I always like summer
Best
you can eat fresh corn
From daddy's garden
...
In my dream,
drilling into the marrow
of my entire bone,
my real dream,
...
September rain falls on the house.
In the failing light, the old grandmother
sits in the kitchen with the child
beside the Little Marvel Stove,
...
They sent me a salwar kameez
peacock-blue,
and another
glistening like an orange split open,
...
In the middle of our porridge plates
There was a blue butterfly painted
And each morning we tried who should reach the
butterfly first.
...
Millions of babies watching the skies
Bellies swollen, with big round eyes
On Jessore Road--long bamboo huts
Noplace to shit but sand channel ruts
...
If the year is meditating a suitable gift,
I should like it to be the attitude
of my great- great- grandmother,
legendary devotee of the arts,
...
She begins, and my grandmother joins her.
Mother and daughter sing like young girls.
If my father were alive, he would play
his accordion and sway like a boat.
...
I prefer red chile over my eggs
and potatoes for breakfast.
Red chile ristras decorate my door,
dry on my roof, and hang from eaves.
...
Taped to the wall of my cell are 47 pictures: 47 black
faces: my father, mother, grandmothers (1 dead) , grand-
fathers (both dead) , brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts,
cousins (1st and 2nd) , nieces, and nephews.They stare
...
A heap of wheat, says the Song of Songs
but I've never seen wheat in a pile.
Apples, potatoes, cabbages, carrots
make lumpy stacks, but you are sleek
...
Old Eddie's face, wrinkled with river lights,
Looked like a Mississippi man's. The eyes,
Derisive and avuncular at once,
Swivelling, fixed me. They'd seen
...
There were some dirty plates
and a glass of milk
beside her on a small table
near the rank, disheveled bed--
...
1.
The dark socket of the year
the pit, the cave where the sun lies down
...
I have written this day down in my heart
As the sweetest day in the season;
From all of the others I've set it apart---
But I will not tell you the reason,
...
This plot of ground
facing the waters of this inlet
is dedicated to the living presence of
Emily Dickinson Wellcome
...
The fellow who sits in the air-conditioned office
is the one who in his youth raped
a dozen or so young girls,
and, at cocktail parties, is secretly stricken with lust,
...
Me thinks much ink
has been spilt
over the poem;
‘Phenomenal Woman’
...
"Vocat aestus in umbram"
Nemesianus Es. IV.
E. P. Ode pour l'élection de son sépulchre
...
She taught me what her uncle once taught her:
How easily the biggest coal block split
If you got the grain and the hammer angled right.
...
Bereft of soul
My body shall be bare.
Bereft of body
My soul shall be bare.
...
On an island the soft hue of memory,
moss green, kerosene yellow, drifting, mingling
in the Caribbean Sea,
a six-year-old named Alfred
...
It was a time when they were afraid of him.
My father, a bare man, a gypsy, a horse
with broken knees no one would shoot.
Then again, he was like the orange tree,
...
"Sit in my hand."
I'm ten.
I can't see him,
but I hear him breathing
...
my grandmother had a serious gas
problem.
we only saw her on Sunday.
she'd sit down to dinner
...
Downward through the evening twilight,
In the days that are forgotten,
In the unremembered ages,
...
My mother's playing cards with my aunt,
Spite and Malice, the family pastime, the game
my grandmother taught all her daughters.
...
Clothespins
Mama had a worn out cloth bag
Hanging out on the line.
It was full of old clothespins
...
How far is it to peace, the piper sighed,
The solitary, sweating as he paused.
Asphalt the noon; the ravens, terrified,
Fled carrion thunder that percussion caused.
...
I’m delighted by the velocity of money as it whistles through the windows
of Lower East Side
Delighted by skyscrapers rising the old grungy apartments falling on
84th Street
...
My dream was to be a Jane Austen - or a Virginia Woolfe, whose 'stream of consciousness' touched the world,
or Kadambari - the muse who inspired the Bard in Bengali Literature.
a few fearless women -
...
The blue forest, chilled and blue, like the lips of the dead
if the lips were gone. The year has been cut in half
with dull scissors, the solstice still looking for its square
on the calendar. Perhaps the scissors were really
...
She lay, skin down in the moist dirt,
the canebrake rustling
with the whispers of leaves, and
...
