,
human hair, plugging our intestines,
yet baptized joyfully with mustard!

Praise the wobbling drunk, seasick beer
in hand, staring at the number on his ticket,
demanding my seat!

Everyone gawked at the man standing
on his seat, bellowing poetry in Spanish.
Anonymous no longer,
Neruda saw the Chilean secret police
as they scrambled through the bleachers,
pointing and shouting, so the poet
jumped a guardrail to disappear
through a Fenway tunnel,
the black cap flying from his head
and spinning into center field.

This is true. I was there at Fenway
on August 7, 1948, even if I was born
exactly nine years later
when my father
almost named me Theodore.

-- Martin Espada [Connie Breece]

When You Are Old

WHEN you are old and gray and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face among a crowd of stars.

-- William Butler Yeats [Elizabeth]

Forgetfulness

Forgetfulness

The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read,
never even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,

something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.

Whatever it is you are struggling to remember,
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.

It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.

No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

-- Billy Collins [Fred Elliott-Hart]

Mossbawn Sunlight

1. Sunlight

There was a sunlit absence.
The helmeted pump in the yard
heated its iron,
water honeyed

in the slung bucket
and the sun stood
like a griddle cooling
against the wall

of each long afternoon.
So, her hands scuffled
over the bakeboard,
the reddening stove

sent its plaque of heat
against her where she stood
in a floury apron
by the window.

Now she dusts the board
with a goose's wing,
now sits, broad-lapped,
with whitened nails

and measling shins:
here is a space
again, the scone rising
to the tick of two clocks.

And here is love
like a tinsmith's scoop
sunk past its gleam
in the meal-bin.

-- Seamus Heaney [Liam O'Connor]

The Ides of March, 2008

Wouldn't it take a certain arrogance or pride to hold a party on the Ides of March?
Or, for that matter, to attend one?
Are we too busy to heed the signs? To unaware of portentous omens? Too lacking in simple humanity?
If this were a Greek tragedy, the gods would certainly punish such hubris:

-- there'd be salmonella in the artichoke dip
-- the keg would run flat, or worse, dry
-- Jerry's falsetto during "Danny Boy" would shatter our windshields
-- the stage, at the end of Act V, would be littered with corpses

But, then again, the Irish have been beating the odds for centuries.
They majored in tragedy, minored in hard knocks.
And a wiser poet than I once said, "I'd walk a longish road, through drear, hard rain, and fog, for a well-pulled pint."
Who am I, a New York Jew, to argue?
Was it Yeats? Or maybe Brendan Behan?
Either way, it was another scribe - a Brit - who coined for us "the Ides of March."
I first read it in 10th grade English class of Mr. Wills,
Who, if the second-floor bathroom stall was accurate, eats pills.
In Act 1, Scene 2 of Julius Caesar, a Soothsayer, yes, a soothsayer, (Rome was lousy with them in those days) cries, "Beware the Ides of March!"

He says it three times before exiting stage right, and we all know that bad luck runs in threes, like the number of leaves on the much more common, unlucky clover.

Caesar, stubborn as an Irish mule, pays no heed.
But there are, to be sure, other signs.
Looking out on a violent storm, here is Casca, a conspirator, talking to Cicero, a Senator, in Act 1, Scene 3:

"Are not you moved, when all the sway of earth
Shakes like a thing unfirm? O Cicero,
I have seen tempests, when the scolding winds
Have rived the knotty oaks, and I have seen
The ambitious ocean swell and rage and foam,
To be exalted with the threatening clouds:
But never till to-night, never till now,
Did I go through a tempest dropping fire.
Either there is a civil strife in heaven,
Or else the world, too saucy with the gods,
Incenses them to send destruction."

