#todayspoem
Important to remember is that a myth is not something false, rather a myth is something with so much truth that it needs a fantastical container.
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styrofoam snow
dusting the puddle
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train whistle quack
clouds curled like dragon whiskers
racing down
#todayspoem
Don’t you think if you were living in a dream you made for yourself you’d have less diarrhea?
#todayspoem
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became death, destroyer of worlds
just bird tools
for kickin' up bugs
#todayspoem
from January by Nancy Schoenberger
in this, this baleful start
to a new beginning,
a new life? You seem to be guarding
something, brothers. One at each door.
Is it the little secret of the new year:
that everything waiting for us up ahead
will be exactly as it was before?
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slab of glued sand
in sun cracked parking lot
neon lit night
doors sliding open, closed
for circling bat
#todayspoem
Ma Goose: The Interrogation by Jane Flanders
Who killed Cock Robin?
Where is the boy who looks after the sheep?
What’s in the cupboard?
Have you any wool?
Where is the boy who looks after the sheep?
Where have you been?
Have you any wool?
How many hairs to make a wig?
Where have you been?
How many miles to Babylon?
How many hairs to make a wig?
Wasn’t that a dainty dish to set before the king?
How many miles to Babylon?
How many were going to St. Ives?
Wasn’t that a dainty dish to set before the king?
Whose dog art thou?
How many were going to St. Ives?
How does your garden grow?
Whose dog art thou?
Are the children in their beds?
How does your garden grow?
What’s in the cupboard?
Are the children in their beds?
Who killed Cock Robin?
a circular series of questions stolen from nursery rhymes? yes please
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feed:
because that’s what you do to it
attention vampire
#todayspoem
from Mourning Problems by Xi Chuan:
a person dies, and some people mourn and some even applaud
a generation dies, and the next generation doesn’t really mourn
a country dies, most of the time just leaving apocrypha
a country that doesn’t leave apocrypha wasn’t a real country
if it wasn’t a real country, when it dies no one mourns
no one mourns, and the wind blows in vain
rivers flow in vain, washing over rocks in vain
glistening in vain, making vain ripples
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azalea blooms: brown
clinging
to the branches
#todayspoem
from The Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried by Amy Hempel:
There are times when the wolves are silent; there are times when the moon howls
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tattered clouds
glowing
racing
across full moon face
silent night
#todayspoem
by Sappho
The moon is set. And the
Pleiades.
It’s the middle of the night.
Time passes.
But I sleep alone.
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deer head in a storm drain
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cold rock
hanging in blue vacuum
above bundled wooden sticks
#todayspoem (s)
from night void messages by Edward Smallfield (a chapbook)
from night void message #33:
discolored walls
& French champagne
a bus to somewhere
from night void message #173:
the metal grinds
outside the door
in the sudden night
night void message #177:
mostly the intensity of the red
from night void message #97:
what time is it
on your coast?
human time
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r. hole filled with lightning
a. tar ridden
i. whitewater runoff
n. pothole weather
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snakeskin shoulder line
worn, flattened
empty toothpaste tube
#todayspoem
from For Brothers of the Dragon by Terrance Hayes:
Because growing old is like slipping into a new coat without taking the old coat off
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last year’s whistle
cutting
through first new morning
#todayspoem
4
To write a blues song
is to regiment riots
and pluck gems from graves.
9
Making jazz swing in
Seventeen syllables AIN’T
No square poet’s job.