I left my heart in Dupree

By Amy Lipman

Most of the Drive there was Spent in Darkness

You and he and us and they
Are all just
One big foot
A shot star
A welfare family’s check


We were Cleaning out the Barn all Day, and I Realized I was in love with him

I am a long process
An iceberg
A sailboat
No wind in the storm

Later, I was thinking about Why Other ones Haven’t worked Out

A lot of men have held me
But they couldn't hold me
Who wants a writhing newborn
Skin once shrunken, stretched and glowing

I.

If it all ends in a warm room
I’ll be happy I felt the cold

II.

Lightning strikes in so many places
And I’m never at the right one

If I had been taller-
I’m never hiding again,
You would have seen me
Filled me with light
Grabbed on for life


Poems inspired by Orville
“We didn’t have cathedrals. The sky was our cathedral.”

III.

We’re not happy, but we’re living
In a place unfit for earth
Too small for me
To hold a child through his years
Have you ever felt too small
Boy, you might have been a man
If you’d not passed away
Our lord could pick us up
If we’d not slipped away

IV.

Women start as mothers
End as fathers
Attribute the wealth you saved for yourself
To sparks and stars up in arms
And paid someone to do the washing
When daddy was away
And when we are forgiven
We’ll bless the trees for bringing rain
We’ll keep changing our names
And charting new blood
We’ll discover, discover alone
If creation’s ever ending

V.

What could I bring
That you’d like to receive
I can wipe your nose
And paint
And run with you
And your house will still stand on two poles
Not to dodge a flood
But to heighten, fatten up
And pray for rain

“Everyone has a red road. Everyone is a turtle.” –Ray Dupris

Clarissa

Clarissa, get your lunch
It’s hot outside today
I’m running how a falcon tries to fly
Who’s still got God-given unclipped wings
Who doesn’t know her lover is crippled and still flies near
Still sings, sings

And little girl
I see you now
I saw you then
When you were ten
But have a drink
From frozen streams
Conserve all of the water
Save up riches in your lungs
Nobody banks for you like I do
Save breath for when you need it
Nobody’s always only young
Save your weeping for an angel
And your laughter for the buried
Not for me, pale skin and barely here, the calm and burning
Just one of your memories
Meant for safekeeping


Little Boys on Reservations

Little boys on reservations
Are wolves
Never wolverines
Just fast and sharp
With adult teeth
Cries came from the field
Two runs and then a strike
That’s just how the game goes
I can’t pretend it’s right

Christopher Columbus writes a letter to his lover Dona Felipa knowing that he wont have any way to send it

mike swanberg


If I lost sight of my way only slightly
It was because joy had blinded me
And the sight of flying fish
like hours dashed against the sea
tomó mi respiración ausente

the rest are just words love
it feels good to hear men laughing
good to polish and to wait
and of course the stars call your name
how couldn’t they with bright tongues?
I find myself humming more often
I remember things my mother said

I picture you watching the horizon
Every morning when you wake
Your eyes bluegreen and opening
Your breath hot from a night of sleep
Your shoulders flexed from your arms
On the railing

I remember how you once said love is a dish
Best served and I,

Your servant
C.

Pets

by Nik

there is a tetherfrom my chestto my cardiac muscle
how bout i flex this one for you babydoes that look hot?
crane your head in another directioni'm just trying to keep up
i know it's a little toungue-in-cheekbut i might have to cage that muther fucker

two poems about joel chace

mike swanberg

Stuck in Virginia with Joel Chace’s 20^th Century Deaths

He isn’t a remarkably bad poet, no
Although he refuses to say anything I could
use as a shield and seems exceedingly content
to scratch the surface of experience then
retreat to his home in pennsylvania to pretend
it isn’t his job to open doors in people
that they once thought they had bolted shut

I suppose the one about the wind surfer isn’t awful
but his arrogance bites my minds heel as he
hoots and hollers from the shore of that poem
as smug as his press photo looks on the back cover

I am published he would say to me if we spoke.
If we ever speak I hope he doesn’t know his place
In the library of congress between martin amis and
billy collins. The arrogance of those men notwithstanding
but offering up at least something akin to wings in the world
for those who, with shaking hands or heads find them.

No joel you were not published by pitt press
Or even grey wolf for that matter, no something called singular speech
from connecticuit saw fit to bind your words.

And in truth I would bind your hands with rope
and toss you into the same angry see that your windsurfer
couldn’t navigate in that too long poem of yours
because maybe, and this is a heavy maybe,
you could teach us something close to the art of drowning
if the situation presented itself
as do or die.

An apology for the poem Stuck in Virginia with Joel Chace’s 20^th Century Deaths

I am standing in the kitchen drinking juice
When I think of Chace again and begin to wonder
If I was too rough on him. The day started out late
And lovely, if not a little cold. And by now the rain has
stopped but the river covers our small bridge and wont
Let me get anywhere but back into Chace’s poems for
another disastrous reading.