And, if that's not enough, here's the dream of Calpurnia (wife of Caesar) from Act II, Scene 2:

"Caesar, I never stood on ceremonies,
Yet now they fright me. There is one within,
Besides the things that we have heard and seen,
Recounts most horrid sights seen by the watch.
A lioness hath whelped in the streets;
And graves have yawn'd, and yielded up their dead;
Fierce fiery warriors fought upon the clouds,
In ranks and squadrons and right form of war,
Which drizzled blood upon the Capitol;
The noise of battle hurtled in the air,
Horses did neigh, and dying men did groan,
And ghosts did shriek and squeal about the streets.
O Caesar! these things are beyond all use,
And I do fear them."

So the heavens are raining fire and blood; ghosts and the undead are strolling about; Lions are whelping in the town square,

And what does Caesar do?

Ignores it all. He might just as well have gone to a St. Patrick's Day party for all he cared.

"Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once," he smugly answers his spouse.

"Of all the wonders that I yet have heard.
It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come."

You can say that again. He gets it in the back nine times at the start of Act III.
Always, as my Calpurnia would say, listen to the woman.
But here I stand, despite the Soothsayer's prophesy, on the Ides of March.
What's a Roman with an omen to do?
I could cite my father, a voluntary poet in his own right, when he heard me practicing Marc Antony's soliloquy for Mr. Wills' class:

Quoth he: "He who drinks beer, Shakespeare."

-- Steve Hodin

Rocket to Space

NASA built a rocket to space
And everyone wanted to go
So they had a very big race
To see who would run round Mexico
Who won but a simple millipede with many many legs
And they decided to let him go, despite the others' pleas and begs
He shot past Mars
Quickly passing our stars
Now he sends postcards from Zigzagabaroon
Telling NASA "Hope to see you soon!"

-- Matthew Rappe

Magdalen Walks

THE little white clouds are racing over the sky,
And the fields are strewn with the gold of the flower of March,
The daffodil breaks under foot, and the tasselled larch
Sways and swings as the thrush goes hurrying by.

A delicate odour is borne on the wings of the morning breeze, 5
The odour of leaves, and of grass, and of newly up-turned earth,
The birds are singing for joy of the Spring’s glad birth,
Hopping from branch to branch on the rocking trees.

And all the woods are alive with the murmur and sound of Spring,
And the rosebud breaks into pink on the climbing briar, 10
And the crocus-bed is a quivering moon of fire
Girdled round with the belt of an amethyst ring.

And the plane to the pine-tree is whispering some tale of love
Till it rustles with laughter and tosses its mantle of green,
And the gloom of the wych-elm’s hollow is lit with the iris sheen 15
Of the burnished rainbow throat and the silver breast of a dove.

See! the lark starts up from his bed in the meadow there,
Breaking the gossamer threads and the nets of dew,
And flashing a-down the river, a flame of blue!
The kingfisher flies like an arrow, and wounds the air. 20

-- Oscar Wilde [Becky Miller]

O Captain, My Captain!

1

O CAPTAIN! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:
But O heart! heart! heart! 5
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

2

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills; 10
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding;
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head;
It is some dream that on the deck, 15
You’ve fallen cold and dead.

3

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won; 20
Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.


-- Walt Whitman

Portrait With Still-Life

I find no reason to distract my father who is yelling at the empty prescription

bottle. After he returned from the war, which he didn't find to his liking, he

operated a drill press without distinction for nearly fifty years. He raised a

family that was barely passable. He strode forth only when the weather fit

his shoes. He stood in the backyard and painted all the landscapes that

passed through his head, "like tulip petals on their way to a farter version of

heaven." He learned to read when he was a very young child, but found this

was an impediment later in his life. He was not my father, but a kitchen

appliance in need of repairs.

-- John Yau [Jan Reitsma]

There Once Was an Irish Mechanic

There once was an Irish mechanic
Who was not very prone to a panic
When I heard this I thought
I might give him a shot
At a problem I knew was satanic.

Cars and trucks and bikes, you see
Are serviced every day
With logic and a diagram
You’ll soon be on your way
But mobile homes are different,
They’re relatively few,
And mine was even further rare,
There was no number 2.

