Sean Eaton (Poet)

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🍉 Official Bluesky of Sean Eaton, poet from New England, USA. https://www.writerscafe.org/sea2sea https://www.writing.com/main/portfolio/view/sea2sea

Title: 1999 by Sean Eaton You ask for color, are denied; your job should be excitement enough. A sea of beige, the walls, the fax machines, bulky monitors whose pixels blink NASDAQ quotes, the countless cubicles. Chroma is luxury: only the floors and chairs, the telephones are dark, desks if you’re lucky. Three-ring binders, photos of your kids and wife at home. All bathed in the dim fluorescent light of beige drop-ceilings and a distant perimeter of high narrow windows and columns like limewashed castle walls. So liminal, you might think this Limbo, Purgatory. They seem to think it normal.
Title: 12:18 (1993) by Sean Eaton —after Cameron Awkward-Rich’s poem “Meditations in an Emergency” You stable the horse and the horse kicks you. Uptown, in isolated farms, apportioned. Once, this was underwater. Now, a bathtub parting the depths of Hudson mud. The wind whistles showtunes through the skyscraping ravines. Well, Manhattan in February is as cold as anywhere. On the streets, litter and grime, the last incinerators soon to shutter. A flock of birds takes flight over men in their Friday suits. It’s lunch break. Hear the whistles. The truck explodes in the garage, makes a bottomless note ring through the towers filling them with black smoke.
Edward, Edward (traditional, Bishop Thomas Percy, 1765, translated and arranged by Sean Eaton) (version to be sung to the tune of “Minorie”) There once was a yeoman rich and old, Named Edward, called Old Edward; There once was a yeoman rich and cold, With a wife, and a son named Edward. “Where have ye been, at this late hour, My Edward, my young Edward? Where have ye been, at this late hour, And why so long look ye, oh?” “I was down at the burnie banks, My mother, my dear mother; I was down by the bonny burnie banks, Where I let my mare drink free, oh.” “Why has your coat-sleeve been torn so, My Edward, my young Edward? Why has your coat-sleeve been torn so, And why’s it stained so red, oh?” “I was caught on a blackberry thorn, My mother, my dear mother; I was caught on a blackberry brush, And struggled on the brambles.” “The blackberry stains not so red, My Edward, my young Edward; The blackberry stains not so red, And I see no horse with thee, oh.” “Oh, I have killed my hawk so good, My mother, my dear mother; I have but killed my hawk so good, And my steed is in the stable.” “Your small hawk’s blood is not so red, My Edward, my young Edward; Your small hawk’s blood was not so red, I dare, dear Son, tell thee, oh.” “Oh, I have killed my red-roan mare, My mother, my dear mother; I have killed my red-roan mare, That e’er was fair and free, oh.” (continued in next image)
Kullervo by Sean Eaton I come from the air and descend on the water, I weave for myself a nest from the waves. "Montelukast for allergies, Risperidone for moods." I come to see what life is like down on Earth, among you. "I hear you seething and cursing your neighbors." This pear-shaped egg remains on the cliff’s edge, such evolved genius. "You should get over it." But where is my mother? Not this woman who baked stones into my bread. The birds say, "She has taken wing as a gull." Where is my father? Not this Uncle whose laws beget cruelty. The river fish say, "He has been slain by his brother." Where is my sister? Dragged by her hair, they beat her and starved her, made her kiss the Israeli flag. The stars say, "Who? We no longer speak of her." Then I wish for you what you wish unto others. "How dare you wish for our arrows to strike us!" I learned from my mother a tongue is its own magic. "Make yourself useful and go into the country, collect our tariffs from the flesh of the impoverished." So damn you, may the wild things chew you to shreds. "Do you think you ought to behave in this fashion?" I tell you, this Egg will crack and scatter its contents. "Do you think such violence of temper is acceptable?" I tell it to you now, no American is in Heaven. "Whose blood on your coat? No brambles tore you." You’d make a daughter carry her brother’s child! "Whose blood on your coat? A hawk spills too little." I will accept you as friends when a stone dances on water. "Then where will you flee to, O wretched son?" I’ll not flee to anywhere, for this is my homeland. "Very well, twenty years’ hard labor. Now be gone." Twenty years? Your regime shan’t last that long. Note: This poem draws on the tales of Kullervo and Luonnotar in the Kalevala, the murder-ballads Velisurmaaja and Edward, Edward, and the 1968 tribunal of VĂ” Thị TháșŻng, as well as the brief captivity of Greta Thunberg by IDF forces in 2025. All sources are public domain.
