Dancers

At least one couple tonight at the Topaz Room
May have quarreled on the long drive over in the rain
About whether moving to a drier climate
And making new friends would brighten their outlook.
Still they agree, for this evening at least,
That dancing is something they're willing to try.
Maybe tonight, for once, they'll be able to feel
What they'd like to feel: that moving to music
Is an instance, not merely a metaphor,
Of life lived as it should be lived.
Other dancers may be more graceful,
But among the clumsy these two may have learned
To look at their feet without embarrassment.
And if they can't set aside all their differences,
Maybe they can agree tonight that consensus
Is the wrong model for them, too close
For comfort in their private commonwealth
To one-party rule, to tyranny. A dance they enjoy
Won't prove that division is far behind them,
Just that they're making their peace with it
As one defers when the other decides
The tune has come from afar to find them
Here where they ought to be, in the Topaz Room,
Taking one step forward, one step back.

Carl Dennis

Pee

Sometimes, if I jump around too hard on the dance floor a little pee will escape.

Long Division

People do weird illogical things and I just want to slap them across the face and make them do long division until they're f****** good at it.

Happenings

"...add that to the bucket list of things I never wished happened." - Sarah

My life. But also, yay for things happening :D

To Ninety

A city sparrow
touches down
on a bare branch

in the fork of a tree
through whose arms
the snow is sifting —

swipes his beak
against wood, this side
then that,

and flies away:
what sight
could be more common?

Yet I think
for such sights alone
I would live to ninety.

Robyn Sarah

Public Confession

I just wrote a stupid emotionally charged crazypants letter to someone that should have been out of my life for good. And now I'm embarrassed. But I did it, it's out there.

Oh god.

At the County Fair, 1956

For a nickel, a machine
called An Expression of Faith
would take your dime
and squash it.
All tubes and gears and lights,
the thing would groan, squeak,
fart, smoke, and finally drop
a little silver oval in your hands,
hot as a pistol,
with Jesus's face on one side
and the Lord's Prayer on the other.
I took my medallion
home for Grandma,
but she wouldn't keep it
because it was Catholic
and had "trespasses"
instead of "debts"
and left out the part
about the kingdom
and the power and the glory.
She gave it back
and I went downtown
and set it on the railroad track.
And after the train went by
I had a piece of silver
smooth as glass and that
says something about
power and glory, by God.

Charles Darling

Some Poems I Had Written A Lifetime Ago When I Was Sad

I had played my piano for you,

notes slipping in and out of my fingers

full of unuse and neglect,

sweaty because of the one thing I couldn’t control.

The music flowed in my heart and

got lost in translation

as I hit each key and missed the others.

Still I let you hear me play,

I trusted you to hear the melody

within the lapses of musical judgement.

I trusted you to see through me,

and perhaps, I muse, once you did.

But that quickly faded with time

because you couldn’t be bothered to think of me,

of Me before you,

and it wore me down.

Then you left me in a shamble,

left me as broken as the notes translated through

the power of my fingers,

and I solved that problem the way I did any other,

I cried and I wrote,

the pen in my hand sturdier than all the

french horns echoing in my heart.

I lost a poem somewhere in between

finding a paper and a pen,

sitting alone in the front row of a movie theatre.

The perfect song came on,

gibberish noises in gibberish ears,

and I felt empowered to talk about the

comfort of the big screen and the smell of stale popcorn,

and how,

even though it was the middle of summer,

I could feel the crisp winter air blow against my hair.

Can you read me like you read an ultrasound?

Eyes round and squinting in the darkness,

looking among the sea of grays and black,

to find things that look less gray

and more black.