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| CONTENTS |
Mary Meriam, Editor
June, 2012
ISSUE 5 - GARDENS
Mary Meriam, Editor
June, 2012
ISSUE 5 - GARDENS - CONTENTS
| POETRY | ART |
|
KATE LIGHT Gardening SARAH SARAI This Way and That COLLEEN MCKEE In the Glossy Green Heart of the Neighborhood JANICE GOULD Gacela of Bamboo and Plum Blossoms CALLY CONAN-DAVIES By Strike-a-Light Creek AIMEE HERMAN how to love without forgetting where it came from MARINA TSVETAEVA - LEONARD KRESS from Podruga (Friend) BLAQUE NOIZ Give me some Conquer BROOKE BAILEY Appreciating Art LESLEA NEWMAN Paradise Found R. NEMO HILL Queen’s Worm LISA L. MOORE Landscape KIM M. BAKER The First Venus ED BENNETT My Dissolute Garden HOLLY MITCHELL E.M. Forster CHARLOTTE MEW May, 1915 SARAH FONSECA Queen Anne's Lace JAN STECKEL The Queen of Green VARIOUS POETS A Rush of Petals | G.W. PABST Countess Geschwitz and Lulu (1929) MEGAN ROSE GEDRIS Pretty Sadako (2012) MARY DELANY Zinnia Multiflora (1779) AYA TAKANO I know that just a kiss will take me far away (2006) CEZANNE The House with the Cracked Wall (1892-94) KERRY DUCKMANTON Reflections (2009) NADIA KHUZINA Lesbians of Lenin (2012) LUCY ASH LOVE in 365 days (2011-2012) GEORGIA O'KEEFFE Red Canna (1919) SHELLEY STEFAN Lamboy II (2009) NICOLE EISENMAN Beer Garden at Night (2007) TAMARA DE LEMPICKA La Tunica Rosa (1927) JEAN-POL D. FRANQUEUIL The First Venus (2009) ANNE BENTLEY Poppies (2006) ANONYMOUS Nancy Cunard and Janet Flanner (1926) LAUREL GOLIO Magda, Age 17, Brooklyn, New York (2010) NIKKI MCCLURE Source (2010) DEBORAH VINOGRAD Jan Steckel as a Reclining Nude (2007) ANONYMOUS Amy Lowell, Age 16 (1890) |
Kate Light
Gardening
Love lost late in life; love lost,
for that matter, ever; love lost
is the sadness only clouds can float above—
oh, is that what holds them up, all the love
lovers don't know where to put, when their one
is gone? Clouds raining tears
onto the gardens of lovers left behind, for years.
Then is that why flying in the skies I feel so sad,
though I am going to, going to the love
I almost lost because I thought I was above
giving what a lover needs?
What a terrible gardener I would make!
I want to grab unopened envelopes of seeds
and run to other gardeners; beg them: Take.
Poet Kate Light is the author of Gravity’s Dream (Donald Justice Award), Open Slowly, and The Laws of Falling Bodies (Nicholas Roerich Prize), and of the texts of two works for narrator and musicians, The World Beneath the Waves (originally Oceanophony) and Einstein’s Mozart: Two Geniuses. She is also the librettist of The Life and Love of Joe Coogan (an opera based on The Dick Van Dyke Show), and her lyrics to the song “Here Beside Me” are heard in Disney’s Mulan II. Kate has been visiting professor at Cornell University and at the Musashino Art University in Tokyo. Her poetry has appeared in The Paris Review, Hudson Review, Washington Post Book World, Feminist Studies, Carolina Quarterly, The Formalist, The Dark Horse, New York Sun, the anthologies Western Wind, The Penguin Book of the Sonnet, and Garrison Keillor’s Good Poems for Hard Times (and four times on his radio show “The Writer’s Almanac”). She is also a professional violinist.
Love lost late in life; love lost,
for that matter, ever; love lost
is the sadness only clouds can float above—
oh, is that what holds them up, all the love
lovers don't know where to put, when their one
is gone? Clouds raining tears
onto the gardens of lovers left behind, for years.
Then is that why flying in the skies I feel so sad,
though I am going to, going to the love
I almost lost because I thought I was above
giving what a lover needs?
What a terrible gardener I would make!
I want to grab unopened envelopes of seeds
and run to other gardeners; beg them: Take.
Poet Kate Light is the author of Gravity’s Dream (Donald Justice Award), Open Slowly, and The Laws of Falling Bodies (Nicholas Roerich Prize), and of the texts of two works for narrator and musicians, The World Beneath the Waves (originally Oceanophony) and Einstein’s Mozart: Two Geniuses. She is also the librettist of The Life and Love of Joe Coogan (an opera based on The Dick Van Dyke Show), and her lyrics to the song “Here Beside Me” are heard in Disney’s Mulan II. Kate has been visiting professor at Cornell University and at the Musashino Art University in Tokyo. Her poetry has appeared in The Paris Review, Hudson Review, Washington Post Book World, Feminist Studies, Carolina Quarterly, The Formalist, The Dark Horse, New York Sun, the anthologies Western Wind, The Penguin Book of the Sonnet, and Garrison Keillor’s Good Poems for Hard Times (and four times on his radio show “The Writer’s Almanac”). She is also a professional violinist.
G.W. Pabst
Screenshot from G.W. Pabst’s Pandora’s Box, Countess Geschwitz (Alice Roberts) and Lulu (Louise Brooks) (1929)
Sarah Sarai
This Way and That
It was a fairy funeral. [William Blake]
On the garden bed of
Blake’s fairy procession
roll this and that, these ways
of midnight pleasure
in enchantment and
commonplace wisdom
like don’t touch the fairies,
they’re sensitive.
Act within a soul
populated by
sightings and wistful affection,
see the filmstrip is at
high-enough speed
life’s fluidity's felt,
as at the funeral Blake saw,
a bodylet laid out on a leaf.
Authentication enough for me
[that fairies exist] I e-mailed you
who reminded me
Blake saw God when he was
four. God got down on Her
omniaching knees
now and then to spy on
William Blake
and could hardly contain Her
infinite self, waiting for
the artist to become Heaven and
those paintings to be flashed to
the good and bad alike as proof of
the great mystery of vision
even She can't figure out.
Sarah Sarai is the author of The Future Is Happy (BlazeVOX [books]). Her poems and short fiction are in journals including Boston Review, POOL Poetry, Devil's Lake, and others. Links to her work can be found at My 3,000 Loving Arms.
It was a fairy funeral. [William Blake]
On the garden bed of
Blake’s fairy procession
roll this and that, these ways
of midnight pleasure
in enchantment and
commonplace wisdom
like don’t touch the fairies,
they’re sensitive.
Act within a soul
populated by
sightings and wistful affection,
see the filmstrip is at
high-enough speed
life’s fluidity's felt,
as at the funeral Blake saw,
a bodylet laid out on a leaf.
Authentication enough for me
[that fairies exist] I e-mailed you
who reminded me
Blake saw God when he was
four. God got down on Her
omniaching knees
now and then to spy on
William Blake
and could hardly contain Her
infinite self, waiting for
the artist to become Heaven and
those paintings to be flashed to
the good and bad alike as proof of
the great mystery of vision
even She can't figure out.
Sarah Sarai is the author of The Future Is Happy (BlazeVOX [books]). Her poems and short fiction are in journals including Boston Review, POOL Poetry, Devil's Lake, and others. Links to her work can be found at My 3,000 Loving Arms.
Colleen McKee
In the Glossy Green Heart of the Neighborhood
We quarreled up Washington, Waterman, Ames,
through the elegant gated boulevards,
“communities” where we did not belong.
From behind trimmed hedges, good homeowners
glowered at us, two plump girls
in shabby skirts cooing, sniffing,
humidly clutching, then releasing
each others’ hands, blowing our noses
on crumpled Kleenex, declaring our love and dismay
loudly enough for the neighbors to hear,
and you know, it’s one thing…but as long
as you keep it behind closed doors…
But our salaries did not permit privacy,
only roommates who multiplied like mice,
so in the glossy green heart of the neighborhood
I pilfered a zinnia the color of brick
worrying, bending the fibrous stalk,
felt a sting as my fingers slid down the stem
from the slender short hairs that looked soft as yours.
