“The Lobster Quadrille” by Lewis Carroll (1865): “Will you walk a little faster?” said a whiting to a snail, “There’s a porpoise close behind us, and he’s treading on my tail. See how eagerly the lobsters and the turtles all advance! They are waiting on the shingle—will you come and join the dance? Will you, … Continue reading A Poem From The Year
“Little Eternities” by Mary Ruefle: When are we happiest? he asked her. Not one of them could get the seats to go back, not one of them really knew what was in the glove box, though everything there was theirs. When they got to where they were going, a park, a gray squirrel came jumping … Continue reading A Poem From The Year
“Nighttime Begins with a Line by Pablo Neruda” by Yusef Komunyakaa: So my body went on growing, by night, went on pleading & singing to the earth I was born to be woven back into: Love, let me see if I can’t sink my roots deeper into you, your minerals & water, your leaf rot … Continue reading A Poem From The Year
“Slave Driven” by Wanda Coleman: i barely niggle a living squirreling around the home office. I work for myself as my own secretary. it’s a shitty job, paperwork ceiling to floor. the technology changes every few months. i’m on call weekends and holidays. no benefits or perks. there’s no vacation or overtime. the pay is … Continue reading A Poem From The Year
“The Ache of Marriage” by Denise Levertov: The ache of marriage: thigh and tongue, beloved, are heavy with it, it throbs in the teeth We look for communion and are turned away, beloved, each and each It is leviathan and we in its belly looking for joy, some joy not to be known outside it … Continue reading A Poem From The Year
From “Clearances” by Seamus Heaney: In Memoriam M.K.H., 1911-1984 When all the others were away at Mass I was all hers as we peeled potatoes. They broke the silence, let fall one by one Like solder weeping off the soldering iron: Cold comforts set between us, things to share Gleaming in a bucket of clean … Continue reading A Poem From The Year
One of the things I’m proudest of, here at the Dish, is our publishing of poetry on a regular basis. We started doing it haphazardly a few years back, but this is the second year that the Dish’s poetry offerings have been arranged by Alice Quinn. Not every reader will know what an honor and … Continue reading A Poem From The Year
"Cleaning Out Your Apartment" by Elizabeth Alexander: A fifty-year-old resume that says you raised delphiniums. Health through vegetable Juice, your book of common prayer, your bureau, bed, your easy chair, dry Chivas bottles, mop and broom, pajamas on the drying rack, your shoe-trees, shoe-shine box. I keep your wicker sewing kit, your balsa cufflink box. … Continue reading A Poem From The Year
"Street" by George Oppen: Ah these are the poor, These are the poor— Bergen street. Humiliation, Hardship… Nor are they very good to each other; It is not that. I want An end to poverty As much as anyone For the sake of intelligence, ‘The conquest of existence’— It has been said, and is true— … Continue reading A Poem From The Year
"A Brief for the Defense" by Jack Gilbert: Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies are not starving someplace, they are starving somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils. But we enjoy our lives because that’s what God wants. Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not … Continue reading A Poem From The Year
