Quite Excellent

Autumn
Kalidasa

The autumn comes, a maiden fair
In slenderness and grace,
With nodding rice-stems in her hair
And lilies in her face.
In flowers of grasses she is clad;
And as she moves along,
Birds greet her with their cooing glad
Like bracelets' tinkling song.

A diadem adorns the night
Of multitudinous stars;
Her silken robe is white moonlight,
Set free from cloudy bars;
And on her face (the radiant moon)
Bewitching smiles are shown:
She seems a slender maid, who soon
Will be a woman grown.

Over the rice-fields, laden plants
Are shivering to the breeze;
While in his brisk caresses dance
The blossomed-burdened trees;
He ruffles every lily-pond
Where blossoms kiss and part,
And stirs with lover's fancies fond
The young man's eager heart.

Did I Miss Anything
Tom Wayman

Nothing. When we realized you weren’t here
we sat with our hands folded on our desks
in silence, for the full two hours

Everything. I gave an exam worth
40 percent of the grade for this term
and assigned some reading due today
on which I’m about to hand out a quiz
worth 50 percent

Nothing. None of the content of this course
has value or meaning
Take as many days off as you like:
any activities we undertake as a class
I assure you will not matter either to you or me
and are without purpose

Everything. A few minutes after we began last time
a shaft of light suddenly descended and an angel
or other heavenly being appeared
and revealed to us what each woman or man must do
to attain divine wisdom in this life and
the hereafter
This is the last time the class will meet
before we disperse to bring the good news to all people on earth.

Nothing. When you are not present
how could something significant occur?

Everything. Contained in this classroom
is a microcosm of human experience
assembled for you to query and examine and ponder
This is not the only place such an opportunity has been gathered

but it was one place

And you weren’t here

Does Maude Have Friends? (A Poem in Fifteen Tweets)
Raphael Bob-Waksberg

@RaphaelBW
 Does Marge have friends?

@RaphaelBW
 (a poem in fifteen tweets)

@RaphaelBW
 Who are Marge’s friends? Is Helen Lovejoy a friend? Sarah Wiggum? Agnes Skinner?

@RaphaelBW
 To whom does Marge spill her secrets over coffee on cold days? Who laughs at Marge’s jokes? Who knows Marge, truly and well?

@RaphaelBW
 Who tells Marge to leave the brute, knowing she won’t? “You don’t have to stay. You deserve so much more.”

@RaphaelBW
 Who, on a morning walk, sees a tall blue bush, texts a photo to Marge, “this made me think of you”? Surely not Lenny, or Kirk or Luann.

@RaphaelBW
 Did Marge mourn for Maude Flanders? Late nights, at the kitchen table, staring at her own hands. Is she haunted still by her absence?

@RaphaelBW
 Does she see in her late neighbor a cautionary tale? Seldom-remembered, semi-anonymous Maude — could this fate too befall Marge?

@RaphaelBW
 Perhaps, once at a summer barbecue, when both were still alive, Maude grabbed Marge’s hand under the table and held tight.

@RaphaelBW
 What prompted this sudden connection, this sudden expression of— what was it, warmth?

@RaphaelBW
 The two weren’t close— acquaintances, sure, had they ever even hugged?

@RaphaelBW
And yet here they were, holding hands, silently, secretly, while their children shrieked and their husbands grilled the hot dogs.

@RaphaelBW
One night, Marge couldn’t sleep, the linens, hung to dry in the yard, flapping in the wind with unprecedented accent.

@RaphaelBW
Marge wandered into the night, a fleck of yellow in a blanket of white stars, and she felt, as she often did, alone.

@RaphaelBW
 Marge felt the sharp grass on her feet, the breeze on her face. Over the fence she saw Maude, pale as a sheet, her eyes wet with tears.

@RaphaelBW
 Marge looked to her— “Maude?” and Maude shook her head.

@RaphaelBW
And Maude whispered this: “It’s not the calm before the storm that frightens me. It’s the calm that follows.”

We Wear the Mask
Paul Laurence Dunbar

We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
       We wear the mask.

We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
       We wear the mask!

A Good Dog
Wesley Lydon

Tail-wagging and leash-pulling as
we lead her into her new home, let loose
she runs from the front door, runs fast
not about the house, wild, but out
into the back. Excitement paused for manners,
she uses the little dog's room that first sweet day, because
She is a Good Dog.

Tail-wagging, window-fogging as
we bring Santa's snow for wishing children,
she's in my lap inside the truck,
eager to breath the frozen air.
But the window is up, repelling the cold,
so she just follows passing lights that cut the pitch, because
She is a Good Dog.

Tail-wagging and gums-bleeding as
we survey: the crumpled garage door seams,
bent from climbing paws, anxious teeth;
the house door, licked soft and dug through;
the door knob, dimpled from teeth that turned, opened.
Even bloody, stump-toothed, she's smiling-glad we're home, because
She is a Good Dog.

Tail-wagging and mouth-agape as
she tries and fails to catch a soft- tossed treat,
always trying, always missing.
Sniffing out the lost treat, crunching,
lapping up the pieces with her great pink tongue.
I clap the thick bassy drum of her sturdy ribs because
She is a Good Dog

Tail-wagging and fur-kneaded as
the baby, clambering, pulls ears, rolls down
her haunch. Grayed white tuffs are loosed, thrown.
Baby stumbles over her brown-
freckled face, poking at her patient, kind eyes;
she groans, rolls to expose her belly for scratching, because
She is a Good Dog.