The leaves stiff as paper said, promise,
I promise. It did not want to give,
but I gave it to you.
Colleen McKee is the author of two collections of poetry: My Hot Little Tomato, and A Partial List of Things I Have Done for Money. She is also co-editor of an anthology of personal essays, Are We Feeling Better Yet? Women Speak About Health Care in America. She lives in Oakland, CA and teaches at the Academy of Art.
We quarreled up Washington, Waterman, Ames,
through the elegant gated boulevards,
“communities” where we did not belong.
From behind trimmed hedges, good homeowners
glowered at us, two plump girls
in shabby skirts cooing, sniffing,
humidly clutching, then releasing
each others’ hands, blowing our noses
on crumpled Kleenex, declaring our love and dismay
loudly enough for the neighbors to hear,
and you know, it’s one thing…but as long
as you keep it behind closed doors…
But our salaries did not permit privacy,
only roommates who multiplied like mice,
so in the glossy green heart of the neighborhood
I pilfered a zinnia the color of brick
worrying, bending the fibrous stalk,
felt a sting as my fingers slid down the stem
from the slender short hairs that looked soft as yours.
The leaves stiff as paper said, promise,
I promise. It did not want to give,
but I gave it to you.
Colleen McKee is the author of two collections of poetry: My Hot Little Tomato, and A Partial List of Things I Have Done for Money. She is also co-editor of an anthology of personal essays, Are We Feeling Better Yet? Women Speak About Health Care in America. She lives in Oakland, CA and teaches at the Academy of Art.
Mary Delany
Mary Delany, Zinnia Multiflora, from an album (Vol.IX, 100). 1779
Collage of coloured papers, with bodycolour and watercolour, on black ink background
© Trustees of the British Museum
Janice Gould
Gacela of Bamboo and Plum Blossoms
We were living in a woodcut by Hiroshige
of weathered houses with blue tile roofs, where,
behind a bamboo gate, we found azaleas,
tea roses and jasmine, delicate
and spicy amid stone Buddhas,
placid with their inward gazing.
On the bay a few small boats tilted among whitecaps,
sails open in the fulsome wind.
Across the water the volcano gleamed,
mantled with spruce and incense cedar.
“There is more than one path
to the top of the mountain,”
you remarked, solemn and wistful,
while a flock of blackbirds
alighted in the scraggly pines.
The ocean lapped against the long stretch
of pebbled beaches, mile after mile,
and we knew the piping whales
were rolling, diving on their great migrations,
waving fins at gawking tourists
who huddled on cliffs among parsnips and thistles.
While here, on the steep, winding streets of our city
plum trees blossomed, pink and passionate,
with crooked boughs that smell like imported baskets,
like dyed cloth and paper, like damp gardens.
Far to the west, mist thickened,
clouds churned up, rain came whistling
over the water and poured down upon us—
pushed us into the next panel.
Stumbling, sullen, bent, bedraggled,
I caught at my blowing coat
and looked to find you.
Alas, you had fallen in
with the rabble. Over the arched bridge
you disappeared, jostled but happy
at the foot of the mountain—
dancing in a procession
of drums and gongs.
Koyoonk’auwi poet Janice Gould appears in over sixty publications, and has won awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Astraea Foundation for Lesbian Writers, the Pikes Peak Arts Council, and from the online publication Native Literatures: Generations. Her books of poetry include Beneath My Heart, Alphabet (a chapbook), Earthquake Weather, and most recently, Doubters and Dreamers, a finalist for the Colorado Book Award for 2012, and also a finalist for the 2012 Binghamton University Milt Kessler Poetry Book Award. She is the co-editor, with Dean Rader, of Speak to Me Words: Essays on Contemporary American Indian Poetry. In March Janice completed a Residency for Indigenous Writers at the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She is an Associate Professor in Women’s and Ethnic Studies (WEST) at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. "Gacela of Bamboo and Plum Blossoms" was first published in Native American Literatures: Generations.
We were living in a woodcut by Hiroshige
of weathered houses with blue tile roofs, where,
behind a bamboo gate, we found azaleas,
tea roses and jasmine, delicate
and spicy amid stone Buddhas,
placid with their inward gazing.
On the bay a few small boats tilted among whitecaps,
sails open in the fulsome wind.
Across the water the volcano gleamed,
mantled with spruce and incense cedar.
“There is more than one path
to the top of the mountain,”
you remarked, solemn and wistful,
while a flock of blackbirds
alighted in the scraggly pines.
The ocean lapped against the long stretch
of pebbled beaches, mile after mile,
and we knew the piping whales
were rolling, diving on their great migrations,
waving fins at gawking tourists
who huddled on cliffs among parsnips and thistles.
While here, on the steep, winding streets of our city
plum trees blossomed, pink and passionate,
with crooked boughs that smell like imported baskets,
like dyed cloth and paper, like damp gardens.
Far to the west, mist thickened,
clouds churned up, rain came whistling
over the water and poured down upon us—
pushed us into the next panel.
Stumbling, sullen, bent, bedraggled,
I caught at my blowing coat
and looked to find you.
Alas, you had fallen in
with the rabble. Over the arched bridge
you disappeared, jostled but happy
at the foot of the mountain—
dancing in a procession
of drums and gongs.
Koyoonk’auwi poet Janice Gould appears in over sixty publications, and has won awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Astraea Foundation for Lesbian Writers, the Pikes Peak Arts Council, and from the online publication Native Literatures: Generations. Her books of poetry include Beneath My Heart, Alphabet (a chapbook), Earthquake Weather, and most recently, Doubters and Dreamers, a finalist for the Colorado Book Award for 2012, and also a finalist for the 2012 Binghamton University Milt Kessler Poetry Book Award. She is the co-editor, with Dean Rader, of Speak to Me Words: Essays on Contemporary American Indian Poetry. In March Janice completed a Residency for Indigenous Writers at the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She is an Associate Professor in Women’s and Ethnic Studies (WEST) at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. "Gacela of Bamboo and Plum Blossoms" was first published in Native American Literatures: Generations.
Aya Takano
Aya Takano
I know that just a kiss will take me far away
2006
Acrylic on canvas
727 x 606 mm
© 2006 Aya Takano/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
Cally Conan-Davies
By Strike-a-Light Creek
All the warmth has gone for the wall is broken.
I set out before all the quiet sleepers
wake in half-light, eyes without faces, ancient
dreams interrupted.
I recall a story of one with flowers
woven through his hair in a blaze of fragrance,
bees a slap away from his nose and lashes,
almost a garden.
On his knees by Strike-a-Light Creek I find him;
at his side, mysterious lynxes open
crimson bottles, emptying all the liquid
into the water.
Find me first, he says, when I beg he help me,
something green and quick with the fleece of life.
One fern frond with four mossy worms aglow is
all I can manage.
Give me bands and brackets to tie my house up,
give me skills the carpenter plies his trade with,
quick, before the sleepers are crushed by roof tiles.
Here’s what he told me:
Leaf is mould when left on the ground to wither,
flame leaps high when breath gathers close to ashes,
calm will call for storm-heavy cloud to soak us
through to the body.
Yawn and stretch, then open your veins precisely,
know through blood that ceilings and walls will fall on
only those who keep all their birds in cages,
flowers in vases.
Cally Conan-Davies feels a great affinity for the star fish, beach stones, and sea birds of Oregon. And then there are the poems. Look for them in The New Criterion, Poetry, The Hudson Review, and sundry web-based journals.
All the warmth has gone for the wall is broken.
I set out before all the quiet sleepers
wake in half-light, eyes without faces, ancient
dreams interrupted.
I recall a story of one with flowers
woven through his hair in a blaze of fragrance,
bees a slap away from his nose and lashes,
almost a garden.
On his knees by Strike-a-Light Creek I find him;
at his side, mysterious lynxes open
crimson bottles, emptying all the liquid
into the water.
Find me first, he says, when I beg he help me,
something green and quick with the fleece of life.
