A Poem-A-Day Celebration

For those who don’t know Archy, he was the cockroach poet who used the typewriter of his “boss,” Don Marquis, a columnist for the New York Sun from 1916 into the 1930s, in order to type out his poems, which then became the fodder for Marquis’s highly popular Sun Dial column. Together with his sidekick, the cat Mehitabel (she claimed to have been Cleopartra in a previous life), Archy discoursed on all manner of subjects, using only lower-case letters and no punctuation (because of his difficulty in operating the shift key). In our new Pocket Poets edition, The Best of Archy and Mehitabel, we reproduce E. B. White’s introduction to a 1950 volume collecting Marquis’s Archy columns, in which he writes, “The creation of Archy, whose communications were in free verse, was part inspiration, part desperation. It enabled Marquis to use short (sometimes very very short) lines, which fill space rapidly, and at the same time it allowed his spirit to soar while viewing things from the under side, insect fashion….Vers libre was in vogue….It was the time of ‘swat the fly,’ dancing the shimmy, and speakeasies. Marquis imbibed freely of this carnival air, and it all turned up, somehow, in Archy’s report. Thanks to Archy, Marquis was able to write rapidly and almost (but not quite) carelessly. In the very act of spoofing free verse, he was enjoying some of its obvious advantages.”

- Knopf Poetry Team

***

a spider and a fly

i heard a spider
and a fly arguing
wait said the fly
do not eat me
i serve a great purpose
in the world

you will have to
show me said the spider

i scurry around
gutters and sewers
and garbage cans
said the fly and gather
up the germs of
typhoid influenza
and pneumonia on my feet
and wings
then i carry these germs
into the households of men
and give them diseases
all the people who
have lived the right
sort of life recover
from the diseases
and the old soaks who
have weakened their systems
with liquor and iniquity
succumb it is my mission
to help rid the world
of these wicked persons
i am a vessel of righteousness
scattering seeds of justice
and serving the noblest uses
it is true said the spider
that you are more
useful in a plodding
material sort of way
than i am but i do not
serve the utilitarian deities
i serve the gods of beauty
look at the gossamer webs
i weave they float in the sun
like filaments of song
if you get what i mean
i do not work at anything
i play all the time
i am busy with the stuff
of enchantment and the materials
of fairyland my works
transcend utility
i am the artist
a creator and a demi god
it is ridiculous to suppose
that i should be denied
the food i need in order
to continue to create
beauty i tell you
plainly mister fly it is all
damned nonsense for that food
to rear up on its hind legs
and say it should not be eaten

you have convinced me
said the fly say no more
and shutting all his eyes
he prepared himself for dinner
and yet he said i could
have made out a case
for myself too if i had
had a better line of talk

of course you could said the spider
clutching a sirloin from him
but the end would have been
just the same if neither of
us had spoken at all

boss i am afraid that what
the spider said is true
and it gives me to think
furiously upon the futility
of literature
                                       archy

***

Excerpt from THE BEST OF ARCHY AND MEHITABEL © 2011 by Everyman’s Library. Excerpted by permission of Everyman’s Library a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Poem submission by Michael Malpiedi

Noon of today the cumulonimbus
Discharged fulminological wisdom to my being
And poured drops of knowledge lost to us.

Whispered of how she wonders about our fleeing
From her gentle precipitating kiss,
And she asked if truths are not worth seeing.

She told me that maybe ignorance’s bliss 
Has caused us to forget our creation
From the combination of rains such as this.

Our bodies are her waters after solidification,
And our tears are our dreams
Of melting back within her, the beauty of unification.

And with my enlightenment, all of me returned through streams
Of self evaporating while finding love within crystal seams.

Poem submission by copyists

A winsome man, who
At half past twelve every day
Asks for a water and a decaf,
Waters the plant 
On one coffee shop table 
And under the careful lamp light,
His eyes would retreat
Into thought of 
I don’t know what
But he would gently
Sip the rest of his coffee,
Complete a crossword,
Tuck his chair in
And leave, newspaper under arm,
With those same eyes.