Title: "Kamisuki Combing Her Hair" poem by Sean Eaton —woodblock print by Torii Kotondo, 1929 Teeth of abalone bomb comb rivulets running through like waves of foam Face composed of palest sand abashed erased serene debased Womb beneath her Dantian barren now as summer grass Unblemished, she a Rose of Sharon She a Frilled Carnation Humming softly as she weaves, a smile dancing on her lips Tsukuyomi milk-white blushes at his lover's form, rouged yet paler than his homeschooled skin She unclothed, untouched by yesterday's soiled cotton, peony-bright yukata roseate　modesty-bright twelve-tone skylight figures flat as glass everything imported measures everything changing with the tide aeolian flute of bone womb comb waterfall of summer moon-liquid shivering droplets tresses　　wrap of saltwater weeds pearled box flute of reed elsewhere sound of brush rustling in languid breeze
Title: "Creative Genius (The Artist)" by Sean Eaton Do you not know me? I AM that I AM. I am The guise I affect In holy art and scripture. — N. Scott Momaday I am the poem on every minstrel's tongue; I am the cry on every hunter's lips. I am the birth of all art and language. All that has occurred in the world has taken place because I willed it to. With my hand I gathered the dusts of the universe and scattered them across this planet's surface, and life sprang forth from my palm. The sun rises in the morning because I call it forth with my cry. The sun sets in the evening because I send it off with my song. Where I go, the winds bear me on their backs, and tell me their secrets. Where I breathe, the white Northern Lights issue from my mouth. Where I step, horses scatter wildly. My bow is strung with the cords of the rainbow; my boots are sewn from the skin of a lake. My abode is made from the hide of a mountaintop stretched between the poles of the redwoods, and my hunting horn is carved from the deepest valley. When I draw with my brush, deer spring up from my hand. When I write, bears wake from slumber and cry out their thunder. What I paint springs to life, and the earth knows it as beauty. All that I touch turns to gold in my palms. The many birds know my name and sing me their dreams, their splendorous feathers they weave in my hair. I alone gave the hidden names of all what is holy; I alone have caused the birth of scripture. I am the god that brought you all to life! Yes! Praise the lofty heavens in my name!
Psalm (2) by Sean Eaton This is not the end of all things, only something in turn, this transfiguring of bone meal into pale bread to be eaten. blow out the candles, the incense, wrap up your prayers, the abbot is anxious to close the church for the night. I walk into the setting sun pretending it’s a benediction, my appetites unsated, the stink of sorrow around me, knowing I’ve failed to become a future light’s ancestor. I want a beautiful man to open the seam of himself and, laughingly, swallow me up, as none have done. Let me graft to his sinews, his heartbeat, let my palms be his palms. I want to be made flesh by someone so beautiful, my fat sustaining him on hungry winter nights. O Lord, let me contribute to something greater than myself in recompense, O ghosts of my ancestors, my sons.
Title: In Heaven (4) by Sean Eaton —I've always felt that, if Heaven were real, there must be some terrible oversight about it. When we all got to Heaven and found only crumbling palazzi of stone and glass, long ago abandoned, we realized Heaven had been designed for a rarer breed than us. Those lofty architects of the Lord had not bet on hardscrabble coal miners and biting nail salonists, people from West Virginia or Brazilian favelas inheriting the vast realm of the Savior. Grocery clerks and meth addicts weren't on the guest list. Mexicanos, Chinese, and East Enders were less than an afterthought. We suspected that whatever power had overseen to this place preferred its suits Italian, perfume French, cars Teutonic. We looked around at the sweeping staircases and wrought-iron lamps, flying buttresses and lofty cantilevers, cavernous halls that echoed thunderously to our footsteps, the unending formal gardens and reflecting pools, the unrelenting frescoes on warlike themes or glorifying the Lord, the ossuaries and auto-tellers and pilasters of pink granite, and everywhere the stone urns, everywhere steel members and wainscotting of black marble and white rococo ceilings, loggias and fountains, hallways that led nowhere, Indiana limestone and marble backsplashes, decayed pianos, full-height mirrors reflecting equally tall windows, a flash music of accent walls and glass domes above twenty-foot ceilings and Purbeck and Carrara and an abundance of gilt edging every room toward a climax of frenetic faith and luxury, everywhere emphasizing the verticality, the soaring stretch of eternity toward a singular point or nonpoint at which spacetime was originating and ending simultaneously. And we thought, “This is no place to spend eternity praising the Lord.” (continued in next image)