One fern frond with four mossy worms aglow is
all I can manage.
Give me bands and brackets to tie my house up,
give me skills the carpenter plies his trade with,
quick, before the sleepers are crushed by roof tiles.
Here’s what he told me:
Leaf is mould when left on the ground to wither,
flame leaps high when breath gathers close to ashes,
calm will call for storm-heavy cloud to soak us
through to the body.
Yawn and stretch, then open your veins precisely,
know through blood that ceilings and walls will fall on
only those who keep all their birds in cages,
flowers in vases.
Cally Conan-Davies feels a great affinity for the star fish, beach stones, and sea birds of Oregon. And then there are the poems. Look for them in The New Criterion, Poetry, The Hudson Review, and sundry web-based journals.
Aimee Herman
how to love without forgetting where it came from
Did you look up tonight?
See that thick moon, curved into the sky
notice it will go away if you forget
notice the smell she leaves inside magazines
the shape she makes when pressed against red-linen’d mattress
her bone structure Eastern European lineage her thumb
slung into bent silver her appetite: she forgets
to eat lunch sometimes
notice the dent against her skull when boys pushed her down because she was too homo
I thought I could handle someone else’s trauma, but
I can barely pronounce my own.
notice her heels frozen oceans cracked against feet hair detangled due to boredom and persistence her
hipbone her chin freckles that gather in the summertime and worry the cancer
notice her push press of salt and blood against western earth grow
into thunders
Aimee Herman, a performance poet, hates labels, though occasionally wears one to rip off and count the hairs pulled. Her poetry can be read in Uphook Press’s poetry anthologies: hell strung and crooked and you say. say plus Pregnant Moon Review, Polari Journal, Mad Rush, Cake Train, and/or journal, Sous Les Paves, Polari Journal, InStereo Press and Cliterature Journal. She works as an erotica editor for Oysters & Chocolate, as a curator/host for monthly erotica and GLBT lit readings and can be found writing poems on her body in Brooklyn. Her full-length book of poetry, to go without blinking, will be published by BlazeVOX Books in Spring 2012. Find her here.
Did you look up tonight?
See that thick moon, curved into the sky
notice it will go away if you forget
notice the smell she leaves inside magazines
the shape she makes when pressed against red-linen’d mattress
her bone structure Eastern European lineage her thumb
slung into bent silver her appetite: she forgets
to eat lunch sometimes
notice the dent against her skull when boys pushed her down because she was too homo
I thought I could handle someone else’s trauma, but
I can barely pronounce my own.
notice her heels frozen oceans cracked against feet hair detangled due to boredom and persistence her
hipbone her chin freckles that gather in the summertime and worry the cancer
notice her push press of salt and blood against western earth grow
into thunders
Aimee Herman, a performance poet, hates labels, though occasionally wears one to rip off and count the hairs pulled. Her poetry can be read in Uphook Press’s poetry anthologies: hell strung and crooked and you say. say plus Pregnant Moon Review, Polari Journal, Mad Rush, Cake Train, and/or journal, Sous Les Paves, Polari Journal, InStereo Press and Cliterature Journal. She works as an erotica editor for Oysters & Chocolate, as a curator/host for monthly erotica and GLBT lit readings and can be found writing poems on her body in Brooklyn. Her full-length book of poetry, to go without blinking, will be published by BlazeVOX Books in Spring 2012. Find her here.
Marina Tsvetaeva - Leonard Kress
from Podruga (Friend)
Marina Tsvetaeva (1892-1941)
What did you think—in your gray fox, and me
in sable, snowflakes sticking like little lights—
as we searched the Christmas bazaar for bright
ribbons? I stuffed myself on three,
no six, of those pink unsweetened waffles,
and got all mawkish and sentimental
when you pretended to catch the tail
of a passing chestnut horse—be careful!
And then that old biddy, cawing like a crow,
who cursed at us for passing up her rags—
what do you think she and those other hags
thought—a couple of crazy girls from Moscow?
When everybody left, running for the tram,
we stepped into the church, just to rest,
and you kept staring—you couldn’t resist—
that ancient icon of the Virgin,
her drawn face and sullen eyes,
full of emaciation and blessing,
and the frame with Venus caressing
a chubby cupid with its ties
to the times of Empress Elizabeth.
You dropped my hand and blurted,
“I want her!” and then gently inserted
a long yellow candle into the holder—with
that knowing hand and its opal ring.
Oh, what got into me, what could I do?
I swore I’d steal that icon for you,
I swore that very night I’d bring
it. And so, like a band of marauders
or soldiers—in a rumble of bells and darkness—
innocent as girls in first communion dress,
we broke into the convent guest quarters.
I pledged for you, to grow more beautiful—
until old age. And then I spilled
the salt. Three times you yelled
when I drew the king of hearts, but still
you gave my head a squeeze, and the tips
of my curls felt your fingers trace—
the flower of your brooch touched my face,
the chill enamel on my lips.
How I made your slender finger
scribble up and down my drowsy
cheek—you teased, my little boy,
and said how pleased by that you were...
Translated from Russian by Leonard Kress
Leonard Kress’s recent publications include The Orpheus Complex, Braids & Other Sestinas, and Living in the Candy Store. He has recent work in Harvard Review, Cortland Review, and Crazyhorse. He has also translated the 19th century Polish romantic epic, Pan Tadeusz by Adam Mickiewicz.
Marina Tsvetaeva (1892-1941)
What did you think—in your gray fox, and me
in sable, snowflakes sticking like little lights—
as we searched the Christmas bazaar for bright
ribbons? I stuffed myself on three,
no six, of those pink unsweetened waffles,
and got all mawkish and sentimental
when you pretended to catch the tail
of a passing chestnut horse—be careful!
And then that old biddy, cawing like a crow,
who cursed at us for passing up her rags—
what do you think she and those other hags
thought—a couple of crazy girls from Moscow?
When everybody left, running for the tram,
we stepped into the church, just to rest,
and you kept staring—you couldn’t resist—
that ancient icon of the Virgin,
her drawn face and sullen eyes,
full of emaciation and blessing,
and the frame with Venus caressing
a chubby cupid with its ties
to the times of Empress Elizabeth.
You dropped my hand and blurted,
“I want her!” and then gently inserted
a long yellow candle into the holder—with
that knowing hand and its opal ring.
Oh, what got into me, what could I do?
I swore I’d steal that icon for you,
I swore that very night I’d bring
it. And so, like a band of marauders
or soldiers—in a rumble of bells and darkness—
innocent as girls in first communion dress,
we broke into the convent guest quarters.
I pledged for you, to grow more beautiful—
until old age. And then I spilled
the salt. Three times you yelled
when I drew the king of hearts, but still
you gave my head a squeeze, and the tips
of my curls felt your fingers trace—
the flower of your brooch touched my face,
the chill enamel on my lips.
How I made your slender finger
scribble up and down my drowsy
cheek—you teased, my little boy,
and said how pleased by that you were...
Translated from Russian by Leonard Kress
Leonard Kress’s recent publications include The Orpheus Complex, Braids & Other Sestinas, and Living in the Candy Store. He has recent work in Harvard Review, Cortland Review, and Crazyhorse. He has also translated the 19th century Polish romantic epic, Pan Tadeusz by Adam Mickiewicz.
Blaque Noiz
Give me some
Thank you
for spelling my name out in chocolates
with one hand.
give me some of the rainbows from the other
you charleston dancing angel
you hold harlem in your mouth
like it’s your secret alone
I know
there’s a rhythm to all your scars
crochet the kisses you’re leaving on my shoulders
until they form something
a sweater maybe
that will sing like you do when I’m lonely
Thank you
for teaching me how to make love
and not laughing when I cry
and for crying with me
your tears taste like the hope
of college students in the sixties
give me some
I feel your want when you breathe
exhale, please
I want too.
You walk like you know we’re all soldiers
you cactus princess
with your spines of gold
hug me
you are a creature of fantasy
you dream
or you are not real
Come lay with me
I know you’re hiding fruit behind your ears
plucked straight from the tree of knowledge
and there are shards of my last heart in your pocket
Give me some
Conquer
Last loves
are more important than firsts.