I thought
I should tell him
He needn’t bother himself
With watering that little tree,
That I, or some other employee,
Could take care of it.
But when I went up to him
And he looked straight at me,
My lips could only muster, “Hello,”
And his gave back, “I was
Beginning to wonder if you’d 
Ever come talk to me
After all that staring.”

Poem submission by Janée Romesberg

dear starving stream
running beside the three-lane highway,
i see you nibbling at its bank,
trying to fill your belly-
rebelling against progress the only way you know how.

you are small and you are hungry but
graze elsewhere, else
the traffic currents and blacktop rapids 
decide to sweep you away and
drive you under.

then,
you will be filled but
no one will know you,
no one will remember you 
once trickled against our grain.

We like to page through our backlist in search of gone but not forgotten little gems like this one from the novelist Susan Minot.

- Knopf Poetry Team

***

Interloper

There’s a cat up on the roof
with stripes across his face.
He has the curious guarded look
of a cat who knows this place
may be inhabited
by other cats.
I see him through the window
past yellow tangles on the sill,
beyond the long pegged rack
of all my heartsick hats.
He lifts his paw and shakes off rain.
His face is wild and true.
For a moment he relieves me
of the pain of loving you.

***

Excerpt from POEMS 4 A.M. © 2002 by Susan Minot.  Excerpted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Poem submission by 1forbiddenlove

Dear Little One,

The world is going great for you right now,
Soon the weight of the world will lay on you.
Turning your body into a constant bow,
Because your naive mind can’t handle the truth.

One of the ones you hold dear,
Will be gone in two years.

You’ll deal with pain and depression,
Another 2, 3 years you’ll go through self-realization.

I just want to warn you ahead of time,
So maybe you’ll have a chance to change our screwed up life.
This isn’t just some nonsense rhyme,
Don’t you even think ‘bout touching those pills or that knife.

When you catch yourself thinking,
About that boy.
And you swear to God you hear bells ringing;
He just wants a cheap toy.

He will break you and then he’ll look down,
And he’ll be smiling, watching your tears make you drown.

People will whisper and stare,
The know the rumors-who, what, and where.

When you get to where I am,
You are going to be lonely, tired, and just want to quit.
Your thoughts will make you believe everything is an illusion- a scam,
But when you finally find yourself, hun, you’re going to be brilliant. 

Poem submission by Anurag Sharma

Last time when it rained,
It flooded everywhere I could see.

Tall trees were deep into water
The street turned into a mighty river.

The storm shook my house
The flood washed away my office.

I was homeless and jobless
And used a boat instead of my car.

Now when the rain is gone
Far-far away from me.

Leaving no drop of water
Anywhere around me.

Not a single cloud in sight
I long for rain, I really long.

Poem submission by Kentiya Dyree

I heard she was beautiful. There is no accounting for taste, but I heard she was algebraically delectable. Hardly detestable. That girl is a wrecking ball. I heard she shook her hair behind her shoulders and wept to the moon. Wailed at it too…once when it was blue. I heard she held her near-perfect body hostage for Lent. She made it pay rent, ‘til it was spent. Hallelujah.

Lenny and Lisa have a daughter named Zoë.

I heard she was difficult. There is no geometry for taste, but I heard she was symmetrically divine. Completely refined. But that girl can unwind. I heard she beat the snow from her boots with the blade of her stiletto. Lost her rhythm and rhyme with her libretto: aceto-. I heard she was at her wit’s end. Death and all his friends dance around her grave again. Hallelujah.

Lenny and Lisa have a daughter named Zoë.

But they gave her to the light: quite bright white night. And they gave her to the night: trite blight right fright.

From our current Poet Laureate, Philip Levine, an immigrant story, the unrecorded contours and meaning of which the offspring must fill in for himself, with a bittersweet generosity that won’t discount the pain.

