21st-Century American Poetry

DPF / Mark

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For love, acceptance, obsessions, and what to take to forever, from West Branch Wired. The whole grand unbelievable believableness of it is here:
http://www.bucknell.edu/west-branch-wired/sabrina-orah-mark.html

from If You Need Me, MOTHER is the Poem Where I’ll Be / by Sabrina Orah Mark

I ask my MOTHER what useless thing she would take with her if she was to go away forever. She wants to know, what do I mean by “useless?” “Like a photograph?” she asks. And then she begins to worry: “What about the necessary things will they have the necessary things where I’m going?” “Forget it,” I say. “This is all too much,” she says. “Plus I think the stock market is crashing.”

DPF / Padgett

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For the way grief leaps out unexpectedly, from Collected Poems, by Ron Padgett.

from Prose Poem (“The morning coffee.”) / by Ron Padgett

Papa Bear looks disgruntled. He removes his spectacles and swivels his eyes onto the cup that sits before Baby Bear, and then, after a discrete cough, reaches over and picks it up. Baby Bear doesn’t understand this disruption of the morning routine.

DPF / Rankine

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For the man and the day, from Citizen, by Claudia Rankine. A book for anyone who’s ever felt unseen or mis-seen. This poem can also be found here:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/247344#poem

from Citizen: “You are in the dark, in the car….” / by Claudia Rankine, b. 1963

You think maybe this is an experiment and you are being tested or retroactively insulted or you have done something that communicates this is an okay conversation to be having.

DPF / Wright

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For C.D. Wright and Forrest Gander. Very sad to hear of C.D. Wright’s passing on January 12, yesterday, 2016.  Announcement and poem from Copper Canyon Press and Poetryfoundation.org:
https://www.coppercanyonpress.org/
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/177347#poem

from Floating Trees / by C.D. Wright (1949-2016)

a face is studied like a key
for the mystery of what it once opened

DPF / Adamshick

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For mothers and sons, from American Poetry Review, January/February 2016.

from Moon Seen Two Days Before Thanksgiving / by Carl Adamshick

My mother is the glass cabinet
with snow falling

DPF / Oliver

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For winter birds, from poetryfoundation.org. The rest of the poem may be found here: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/30876

from White-Eyes / by Mary Oliver, b. 1935

like stars, or the feathers
      of some unimaginable bird

that loves us,
        that is asleep now, and silent—
          that has turned itself
            into snow.

DPF / Wiman

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For 15-degree football games and other ways to witness winter, from poetryfoundation.org.

from This Inwardness, This Ice / by Christian Wiman, b. 1966

This inwardness, this ice,
this wide boreal whiteness

DPF / Violi

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For bent trees flies and bees, from poetryfoundation.org.

from Resolution / by Paul Violi (1944-2011)

Whereas the porch screen sags from
the weight of flowers (impatiens) that grew
against it, then piles of wet leaves,
then drifted snow; and

 

Whereas, now rolled like absence in its
drooping length, a dim gold wave,
sundown’s last, cast across a sea of clouds
and the floating year, almost reaches
the legs of the low-slung chair

DPF / Chasar

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For Gabriellan trumpets and beaches on Christmas Day, from poetryfoundation.org.

from Conches on Christmas / by Mike Chasar

Diluvian, draggled and derelict posse, this
barnacled pod so pales
next to everything we hear of red tides and pilot whales
that a word like “drama” makes me sound remiss

 

except that there
was a kind of littoral drama in the way the shells
silently, sans the heraldry of bells,
neatly, sans an astrological affair,

 

and swiftly, sans a multitude of feet, flat-out arrived—
an encrusted school of twenty-four
Gabriellan trumpets at my beach house door

DPF / Spahr

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For all the keys on the keyboard which never got so much use as they do now, from poetryfoundation.org.

from Turnt / by Juliana Spahr, b. 1966/Ohio

I texted love you some forty-three times in the last few years.
I texted ❤ some thirty-three times.
Lub u, eighteen times.
Miss you, thirty-eight.