As I stood in the courtyard
Of my ancestral house in Palakkad;
A sweet-scented breeze blew,
On my face, touching, caressing my whole being
...
has not altered; -
a place as kind as it is green,
the greenest place I've never seen.
Every name is a tune.
...
Oh, a wonderful horse is the Fly-Away Horse -
Perhaps you have seen him before;
Perhaps, while you slept, his shadow has swept
...
These recollections with the scent of ferns
Are the idyll of early years
(Gregorio Gutierrez González)
...
That time my grandmother dragged me
through the perfume aisles at Saks, she held me up
by my arm, hissing, "Stand up,"
through clenched teeth, her eyes
...
BROTHER of all, with generous hand,
Of thee, pondering on thee, as o'er thy tomb, I and my Soul,
A thought to launch in memory of thee,
...
GRANDMOTHER's mother: her age, I guess,
Thirteen summers, or something less;
Girlish bust, but womanly air;
Smooth, square forehead with uprolled hair;
...
My mother’s brother’s sister’s name is Grace
She’s my aunt and likes to go from place to place
My mother’s sister’s brother’s name is Brad
He’s my uncle and he is my cousin’s Dad
...
I
I have loved England, dearly and deeply,
Since that first morning, shining and pure,
The white cliffs of Dover I saw rising steeply
...
I.
And Willy, my eldest-born, is gone, you say, little Anne?
Ruddy and white, and strong on his legs, he looks like a man.
And Willy's wife has written: she never was over-wise,
...
When I am old, my bones will make music with every crack,
creating rhythms throughout my spinal cord and back
that tell fractured stories of where I've been.
All 206 of them are shells that breathe life into the living,
...
Many are the deceivers:
The suburban matron,
proper in the supermarket,
list in hand so she won't suddenly fly,
...
BOOK I
Tell me, O muse, of that ingenious hero who travelled far and wide
...
But you can have the fig tree and its fat leaves like clown hands
gloved with green. You can have the touch of a single eleven-year-old finger
on your cheek, waking you at one a.m. to say the hamster is back.
You can have the purr of the cat and the soulful look
...
There are no stars to-night
But those of memory.
Yet how much room for memory there is
In the loose girdle of soft rain.
...
A frail…old Negro lady
…Born…in Lincoln's day
Who knew the taste of freedom
Only… when… she passed …away
...
My new, rustic kitchen table,
Swallows completely my turbulent state,
I feel calm like the ocean's near stillness,
As it holds its breath and waits
...
When I was four
I used to tell my grandmother
'' Who cares about ghosts,
My mother is a ghostbuster.''
...
to my sister, Sharon,
and all her glistening music
go deeper into the woods soothed my pages,
...
1.
I am thirty this November.
You are still small, in your fourth year.
We stand watching the yellow leaves go queer,
...
Vincent loved to have models to do his paintings.
When Theo's monthly fund arrived,
Every morning, he went round in search of models.
He would invite different kinds of people to his house,
...
Were I a king in very truth,
And had a son - a guileless youth -
In probable succession;
To teach him patience, teach him tact,
...
HE - Your breast on my breast,
Eh ? We could go,
With our nostrils full of air,
Into the cool light
...
First Old Man
He threw his crutched stick down: there came
Into his face the anger flame,
And he spoke viciously of one
...
It is the fortune of poeple
that the shadows
of our futures do not
lie heavy
...
A large carved cupboard of white oak
emanates that relaxed gentle air
Old people have; open, it's kindly
shadows give off fragrances like fine
...
My Grandma
A beautiful lady,
Whose face shone like a silver moon,
So lovely, like a pink rose,
...
Your children grow from you apart,
Afar and still afar;
And yet it should rejoice your heart
To see how glad they are;
...
A wise man said a woman's scorn
is given to her when she's born.
She carries it, though under cover,
a secret weapon for a lover
...
.
Congratulations! ! !
You are Graduating from College! ! !
We celebrate your graduation
...
You don’t know whom you’re dealing with,
when you start to mess with me.
I’m your worst enemy, with me you’ll never be free.
I’ll chew you up, spit you out, never blink an eye.
...