Title: Blackout poem by Sean Eaton written in emulation of blackout poetry and found poetry (poetry assembled from multiple quotations) "[name redacted] writes, regarding the [redacted] pejorative use of the words Mulatto, Quadroon and Octoroon, a terminology which once held legal consequence in the three-tiered society inherited from the French, and continued within the Creole and Acadian pale despite Anglo-American dominance over the region" "a fine summer and crop harvest, may God keep us" "the prestige of consulting the Almanac when it’s already raining" "In 1823, for the theft of a spoon, it is reported that, owing to her race, the highest punishment was naturally sought, and, despite her youth, carried out" "her mistress’ letters burned" "Haiti long given over to all devilry" "the fort and harbor defenses fortuitously remodeled the year before, at a cost of [price redacted]" "And in local news, his wife newly expectant" "Regarding his position at the [name redacted] Bank, and its business of trading throughout the state and with England, the prestige of hiring an Octoroon nurse was a given" "Not Creole, but no stranger to horses due to her upbringing [redacted] and the races" "renovations at a cost of $1,200" "The nurse does well with the children, but care should be taken she does not influence their diction" "[date redacted] the river swollen, the [steamship] SULTANA [fate redacted]" "Before the war the house stood proudly [redacted] satin marble, crystal chandeliers imported from England" "He had never tasted meat without salt, and so knew no better [redacted] Calamity [redacted] the embarrassment [redacted] her letters burned [redacted]" "believing her at fault, he [blanked] her [blank] in a rage, and cast her out into the swamp, dark babe in her arms."
Title: "And Would You Also Fly?" poem by Sean Eaton I gather my trash up, and wash my hands thoroughly. Outside, a night of light snowfall has blessed the pale grounds. My poor head is pounding, so I snort some distilled water to flush out my sinuses. Always, the stolid clots of mucus. Always, the reams and reams of flushing. Outside, a jetliner rises from the sapless, melting earth, impossibly close through my living-room window— pelagic, stark-white and flashing its red-orange sail, beluga nose tipped up at fifteen degrees. I've never seen an airplane this close before— not while living in this town at least. Silent, it floats out of sight, a sober, unshakeable aluminum balloon. Only after the mirage's end, the guttural whinnying of its thrusting engines, echoing back to rattle my windowpanes as it climbs through the thin wintry air, an electronic javelin. I think of the hundred-some passengers aboard, all of them well-shod in pressed suits and fur coats, wristwatches, pink satins and strings of pearls, on their way to important locales—Cancun or Bermuda, or some Californian conference for execs and starlets. Perhaps I am thinking of an earlier Era. Perhaps it is only a wanton symptom of desire. (Postmodern or Ancient?) Well, whatever.
The Dream of Akinosuke By Sean Eaton My soul crawls forth from my mouth as I sleep, as soft and white as peony petals, and flickers on a breath of air. Fluttering, I go to my cedar's weaving roots to rest, but ambushed: a nation of ants carry me beneath the grass, and gift a palace, and a princess to wed. In such way I live in splendor for many years— yet return within the day.
"Sorry for Complaining, But" by Sean Eaton I wanted to buy for my shelf a beautiful miniature but my credit debt is a red cadmium sunrise glibly dappled by a sarcastic artist. He laughs and won’t let paint dry, reveling in toxicity, because I’ve doubled my pandemic waistline and now my hale woolen peacoat looks shrink-wrapped around me. This is not a poetic poem, but who really cares when Craft bodyslams Truth and throws them in the back of ICE’s black vans? When the Political Opposition writes Strong Worded Letters of complaint while vilifying civil disobedience? Everything is a game to the brunch-loving caste, state-sanctioned parades with no material demands, and here comes another issue of shitting and farting from that poetry quarterly everyone reveres, and, for their prestige, their tastes are unacceptably boring, but I don’t have the time to rebuke bleak venality when I’m busy just trying to continue my existence. For now, I have freedom, and a language to make love to on my better days, so I don’t want to die just yet, that can happen after society or the biome collapses. This is not a poetic poem, but I’m scrounging for pennies on a fixed income that may soon disappear. Look, O First World, I’m a Good Poor Personℱ, I behave myself and budget my dollars. I don’t eat avocados, so why do I have nothing? Bills, clothes, or treats, why must I choose between what I want, owe, and need? Well, one succulent berry remains on the bough: I’ve cancelled my worthless poetry subscription, so I can hold off on buying another bookshelf, for now.