But somehow I cant help but imagine him searching his own name
And having my poem show up in all its own not so quiet
scorn without this one I am writing now as a companion
Because would he really be so quick to rush and defend
The poems he wrote ten years ago? I found the book
At a garage sale, the woman gave it to me for free and would
He really even argue that the windsurfer is worth the read?

How could he when of course he has moved on to different things
A simple search revealed he is working now and often
With a free press, what a man I say to myself and to the walls
Although the poems even now don’t grip me much

And in his picture he seems much older, the difference in his ten years
Almost the same as my own, so visible one can only see a decade as
Being wide as the atlantic at night

and there are Chace and I both
Atop the windsurfers board,
trying desperately to make it through the next
decade with all our poetry in tow,
and a little bit drier than the other.

Today my flag was a Fleur de leis

mike swanberg

The girl im seeing doesn’t believe in Columbus day,
And has already refused to celebrate it with me
But rather than seeming understanding to her plea
that Columbus was parasitical at best
I know if I find the time I will try and dress like him

Then walk around all afternoon discovering different things
and pretending that I don’t celebrate Her Day either
Because I tell her without the Nina or the St.Mary
we wouldn’t be here, and she shakes her head
so that the knowledge of the Americus’s and Ericson’s,
all those early explorers of great esteem
pours disastrously into my lap.

But what she doesn’t know is I mean her and I,
Here in my small shared room,
not this country, this continent.

I mean my hand on her hip, and when the light dims
Her breast, hangs forever on Ferdinand and Isabella
on the poisoned fish, the planted flag
the sand that was kissed, and the spice

Life is about taste I tell her as I slide off
her clothes As I claim her naked body
In my name

Life is about taste my love,
and how far we will sail for ours

Language Is For The Ages

by bru.

I touch the pages of my life
as if I will be able to feel what I felt
when it was happening.

I want to hug the pages,
touch my lips to its words.

They're each a picture of what I want and wish to be:
A firm and solid and permanent object.
Sure in its existence.
Never changing.
Never ever.

There is a romance to my words and I.
No,
not romance.
My blood surges with words.
With the words of my lives
and I am living them with contempt.

I feel space underneath me.
Space filled with all the words I've yet to speak.
All the words I've yet to write.
All the words I've yet to kiss
and hold against my chest and cheek.

I see words coming out of people's mouths
when they aren't speaking
I see words coming out of people's ears
when they're not thinking.
All the words they've yet to write and speak
and hold against someone else's cheek.

A trail of words follows everyone.
Ready to fill them up when they run out.

Our skin is made up of little words pushed together
as a picture is made up of small dots.
If you look close enough,
you can see pages of the dictionary
scrawled on your ankle.

Where do you think we got the dictionary from?
It's been on our skin our entire lives.
We just never looked hard enough.

Two new poems

mikeswanberg

The order

I find a little comfort in the fact
That today more species will be lost
Than named

That there are still regions of the small world
That go unexplored but not untouched
And that the scientists know this
but our particular hungers make them look the other way

Because where I am going there are no poets
And the small insects that dart around my mouth
And stick in the sweat on my brow have no want
Or need for permanence

the beetle of unending deforestation
doesn’t want his picture taken,
and the mosquito of simple pleasure and white wine
doesn’t belong to a phylum but somehow he knows

That we are all in this together
Every last insignificant one of us

Christopher Columbus revisits a failed relationship
Spain 1491

What a sad son of a bitch I must have looked
The first time I came home after that girl
Broke up with me and everybody knew
That I just didn’t know what I was doing anymore

How lost I must have seemed even to my friends
Although they treated me the same and wanted
Nothing more than to drink in my hotel room
And laugh about it

Because we were young and that meant
that we thought it was a time of laughing
as much as we thought it was a time of loss

and I know now that everyone was right about me
because I didn’t have the any clue what I was doing
I couldn’t see that I was laying heavy tracks
and practicing goodbyes

so now when I look back im glad
my friends couldn’t see the look on my face
when I finally said farewell and meant it
to the whole sinking friendship

goodbye you sea of self doubt
goodbye you beams and planks
goodbye long nights without affection

I just heard the world is round, and I am off
To prove them wrong

Some Thoughts

Amy Lipman

Spring

I tried to find home in a lover, he was lost as well
I tried to find home in a friend, but she had a lover
I tried to find home in me but I have
Too much on my mind
To keep all the way clean and dust-free for everybody to live in
Even though I wash so many times a day
And say my prayers before I sleep
But I've always housed really comforting songs


Why We Still Use Money

Some things snap in half
A button, a tree stump
A roof
But a wrecking crew couldn't split a penny,
Wouldn't waste time on the clock colonizing my brain
'Cause it would take
All the chemicals in the world that we use to stay hydrated
And inebriated
To find value in a stranger's blood


Plastic Guns

Men who hunt
Have been evicted
From church, from skin
From poetry
And want to see
What they used to believe in
Given the funeral they won't receive


New Year's Resolution

Our lives start in a calm yellow room
We seek to defy our limbs
Rise from a cradle and part from a mother
In time to run late to meet father for a drink

We cut our hair
Lose touch with people
Meet nice boys
Stay in control
Check the weather
And starve when the frost comes early


And then I turned to my mom and said, "I'm a tough bitch."