You taught me this
with our fingers intertwined
with your eyes framed between my thighs
with every Amen emailed to God to thank her
for this moment
curled like silverware in a drawer
with your lips lining promises against my temples
and that space between my chin and bottom lip.
You have no blood or bones
only every poem I’ve ever written
crumpled like muscle,
ink pumping from your heart.
I’ve spoken to you in my sleep
confided all the secrets that scare me.
You’ve held my hand in the most unromantic moments
seen me naked, with bed hair, with no hair,
with blood on my sheets from miscalculating the moon
and you’ve seen all the oil wells I call pores,
the diamonds between my legs,
the deserts under my breasts,
the starving people in my eyes...
You know me like you know air in your lungs
and our love making has become
a gentle war between our bodies
I let you win,
wave white flags so you can conquer me
your victory feels as cool as coconut water
down my throat.
A Bronx Native, Becca has been performing poetry for over seven years under the names Scribe, B-Scribe and most recently Blaque Noiz. She has been blessed to share the stage with the most inspiring minds from Sonia Sanchez to Saul Williams to Stacyann Chin and many more. She is currently living in Brooklyn with her girlfriend, trying her hand at fiction. However poetry will always be her first love.
Thank you
for spelling my name out in chocolates
with one hand.
give me some of the rainbows from the other
you charleston dancing angel
you hold harlem in your mouth
like it’s your secret alone
I know
there’s a rhythm to all your scars
crochet the kisses you’re leaving on my shoulders
until they form something
a sweater maybe
that will sing like you do when I’m lonely
Thank you
for teaching me how to make love
and not laughing when I cry
and for crying with me
your tears taste like the hope
of college students in the sixties
give me some
I feel your want when you breathe
exhale, please
I want too.
You walk like you know we’re all soldiers
you cactus princess
with your spines of gold
hug me
you are a creature of fantasy
you dream
or you are not real
Come lay with me
I know you’re hiding fruit behind your ears
plucked straight from the tree of knowledge
and there are shards of my last heart in your pocket
Give me some
Conquer
Last loves
are more important than firsts.
You taught me this
with our fingers intertwined
with your eyes framed between my thighs
with every Amen emailed to God to thank her
for this moment
curled like silverware in a drawer
with your lips lining promises against my temples
and that space between my chin and bottom lip.
You have no blood or bones
only every poem I’ve ever written
crumpled like muscle,
ink pumping from your heart.
I’ve spoken to you in my sleep
confided all the secrets that scare me.
You’ve held my hand in the most unromantic moments
seen me naked, with bed hair, with no hair,
with blood on my sheets from miscalculating the moon
and you’ve seen all the oil wells I call pores,
the diamonds between my legs,
the deserts under my breasts,
the starving people in my eyes...
You know me like you know air in your lungs
and our love making has become
a gentle war between our bodies
I let you win,
wave white flags so you can conquer me
your victory feels as cool as coconut water
down my throat.
A Bronx Native, Becca has been performing poetry for over seven years under the names Scribe, B-Scribe and most recently Blaque Noiz. She has been blessed to share the stage with the most inspiring minds from Sonia Sanchez to Saul Williams to Stacyann Chin and many more. She is currently living in Brooklyn with her girlfriend, trying her hand at fiction. However poetry will always be her first love.
Lucy Ash
Title of work: ‘Love in 365 days’
Painted: 2011-2012 (painted a day each day during 2011 – finished off beginning of 2012)
oil on Linen, 150 cm x 150 cm
Copyright: Lucy Ash
Brooke Bailey
Appreciating Art
If Georgia O’Keeffe paintings could be
translated into topographical maps,
lips raised from the canvas of the body
with ridges of edible raspberry paint
I would coax the bulb of your Red Canna lily
to flower with lips that could only belong
to a garden whisperer, tease the petals
of your Oriental Petunia and have them
stretching further towards the warmth
of my hands in the sun. I would unearth
your virgin Calla lilies, make them blush,
no longer fit to hide in white on a Sunday
when their pollen is spread from my hip to my lips,
my hair post-coital and wild like the roots
I untangled and lifted to prove you didn’t have
to hide there where it felt safe in the darkness.
You’re more pure than those
giving flowers I’m usually drawn to—the
honeysuckles that exist to live at the tip
of my tongue, yes you’re quiet but you’re
beautiful, a painting of a woman come to life
in spring colored lace, your dark legs spread,
a work of art I’m eager to pin against the wall
and take the time to linger in front of, fingering
the texture of each brush stroke that created you
until you melt back down to your essence and
stain the hands I work inside you.
Brooke Bailey works, studies, and caffeinates at North Carolina State University. In recent past lives, she has been a corporate trainer and a high school English teacher.
If Georgia O’Keeffe paintings could be
translated into topographical maps,
lips raised from the canvas of the body
with ridges of edible raspberry paint
I would coax the bulb of your Red Canna lily
to flower with lips that could only belong
to a garden whisperer, tease the petals
of your Oriental Petunia and have them
stretching further towards the warmth
of my hands in the sun. I would unearth
your virgin Calla lilies, make them blush,
no longer fit to hide in white on a Sunday
when their pollen is spread from my hip to my lips,
my hair post-coital and wild like the roots
I untangled and lifted to prove you didn’t have
to hide there where it felt safe in the darkness.
You’re more pure than those
giving flowers I’m usually drawn to—the
honeysuckles that exist to live at the tip
of my tongue, yes you’re quiet but you’re
beautiful, a painting of a woman come to life
in spring colored lace, your dark legs spread,
a work of art I’m eager to pin against the wall
and take the time to linger in front of, fingering
the texture of each brush stroke that created you
until you melt back down to your essence and
stain the hands I work inside you.
Brooke Bailey works, studies, and caffeinates at North Carolina State University. In recent past lives, she has been a corporate trainer and a high school English teacher.
Lesléa Newman
Paradise Found
(for Mary)
Each night at six the hummingbird
drops by our yard, without a word
you stop with hose in hand and freeze
beneath our acorn-laden trees.
The toy bird takes a dainty drink
(you dare not make a sound or blink)
She flits, she flutters—zip!—she’s gone
and you come to and carry on.
You snip, you clip, you tend, you hose
each daisy, lily, heather, rose,
then with your strong and gentle hand
you pluck the fairest of the land.
An ordinary eve as this
could bear not one more drop of bliss.
Copyright © 2012 by Lesléa Newman.
Used by permission of the author.
All rights reserved.
Lesléa Newman is the author of 64 books for readers of all ages including the poetry collections NOBODY'S MOTHER, SIGNS OF LOVE and STILL LIFE WITH BUDDY, the novel, THE RELUCTANT DAUGHTER, and the children's book, HEATHER HAS TWO MOMMIES. Her literary awards include poetry fellowships from the National Endowment of the Arts and the Massachusetts Artists Fellowship Foundation. Nine of her books have been Lambda Literary Award finalists. A past poet laurate of Northampton, MA, she is currently a faculty member of Spalding University's brief-residency MFA in Writing program. Her newest poetry collection, OCTOBER MOURNING: A SONG FOR MATTHEW SHEPARD will be published by Candlewick Press in September, 2012.
(for Mary)
Each night at six the hummingbird
drops by our yard, without a word
you stop with hose in hand and freeze
beneath our acorn-laden trees.
The toy bird takes a dainty drink
(you dare not make a sound or blink)
She flits, she flutters—zip!—she’s gone
and you come to and carry on.
You snip, you clip, you tend, you hose
each daisy, lily, heather, rose,
then with your strong and gentle hand
you pluck the fairest of the land.
An ordinary eve as this
could bear not one more drop of bliss.
Copyright © 2012 by Lesléa Newman.
Used by permission of the author.
All rights reserved.
