Ask Me, By William Stafford

Some time when the river is ice ask me

mistakes I have made. Ask me whether

what I have done is my life. Others

have come in their slow way into

my thought, and some have tried to help

or to hurt: ask me what difference

their strongest love or hate has made.

I will listen to what you say.

You and I can turn and look

at the silent river and wait. We know

the current is there, hidden; and there

are comings and goings from miles away

that hold the stillness exactly before us.

What the river says, that is what I say.

Before the Diagnosis

Mom set the pool up in the backyard
on top of the crunchy grass
grown dry under the summer sun,
our young chubby bodies
drifting in the light breeze.

We wore sunglasses in the shape of stars
and floated in inner tubes
to feel the cool water
touching our bums,
our pink painted toes gliding across the surface.

In the big backyard of my childhood,
where the worst that could happen was a bee sting.
My mother lifted me from that little pool
into her warm toweled embrace.

Alexandra Ustach

Lindsay's Shoot with Yu Tsai

"The short film's models relive the reckless, drug and sex fueled relationship of Johnny Depp and Kate Moss in the 1990s."

Poem Written on a Napkin

Finally some time to sit and

think again,

time to contemplate the way of things.

I notice again, finally,

the gesture of a hand,

light's quiet glow,

the authority of words.

Months of held breath,

sick with decisions,

but thoughts, stunted--

the bird with clipped wings,

water surrounded by the concrete

walls of a pool.

And though there is now a certain loneliness,

I have more time

to grasp some things I missed.

As if all the thoughts now

are driftwood carved in to a dining room chair.

Alexandra Ustach

Rough Draft 12/15/09

O My Pa-Pa, by Bob Hicok

Our fathers have formed a poetry workshop.

They sit in a circle of disappointment over our fastballs

and wives. We thought they didn’t read our stuff,

whole anthologies of poems that begin, My father never,

or those that end, and he was silent as a carp,

or those with middles which, if you think

of the right side as a sketch, look like a paunch

of beer and worry, but secretly, with flashlights

in the woods, they’ve read every word and noticed

that our nine happy poems have balloons and sex

and giraffes inside, but not one dad waving hello

from the top of a hill at dusk. Theirs

is the revenge school of poetry, with titles like

“My Yellow Sheet Lad” and “Given Your Mother’s Taste

for Vodka, I’m Pretty Sure You’re Not Mine.”

They’re not trying to make the poems better

so much as sharper or louder, more like a fishhook

or electrocution, as a group

they overcome their individual senilities,

their complete distaste for language, how cloying

it is, how like tears it can be, and remember

every mention of their long hours at the office

or how tired they were when they came home,

when they were dragged through the door

by their shadows. I don’t know why it’s so hard

to write a simple and kind poem to my father, who worked,

not like a dog, dogs sleep most of the day in a ball

of wanting to chase something, but like a man, a man

with seven kids and a house to feed, whose absence

was his presence, his present, the Cheerios,

the PF Flyers, who taught me things about trees,

that they’re the most intricate version of standing up,

who built a grandfather clock with me so I would know

that time is a constructed thing, a passing, ticking fancy.

A bomb. A bomb that’ll go off soon for him, for me,

and I notice in our fathers’ poems a reciprocal dwelling

on absence, that they wonder why we disappeared

as soon as we got our licenses, why we wanted

the rocket cars, as if running away from them

to kiss girls who looked like mirrors of our mothers

wasn’t fast enough, and it turns out they did

start to say something, to form the words hey

or stay, but we’d turned into a door full of sun,

into the burning leave, and were gone

before it came to them that it was all right

to shout, that they should have knocked us down

with a hand on our shoulders, that they too are mystified

by the distance men need in their love.

