"Autobiography [Polish it Like a Piece of Silver]" by Richard Brautigan

I am standing in the cemetery at Byrds, Texas.
What did Judy say? "God-forsaken is beautiful, too."
A very old man who has cancer on his face and takes
care of the cemetery, is raking a grave in such a
manner as to almost polish it like a piece of silver.

An old dog stands beside him. It's a hot day: 105.
What am I doing out here in west Texas, standing in
a cemetery? The old man wonders about that, too.
My presence has become a part of his raking. I know
that he is also polishing me.

Recommended: "Spring and All [By the road to the contagious hospital]" by William Carlos Williams

I

By the road to the contagious hospital
under the surge of the blue
mottled clouds driven from the
northeast-a cold wind.  Beyond, the
waste of broad, muddy fields
brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen

patches of standing water
the scattering of tall trees

All along the road the reddish
purplish, forked, upstanding, twiggy
stuff of bushes and small trees
with dead, brown leaves under them
leafless vines-

Lifeless in appearance, sluggish
dazed spring approaches-

They enter the new world naked,
cold, uncertain of all
save that they enter.  All about them
the cold, familiar wind-

Now the grass, tomorrow
the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf
One by one objects are defined-
It quickens:  clarity, outline of leaf


But now the stark dignity of
entrance-Still, the profound change
has come upon them:  rooted, they
grip down and begin to awaken




Recommended by Adina Johnson.

 

Recommended: "Humanity I Love You" by E.E. Cummings

Humanity i love you
because you would rather black the boots of
success than enquire whose soul dangles from his
watch-chain which would be embarrassing for both

parties and because you
unflinchingly applaud all
songs containing the words country home and
mother when sung at the old howard

Humanity i love you because
when you’re hard up you pawn your
intelligence to buy a drink and when
you’re flush pride keeps

you from the pawn shop and
because you are continually committing
nuisances but more
especially in your own house

Humanity i love you because you
are perpetually putting the secret of
life in your pants and forgetting
it’s there and sitting down

on it
and because you are
forever making poems in the lap
of death Humanity

i hate you

Recommended by Adina Johnson.

"The Genius" by Leonard Cohen

For you 
I will be a ghetto Jew 
and dance 
and put white stockings 
on my twisted limbs 
and poison wells 
across the town 

For you 
I will be an apostate Jew 
and tell the Spanish priest 
of the blood vow 
in the Talmud 
and where the bones 
of the child are hid 
For you 
I will be a banker Jew 
and bring to ruin 
a proud old hunting king 
and end his line 

For you 
I will be a Broadway Jew 
and cry in theatres 
for my mother 
and sell bargain goods 
beneath the counter 

For you 
I will be a doctor Jew 
and search 
in all the garbage cans for foreskins 
to sew back again 

For you 
I will be a Dachau Jew 
and lie down in lime 
with twisted limbs 
and bloated pain 
no mind can understand 

“A Story About the Body” by Robert Hass

The young composer, working that summer at an artist's colony, had

watched her for a week. She was Japanese, a painter, almost sixty, and

he thought he was in love with her. He loved her work, and her work was

like the way she moved her body, used her hands, looked at him directly

when she made amused or considered answers to his questions. One

night, walking back from a concert, they came to her door and she

turned to him and said, "I think you would like to have me. I would like

that too, but I must tell you I have had a double mastectomy," and

when he didn't understand, "I've lost both my breasts." The radiance

that he had carried around in his belly and chest cavity--like music--

withered, very quickly, and he made himself look at her when he said,

"I'm sorry. I don't think I could." He walked back to his own cabin

through the pines, and in the morning he found a small blue bowl on the

porch outside his door. It looked to be full of rose petals, but he found

when he picked it up that the rose petals were on top; the rest of the

bowl--she must have swept them from the corners of her studio--was

full of dead bees.

Recommended: "Soul Kitchen" by Jim Morrison

Well, the clock says it's time to close now 
I guess I'd better go now 
I'd really like to stay here all night 
The cars crawl past all stuffed with eyes 
Street lights share their hollow glow 
Your brain seems bruised with numb surprise 
Still one place to go 
Still one place to go 

Let me sleep all night in your soul kitchen 
Warm my mind near your gentle stove 
Turn me out and I'll wander baby 
Stumblin' in the neon groves 

Well, your fingers weave quick minarets 
Speak in secret alphabets 
I light another cigarette 
Learn to forget, learn to forget 
Learn to forget, learn to forget 

Let me sleep all night in your soul kitchen 
Warm my mind near your gentle stove 
Turn me out and I'll wander baby 
Stumblin' in the neon groves 

Well the clock says it's time to close now 
I know I have to go now 
I really want to stay here 
All night, all night, all night

Recommended by Patrick Stein.
"Mainly I like the line 'your fingers weave quick minarets'. It sounds nice."

He was inspired to begin writing his own poem:

Baby
Your fingers weave quick minarets



 

“Fairy-tale Logic” by A.E. Stallings

Fairy tales are full of impossible tasks:

Gather the chin hairs of a man-eating goat,

Or cross a sulphuric lake in a leaky boat,

Select the prince from a row of identical masks,

Tiptoe up to a dragon where it basks

And snatch its bone; count dust specks, mote by mote,

Or learn the phone directory by rote.

Always it’s impossible what someone asks—

You have to fight magic with magic. You have to believe

That you have something impossible up your sleeve,

The language of snakes, perhaps, an invisible cloak,

An army of ants at your beck, or a lethal joke,

The will to do whatever must be done:

Marry a monster. Hand over your firstborn son.