I clap her hollow ribs,
Feel the bones, the spine. Her slow steps
are less steady. We coax
her to eat, and she does,
mostly. She hears less or is more in-
different. But she still comes when I call because
She is a Good Dog.

She sees waiting dogs and
leash-pulls, strong again one moment.
But her tail remains limp.
Lying, calm, the cruel-kind
pink syringe drains and she breaths deep, rests
her head, heavy, on my lap. I knead her because
She was my Good Dog.

The Wounded Cupid. Song
BY ANACREON
TRANSLATED BY ROBERT HERRICK

Cupid as he lay among
Roses, by a Bee was stung. 
Whereupon in anger flying
To his Mother, said thus crying; 
Help! O help! your Boy’s a dying. 
And why, my pretty Lad, said she? 
Then blubbering, replied he, 
A winged Snake has bitten me, 
Which Country people call a Bee. 
At which she smil’d; then with her hairs
And kisses drying up his tears: 
Alas! said she, my Wag! if this
Such a pernicious torment is: 
Come tell me then, how great’s the smart
Of those, thou woundest with thy Dart!

Cape Cod Pantoum
Maria Nazos

Tonight you’re loaning Billy your car, a brand-new
seal-gray Volkswagen Passat with four doors,
though last week at 3 a.m., he stole your canoe,
and sank it in the autumn sea, then swam ashore.

Tonight you’re lending Billy your car—it’s brand-new—
and he’s a well-meaning, blue-eyed Byronic drinking man
who last week, at 3 a.m., stole your beached canoe,
and when it sank he blamed it on a dolphin.

A well-meaning, blue-eyed, Byronic, hard-drinking man
whose phone calls you take, no matter the hour,
who sank your canoe and blamed it on a dolphin,
and the young man with him, whom the sea sadly devoured,

so you’ll always take Billy’s call, no matter the hour.
Because, you sigh, his mother’s dying, too, and he’s drinking again.
He’s no longer a young man (he’s sad and he’s drowning),
and neither are you, and all friends sometimes sin.

Besides, you sigh, his mother’s dying, too, that’s why he’s drinking.
She wasn’t a beauty—she came on to you long ago.
And he’s not a young man; he’s drunk and he’s drowning.
So you press the phone to your cheek, stare out the dark window.

Who hasn’t come on to you? (Who wasn’t lovely long ago?)
(Even Billy did; his tragic need, his blank blue eyes.)
You press the phone to cheek, stare out the dark window,
and listen to him make a mess of our peaceful lives.

Now back in bed, we return to our disrupted romance.
Although last week, at 3 a.m., he stole your canoe,
you set a sinking man adrift in the sea of second chance:
tonight you’ve loaned Billy your car again, brand-new.
 

Your body wakes
into its quiet rattle.
Ropes & ropes . . . 
How quickly the animal
empties.
We’re alone again
with spent mouths. 
Two trout gasping
on a June shore.
Side by side, I see
what I came for, behind
your iris: a tiny mirror.
I stare
into its silver syllable
where a fish with my face
twitches once
then gones. 

The fisherman
suddenly a boy
with too much to carry.

Leisure
William Henry Davies

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.

No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this is if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
 

On My Daughter’s Twentieth Minute
Putting on a Sock Before School
Wesley Lydon

The red-blocked digits on the microwave
have paused until, at twenty past, I have
made a sandwich, sliced diagonally, 
and carrots, with ranch, each cut carefully  
to exactly neither-too-big-nor-small, 
and a fruit… cup, I suppose, for the ease
it offers, an iced water, and a treat
to show I’d ever thought of her at all.

I am sure we could be the poetry, 
portrait, idyllic domesticity
in relief of smiling, loving mother,
of fathers, grandparents, other further
relations hand in hand with small children
beneath maudlinisms in quirky type
proclaiming a great Hallmarkian-like
love, thankful-like love, that kids are stilled in.

Instead, I am cautiously balancing
on a tightrope noosed around urgency
at one end and pulled taught at the other
by the need to instruct, model for her
composure and steadfastness and unflapp-
ability and poise and temperance
and a real cool-as-a-cucumberness
that ensures that we bend but never snap.

Meanwhile, in the enforced periphery,
apoplectically flailing flurry
of pantomime and nasal, shotgun grunts
that is my daughter, she aligns and mis-
aligns the toe-seam atop her toe-tips, 
pulls it on, up, down, up, under, over,
accordion-from-a-ventilator
in essentialness: life, death if it fits.

Remember that you love her. You love her.
For her hugs in the early morning blur,
for stick drawings and rock, leaf, and bug gifts,
for “goodnight mom” and “huggy please” and this
feeling - she's struggling, too, with all of it.
Remember that when she is gone to school
you don’t feel in love or warmth half as full
as when she holds your hand and kisses it.
 

Death

Once he will miss, twice he will miss,
  He only chooses one of many hours;
For him nor deep nor hill there is,
  But all’s one level plain he hunts for flowers.