Like Riding a Bicycle, By George Bilgere

I would like to write a poem


About how my father taught me 


To ride a bicycle one soft twilight,

A poem in which he was tired


And I was scared, unable to disbelieve


In gravity and believe in him,

As the fireflies were coming out


And only enough light remained


For one more run, his big hand at the small


Of my back, pulling away like the gantry


At a missile launch, and this time, this time


I wobbled into flight, caught a balance


I would never lose, and pulled away


From him as he eased, laughing, to a stop,

A poem in which I said that even today

As I make some perilous adult launch,

Like pulling away from my wife


Into the fragile new balance of our life


Apart, I can still feel that steadying hand,

Still hear that strong voice telling me

To embrace the sweet fall forward

Into the future's blue


Equilibrium. But,

Of course, he was drunk that night,

Still wearing his white shirt 


And tie from the office, the air around us


Sick with scotch, and the challenge


Was keeping his own balance


As he coaxed his bulk into a trot


Beside me in the hot night, sweat


Soaking his armpits, the eternal flame


Of his cigarette flaring as he gasped


And I fell, again and again, entangled


In my gleaming Schwinn, until


He swore and stomped off

Into the house to continue 


Working with my mother


On their own divorce, their balance


Long gone and the hard ground already


 Rising up to smite them


While I stayed outside in the dark,


Still falling, until at last I wobbled


Into the frail, upright delight


Of feeling sorry for myself, riding


Alone down the neighborhood's 


Black street like the lonely western hero

I still catch myself in the act 


Of performing.

And yet, having said all this,

I must also say that this summer evening


Is very beautiful, and I am older


Than my father ever was


As I coast the Pacific shoreline


On my old bike, the gears clicking


Like years, the wind


Touching me for the first time, it seems,

In a very long time, 


With soft urgency all over.

Days of the Depressed

He told me I was just a head in a bed.

One Liner

Alexandra Ustach

Me, You, Me You

click this link:

Me and You and Everyone We Know

No Matter Where We Go, by Henrik Nordbrandt

No matter where we go, we always arrive too late

to experience what we left to find.

And in whatever cities we stay

it is the houses where it is too late to return

the gardens where its too late to spend a moonlit night

and the women whom it's too late to love

that disturb us with their intangible presence.

And whatever streets we think we know

take us past the gardens we are searching for

whose heavy fragrance spreads throughout the neighborhood.

And whatever houses we return to

we arrive too late at night to be recognized.

And in whatever rivers we look for our reflections

we see ourselves only when we have turned our backs.

from The Vintage Book of Contemporary World Literature

Translated from the Danish by the author and Alexander Taylor

Little Ruth, by Yehuda Amichai

Sometimes I remember you, little Ruth,

We were separated in our distant childhood and they burned you in the camps.

If you were alive now, you would be a woman of sixty-five,

A woman on the verge of old age. At twenty you were burned

And I don't know what happened to you in your short life

Since we separated. What did you achieve, what insignia

Did they put on your shoulders, your sleeves, your

Brave soul, what shining stars

Did they pin on you, what decorations for valor, what

Medals for love hung around your neck,

What peace upon you, peace unto you.

And what happened to the unused years of your life?

Are they still packed away in pretty bundles,

Were they added to my life? Did you turn me

Into your bank of love like the banks in Switzerland

Where assets are preserved even after their owners are dead?

Will I leave all this to my children

Whom you never saw?

You gave your life to me, like a wine dealer

Who remains sober himself.

You sober in death, lucid in the dark

For me, drunk on life, wallowing in my forgetfulness.

Now and then, I remember you in times

Unbelievable. And in places not made for memory

But for the transient, the passing that does not remain.

As in an airport, when the arriving travelers

Stand tired at the revolving conveyor belt

That brings their suitcases and packages,

And they identify theirs with cries of joy

As at a resurrection and go out into their lives;

And there is one suitcase that returns and disappears again

And returns again, ever so slowly, in the empty hall,

Again and again it passes.

This is how your quiet figure passes by me,

This is how I remember you until

The conveyor belt stands still. And they stood still. Amen

from TheVintage Book of Contemporary World Poetry

Translated from the Hebrew by Benjamin Harshav and Barbara Harshav