I loved you because I knew you'd leave me with nothing to lose
You, sometimes were good
I, always told the truth


Isn't that against your religion?

I've cried in a few churches
Once I wished for a father

I got on my knees in the synagogue
I said, "you'll be ok" to my dad


Strict Analysis

Patience is washing the sheets instead of burning them
When someone forgets you let them sleep in your bed
Feeling is moving a lamp past the ceiling
To find light in the room where it happened
Vanity isn't knowing you're beautiful
It's trying to convince yourself why someone else isn't


Victory Dance

The way that I walk when I get the chance,
Have some extra time,
Feel my clothes getting looser,
Is an excercise of evacuation
How to be the first out of a burning building,
The only way to fuck without coming close to the hands

Witnessing a Stampede

We kissed
Maybe you didn't notice

I’ve felt better, seen worse inner-workings of man
Than you
How you searched for you not for me not for we

You couldn’t see past my eyes
You probably thought you'd discovered an ocean
I am warmer
Than water cherished seasonally
By vacationers and by other people I meet looking for relief
I was raised to stay on the rise; a rose

giving birth

by: stacy

if i could find the words
to describe what this is,

how this feels,

if i could verbally encapsulate it,
keep the letters and spaces
rolling and soaking on my tongue
to distribute to the world
at my will, it would be my
single.
greatest.
accomplishment.

not graceful AGING,
not unrestrained LOVE could compare.
not peaceful DEATH, nor screaming LIFE
could outshine the ability

to birth, through my lips,
this pregnant bliss.

February poems lost archive

mike swanberg (sorry about the quiet)


St. James

I know I am stronger then most
And with age I have become handsome
I know these things but uncertainty
Keeps tossing rocks into my pond

I would have gone anywhere
I would have said anything for a love
This truth isn’t lost on me still
Oh there were girls to kiss I am sure
But what good

They think I am blind I see this
They say my ears are bad because
I pretend not to hear them

Lord I hear them now and call your name
Blankly into the forest that holds its breath
To touch our land those woods I wouldn’t
Cut or bother

So don’t say my name in a tone
You wouldn’t want me to use
To say your own because I am
Stronger then most and with time
I have become


Here comes your man

I don’t know why I couldn’t explain
That I felt far from you all day
And wanted your sympathy

So I questioned your love for me
Hoping it would bring us closer
I just needed to be kissed by you
So I could touch the floor again

I am tired of finding you in my poems
As only a beautiful girl my love you are flawed
And often times more then myself
When I kiss your face, your broken nose
I cant remember it before the break
Why would I want to

Love I do not care if you have been
Scattered by the wind
Even I am destined for that place of lost kites
Wherever you were sent I am going
I will get there

I am swimming in the lake of your
Knowing if I get tired, I can drink.




Wedding Guest

I thought that if I kept drinking champagne and smiling
then eventually your family would stop wondering who I was
and just confuse me with another cousin who got lost
amongst the photo albums the fights

and then I thought that you alone might carry me
dress shirt and all, up over the hor dourves and bridal party
past the disapproving mother of the groom, the aunt
whose drunkenness laughed in my face and called me chicago

Was I a fool to think you could have taken me out that row of windows
and into that hard bright skyline ? you had done more impressive things
the night before you had already humbled me so many times
that I was no more myself then I was you acting through me

I was you lacing my shoes at the foot of the bed, love
I was you kissing your cheek so quickly in a stairwell

Lucky

She could tell by my eyes and easy smile
that I wanted her naked and she was going
to prove something by staying clothed

I must admit that even I was cheering for her
as I kissed her softly where her jeans
met her hip

We were putting touch to the test
I bit her a little My heart and my want
for her shook like dice in my chest
Because she thought she was going to teach me
a lesson .

i wont bring you into the bedroom with me
I wont show you how it ends Just know she kissed me gently
and I couldn’t tell if she was crying
and that when I addressed her which was often
I only ever called her love

newsflash!

hey, because of my internet ... ineptitude ... i managed to accidentally switch this blog to a fancy new google account, which was annoying at first but i think tolerable now. so in order to log into this blog now, all new google account style, the information is

localpoet@gmail.com
and the password is still whitehorse.

that is all, sorry for any unnecessary trouble.

-erin