Title: Yourkevitch poem by Sean Eaton —after Paul Monette Five years after my ship burned, the American Stevens designed a streamlined tail-car for the Milwaukee Road— a dream, for a select few. Exceptional work. The Americans have took the Frenchman’s style and made it their own: Everything aerodynamic. Forgive my fractured English: I once attended the Naval Polytechnic in St. Petersburg, earned a front office in the Romanov Admiralty. A handsome dacha might have been mine. Instead, amid Revolution I escaped from the Crimea to join the dregs of the Ottomans, tea-reading the fate of one empire in another. Mere survival. Two years I stevedored to pay my passage to my countrymen in Paris. Then—Coffee and Jazz, and how mild the climate! And I, always, dreaming of a vessel to carry beautiful women. How wide the night opens, as the fire gutters. But I digress. Cunard rebuffed me, the French C.G.T. skeptical. My ideas were advanced—always I had to belabor my point. Two years I worked from dawn until midnight at the drawing- board, calculations on calculations, triple-checking my work. A clipper’s prow and a bulbous forefoot, slim and sleek as an arrow at play. My model bested two dozen Frenchmen’s! I had won—my ship would become the ark of French culture. The first vessel afloat to best a thousand-foot length, a raft for rich men and madams, a dream for a select few. The Grand Salon: Thirty-foot ceilings, murals of glass and richest embroidery, the history of navigation. The Salle à Manger: Twenty-foot bronze doors dividing a hall of marble from a hall of glass three-hundred-and-five feet in length, with bas-reliefs and ten-foot-tall statues, electric pilasters and pots à feu lighting up the mirrored walls. Cages of exotic (continued in next image)
Note to Self by Sean Eaton I am young, I must remember that. In an age of skincare routines and discount Botox and liposuction, depilatory creams and electrolysis, my skin is firm and supple, not sagging at the seams, nor crinkling at the edges like charred bits of paper used to kindle fires in Hungarian bread ovens or pot- bellied stoves in hunters' cabins up in Siberia, snow falling like a child's tears around the logs, piling up in drifts, burying everyone inside alive, in beauty, so that they may sleep forever and never go hungry, and I am potbellied but my limbs have strength, they have strength and I am not decrepit, I am not shuffling with a cane or walker down sidewalks confined to a single block and back, scrounging inside purse or pocket- book for spare change with arthritic hands veined and speckled like moths' wings or mildewed books left abandoned in nuclear-ravaged towns, quivering like cat-gut plucked by some genius minds arraying arpeggios like cascading sunlight upon the ears of every vile bank teller and country-store clerk who still believes in Santa Claus despite this being an Age of Skepticism and of Wisdom and of communities tear- ing themselves apart at the seams, of bullies prone to playing the victim in riot gear and bloodied batons and hoses and sonic weapons aimed at the ears of protesters fighting for a better world who are rounded up by the thousands and thrown in decrepit prison camps to sweat and swelter under the gaping maw of a sun that swallows all with abandon, burning their honest backs to black and giving them skin cancer all with time, while I stay holed up in my apartment where it's safe, while politicians establish death (continued in next image)
Title: Why I Don’t Join My Local Poetry Group poem by Sean Eaton Because they’re all retirees juvenile, provincial. Because they meet on Tuesdays at 11 AM, when all the good poets are working. Because one member is a godawful idiot. Because they all roared with laughter when I read Wanda Coleman’s “Things No One Knows”. Because the one writer I respected ignored my messages for a month, then took offense when I called him out. Because I exploded in language in front of those people, so I burnt my metaphors to ensure I’d keep distance.
Title: Metal Fatigue, poem by Sean Eaton Every day the arthouse media report a pillar of salt has fallen in the house of gold, while mogulite media report that pillar still standing. Who can say what is to be believed? Feel your coupons return to ash inside your pockets as items of purchase strip-search your purse. I say, you say, they all say to wait ‘til the smoke clears. Remain in your homes and boil your clothing. Let synthetic fibers spoil the green-dappled rivers where salmon run in their biblical wisdom, pursuing the end of a means as they continue to vanish. The brush paints lights in yellows and pinks, red and blue shadows darkening their backsides. Curated timelines of knowledge of no consequence glibly distract us from our more seditious urges. Each earthquake furthers the apparatus of surveillance, each upheaval a plague encircling us in rashes. Look at these rosy rings on our wrists, our necks, bullseyes of tick-bites forbidding us from red meat. It’s all part of a plan, they say in closed circuits, our price-hikes and cyanide bombs, our rigged elections, since unleaded paint makes unruly voters, and those we can’t influence must not be enfranchised. No VPNs will save you from our torrential erectings of a new world order built atop your subservience. You think this is recent, a lone man’s wet-dream? This is the star-spangled nature of our imperial project. We’ve spent eighty years salting your fields because we care for your sake; the least you could do is show us some concern, the grandly petulant say.