- Knopf Poetry Team

***

The Mercy

The ship that took my mother to Ellis Island
eighty-three years ago was named “The Mercy.”
She remembers trying to eat a banana
without first peeling it and seeing her first orange
in the hands of a young Scot, a seaman
who gave her a bite and wiped her mouth for her
with a red bandana and taught her the word,
“orange,” saying it patiently over and over.
A long autumn voyage, the days darkening
with the black waters calming as night came on,
then nothing as far as her eyes could see and space
without limit rushing off to the corners
of creation. She prayed in Russian and Yiddish
to find her family in New York, prayers
unheard or misunderstood or perhaps ignored
by all the powers that swept the waves of darkness
before she woke, that kept “The Mercy” afloat
while smallpox raged among the passengers
and crew until the dead were buried at sea
with strange prayers in a tongue she could not fathom.
“The Mercy,” I read on the yellowing pages of a book
I located in a windowless room of the library
on 42nd street, sat thirty-one days
offshore in quarantine before the passengers
disembarked. There a story ends. Other ships
arrived, “Tancred” out of Glasgow, “The Neptune”
registered as Danish, “Umberto IV,”
the list goes on for pages, November gives
way to winter, the sea pounds the alien shore.
Italian miners from Piemonte dig
under towns in western Pennsylvania
only to rediscover the same nightmare
they left at home. A nine-year-old girl travels
all night by train with one suitcase and an orange.
She learns that mercy is something you can eat
again and again while the juice spills over
your chin, you can wipe it away with the back
of your hands and you can never get enough.

***

Excerpt from THE MERCY © 1999 by Philip Levine. Excerpted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Bonus: Listen to Philip read “The Mercy.”

Poem submission by Sherryl Lynn Chavarria

AIDS

To be trapped in this body
Oh! How it breaks the Soul,
No Escape! No release! No waking up
To realize it’s just a bad dream,
Saddest thing for the human soul to endure

Shunned! By the very ones who gave life to you,
Scorned by so many, pitied by few,
Hope’s gone, nightmares, anxiety, fear, and anger,
Their your only comforts,
When the world turns its back on you

Why me? Why this body? Your soul cries,
Your eyes now long dried,
You would exchange places with a dog,
If only to escape your body,
That vile and polluted, sickened body

The waiting! The waiting! That’s the worse,
Death is around the corner, grinning its evil smile your way,
You beg, plead for someone to find the cure!
To take pity on the wrongs life has dealt you,
You sure as hell, don’t want death to claim you

But no one hears, no one even wants to,
Ignored, they pretend not to see you,
All alone, loneliness sets in,
Pride’s gone, hope’s gone, bitterness is sweet to pass the time away,
You want to cry, but the ‘rivers have run dry,’

To be trapped in this body!
What a vicious hand life has dealt you,
You can’t run, you can’t hide, death just bides its time,
To be trapped in this body!
When all you want to do is live!

Poem submission by Alejandro Ortiz

The Air and the Trees

He hopped on the railing, rose halfway to the sun,

And as daylight waned,

The air and the trees asked of what he’d done.

Emulsified ink drawn across the sky,

Spelling out the rivers of many days before yesterday’s lie.

The feathers and the tar,

And aphorisms in time of war,

All covered his eyes, 

And then the concrete did not seem very far.

He walked down the railing and dreamt of the sea,

And as the nighttime passed,

The air and the trees asked for an overcharge fee.

He stood on the railing and thought of why and how come,

And where and when and drowning under seafoam.

He stood on the railing, turned and said to her,

“I’m not scared that I might fall. I’m just scared that I might jump.”