Lesléa Newman is the author of 64 books for readers of all ages including the poetry collections NOBODY'S MOTHER, SIGNS OF LOVE and STILL LIFE WITH BUDDY, the novel, THE RELUCTANT DAUGHTER, and the children's book, HEATHER HAS TWO MOMMIES. Her literary awards include poetry fellowships from the National Endowment of the Arts and the Massachusetts Artists Fellowship Foundation. Nine of her books have been Lambda Literary Award finalists. A past poet laurate of Northampton, MA, she is currently a faculty member of Spalding University's brief-residency MFA in Writing program. Her newest poetry collection, OCTOBER MOURNING: A SONG FOR MATTHEW SHEPARD will be published by Candlewick Press in September, 2012.
Shelley Stefan
Artist: Shelley Stefan
Title: Lamboy II
Medium: Acrylic, Chalk, Ink, and Kilz on Roofing Paper, Mounted on Board
Size: 36 x 55 inches
Year: 2009
R. Nemo Hill
Queen’s Worm
Oh, Worm! Why stay your venom at the last?
To your infernal appetite I cast
this vacant ache to which desire’s reduced,
this palace built of excrements and dews,
this ruined tissue.
Strike!
Why do you pause—
my shrunken kingdom clenched between your jaws?
One stinking germ,
these dreams that crown the Worm.
R. Nemo Hill is the author, in collaboration with painter Jeanne Hedstrom, of an illustrated novel, Pilgrim’s Feather (Quantuck Lane Press, 2002), a narrative poem based upon a short story by H.P. Lovecraft, The Strange Music of Erich Zann (Hippocampus Press, 2004), and a chapbook, Prolegomena To An Essay On Satire (Modern Metrics, 2006). His full-length poetry collection, When Men Bow Down, is forthcoming from Dos Madres Press. He is the editor of EXOT BOOKS.
Oh, Worm! Why stay your venom at the last?
To your infernal appetite I cast
this vacant ache to which desire’s reduced,
this palace built of excrements and dews,
this ruined tissue.
Strike!
Why do you pause—
my shrunken kingdom clenched between your jaws?
One stinking germ,
these dreams that crown the Worm.
R. Nemo Hill is the author, in collaboration with painter Jeanne Hedstrom, of an illustrated novel, Pilgrim’s Feather (Quantuck Lane Press, 2002), a narrative poem based upon a short story by H.P. Lovecraft, The Strange Music of Erich Zann (Hippocampus Press, 2004), and a chapbook, Prolegomena To An Essay On Satire (Modern Metrics, 2006). His full-length poetry collection, When Men Bow Down, is forthcoming from Dos Madres Press. He is the editor of EXOT BOOKS.
Nicole Eisenman
Nicole Eisenman
Beer Garden at Night
2007
Oil on canvas
165 x 208.3 cm
Image courtesy of the Saatchi Gallery, London
© Nicole Eisenman, 2007
Lisa L. Moore
Landscape
I dreamed that I was made of sod,
tits up, my furry mounds set here and here.
Worms nestled in my woody roots, coneflowers
pink and hot adorned my hills. Kirk says
we should be golden orbs, not messy
mortal meat. But I have done this giving
birth, this glistening verb. Nan-ye-hi,
in Cherokee, on meeting Franklin:
I do not pull children from rocks and trees
but from my body. Therefore listen.
Lisa L. Moore‘s most recent book, Sister Arts: The Erotics of Lesbian Landscapes, is a study of women's garden designs, botanical illustrations, and landscape poems. Her own poems have appeared in Experiments in a Jazz Aesthetic, Sinister Wisdom, Broadsided, and Lavender Review. Her poem “Anthropomorphic Harp” was awarded the Art/Lines Juried Competition for Ekphrastic Poetry.
I dreamed that I was made of sod,
tits up, my furry mounds set here and here.
Worms nestled in my woody roots, coneflowers
pink and hot adorned my hills. Kirk says
we should be golden orbs, not messy
mortal meat. But I have done this giving
birth, this glistening verb. Nan-ye-hi,
in Cherokee, on meeting Franklin:
I do not pull children from rocks and trees
but from my body. Therefore listen.
Lisa L. Moore‘s most recent book, Sister Arts: The Erotics of Lesbian Landscapes, is a study of women's garden designs, botanical illustrations, and landscape poems. Her own poems have appeared in Experiments in a Jazz Aesthetic, Sinister Wisdom, Broadsided, and Lavender Review. Her poem “Anthropomorphic Harp” was awarded the Art/Lines Juried Competition for Ekphrastic Poetry.
Kim M. Baker
The First Venus
I am woman speaking woman.
I inhale hatred and exhale hope.
Exhale flowers of tender resistance.
Flowers of persistence.
Flowers of grace and beauty and soul.
I am swathed in blue tranquility.
No cancer will eat me.
No violence can wound me.
No loss can boss me around.
They could not believe
I have no weapon.
So they took my arms.
But my weapon is affection.
I was reaching for you.
To wrap you in my happiness,
in the vines of my imagination
where horses with green legs
and hearts of red outrun hunters.
These blue daisies line my abundance.
You think I have no face?
My head is thrown back in laughter.
I am sacred when naked.
Touch me.
Don’t be afraid.
My pendulous breasts
are fields for flowers.
Bees feed on my milk
of human kindness.
Here. Let me hold you.
You are as I was then.
Lean of spirit.
Come. Lie down with me.
We will feast on history
and art fat with forgiveness
and love.
When she isn’t teaching the abundant virtues of the comma, writing about big hair and Elvis, and doing the Cha Cha, Kim Baker works to end violence against women. Kim performs in the annual production of Vagina Monologues in Rhode Island to raise money for victims of domestic violence. Her poems have been published online and in print. Kim’s essays have been broadcast on This I Believe, NPR Rhode Island, and two plays have been stage read at Culture*Park Annual Short Play Marathon in New Bedford, Massachusetts, about a middle-aged female survivor of childhood sexual assault and about a senior losing her battle with cancer but not losing her sense of humor. Kim lives with her wife at the beach in Warwick, RI. She can be reached at bighairedpoet@gmail.com
I am woman speaking woman.
I inhale hatred and exhale hope.
Exhale flowers of tender resistance.
Flowers of persistence.
Flowers of grace and beauty and soul.
I am swathed in blue tranquility.
No cancer will eat me.
No violence can wound me.
No loss can boss me around.
They could not believe
I have no weapon.
So they took my arms.
But my weapon is affection.
I was reaching for you.
To wrap you in my happiness,
in the vines of my imagination
where horses with green legs
and hearts of red outrun hunters.
These blue daisies line my abundance.
You think I have no face?
My head is thrown back in laughter.
I am sacred when naked.
Touch me.
Don’t be afraid.
My pendulous breasts
are fields for flowers.
Bees feed on my milk
of human kindness.
Here. Let me hold you.
You are as I was then.
Lean of spirit.
Come. Lie down with me.
We will feast on history
and art fat with forgiveness
and love.
When she isn’t teaching the abundant virtues of the comma, writing about big hair and Elvis, and doing the Cha Cha, Kim Baker works to end violence against women. Kim performs in the annual production of Vagina Monologues in Rhode Island to raise money for victims of domestic violence. Her poems have been published online and in print. Kim’s essays have been broadcast on This I Believe, NPR Rhode Island, and two plays have been stage read at Culture*Park Annual Short Play Marathon in New Bedford, Massachusetts, about a middle-aged female survivor of childhood sexual assault and about a senior losing her battle with cancer but not losing her sense of humor. Kim lives with her wife at the beach in Warwick, RI. She can be reached at bighairedpoet@gmail.com
Ed Bennett
My Dissolute Garden
How they love their gardens,
pruned and hedged to perfection,
each bloom a mirror of the next
each genus within its marked border,
color coded, mulched, much loved
for the monoculture sameness
born from the need to control.
My garden is unkempt,
no borders or boundaries
in this tangled plot of hybrids
living each to each on common soil
sharing sunlight, water and air
in the verdant entropy
of diverse color and kind.
I hear my neighbors “tsk”,
shake their heads at my shortcomings
so apparent in this wild patch
devoid of rhyme, reason or theme;
they will not see the beauty of
each unfettered swaying stem
free to be,
free to be.