Title: At the First Ceasefire —after Refaat Alareer & Myung Mi Kim Which would you prefer? Gated communities of the rich, or gated communities of the poor? Speak up now. Honey. Phonic. Hive. The menu is in false Hebrew, and each meal drips red with violence. Death is kaleidoscopic, dark shrapnel prismatic. The singers are silent in the contused streets and theaters. The last slice of bread in the hospital vanishes down a grateful throat. Prayers of heavy ocean rise up from two million lips as molecules, film-clouds. Olive trees cut down, offenders. The third and fifth movements sing out, but the other move- ments are not silent. Bullets, wings, fire. Eyes, neck, back. Sloughing flesh. Relief funds spent on white phosphorus. Food in plastic effigy proffered to unworthy mouths. Wells cemented, marts empty. Affecting to starve the whole region into submission. Shopkeepers, professors stripped naked, disappeared. If we end this war now, we risk inviting retaliation in the future. Veto of fatal venom. Ash, pumice, Pompeii riven by genuflectal mass psychosis. Braying nay-sayers harangued yet untouchable. Flying by instrument-approach, dropping whales onto hovels. Dispossessed grime-washed fruitless, un- clothed. Indigent. Tents abandoned, shredded. Wandering for miles until the wet fires envelop them. Screaming. Seawater pumped into tunnels to drown the rats. Salt the earth, spice the mutilated flesh for racial consumption. Bombs. Bones. Martyrs. If I die, let me become a kite or an angel, and let the children take hope from my weightlessness, my soaring.
Untitled My lover asks me: "What is the difference between me and the sky?" The difference, my love, Is that when you laugh, I forget about the sky.
Title: Love Poem from a Cup of Coffee to the Spoon that Stirs It —after Nizar Qabbani Each morning you stir in my liquid embrace, each evening you caress me with your potent curve. Daily you kiss me like ice kissing flame, your tuliped face repaying bitterness with milk and sugar. Be like a cunning and cowardly fish and dive into me! Inscribe on me your love like runes writ on water. Would I were tree-bark or bone of a tortoise, so I could preserve the birth of your language! Like the silver of a Holy kingdom’s coffers you gleam, like the holy wisdoms of its mystics, catching the light of the sun in your face, your laughing lip holding that gleam as your own. Show me the seasons, all one thousand and one of them, become my mirror and teach me a world I don’t recognize. You are my tutor, my judge and my jurors, guiding me by the law of a beautiful new land. For you I am fragrant, like an orchard of orange-trees, for you I am nectar in the cup of your desire. My mouth rings like a bell as you scrape my walls. Your mouth presses to my mouth the trill of your song. How dear you are, O lover of mine! Like ancient magic, You scatter your sugar over my every blossoming. You are a mystic reading futures in stars, in grains of white sand. Your eyes prophesy doom by sweetest dilution.
Poem officially untitled [Goodbye Poem No. 3] —after Bob Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright” I never wanted to fall in love with you, no, I knew the trouble too well of falling in with someone young as you, girl; oh, what tales I could tell. I, a patent no one, an alley-cat, thin and clipped-eared, and chasing rats. But you came and lifted me up from all that. Don't look back, it's alright. And I didn't ask for you to light my way, girl, with your wandering star. I just wanted to travel ‘long beside you, without knowing how far. Once there was darkness, then came light: dripping pearls, you burnished my night; You were the most beautiful waste of my time. Now don't look back, it's alright. I'm sorry that I couldn't be your partner for more'n a year and a day. And I'm sorry that I couldn't be your mentor; didn't want to anyway. All of your questions went over my head; I just wanted to sit with you, and break bread. But that didn't fit with the film in your head. Now don't look back, it's alright. Maybe I'm the villain of the story, though you treated me a saint. Many o' my poems pro'ly were too gory; I, a one-time lonely haint. But I can't say that I'd go back again and cleave my heart a second time, if I could hide all the thorns with a rhyme. So don't look back, it's alright. [End poem] *Lines by Bob Dylan used, in altered form: --You just kinda wasted my precious time --But don't think twice, it's all right
"Anne Sexton in Harlem" by Alec Matthew Tonight I thought of you, Anne. A friend collected the debris of her life and strung them into bracelets. I entered the urban carnival at 125th and Lenox, Saw the shoe-shined Witnesses, the lunatic, the men in their exposure, the Saturday Shoppers in their muffs- For two weeks I have mended and given her alms,Tidied her messes, reconstructed a life, slept in the bed she made, as though I myself was not an unvetted talent for disaster, erratically medicated, harried, pulled at like a coat- I too have felt the wind shriek at Lenox, Erica, Where the subway placards hold like palisades against the downdraft And the boulevard bleeds wide. I have wanted to shout myself through the streets as you did, Telling you I would turn to everyone and no one at all when I declared it time- Tonight the snow slurries in Harlem. I think of the mind wherein I have lived like a rat for 400 days recycling thought loops, and then of the one you leapt through- Visitation has ended. aborted in that gesture, I leave here a tourist.