For years I’d felt a growing pride
In my country, right or wrong,
And wrote a lot of glowing words,
I even tried a song
But the battle groups and radar domes
Could not be contained
The anti anti missle missles,
The rays that leave no stains

What concept could I summarize?
What image could I use?
To show the world the way I felt
That we’re not going to lose
The way of life so righteous
So pure and worry free
That paper bags or plastic are
Of no concern to me.

The seasons came the seasons went
And still the struggle grew,
My eyelid started quivering
And then my gums withdrew
But late one night it came to me
The thing our nation lacked
A symbol of the leadership
To get us back on track

A vision of the future
The way we must be led
A mobile home, of stainless steel
In the shape of Cheney’s head!

Our country’s been deprived of him
By those who make him stay
In that heavy duty bunker
So very far away
He must be safe from harm of course,
So this could be the thing
To bring his words and spirit out
And let the country sing
The songs of liberation
The terrorists must die
The weapons of mass destruction will be shot into the sky.

I shopped around and found a firm,
A family I could trust
To fabricate and execute
My vision of this bust

This rolling art would incorporate
The latest of today,
The cellular and satellite
And some birdies tucked away
For that special rare occasion
When good friends should happen by
If the urge should come upon us
To shoot at things that fly

The day arrived when it was done
It gleamed and sparkled in the sun
I took the keys
Sat in the mouth
Released the brake
And headed south

I took a route along the shore
Perhaps to hear the ocean’s roar
Instead I heard a sound most queer
Emitted from my hero’s ear
As I drove the volume rose
The sound now bellowed from the nose

I tried to place where I had heard
A sound so like that chilling word
Obama was, it seemed to me the cry
That soon enveloped me.

Where to go to fix this curse
I queried near and far
There’s only one can tackle this,
And he’s likely at the bar.
So many people said the same
I finally headed east
And set a course for sunrise
With hope to slay this beast!

I found him where they said I would
Seated on a stool
Sipping oysters from their shells
And looking rather cool.

I told him what had made me cringe
And begged him for some aid
He said it could be anything
I could not be delayed
He said I’d have to leave it
He’d look it over well
I bit my lip and trembled
My eyes began to well

You don’t know how important
This is to our way of life
Our country and our values
Your children and your wife

He slowly slid another oyster
Off it’s pearly shell
If I can’t fix it mister
I’ll send myself to hell.


For days I gnawed my knuckles
My hair came out in clumps
My lower lip was sushi
My fingernails were stumps.

When long at last the message came
To come and pick it up
I spilled my coffee on my leg
Then tripped upon the cup.



A Larry Craig was on each ear
A Ferraro on the nose
A Clinton clambered on each eyebrow
Grabbing with their toes…..


3/15/08
Ed Braverman

TO BE CONTINUED

Poker

There were five of us playing that night,
Padge, Kieran, Neal and me --
and, stretched out in his coffin, Uncle Charlie.
We dealt him a hand each time
and took turns to bet for him,
waiving his losses, pooling his wins,
for what good were coins to him?
What could he win but his life?
Still, five of us played that night
and when we stopped it was daylight.
We left the cards with him
to remind him, forever, of that game
and Padge, Kieran, Neal and me
went up the road to our beds
and slept until we buried him,
then played until we had to agree
the good hands had gone with Uncle Charlie.

--Matthew Sweeney [Nora O'Connor]

The Tree and the Garden

There was an oak tree
In the front of the house
Which blazes forth in spring and is
Struck by changing colors as though
It was lightning instead of time
Which brought the fall
It’s known to all rememberers
Who have ever
Suffered its shade

While out the back
There is a garden, which
With an unassuming, steady gait
Filled plates
And beds of marigolds
Accompanied tomatoes
In a forever dance
Keeping pace, without rest
With never a fallow season blessed

And as for time and passers-by
Who could know? that it was
Neither the sun nor water
Nor seeds nor spring that gave it such
Plenty while
Dispensing safety
But rather
The hoe and rake
And touch
And grace
And give and take
And tender love
Of the gardener’s hand.


Michael O'Connor