Poem submission by alloveryourwood

Storming through these broken lands,
Biting off more than I can chew, oh hands,
For I have deciphered all I can, but I cannot foretell,
What is to come in a fractured dimension, locked in a body cell,
I am what I am, But what I am can never be,
My language is incapable of expressing the power within these cracks, I see,
Like the lone of survivor of my species,
On the brink of extinction,
With extinction on the brink of itself,
I once stormed through these broken lands,
Until the lands stormed and broke through me.

Poem submission by theferocity.tumblr.com

            I won’t be forgiven

for what I’ve made

of myself.

            Soil recoils

from my hooked kisses.

            Pines turn their backs

on me. They know

what I can do

with the wrap of my legs.

            Each summer,

when the air becomes crowded

with want, I set all my tongues

upon you.

            To quiet this body,

you must answer

my tendrilled craving.

            All I’ve ever wanted

was to kiss crevices, pry them open,

and flourish within dew-slick

hollows.

            How you mistake

my affection.

            And if I ever strangled sparrows,

it was only because I dreamed

of better songs.

The below may not be a poem, but it is also not NOT a poem. It is typical of the work in Almost Invisible, a slim but significant book of playful creations from the pen of Mark Strand, whose whole career, in a way, has been an attempt to understand (or perhaps to refute!) “The Triumph of the Infinite.”

- Knopf Poetry Team

***

The Triumph of the Infinite

I got up in the night and went to the end of the hall. Over the
door in large letters it said, “This is the next life. Please come
in.” I opened the door. Across the room a bearded man in a
pale-green suit turned to me and said, “Better get ready, we’re
taking the long way.” “Now I’ll wake up,” I thought, but I was
wrong. We began our journey over golden tundra and patches
of ice. Then there was nothing for miles around, and all I could
hear was my heart pumping and pumping so hard I thought I
would die all over again.

***

Excerpt from ALMOST INVISIBLE © 2012 by Mark Strand. Excerpted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Poem submission by Glenn Roth

Run to the green heart of me,

I who run true on woodland paths,

on beach sand, through storm berm,

the water welcomes me.

I am sea and river and bird and sky.

Delve to the granite heart of me,

I who was born of these eastern hills.

The scree and soil mask the ore

running heartlong, rich veins coiling

through breath and bone.

Run to the green heart of me.

I am water and stone, air and bone.

I am the march of oak and the spire pine.

The dun hart knows the heart of me;

the fox shelters deep in my deepest den.

I breathe the wind to learn

the names of all the winds.

I name the birds and trees, for Adam’s

gift is my gift too.  I seek to see, to know,

to name.  I name what see; I seek to look true.

Know the green heart of me,

the stone and soil from which I spring.

Learn the birdsong soul of me;

I am bluesky diamond; evensong.

I am the hawk-wind at the green heart of you.

Poem submission by bookmarkthispage

It is late, the shadows are gone, and I am headed home;
No season shatters the soul like winter, when each day
Seems its own abortion. To challenge the bleak weather,
What company shall we meet, what company shall meet us
But a handful of ephemeral flakes, not beautiful nor glorious—
Instead— a party guest who arrives much too early, standing
Awkwardly in the entrance, holding a basket of colorless fruit.
To make polite banter, avoiding the blindingly obvious—
To not be even dressed properly yet— inviting him to
Remove his premature jacket and his premature boots.

Poem submission by Madam Briner

With shackles and scars

They tread the march

Cloaked in misery and pain

Their tears stream

Prejudice haunts them each day

In their waking

Abandoned by identity

They are hidden

Fear conquers their thoughts and feelings

Leaving no remnants of joy

Waiting for justice

They are blinded

The curse remains unbroken after a century

Wishing for freedom

They yearn to soar

Gagged and powerless

These people are ravenous

Flogged by injustice itself

These people carry the scars of segregation

In his third collection, Coral Road, Garrett Hongo explores the overlapping of historical necessity, personal narrative, and the formation of culture in telling the tale of his Japanese ancestors and their adopted Hawaiian homeland, often finding pathos and beauty in the overlapping itself. Here he celebrates the hybrid vigor of Hawaiian music as he contemplates a rare sighting of Billie Holiday on his home turf.

