Sean Sexton: Shirts
And now I come to wear your clothes, shirts
that no longer fit, you barely wore in the end
arranged in piles to divide and sort, of
three sizes—which was the measure of you?
Michael Simms: Two Poems Inspired by Sean Sexton
Some people should be allowed to live forever
on the basis of our world’s great need. — Sean Sexton
Sean Sexton: Plea
An evening has passed, and a young cow is still
crying among the herd this morning like the widow
in the Bible who wouldn’t leave an ill-tempered
judge alone.
Sean Sexton: Herculaneum (audio and painting email to Robert Cording)
I’m reading Basho’s “Backroads to the North Country,” on my trip, an old, crumbling Penguin classics series that includes four separate journeys and a great intro. He conveys at one point how grateful he is to be on the road, Mt Fuji far away back home in Edo, so he needn’t ponder it in his life for awhile.
Sean Sexton: Not
Not the listless woods these days,
their ongoing summer song
same as the year-round sound in my head.
Sean Sexton: Planting Aeschynomene Seed
It pours from a muslin sack like sunlight
through a cracked window shade, fifty pounds
to a metal washtub, old as your footsteps.
Sean Sexton: Semen Testing the Herd Bulls
We push them in trios
and quartets—bellowing down the lane
—a rider betwixt to stage them
strategically in the pens. Once
arrived, the usual upstart gets thrown
through a fence.
Sean Sexton: Fool’s Day
Was it they’d mostly finished their work,
how the bulls came along this morning, let
themselves be driven back to their pasture
still in ruin with holes dug from last year’s
nine-month layoff?
Sean Sexton: Meditation Upon Dutch Boy General Purpose Paste Flux
See the plastic screw-capped container of
Dutch Boy General Purpose Paste Flux, left
by the man summoned to tear out a wall
of our bathroom closet
Sean Sexton: Lightening
Did I learn the wrong word or is this world indeed lessening
whether gradually or at once, and another lovely pine
of my familiar horizon assumed the sorrel countenance
of demise
Sean Sexton: Final
The broken-legged bull will be slaughtered today—an
end to his struggle if nothing else.
Sean Sexton: Whelmed+
I tap out my pipe, aware of the grand majesty
of a morning taking shape—all the breezes of the
yester-day settle like complaint grown silent.
Sean Sexton: Worth
I’ve wasted these days in the darkening hurry of the hours,
let myself—dryhanded, and ignorant—determine one aim in
deference to another.
Sean Sexton: Angelic
I see how it is with them, left to their own pursuits
in our absence: the forgotten gate merely ajar
between the two pastures, kept that way for days