Ed Bennett is a Telecommunications Engineer living in Las Vegas and a Staff Editor of Quill and Parchment. Originally from New York City, his work appeared in The Patterson Literary Review, The Externalist, Quill and Parchment, Touch: The Journal of Healing and Lavender Review. He is the author of “A Transit of Venus” published by The Lives You Touch Press.
How they love their gardens,
pruned and hedged to perfection,
each bloom a mirror of the next
each genus within its marked border,
color coded, mulched, much loved
for the monoculture sameness
born from the need to control.
My garden is unkempt,
no borders or boundaries
in this tangled plot of hybrids
living each to each on common soil
sharing sunlight, water and air
in the verdant entropy
of diverse color and kind.
I hear my neighbors “tsk”,
shake their heads at my shortcomings
so apparent in this wild patch
devoid of rhyme, reason or theme;
they will not see the beauty of
each unfettered swaying stem
free to be,
free to be.
Ed Bennett is a Telecommunications Engineer living in Las Vegas and a Staff Editor of Quill and Parchment. Originally from New York City, his work appeared in The Patterson Literary Review, The Externalist, Quill and Parchment, Touch: The Journal of Healing and Lavender Review. He is the author of “A Transit of Venus” published by The Lives You Touch Press.
Anne Bentley
Poppies 46x33cm (print size with border) Lambda print edition of 25
Image published courtesy the artist © 2006 Anne Bentley
Holly Mitchell
E.M. Forster
I meet a friend,
the new century unsprung.
I eat violets in my backyard, spinning stems
on my young Cambridge tongue.
At a slight angle to the universe,
I ride the tram through Alexandria,
emptying my travel purse
until the conductor brings me a dahlia
and the holiness of direct desire.
With him, I approach the garden
of Eden. In the connective mire
of dreams, I wrench the gate open.
Holly Mitchell currently studies at Mount Holyoke College. Her poems have appeared in several places, including Pluck! and Still. She is a 2012 recipient of the Gertrude Claytor Award from the Academy of American Poets.
I meet a friend,
the new century unsprung.
I eat violets in my backyard, spinning stems
on my young Cambridge tongue.
At a slight angle to the universe,
I ride the tram through Alexandria,
emptying my travel purse
until the conductor brings me a dahlia
and the holiness of direct desire.
With him, I approach the garden
of Eden. In the connective mire
of dreams, I wrench the gate open.
Holly Mitchell currently studies at Mount Holyoke College. Her poems have appeared in several places, including Pluck! and Still. She is a 2012 recipient of the Gertrude Claytor Award from the Academy of American Poets.
Charlotte Mew
May, 1915
Let us remember Spring will come again
To the scorched, blackened woods, where all the wounded trees
Wait, with their old wise patience for the heavenly rain,
Sure of the sky: sure of the sea to send its healing breeze,
Sure of the sun. And even as to these
Surely the Spring, when God shall please
Will come again like a divine surprise
To those who sit to-day with their great Dead, hands in their hands, eyes in their eyes,
At one with Love, at one with Grief: blind to the scattered things and changing skies.
Let us remember Spring will come again
To the scorched, blackened woods, where all the wounded trees
Wait, with their old wise patience for the heavenly rain,
Sure of the sky: sure of the sea to send its healing breeze,
Sure of the sun. And even as to these
Surely the Spring, when God shall please
Will come again like a divine surprise
To those who sit to-day with their great Dead, hands in their hands, eyes in their eyes,
At one with Love, at one with Grief: blind to the scattered things and changing skies.
Laurel Golio
Magda, Age 17, Brooklyn, New York, 2010
Photograph by Laurel Golio, taken as part of We Are the Youth
Digital C-Print, 30x40.
Sarah Fonseca
Queen Anne’s Lace
I wear a lace dress to Sunday school
It looks like the flowers in the ditch
Beside our trailer
Our teacher tells me that I’ll never know
What it’s like to be like Christ,
Hanging from the cross,
To hold the burden of the world’s sins
In a single
Overflowing
Organ
As they pump out across my hands
My feet
Like red Kool-Aid
But I know a thing or two about hanging
(I’m growing up in the South),
About uncertain limbo
(My daddy is a tall stalk
of undocumented Cuban sugar cane)
About being caught between the earth
And the sky
(Trampoline summersaults are my favorites)
And about bleeding
(Just look at my scabby kneecaps)
Sarah Fonseca spends her time longing for a southern drawl and a good slice of German chocolate cake. Her work has appeared in The Q Review and in the digital pages of Autostraddle.com.
I wear a lace dress to Sunday school
It looks like the flowers in the ditch
Beside our trailer
Our teacher tells me that I’ll never know
What it’s like to be like Christ,
Hanging from the cross,
To hold the burden of the world’s sins
In a single
Overflowing
Organ
As they pump out across my hands
My feet
Like red Kool-Aid
But I know a thing or two about hanging
(I’m growing up in the South),
About uncertain limbo
(My daddy is a tall stalk
of undocumented Cuban sugar cane)
About being caught between the earth
And the sky
(Trampoline summersaults are my favorites)
And about bleeding
(Just look at my scabby kneecaps)
Sarah Fonseca spends her time longing for a southern drawl and a good slice of German chocolate cake. Her work has appeared in The Q Review and in the digital pages of Autostraddle.com.
Jan Steckel
The Queen of Green
On Halloween, when all the world’s
in black, white or lantern orange,
I’ll don a rich green velvet gown.
My hair I’ll spray both green and gold.
My face I’ll streak with greasepaint
the color of Oakland hills in March
after the rains. I’ll pull sparkly green
silk hose onto my legs, slide my feet
into velvet green gold-buckled slippers.
A wreath of the California live oak
that grows over our back fence
will be my crown. At my feet,
gummi worms will burrow,
aerating wet red mud for jelly beans
and candy corn to sprout. After that,
if poems don’t come as naturally
to me as leaves to a tree, then
Keats can kiss my verdant tuchas.
Jan Steckel is a retired physician, a bisexual and disability rights activist, and a poet and writer. Her Mixing Tracks (Gertrude Press, 2009) won the Gertrude Press fiction chapbook award. Her chapbook The Underwater Hospital (Zeitgeist Press, 2006) won a Rainbow Award for lesbian and bisexual poetry. Her writing has appeared in Scholastic Magazine, Yale Medicine, Bellevue Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her first full-length poetry collection, The Horizontal Poet, a Lambda Literary Award finalist, is available from Zeitgeist Press.
On Halloween, when all the world’s
in black, white or lantern orange,
I’ll don a rich green velvet gown.
My hair I’ll spray both green and gold.
My face I’ll streak with greasepaint
the color of Oakland hills in March
after the rains. I’ll pull sparkly green
silk hose onto my legs, slide my feet
into velvet green gold-buckled slippers.
A wreath of the California live oak
that grows over our back fence
will be my crown. At my feet,
gummi worms will burrow,
aerating wet red mud for jelly beans
and candy corn to sprout. After that,
if poems don’t come as naturally
to me as leaves to a tree, then
Keats can kiss my verdant tuchas.
Jan Steckel is a retired physician, a bisexual and disability rights activist, and a poet and writer. Her Mixing Tracks (Gertrude Press, 2009) won the Gertrude Press fiction chapbook award. Her chapbook The Underwater Hospital (Zeitgeist Press, 2006) won a Rainbow Award for lesbian and bisexual poetry. Her writing has appeared in Scholastic Magazine, Yale Medicine, Bellevue Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her first full-length poetry collection, The Horizontal Poet, a Lambda Literary Award finalist, is available from Zeitgeist Press.
A Rush of Petals
The Weather-Cock Points South
Amy Lowell (1874-1925)
I put your leaves aside,
One by one:
The stiff, broad outer leaves;
The smaller ones,
Pleasant to touch, veined with purple;
The glazed inner leaves.
One by one
I parted you from your leaves,
Until you stood up like a white flower
Swaying slightly in the evening wind.
White flower,
Flower of wax, of jade, of unstreaked agate;
Flower with surfaces of ice,
With shadows faintly crimson.
Where in all the garden is there such a flower?
The stars crowd through like lilac leaves
To look at you.
The low moon brightens you with silver.
