Wet Evening In April By Patrick Kavanagh

Circe Invidiosa by John William Waterhouse (1892)

Franciszek Żmurko - Morning star.

November Graveyard

by Sylvia Plath

The scene stands stubborn: skinflint trees Hoard last year’s leaves, won’t mourn, wear sackcloth, or turn To elegiac dryads, and dour grass Guards the hard-hearted emerald of its grassiness However the grandiloquent mind may scorn Such poverty. No dead men’s cries

Flower forget-me-nots between the stones Paving this grave ground. Here’s honest rot To unpick the heart, pare bone Free of the fictive vein. When one stark skeleton Bulks real, all saints’ tongues fall quiet: Flies watch no resurrections in the sun.

At the essential landscape stare, stare Till your eyes foist a vision dazzling on the wind: Whatever lost ghosts flare, Damned, howling in their shrouds across the moor Rave on the leash of the starving mind Which peoples the bare room, the blank, untenanted air.

Come, shining lyre, speak to me--gain the power of utterance. ἄγι δὴ χέλυ δῖα μοι λέγε φωνάεσσα δὲ γίνεω. --Sappho, fr. 118

Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

The Queen

by Pablo Neruda tr. Donald D. Walsh

I have named you queen. There are taller than you, taller. There are purer than you, purer. There are lovelier than you, lovelier.

But you are the queen.

When you go through the streets No one recognizes you. No one sees your crystal crown, no one looks At the carpet of red gold That you tread as you pass, The nonexistent carpet.

And when you appear All the rivers sound In my body, bells Shake the sky, And a hymn fills the world.

Only you and I, Only you and I, my love, Listen to it.

A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.

Robert Frost

The Elevator is Out of Service- Please Use the Stairs - by Katie Walters

Fibromyalgia, took my bones when I was sleeping.

Crept in while I was resting,

Breathing deep against my pillow,

Or the paper of the books I could no longer read.

It grew inside me,

Drank my mitochondria like wine,

Took an angle grinder to my spine,

And wore me away like twilight.

I, got sick at uni,

In a small room, where nobody could hear me cry,

Or permit me to.

My nervous system quit, while I was working.

In the library where my legs were burning,

Like the oven door against my forearms,

And the stovetop, where I made myself curry. For the first time.

Independence, embryonic.

I was nineteen.

November was cold that year, and

January was colder.

As fresh and new as I was, and as,

Stark and clean and painful as my fading autonomy.

I tried to crystallize it.

In an essay, or a poem, in biro ink and off-brand toothpaste.

Like if I wrote it right I could write myself well

And when the rain fell in February,

I fell,

In Tesco and at the train station and on the stairs.

Swallowed the stones in my throat, chose not to dare question why it was that I kept falling.

And got back up.

Because strong people don’t get sick,

You stick it out, you do not quit,

And when the elevator is out of service,

You use the stairs.

I never knew how high the curb was until I could not climb it.

We searched for my bones in decomposing diagnoses,

Degrading medication on my tongue,

Took blood tests of my blood lines,

And on the coastline,

Tried to calcify my insides strong again.

Put our hands in the wet sand,

To build a tibia. Shape my sternum like a castle.

Clavicle and mandible and cranium.

Starlight and seafoam and gone.

My bones, are in the Rotunda museum,

Under the skin of the Gristhorpe man,

We walk where he walked, and I walk no longer,

Pressed behind glass, my skin tight as leather.

My bones, are in the limestone cliffs edge,

Grown from sediment,

Calcium carbonate, cycling, infinite, ground down to shale,

My bones are food for minke whales.

I am lying in bed, and ugly, like a princess.

Limp, and formless, and rolled out to sea

I am blue badge on double yellows,

Pepsi Max and heavy metal,

Flat on the backseat, and staring through the windscreen, where the starlings will dance until nightfall.

My bones, are a murmur of starlings,

Dark and undulating

The shapeless, shape of nature,

Inexplicable,

Impermanent,

And strong.

And I will not be another fucking tragedy,

Another DWP dispensability,

Too many of us have already died.