"Un ojo dejĂ© en Los Lagos" de Violeta Parra Un ojo dejĂ© en Los Lagos por un descuido casual, el otro quedĂł en Parral en un boliche de tragos; recuerdo que mucho estrago de niña vio el alma mĂ­a, miserias y alevosĂ­as anudan mis pensamientos, entre las aguas y el viento me pierdo en la lejanĂ­a. Mi brazo derecho en Buin quedĂł, señores oyentes, el otro por San vicente quedĂł, no sĂ© con quĂ© fin; mi pecho en CaracautĂ­n lo veo en un jardincillo, mis manos en Maitencillo saludan en PelequĂ©n, mi falda en PerquilauquĂ©n recoge unos pececillos. Se m'enredĂł en San Rosendo un pie al cruzar una esquina, el otro en la Quiriquina se me hunde mares adentro, mi corazĂłn descontento latiĂł con pena en Temuco, y me ha llorado en Calbuco, de frĂ­o por una escarcha, voy y enderezo mi marcha a la cuesta 'e Chacabuco. Mis nervios dejo en Granero, la sangr' en San SebastiĂĄn, y en la cuidad de ChillĂĄn la calma me bajĂł a cero, mi riñonada en Cabrero destruye una caminata, y en una calle de Itata se me rompiĂł el estrumento, y endilgo pa' Nacimiento una mañana de plata. Desembarcando en Riñihue se vio la Violeta Parra, sin cuerdas en la guitarra, sin hojas en el colihue; una bandĂĄ' de chirigĂŒes le vino a dar un concierto; con su hermanito Roberto y Cochepe forman un trĂ­o que cant' a l'orilla 'el rĂ­o y en el vaivĂ©n de los puertos.
Title: "The Summer of Black Widows" by Sherman Alexie The spiders appeared suddenly after that summer rainstorm. Some people still insist the spiders fell with the rain while others believe the spiders grew from the damp soil like weeds with eight thin roots. The elders knew the spiders carried stories in their stomachs. We tucked our pants into our boots when we walked through fields of fallow stories. An Indian girl opened the closet door and a story fell into her hair. We lived in the shadow of a story trapped in the ceiling lamp. The husk of a story museumed on the windowsill. Before sleep, we shook our blankets and stories fell to the floor. A story floated in a glass of water left on the kitchen table. We opened doors slowly and listened for stories. The stories rose on hind legs and offered their red bellies to the most beautiful Indians. Stories in our cereal boxes. Stories in our firewood. Stories in the pockets of our coats. We captured stories and offered them to the ants, who carried the stories back to their queen. A dozen stories per acre. We poisoned the stories and gathered their remains with broom and pan. The spiders disappeared suddenly after that summer lightning storm. Some people still insist the spiders were burned to ash (continued on next page)
US Twitter/X user @Nostra, House of Gold, says: "Help us China". A Chinese Twitter/X user responds in Chinese: "Revolution begins with yourself. An egg broken from the outside is food; broken from the inside, it's new life." English translation of Chinese comment courtesy of Twitter/X user @jokieliu
Title: "White Coal", a poem by Sean Eaton In my youth, I used to sing as I walked in public, hoping a man would hear me and fall in love with my weakness. None did. Now I am white coal, flowing, renewable. Which is not to say I’m experienced in earthly matters; I am only charwood. In this charred land no law forbids music, but men do not believe in beauty; they, businesslike, treat weakness with contempt. But, just once, as I sang “The Age of Not Believing” on the waterfront, a woman, with her grandson, passed me by and smiled.
