Nicanor Parra: There is a happy day / Hay un día feliz
I went wandering this afternoon
The lonely streets of my village
Accompanied by the good twilight
Which is the only friend I have left.
Elizabeth Bishop: Insomnia
By the Universe deserted,
she’d tell it to go to hell,
and she’d find a body of water,
or a mirror, on which to dwell.
Naomi Shihab Nye: Voice of America
The Voice of America got us to Karachi. Damascus. Islamabad. Dhaka. We went everywhere thanks to the Voice of America. Sat in circles on wooden floors, wore white flower garlands on beaches. Spent birthdays beneath mosquito nets. Rode in rickshaws. Stirred curries. Made friends. Loners. Social butterflies. A monkey climbed through a window in south India to lift the lid of a pot.
Robert Cording: Reading Poems with David
Over the phone, David begins to read
and Mary, in old age, in a nursing home,
returns to life in David’s voice, voicing
her words, her questioning
of her own bafflement
Laure-Anne Bosselaar: Leaving It There
I stop weeding, stand still a while, hands on hips,
because it’s back again — that feeling of elation
tangled with grief.
Ann Fisher-Wirth: Empathy
In the long long bliss of the breastfeeding years, I belonged to that rocking chair where sun filtered through the window and the leaves of the summer pomegranate shifted slowly in the hot June air.
Naomi Shihab Nye: The Words Under the Words
My grandmother’s days are made of bread,
a round pat-pat and the slow baking.
She waits by the oven watching a strange car
circle the streets. Maybe it holds her son,
lost to America.
Bob Dylan: Nobel Lecture
When awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016, Bob Dylan gave no comment for two weeks, ignored the Academy’s calls, didn’t attend the ceremony, and collected the award in a hoodie four months later. But Dylan later sent them a rambling, 27-minute ode to literature.
Richard Hoffman: Nestling
One day an old painter, impatient with his failures, took a scissors to the paintings he didn’t like, cutting them into strips and putting them out with the trash.
Barbara Hamby: The Word
In the beginning was the word, fanning out into syllables
like a deck of cards on a table in Vegas
Michael T. Young: The Need to Believe | The Poetry of Lisel Mueller
This is the power we need in a post-truth world, where political forces claim the right to manipulate our perceptions through distortions of language.
Fred Shaw: The Pass
In the pass, a testy chef chews his lip
while zesting an orchard of green apple
over a peppery dish of risotto,
squinting his way to soigne by slicing
a plump of roast duck into a shingle
Sandy Solomon: Making Soup
Who would have guessed before this year
how cheerful this simple chore would feel
now that the sick room’s silence starts
beyond the swinging kitchen door.
Michael Simms: America
Beside the highway outside McKeesport PA
a state trooper has pulled over a black man
who leans against his rusty Ford
palms flat, feet apart
assuming the position
as we say in America