We build on their bodies. Defiant.

I, am a being of duty, and fury, and I want you to know, that I am broken,

Because they could not contain me whole.

Fibromyalgia, took my bones, and they grew. Fragmented, transcendent, and new,

I am fragile. And grounded. Bound to dropped kerbs. Sick insides.

But my bones?

Oh, my bones, are the sky.

Just your mouth

Just your love

Just your anointing oils

Just your name

Just your chambers

Just your love

And my mother's sons

And my own vineyard

And my soul

Just your flock

Just your companions

Just your kids

Just your cheeks

Just your neck

Just your couch

And my perfume

And my beloved

And my breasts

And my beloved

And my love

Just your eyes

And my beloved

Our couch

Our house

Our rafters

And my love

And my beloved

Just your shadow

Just your fruit

Just your banner over me

Just your left hand

Just your right hand

And my beloved

And my beloved

Our wall

And my beloved

And my love

And my fair one

And my love

And my fair one

And my dove

Just your face

Just your voice

Just your voice

Just your face

Our vineyards

And my beloved

Just your flock

And my beloved

And my bed

And my soul

And my soul

And my soul

And my soul

And my mother's house

Just your sword

Just your mother

Just your wedding

Just your hearth

And my love

Just your eyes

Just your vein

Just your hair

Just your teeth

Just your lips

Just your mouth

Just your cheeks

Just your veil

Just your neck

Just your two breasts

And my love

And my bride

And my heart

And my sister

And my bride

And my heart

Just your eyes

Just your necklace

Just your love

And my sister

And my bride

Just your love

Just your eyes

Just your lips

And my bride

Just your tongue

Just your garments

And my sister

And my bride

Just your shoes

And my garden

And my beloved

And my garden

And my sister

And my bride

And my mouth

And my spice

And my honeycomb

And my honey

And my wine

And my milk

And my heart

And my beloved

And my sister

And my love

And my dove

And my perfect one

And my head

And my locks

And my garment

And my feet

And my beloved

And my hand

And my heart

And my beloved

And my hands

And my fingers

And my beloved

And my beloved

And my soul

And my beloved

Just your beloved

Just your beloved

And my beloved

Just your head

Just your locks

Just your eyes

Just your cheeks

Just your lips

Just your arms

Just your body

Just your legs

Just your appearance

Just your speech

And my beloved

And my friend

Just your beloved

And my beloved

Just your garden

Just your flock

And my beloved

And my beloved

Just your flock

And my love

Just your eyes

Just your hair

Just your teeth

Just your cheeks

And my dove

And my perfect one

And my mother

And my fancy

And my prince

Just your feet

Just your rounded thighs

Just your navel

Just your belly

Just your two breasts

Just your neck

Just your eyes

Just your nose

Just your head

Just your flowing looks

Just your breasts

Just your breasts

Just your breath

Just your kisses

And my beloved

Just your desire

And my beloved

And my love

Our goals

And my beloved

And my modest breast

And my mother

And my power credits

Just your left hand

Just your right hand

And my beloved

Just your mother

Just your heart

Just your arm

Our sister

And my breasts

Just your eyes

And my vineyard

And my very own

And myself

Just your voice

And my beloved

What You Missed That Day You Were Absent from Fourth Grade

by Brad Aaron Modlin

Mrs. Nelson explained how to stand still and listen to the wind, how to find meaning in pumping gas,

how peeling potatoes can be a form of prayer. She took questions on how not to feel lost in the dark

After lunch she distributed worksheets that covered ways to remember your grandfather’s

voice. Then the class discussed falling asleep without feeling you had forgotten to do something else—

something important—and how to believe the house you wake in is your home. This prompted

Mrs. Nelson to draw a chalkboard diagram detailing how to chant the Psalms during cigarette breaks,

and how not to squirm for sound when your own thoughts are all you hear; also, that you have enough.

The English lesson was that I am is a complete sentence.

And just before the afternoon bell, she made the math equation look easy. The one that proves that hundreds of questions,

and feeling cold, and all those nights spent looking for whatever it was you lost, and one person

add up to something.