- Knopf Poetry Team

***

Holiday in Honolulu

Billie in a yellow bikini and without the gardenia in her hair,
But instead a dark hibiscus, plump as her curls.
Next to her, Armstrong in Bermudas and a flat English driver’s cap,
The famous grin spreading wide as the beach behind them.
And Trummy Young, that marooned trombonist from Gibson’s Bar,
Dressed in a hotel robe and swim trunks, flanks her other side.

She looks shy, perhaps off the drugs or only lightly dosed,
Not quite sad, as the sun makes a light gleam off their skins.
I’d never thought of them here, American jazz greats,
         cavorting on the beach,
The big pink hotel looming just off Armstrong’s right shoulder,
Celebrities among the tourists, bringing their brand of music
To mix in among the ‘ukulele, steel guitars, and falsetto tenors
                                                                          of the hotels.
But Pahinui must have, his singing a short breath
         behind the beat sometimes,
Playing that slappy catch-up, tailgating to the rhythm
Like Satchmo, who showed Holiday how to do the same,
All hip to the bluesy, hesitation style—a kind of tease.

And didn’t Gabby sound like Charlie Christian sometimes,
Strumming that guitar to a hula measure,
A half-beat off the One and swinging the pace
So the music had that feel of a five o’clock jump?

I don’t know for sure, but musicologists tell me
Hawai’i was forever a crossroads, seaborne chants
From Polynesia circulating up via Tahitian canoe
And bouncing back from Rapa Nui,
Where only the moai survive now.
And then the missionary hymns crept in,
The falsetto yodel of Argentine vaqueros.
After that, Mississippi and Louisiana delta blues,
Swamp songs from the steamships through the Panama Canal,
Their deckhands exchanging licks with the local guitar-pickers,
Bottlenecks sliding like spit on Hotel Street.
Pretty soon, a paniolo puts the dull edge of his knife
On the open-tuned strings of a Dobro, and we get the lap-steel
And hapa-haole songs of mixed Hawaiian and English,
Chang-a-lang from the Portuguese, kachi-kachi
And son montuno from Puerto Rican cane and pineapple workers.

What’s “original” anyway? Indigenous and essentially anything?

I’ll take Holiday in Honolulu, plucking a red hibiscus
From a green hotel bush as she saunters from the lobby
Across the breezy lanai with the tiki torches aflame and smoking,
The scent of ginger flowers from ‘awapuhi hotel soap on her skin,
Cocking her head to one side and pulling back the lush hair,
Placing the stem and pea-green corolla back behind an unjeweled ear,
Giving Armstrong and Trummy Young that bluesy wink of hers
As she adjusts the small bell of the bloom so it opens
Like a pliant, red trumpet in the sweetened airs of Waikiki.

***

Excerpt from CORAL ROAD © 2011 by Garrett Hongo. Excerpted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Poem submission by royazahra94

Who are you to tell me who I am

When you lost yourself years ago.

You were washed away when the tide came in,

And crushed against rocks of bitterness.

I am young.

I am still an optimist,

Though I have seen that same flood

Replayed in your eyes, a thousand times 

And have felt the spray of the ocean on my face,

Each time the tsunamis in your mind come out to play. 

I am young.

I was such an optimist,

Until I saw my waves crash in to yours

And mock my drowning reflection.

Now, instead of the silvery surface of my beloved sea,

I see your face.

And it scares me.

My waters, now muddied with hand-me-down hatred,

Whisper in my ear as the night draws nearer 

And the moonlight begins to bounce around me.

I can hear the hiss of the darkness in the depths,

Of the ocean.

Of your thoughts. 

I can feel the pull of your fate on my fingertips,

Begging me to meet it just the same.

And it scares me,

Oh, how it scares me

Each time the tsunamis in your mind come out to play.