Poetry

For Women Who Are Difficult to Love

Archibald MacLeish- Ars Poetica

A poem should be palpable and mute

As a globed fruit,

Dumb

As old medallions to the thumb,

Silent as the sleeve-worn stone

Of casement ledges where the moss has grown

somewhere i have never travelled

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond

any experience, your eyes have their silence:

in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,

or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me

though i have closed myself as fingers,

you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens

(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and

my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,

as when the heart of this flower imagines

the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals

the power of your intense fragility: whose texture

compels me with the colour of its countries,

rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes

and opens; only something in me understands

the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)

nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

e. e. cummings

Kill Your Boyfriends

First, wear the clothes they carelessly left

on that night you can't remember,

so it's themselves they see walking away.

Look at them, always,

with an expensive abandon

and a little below the lips.

Whatever you play, play it on repeat.

And if they say, "why this?"

tell them "Brando or Morrison died

listening to this song"

The Kiss

How it rises out of waves in the bay

and shudders like a gentle thrust

of the sea, which sooner forgives

than punishes, doomed as it is to feckless birth.

How it wakes me up, takes me inside

with a slender hand, with shimmering dust,

gliding like a guess or premonition, up and up

to the eyelashes, the eyebrows, the mouth

and spilling across the face and over the ears,

where the cries of gulls are caught.

A hymn to the moment that lasts

and lasts, so nothing belonging together

will separate, like a boat that worries only about

its arrival in the harbor, dropping its anchor

next to a dock, so the story will reach

the close it was meant to reach. And the sailor,

once turned to a pillar of salt, will forever remain

doubled over, where lobes of water

linger like wedding guests

years after the flood has folded back.

“One got the impression that she was following phantoms; she was consumed by shivering sensations of eternally pursuing something unattainable. Something about her was tear-streaming; she existed in the midst of unconsciousness. And she could only be seen not by those who ceased looking but rather by those who absolutely exhausted it.” ~ Katherine Mansfield, The Collected Stories Of Katherine Mansfield

The heart under your heart
is not the one you share
so readily so full of pleasantry
& tenderness
it is a single blackberry
at the heart of a bramble
or else some larger fruit
heavy the size of a fist
it is full of things
you have never shared with me
broken engagements bruises
& baking dishes
the scars on top of scars
of sixteen thousand pinpricks
the melody you want so much to carry
& always fear black fear
or so I imagine you have never shown me
& how could I expect you to
I also have a heart beneath my heart
perhaps you have seen or guessed
it is a beach at night
where the waves lap & the wind hisses
over a bank of thin
translucent orange & yellow jingle shells
on the far side of the harbor
the lighthouse beacon
shivers across the black water
& someone stands there waiting

~ Craig Arnold

There is one low, leaning

heart-shaped globe left

and dearest, can you

tell, I am trying

to love you less.

Ada Limon

The Jumpers

Aoife Mannix

It was our favourite game you see.

At the end of the garden where the chips

of Chinese emperors lay buried along

with pirate treasure and the emerald glass

of Cu Chulainn’s last birthday party.

The swings were sunshine yellow

hung on strings of orange and green.

The rules simple. You pumped your legs

faster and faster ‘til you were flying above

the wild cats snoozing on the wall.

Then at the highest possible point

you steeled yourself to jump.

It was the letting go was the real challenge.

The moment when the swing fell away

and you were suspended in a stomach dropping

lurch of nothingness as you stretched your legs

to hit the dirt. The aim being to leap as far forward

as possible. We marked our landings with small twigs.

I was determined to be master but it was close.

For every time we played we were getting better,

jumping higher, longer. The twigs moving closer

and closer to the red brick wall of the Spooky House.

So named by my brother as the semi ruined remains

of the old stable where they kept the horses.

We knew it was haunted by the ghosts

of Jewish twins killed during the war

who played leapfrog from the battered

armchairs and climbed with us

up into the forbidden attic spaces.

I’m thinking of the twins the day I win

the game for good. I’m swinging so high

my brother’s face is a pale O far below

and I feel no fear as the entire frame

gives a little warning hop as if me

and the swing set are about to cut loose

from gravity itself. I wait ‘til the ropes

are stretched so high they’re pulling at their chains.

I hurl myself forward into the sheer abandon

of the skydiver. I am Pegasus, I am Icarus

as I fly further than I ever have before

and smash straight into the wall itself.

The game is over for I’ve jumped as far as

it’s possible to go. I pick myself up with cut knees

and the beginnings of a purple eye I will have trouble

explaining to my mother. She thinks I could have

killed myself but I’m dreaming of the ghost twins

sailing through the walls of time. In my mind,

we’re all still jumping together far beyond

any mere physical human limitation.

True champions of the imagination.