Barbara Hamby: Ode to My 1977 Toyota
Engine like a Singer sewing machine, where have you
not carried me—to dance class, grocery shopping,
into the heart of darkness and back again?
Barbara Hamby: Ode to Barbecue
We are lost again in the middle of redneck nowhere,
which is a hundred times scarier
than any other nowhere because everyone has guns.
Barbara Hamby: Ode to American English
no one uses
the King James anymore, only plain-speak versions,
in which Jesus, raising Lazarus from the dead, says,
“Dude, wake up,” and the L-man bolts up like a B-movie
mummy. “Whoa, I was toasted.”
Barbara Hamby: O Deceitful Tongue
Drunk tongue, warling,
malt-mad forger in the bone orchard, give me
your traitor’s code, so I can whistle my psalm
through the sinworm night.
Barbara Hamby: My Translation
I am translating the world into mockingbird, into blue jay,
into cat-bombing avian obbligato, because I want
more noise, more bells, more senseless tintinnabulation
Barbara Hamby: Reading Can Kill You
Yes was Da, which is so much more Yes than Yes
but with a twinge of Nyet, and it was winter, a freezing Siberian
blizzard with days that began at ten and ended at two
Barbara Hamby: Ode to Forgetting the Year
remember the day at the beach when the sun
began to explain Heidegger to you while thunderclouds
rumbled up from the horizon like Nazi submarines?
Barbara Hamby: Elvis and Tolstoy Save the World
I am standing in line waiting for the bus to take me
across the street to Graceland when Tolstoy shows up
with his white beard and peasant’s garb
Barbara Hamby: Thus Spake the Mockingbird
The mockingbird says, hallelujah, coreopsis, I make the day
bright, I wake the night-blooming jasmine. I am
the duodecimo of desperate love
Barbara Hamby: The Tawdry Masks of Women
and when I see myself
in bus windows or store glass, the shock never wears off,
for I recognize myself and see a stranger at the same time
Barbara Hamby: Letter to a Lost Friend
There must be a Russian word to describe what has happened
between us, like ostyt, which can be used
for a cup of tea that is too hot, but after you walk to the next room,
and return, it is too cool
Barbara Hamby: Ode on Dictionaries
A-bomb is how it begins with a big bang on page
one, a calculator of sorts whose centrifuge
begets bedouin, bamboozle, breakdance, and berserk,
one of my mother’s favorite words, hard knock
clerk of clichés that she is