Title: "A Short History of Judaic Thought In The Twentieth Century" by Linda Pastan, from her 1978 book "The Five Stages of Grief" The rabbis wrote: although it is forbidden to touch a dying person, nevertheless, if the house catches fire he must be removed from the house. Barbaric! I say, and whom may I touch then, aren't we all dying? You smile your old negotiator's smile and ask: but aren't all of our houses burning?
Title: "All This in Upstate New York", a poem by Sean Eaton ​ My mother's parents had strange taste in middle names. Their eldest son, John, got Rand, after the Poor-loathing author (that was the father's choice, before he walked out on them), while their second son, Ian, got Herrick, after who-knows-what (the mother's choice, high on drugs). Neither could think of what to put with Gillian, so my mother never got one. Pretty and dark- haired, fatherless and welfare-raised, with a steady stream of social workers checking in each month, my mother was just Gillian Black growing up, no more. And on marrying, after studying at Johns Hopkins on scholarship, her maiden name became her middle name, the Black sliding easily into that empty, welcoming slot which she'd learnt to be grateful for. But if she'd had a middle name, then which name, I wonder, would have been forgotten, shoved aside with the rest of her past by the thick ivory satin of her wedding gown? She was marrying up, after all, if only incrementally. Her husband’s dark green Army uniform so impressive as he handed her his ring.
Untitled poem number one, by Susan Stewart, from her book "The Forest" "What haunts are not the dead but the gaps left within us by the secrets of others." So says the book ofthe phantom where I read the fable ofthe mother's arms, the look behind a fret of limbs, how dread and hope are wound. The voice fell back and back and down, back to its source beneath the ground. Tell me, lonely singer, then why the phantom fades again there on the threshold of our seeing.
Title: "Refugees" by Brian Bilston They have no need of our help So do not tell me These haggard faces could belong to you or me Should life have dealt a different hand We need to see them for who they really are Chancers and scroungers Layabouts and loungers With bombs up their sleeves Cut-throats and thieves They are not Welcome here We should make them Go back to where they came from They cannot Share our food Share our homes Share our countries Instead let us Build a wall to keep them out It is not okay to say These are people just like us A place should only belong to those who are born there Do not be so stupid to think that The world can be looked at another way (now read from bottom to top) The world can be looked at another way Do not be so stupid to think that A place should only belong to those who are born there These are people just like us It is not okay to say Build a wall to keep them out Instead let us Share our countries Share our homes Share our food They cannot Go back to where they came from We should make them Welcome here They are not Cut-throats and thieves With bombs up their sleeves Layabouts and loungers Chancers and scroungers We need to see them for who they really are Should life have dealt a different hand These haggard faces could belong to you or me So do not tell me They have no need of our help
Title: "Telemachus", poem by Ocean Vuong Like any good son, I pull my father out of the water, drag him by his hair through white sand, his knuckles carving a trail the waves rush in to erase. Because the city beyond the shore is no longer where we left it. Because the bombed cathedral is now a cathedral of trees. I kneel beside him to show how far I might sink. Do you know who I am, Ba? But the answer never comes. The answer is the bullet hole in his back, brimming with seawater. He is so still I think he could be anyone’s father, found the way a green bottle might appear at a boy’s feet containing a year he has never touched. I touch his ears. No use. I turn him over. To face it. The cathedral in his sea-black eyes. The face not mine — but one I will wear to kiss all my lovers good-night: the way I seal my father’s lips with my own & begin the faithful work of drowning.
"Feathers or Lead", poem by Jack Gilbert Him, she said, and him. They put us in the second car and followed her back to the villa. Our fear slowly faded during the weeks. Everyone was kind but busy. We could go anywhere on the first floor and on the grounds this side of the fence. They decided on me and sent the other boy away. Before I had only glimpsed her at the upper windows. Now we ate together at opposite ends of the table. Candlelight eased her age, but not her guilt. Once she said the world was an astonishing animal: light was its spirit and noise was its mind. That it was composed to feed on honor, but did not. Another time she warned me about walking on the lawns at night. Told me of heavy birds that flew after dark croaking, "Feathers or lead, stone or fire?" Mounting people who gave the wrong answer and riding them like horses across the whole county, beating them with their powerful wings. We would play cards silently on rainy days, and have sardine sandwiches at four in the morning, taking turns reading aloud from Tolstoy. "What need do we have for consulates?" she said once before going upstairs, the grand room beginning to fill with the dawn. "Why insist on nature? A flower must be red or white, but we can be anything. Our victories are difficult because the triumph is not in possessing excellence. It is found in reluctance." Month after month we lived like that. And with me telling her what it was like out there among the living. She was steadily failing, like a Palladian palace coming apart gracefully. The last morning she stooр by the tall windows. "I will not give you my blessing," she said, "and I refuse you also my reasons. Who are you, who is anyone to make me just?" When they came for her, she smiled at me and said, "At last."