She hooked her fingers in his like pegs to the clothes line
‘’Roller coaster? ’’ she asked. He shook his head
She looked disappointed
He relieved.
...
Just a decade ago - in 2011,
Neeraj Chopra was an obese boy,
An awkward thirteen year old, from Panipat.
He was ashamed of his weight,
...
My mother died on February 24 2016, when she was traveling on the entrance ramp to northbound I-29 from Mexico City Avenue. She traveled off the roadway and overcorrected, sending herself and her truck down an embankment. Ejected from her vehicle, she was dead on arrival.
...
A time's traveler poet travels and sees
Deep immense beauty in any sequence,
The Danda Nata of this year is explained
In short in my previous poem titled,
...
The declaration has been spoken,
For Grandmother told me so.
The darkeys have got their fetlocks broken,
For Grandmother told me so.
...
Ay, age seven
Ay, the magnanimous moment of departure
Whatever happened after you,
happened in a mesh of insanity and ignorance.
...
In our family, there were two saints,
my aunt and my grandmother.
But their lives were different.
...
Canny has always been an Irish word
to my ear, so too its cousin crafty,
suggesting not only an appreciation of close-work,
fine-making, handwrought artistry,
...
Lovely grand daughter
I called my daughter by good name
She was with round face to claim
...
"The quay recedes. Hurrah! Ahead we go! . . .
It's true I've been accustomed now to home,
And joints get rusty, and one's limbs may grow
More fit to rest than roam.
...
How can you fathom,
The breadth of pain
Of a loving mother,
Predeceased by her beloved child?
...
A woman is a child,
A woman is a daughter,
She is a sister,
She is a daughter-in-law, she is a mother,
...
Dark clouds on the horizon
As the family assembled
In their ancestral home to
Visit their octogenarian Mother
...
The younger sister
Of the second wife
Of my dear friend
Of forty-five years
...
Once some children
Said to Grandmother,
"Please tell us a story
We are in wait no bother."
...
1922: the stone porch of my Grandfather’s summer house
I
“I won’t go with you. I want to stay with Grandpa!”
That’s how I threw cold water
...
An image of my grandmother
her head appearing upside-down upon a cloud
the cloud transfixed on the steeple
of a deserted railway-station
...
Tender caresses of kind little sisters
Are ready for you.
With the birds' songs, O the charmed prince,
We're waiting for you.
...
As a month old baby, I saw you! O Moon!
As white huge ball, I whined & purred for You all while
Incapable to reach; incapable to think,
All I did was to sleep & sleep
...
In the cream gilded cabin of his steam yacht
Mr. Nixon advised me kindly, to advance with fewer
...
"Grandmother, Grandmother you come and sit,
Tell us a nice story, mother does admit, "
Said jolly children and offer a chair,
Sitting on chair, tell Granny who has flair. [1]
...
When you can not
See the forest through the trees,
And you can not run
Like Gump,
...
I don't really care who you are,
Or what you say
about who you know.
Your pleasing pleasantries
...
I’ll drive you to the shopping centre, Sandy’s grandma offered
Sandy gladly accepted the proposition her gran proffered
“I’ll just wait in the car”, said gran, “while you go in and inquire
About a job in those shops, surely someone will hire”
...
Up that top flight of stairs
whose old, unvarnished wood
scrubs up so well and welcoming,
...
Who am I to say to you
what I say to you?
I was not a stone polished by water
and became a face
nor was I a cane punctured by the wind
and became a flute...
I am a dice player,
...
There was a Young Person of Smyrna,
Whose Grandmother threatened to burn her;
But she seized on the cat,
And said, 'Granny, burn that!
...
She had a scarlet box,
In which she kept
Every single treasure
She ever owned...
...
``Grandmother dear, you do not know; you have lived the old-world life,
Under the twittering eaves of home, sheltered from storm and strife;
...
"The quay recedes. Hurrah! Ahead we go! . . .
It's true I've been accustomed now to home,
And joints get rusty, and one's limbs may grow
More fit to rest than roam.
...
Falling in pressure of others
You should not adopt abortion,
As I am inside your womb,
Now I am waiting to see Earth.
...
I came to the cemetery in the hazy heat of autumn,
where the crosses creak as they split,
to my grandmother-Maria Iosefovna-
and bought flowers at the gate.
...