The bud is more than the calyx.
There is nothing to equal a white bud,
Of no colour, and of all,
Burnished by moonlight,
Thrust upon by a softly-swinging wind.
Frimaire
Amy Lowell (1874-1925)
Dearest, we are like two flowers
Blooming in the garden,
A purple aster flower and a red one
Standing alone in a withered desolation.
The garden plants are shattered and seeded,
One brittle leaf scrapes against another,
Fiddling echoes of a rush of petals.
Now only you and I nodding together.
Many were with us; they have all faded.
Only we are purple and crimson,
Only we in the dew-clear mornings,
Smarten into color as the sun rises.
When I scarcely see you in the flat moonlight,
And later when my cold roots tighten,
I am anxious for morning,
I cannot rest in fear of what may happen.
You or I—and I am a coward.
Surely frost should take the crimson.
Purple is a finer color,
Very splendid in isolation.
So we nod above the broken
Stems of flowers almost rotted.
Many mornings there cannot be now
For us both. Ah, Dear, I love you!
Before Light
Alice Meynell (1847-1922)
Among the first to wake. What wakes with me?
A blind wind, and a few birds, and a star.
With tremor of darkened flowers and whisper of birds,
—Oh with a tremor, with a tremor of heart—
Begins the day i’ the dark. I, newly waked,
Grope backwards for my dreams, thinking to slide
Back, unawares, to dreams, in vain—in vain.
There is a sorrow for me in this day;
It watched me from afar the livelong night,
And now draws near, but has not touched me yet.
In from my garden flits the secret wind,—
My garden. This wild day, with all its hours
(Its hours, my soul!) will be like other days,
Among my flowers. The morning will awake,
Like to the lonely waking of a child
Who grows uneasily to a sense of tears,
Because his mother had come, and wept, and gone;
The morning grass and lilies will be wet,
In all their happiness, with mysterious dews.
And I shall leave the high noon in my garden,
The sun enthroned, and all his court my flowers,
And go my journey, as I live, alone.
Then, in the ripe rays of the later day,
All the small blades of thin grass, one by one,
Looked through with sun, will make each a long shade,
And daisies’ heads will bend with butterflies.
And one will come with secrets at her heart,
Evening, whose darkening eyes hide all her heart,
And poppy-crowned move ‘mid my lonely flowers.
Four-Leaf Clover
Ella Higginson (1861-1940)
I know a place where the sun is like gold,
And the cherry blooms burst with snow,
And down underneath is the loveliest nook,
Where the four-leaf clovers grow.
One leaf is for hope, and one is for faith,
And one is for love, you know,
And God put another in for luck—
If you search, you will find where they grow.
But you must have hope, and you must have faith,
You must love and be strong — and so—
If you work, if you wait, you will find the place
Where the four-leaf clovers grow
Blue Squills
Sara Teasdale (1884–1933)
How many million Aprils came
Before I ever knew
How white a cherry bough could be,
A bed of squills how blue!
And many a light-foot April,
When life is done with me,
Will lift the blue flame of the flower
And the white flame of the tree.
Oh, burn me with your beauty then,
Oh, hurt me, tree and flower,
Lest in the end death try to take
Even this glistening hour.
O shaken flowers, O shimmering trees,
O sunlit white and blue,
Wound me, that I through endless sleep
May bear the scar of you!
903
Emily Dickinson (1830 -1886)
I hide myself within my flower,
That, fading from your Vase,
You, unsuspecting, feel for me -
Almost a loneliness.
This one-stanza poem is one of the many that ED wrote to accompany the gift of a flower. (Thomas H. Johnson)
Workmates
Lucy Larcom (1824-1893)
Face and figure of a maiden,
Set in memory’s antique gold:
In the eyelids’ droop, thought-laden,
In the dark hair’s shining fold
Over the wide, blue-veined brow,
One I love is with me now.
Side by side we work together,
‘Mid the whirring of the wheels;
Side by side we wonder whether
Each the other’s longing feels
To throw open her heart’s door,
With a “Welcome, evermore!”
Suddenly the seals are broken:
How it came, we cannot tell,—
Eyes have met, and lips have spoken:
We have known each other well,
Ages since, in some fair earth,
Playmates ere our mortal birth.
Noisy wheels break into singing,
Bird-like thoughts with thoughts ascend,
Into the free air upspringing:
Oh, the sweetness of a friend!
What if earth is cold and wide?
Here we two are, side by side.
Out into the summer gazing
From the windows of the mill,—
Running river, cattle grazing,
White clouds on the dark-blue hill:—
Did we murmur then, shut in
With a hundred girls, to spin?
No: for discontent were treason,
When the breath of all the flowers,
And the soul of the bright season
Entering, made their gladness ours.
Of the summer we were part;
Nature gave us her whole heart.
When the slow day dragged, we chanted,
Each to each, some holy hymn,
Till the sunset toward us slanted
As in old cathedrals dim,
Or a cloistered forest-aisle,
Wakening in us smile for smile.
Daily bread our hands were winning,—
Winning more than bread alone;
Unseen finger, with us spinning,
Twined all life into our own,
Knit our being’s fibres fast
Into unknown futures vast.
And we touched the flying spindles,
As if so we struck a note
Unto which the whole world kindles;
Tidal harmonies, that float
Into chords on earth unheard—
Mystic chant of Work and Word.
Work! it thrilled new meanings through us
From creation’s undersong;
Unto all great souls it drew us,
Men heroic, angels strong:
Firm our little thread spun we
For the web of Destiny.
Time has led us onward slowly,
Oh, my low-browed maiden dear,
Into duties new and holy,
Widening labors, year by year:
Good it is for us, in sooth,
That we bore the yoke in youth.
Good it is in the beginning
Toil for our true friend to know,
Place in God’s grand purpose winning,
Deep into His life to grow;
Saying by our work, as He,
Unto light and order, “Be!”
Good and sweet the friendship given
To our girlish working-days,
Bond that death must leave unriven:
While we walk in parted ways,
Close the thought of you I hold,
Set in memory’s antique gold.
“His heart was in his garden..."
Frederick Goddard Tuckerman (1821-1873)
His heart was in his garden; but his brain
Wandered at will among the fiery stars:
Bards, heroes, prophets, Homers, Hamilcars,
With many angels, stood, his eye to gain;
The devils, too, were his familiars.
And yet the cunning florist held his eyes
Close to the ground,—a tulip-bulb his prize,—
And talked of tan and bone-dust, cutworms, grubs,
As though all Nature held no higher strain;
Or, if he spoke of Art, he made the theme
Flow through box-borders, turf, and flower-tubs;
Or, like a garden-engine's, steered the stream,—
Now spouted rainbows to the silent skies;
Now kept it flat, and raked the walks and shrubs.
from Sing-Song, A Nursery Rhyme Book
Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)
A rose has thorns as well as honey,
I'll not have her for love or money;
An iris grows so straight and fine,
That she shall be no friend of mine;
Snowdrops like the snow would chill me;
Nightshade would caress and kill me;
Crocus like a spear would fright me;
Dragon's-mouth might bark or bite me;
Convolvulus but blooms to die;
A wind-flower suggests a sigh;
Love-lies-bleeding makes me sad;
And poppy-juice would drive me mad:—
But give me holly, bold and jolly,
Honest, prickly, shining holly;
Pluck me holly leaf and berry
For the day when I make merry.
After Embroidering
Hazel Hall (1886-1924)
I can take mercerized cotton
And make a never-flower beautiful
By thinking of tulips growing in window-boxes;
I can work into cloth
A certain hushed softness
From an imagined scrutiny
Of a lily’s skin,
And embroider conventional designs the better
For thinking of brick garden paths.
But if I go farther,
If I follow the path,
Fling out the gate,
Plunge one breathless thought over an horizon…
My hands lose their cunning.
Amy Lowell (1874-1925)
I put your leaves aside,
One by one:
The stiff, broad outer leaves;
The smaller ones,
Pleasant to touch, veined with purple;
The glazed inner leaves.
One by one
I parted you from your leaves,
Until you stood up like a white flower
Swaying slightly in the evening wind.