Bluesky user @mommunism says "Another Gazan talking about her experience here" while quote-retweeting a Palestinian account that has been deleted by Bluesky, one of many. Twitter user Tiberius @ecomarxi quote-retweets saying "Bluesky is deleting Palestinian accounts over and over and over again" Twitter user Heidi N. Moore @moorehn quote-retweets that saying "I've said it before, I'll say it again: Bluesky is the liberal Zone of Interest"
"What Were They Like?" poem by Denise Levertov protesting the Vietnam War, written 1967. Did the people of Viet Nam use lanterns of stone? Did they hold ceremonies to reverence the opening of buds? Were they inclined to quiet laughter? Did they use bone and ivory, jade and silver, for ornament? Had they an epic poem? Did they distinguish between speech and singing? Sir, their light hearts turned to stone. It is not remembered whether in gardens stone lanterns illumined pleasant ways. Perhaps they gathered once to delight in blossom, but after their children were killed there were no more buds. Sir, laughter is bitter to the burned mouth. A dream ago, perhaps. Ornament is for joy. All the bones were charred. it is not remembered. Remember, most were peasants; their life was in rice and bamboo. When peaceful clouds were reflected in the paddies and the water buffalo stepped surely along terraces, maybe fathers told their sons old tales. When bombs smashed those mirrors there was time only to scream. There is an echo yet of their speech which was like a song. It was reported their singing resembled the flight of moths in moonlight. Who can say? It is silent now.
Title: "Marriage", a poem by Nick Flynn, from his 2023 book "Low". I was married once, at least we thought about it, it was in b&w, we were tiny, walking in a forest, the trees dwarfed us—the trees had been married forever, moss hung from their fallen branches, we had to step over them. We put on the costumes—groom, bride— these are jobs, I realized, that only last a couple hours. Why not try it, what could we lose, we were already deep inside the forest, we were already lost, marriage was just where the path was headed—I thought it would make us more like the trees, growing closer every year. I wanted you to put your hand out, to pull me closer, I wanted all the way in. A child would be the glue. Was it wrong to think of a child as glue? Too late, we were already in our costumes, we'd already had a shower, maybe someone would give us a red toaster. It was just another day to get through, even if it felt like everyone was talking through long cardboard tubes. In the distance, the Empire State Building, no matter where we were we could find a window or a roof & it would be lit up red or blue or green & that would tell us what month we were in. We could even climb it (it's not impossible) & then look back at all the windows we had looked at it through, all over the city, waking up in strange rooms, & there it was, waiting. It was the tallest for a while & then it wasn't & then it was again.
Poem titled "There Are Mornings", written by Lisel Mueller Even now, when the plot calls for me to turn to stone, the sun intervenes. Some mornings in summer I step outside and the sky opens and pours itself into me as if I were a saint about to die. But the plot calls for me to live, be ordinary, say nothing to anyone. Inside the house the mirrors burn when I pass.
Title: Eden, Then and Now poem by Ruth Stone In ‘29 before the dust storms sandblasted Indianapolis, we believed in the milk company. Milk came in glass bottles. We spread dye-colored butter, now connected to cancer. We worked seven to seven with no overtime pay; pledged allegiance every day, pitied the starving Armenians. One morning in the midst of plenty, there were folks out of context, who were living on nothing. Some slept in shacks on the banks of the river. This phenomenon investors said would pass away. My father worked for the daily paper. He was a union printer; lead slugs and blue smoke. He worked with hot lead at a two-ton machine, in a low-slung seat; a green-billed cap pulled low on his forehead. He gave my mother a dollar a day. You could say we were rich. This was the Jazz Age. All over the country the dispossessed wandered with their hungry children, harassed by the law. When the market broke, bad losers jumped out of windows. It was time to lay an elegant table, as it is now; corporate paradise; the apple before the rot caved in. It was the same worm eating the same fruit. In fact, the same Eden.