BY ARCHIBALD MACLEISH

A poem should be palpable and mute   

As a globed fruit,

Dumb

As old medallions to the thumb,

Silent as the sleeve-worn stone

Of casement ledges where the moss has grown—

A poem should be wordless   

As the flight of birds.

                         *               

A poem should be motionless in time   

As the moon climbs,

Leaving, as the moon releases

Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,

Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,   

Memory by memory the mind—

A poem should be motionless in time   

As the moon climbs.

                         *               

A poem should be equal to:

Not true.

For all the history of grief

An empty doorway and a maple leaf.

For love

The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea—

A poem should not mean   

But be.

(From Poetry Magazine: “Ars poetica is a poem that explains the ‘art of poetry,’ or a meditation on poetry using the form and techniques of a poem.”)

(Erasure poem from Angela Davis’ Women, Class and Race)

(Erasure poem from Angela Davis’ book Women, Race and Class)

“It would seem, unless one looks more deeply at the phenomenon, that most people are able to delude themselves and get through their lives quite happily. But I still believe that the unexamined life is not worth living; and I know that self-delusion, in the service of no matter what small or lofty cause, is a price no writer can afford. His subject is himself and the world and it requires every ounce of stamina he can summon to attempt to look on himself and the world as they are.” – James Baldwin, Nobody Knows My Name, page xii

I’ve finished Stamped by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi so I started James Baldwin’s Nobody Knows My Name this morning. I did not know Baldwin was openly gay. His writing hits home with me in a lot of ways, as a writer, as a disabled person, and as a woman. The search for yourself, for truth, for antiracism, for freedom from persecution and hatred.

I look forward to learning more from him.

Scorpions and humans share 

                 viviparity.

 

In the winter, I consider 

becoming a mother, 

 

carry a high-risk pregnancy,

weigh the risks of death, deformity,

 

As the scorpion sits in her glass 

 

her spindle legs and black lobster claws 

lean against the air,

like a boxer 

in a ring. 

 

In one corner, a cup of mealworms, 

which I watch her devour

the night of the full moon,

 

after a very long fast.

In the opposite corner, 

a cup for water 

petaled with cedar.

 

She can go a year without eating. 

She can survive any cataclysm 

of temperature, or water.

She can do a jagged, black waltz.

 

She turns green-purple 

under the UV flashlight.

A neon sign, stealthy and seedy.

 

She climbed from the ocean onto a crust of land, 

                1,             000,                     000 years ago

So her lungs are books, 

like crabs. 

 

Her telson sharps in a curved crescent, 

where the venom lay. 

How much venom she makes, 

is her 

decision. 

Enough to kill 

or only stun.

 

“A hungry mother scorpion will eat her own babies 

if food is scarce”

 

About this poem: The title of this poem comes from Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. I read Huxley’s line “the old viviparous days” and I fell in love with it. Huxley’s whole story is comical, outrageous, very real. I then went on researching scorpions, and discovered that they also carry their young inside them and have live births, like humans. We have something in common; both violent, angry creatures. The end of my research yielded the quote, “A hungry mother scorpion will eat her own babies if food is scarce.” That is true. And striking. It made me contemplate postpartum depression and depression, in general, which I suffer from. How there are times when your sadness can make you want to tear your whole world apart.

A beautiful poem by Claire Wahmanholm for a beautiful, rainy day.

Spider,        the color of explosion, 

climbs the ladder of words on my laptop screen.

The rain left crystal beads & fence post parachutes.    Spider settles on my right upper corner.

 

In the city, I would never let crawl on me. But here–

 

Crow screams on the roof apex.

I say to him, “You sound ridiculous.”

 

My AirBnB host, a woman with lace over her eyes,

seated upon a chestnut horse–Queen of England–

grazes the shadows beside my perch. 

There is an intimate poem tacked to her fridge,

filled with Corona.

 

Last Sunday, I was in California, 

with my nose in your ear.

 

This Sunday, I’m alone in horse country, drinking wine with newlyweds,

and creatures you taught me to love.

 

It’s May and 

I’m in a bath, first of the last decade, filled the tub with scald, 

red skin, it feels so good.

 

Gray brown lines adorn Spider’s arms–er, legs?, 

eight series of circles,

just like the woman making onion soup in the kitchen, 

her infant son belly flat on the wood.

 

I remember how I put my finger in your mouth 

to examine your backward teeth, because I love you, fiercely.

 

Staying alone in this farmhouse full of spiders 

Mailbox petaled white, as a tomb, 

black cape over the white rose desk, 

boxes contain the letters of the poems I will write for you. 

 

Bread crumb    ink    paths for    one 

electron Spider.

 

She suns herself here on my laptop. 

The willow’s tears firefly     upon the pond.  

She feels right at home, doesn’t she?

The black bars on the windows, tusked in ice, 

curve into hearts.

 

The bones in my toes crack with sleep.

 

Morning shadow rests on chain link,

beside the vibration and plume 

of a dealer’s breath.

 

Whispers on the mattress, 

Your chest hair glued to my belly.

 

Winter is our time.

 

Why do we sing? I asked.

                   The birds. You said.

 

Do people know that love like this exists?

 

Aren’t they bored? 

 

How can they stand it,

without it?

The streetlamp casts neon cells on the grass 

Pitri dishes glow orange,

       fixed in place ’til sunrise.

 

The night sky sits above, 

blank from skyscrapers. 

 

No place left in the world 

not clasped 

by            artificial light.

 

But you, crusader for invisible,

 

Drove a clan of kids 

to watch the Eclipse,

searched for the Lyrid above the mountain.

You checked the sky, craned your neck like a daddy bird

But the light (pollution) blocked your shower of stars.

 

One day, my love, 

I’ll take you to the darkest place I can find.

I found you, fellow scum, 

screaming through darkness 

on a pebble.

I marveled you, 

caught your eye. Played my witchy game but then–

I lost you.

 

It was the saddest lie I ever lived. 

The everything I thought I had was 

clasped to a dam. 

 

I drove over bodies of water and wondered, 

                      where you were.

 

I didn’t recognize my lie, 

                        you pressed. 

Destruction, at the heart, who we don’t want to be.

 

Spent, 

you see what is worthy in me. 

 

I found you

weaving yarn on the castle walls 

                 feet trekking over leaves of snow 

                 and stacks of pallets stained blue

you helped me carry,

 

atop one sunbeam.