White flower,
Flower of wax, of jade, of unstreaked agate;
Flower with surfaces of ice,
With shadows faintly crimson.
Where in all the garden is there such a flower?
The stars crowd through like lilac leaves
To look at you.
The low moon brightens you with silver.
The bud is more than the calyx.
There is nothing to equal a white bud,
Of no colour, and of all,
Burnished by moonlight,
Thrust upon by a softly-swinging wind.
Frimaire
Amy Lowell (1874-1925)
Dearest, we are like two flowers
Blooming in the garden,
A purple aster flower and a red one
Standing alone in a withered desolation.
The garden plants are shattered and seeded,
One brittle leaf scrapes against another,
Fiddling echoes of a rush of petals.
Now only you and I nodding together.
Many were with us; they have all faded.
Only we are purple and crimson,
Only we in the dew-clear mornings,
Smarten into color as the sun rises.
When I scarcely see you in the flat moonlight,
And later when my cold roots tighten,
I am anxious for morning,
I cannot rest in fear of what may happen.
You or I—and I am a coward.
Surely frost should take the crimson.
Purple is a finer color,
Very splendid in isolation.
So we nod above the broken
Stems of flowers almost rotted.
Many mornings there cannot be now
For us both. Ah, Dear, I love you!
Before Light
Alice Meynell (1847-1922)
Among the first to wake. What wakes with me?
A blind wind, and a few birds, and a star.
With tremor of darkened flowers and whisper of birds,
—Oh with a tremor, with a tremor of heart—
Begins the day i’ the dark. I, newly waked,
Grope backwards for my dreams, thinking to slide
Back, unawares, to dreams, in vain—in vain.
There is a sorrow for me in this day;
It watched me from afar the livelong night,
And now draws near, but has not touched me yet.
In from my garden flits the secret wind,—
My garden. This wild day, with all its hours
(Its hours, my soul!) will be like other days,
Among my flowers. The morning will awake,
Like to the lonely waking of a child
Who grows uneasily to a sense of tears,
Because his mother had come, and wept, and gone;
The morning grass and lilies will be wet,
In all their happiness, with mysterious dews.
And I shall leave the high noon in my garden,
The sun enthroned, and all his court my flowers,
And go my journey, as I live, alone.
Then, in the ripe rays of the later day,
All the small blades of thin grass, one by one,
Looked through with sun, will make each a long shade,
And daisies’ heads will bend with butterflies.
And one will come with secrets at her heart,
Evening, whose darkening eyes hide all her heart,
And poppy-crowned move ‘mid my lonely flowers.
Four-Leaf Clover
Ella Higginson (1861-1940)
I know a place where the sun is like gold,
And the cherry blooms burst with snow,
And down underneath is the loveliest nook,
Where the four-leaf clovers grow.
One leaf is for hope, and one is for faith,
And one is for love, you know,
And God put another in for luck—
If you search, you will find where they grow.
But you must have hope, and you must have faith,
You must love and be strong — and so—
If you work, if you wait, you will find the place
Where the four-leaf clovers grow
Blue Squills
Sara Teasdale (1884–1933)
How many million Aprils came
Before I ever knew
How white a cherry bough could be,
A bed of squills how blue!
And many a light-foot April,
When life is done with me,
Will lift the blue flame of the flower
And the white flame of the tree.
Oh, burn me with your beauty then,
Oh, hurt me, tree and flower,
Lest in the end death try to take
Even this glistening hour.
O shaken flowers, O shimmering trees,
O sunlit white and blue,
Wound me, that I through endless sleep
May bear the scar of you!
903
Emily Dickinson (1830 -1886)
I hide myself within my flower,
That, fading from your Vase,
You, unsuspecting, feel for me -
Almost a loneliness.
This one-stanza poem is one of the many that ED wrote to accompany the gift of a flower. (Thomas H. Johnson)
Workmates
Lucy Larcom (1824-1893)
Face and figure of a maiden,
Set in memory’s antique gold:
In the eyelids’ droop, thought-laden,
In the dark hair’s shining fold
Over the wide, blue-veined brow,
One I love is with me now.
Side by side we work together,
‘Mid the whirring of the wheels;
Side by side we wonder whether
Each the other’s longing feels
To throw open her heart’s door,
With a “Welcome, evermore!”
Suddenly the seals are broken:
How it came, we cannot tell,—
Eyes have met, and lips have spoken:
We have known each other well,
Ages since, in some fair earth,
Playmates ere our mortal birth.
Noisy wheels break into singing,
Bird-like thoughts with thoughts ascend,
Into the free air upspringing:
Oh, the sweetness of a friend!
What if earth is cold and wide?
Here we two are, side by side.
Out into the summer gazing
From the windows of the mill,—
Running river, cattle grazing,
White clouds on the dark-blue hill:—
Did we murmur then, shut in
With a hundred girls, to spin?
No: for discontent were treason,
When the breath of all the flowers,
And the soul of the bright season
Entering, made their gladness ours.
Of the summer we were part;
Nature gave us her whole heart.
When the slow day dragged, we chanted,
Each to each, some holy hymn,
Till the sunset toward us slanted
As in old cathedrals dim,
Or a cloistered forest-aisle,
Wakening in us smile for smile.
Daily bread our hands were winning,—
Winning more than bread alone;
Unseen finger, with us spinning,
Twined all life into our own,
Knit our being’s fibres fast
Into unknown futures vast.
And we touched the flying spindles,
As if so we struck a note
Unto which the whole world kindles;
Tidal harmonies, that float
Into chords on earth unheard—
Mystic chant of Work and Word.
Work! it thrilled new meanings through us
From creation’s undersong;
Unto all great souls it drew us,
Men heroic, angels strong:
Firm our little thread spun we
For the web of Destiny.
Time has led us onward slowly,
Oh, my low-browed maiden dear,
Into duties new and holy,
Widening labors, year by year:
Good it is for us, in sooth,
That we bore the yoke in youth.
Good it is in the beginning
Toil for our true friend to know,
Place in God’s grand purpose winning,
Deep into His life to grow;
Saying by our work, as He,
Unto light and order, “Be!”
Good and sweet the friendship given
To our girlish working-days,
Bond that death must leave unriven:
While we walk in parted ways,
Close the thought of you I hold,
Set in memory’s antique gold.
“His heart was in his garden..."
Frederick Goddard Tuckerman (1821-1873)
His heart was in his garden; but his brain
Wandered at will among the fiery stars:
Bards, heroes, prophets, Homers, Hamilcars,
With many angels, stood, his eye to gain;
The devils, too, were his familiars.
And yet the cunning florist held his eyes
Close to the ground,—a tulip-bulb his prize,—
And talked of tan and bone-dust, cutworms, grubs,
As though all Nature held no higher strain;
Or, if he spoke of Art, he made the theme
Flow through box-borders, turf, and flower-tubs;
Or, like a garden-engine's, steered the stream,—
Now spouted rainbows to the silent skies;
Now kept it flat, and raked the walks and shrubs.
from Sing-Song, A Nursery Rhyme Book
Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)
A rose has thorns as well as honey,
I'll not have her for love or money;
An iris grows so straight and fine,
That she shall be no friend of mine;
Snowdrops like the snow would chill me;
Nightshade would caress and kill me;
Crocus like a spear would fright me;
Dragon's-mouth might bark or bite me;
Convolvulus but blooms to die;
A wind-flower suggests a sigh;
Love-lies-bleeding makes me sad;
And poppy-juice would drive me mad:—
But give me holly, bold and jolly,
Honest, prickly, shining holly;
Pluck me holly leaf and berry
For the day when I make merry.
After Embroidering
Hazel Hall (1886-1924)
I can take mercerized cotton
And make a never-flower beautiful
By thinking of tulips growing in window-boxes;
I can work into cloth
A certain hushed softness
From an imagined scrutiny
Of a lily’s skin,
And embroider conventional designs the better
For thinking of brick garden paths.
But if I go farther,
If I follow the path,
Fling out the gate,
Plunge one breathless thought over an horizon…
My hands lose their cunning.
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