Fig from Thistles: First Fig
EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY
My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—
It gives a lovely light!
Sonnet IV
BY EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY
FROM “FOUR SONNETS”
IV
I shall forget you presently, my dear, So make the most of this, your little day, Your little month, your little half a year, Ere I forget, or die, or move away, And we are done forever; by and by I shall forget you, as I said, but now, If you entreat me with your loveliest lie I will protest you with my favorite vow.
I would indeed that love were longer-lived, And vows were not so brittle as they are, But so it is, and nature has contrived
To struggle on without a break thus far, — Whether or not we find what we are seeking Is idle, biologically speaking.
Ave Maria
FRANK O’HARA
Mothers of America
let your kids go to the movies!
get them out of the house so they won’t know what you’re up to it’s true that fresh air is good for the body
but what about the soul that grows in darkness, embossed by silvery images
and when you grow old as grow old you must
they won’t hate you they won’t criticize you they won’t know
glamorous country
they’ll be in some they first saw on a Saturday afternoon or playing hookey
they may even be grateful to you
for their first sexual experience which only cost you a quarter
and didn’t upset the peaceful home they will know where candy bars come from
and gratuitous bags of popcorn
as gratuitous as leaving the movie before it’s over
with a pleasant stranger whose apartment is in the Heaven on Earth Bldg
near the Williamsburg Bridge
oh mothers you will have made the little tykes
so happy because if nobody does pick them up in the movies they won’t know the difference
and if somebody does it’ll be sheer gravy
and they’ll have been truly entertained either way instead of hanging around the yard
or up in their room
hating you
prematurely since you won’t have done anything horribly mean yet except keeping them from the darker joys
it’s unforgivable the latter so don’t blame me if you won’t take this advice
and the family breaks up
and your children grow old and blind in front of a TV set seeing movies you wouldn’t let them see when they were young
a song in the front yard
GWENDOLYN BROOKS
I’ve stayed in the front yard all my life.
I want a peek at the back
Where it’s rough and untended and hungry weed grows.
A girl gets sick of a rose.
I want to go in the back yard now And maybe down the alley,
To where the charity children play.
I want a good time today.
They do some wonderful things.
They have some wonderful fun.
My mother sneers, but I say it’s fine
How they don’t have to go in at quarter to nine.
My mother, she tells me that Johnnie Mae Will grow up to be a bad woman.
That George’ll be taken to Jail soon or late
(On account of last winter he sold our back gate).
But I say it’s fine. Honest, I do.
And I’d like to be a bad woman, too,
And wear the brave stockings of night-black lace And strut down the streets with paint on my face.
Dusting
RITA DOVE
Every day a wilderness—no shade in sight. Beulah
patient among knicknacks, the solarium a rage
of light, a grainstorm as her gray cloth brings dark wood to life.
Under her hand scrolls and crests gleam
darker still. What was his name, that silly boy at the fair with
the rifle booth? And his kiss and the clear bowl with one bright fish, rippling
wound!
Not Michael—
something finer. Each dust stroke a deep breath and the canary in bloom.
Wavery memory: home from a dance, the front door
blown open and the parlor in snow, she rushed
the bowl to the stove, watched as the locket of ice
dissolved and he swam free.
That was years before Father gave her up
with her name, years before her name grew to mean Promise, then
Desert-in-Peace.
Long before the shadow and sun’s accomplice, the tree.
Maurice.
This Your Home Now
MARK DOTY
For years I went to the Peruvian barbers on 18th Street
—comforting, welcome: the full coatrack, three chairs held by three barbers,
oldest by the window, the middle one
a slight fellow who spoke an oddly feminine Spanish, the youngest last, red-haired, self-consciously masculine,
and in each of the mirrors their children’s photos, smutty cartoons, postcards from Machu Picchu.
I was happy in any chair, though I liked best
the touch of the eldest, who’d rest his hand against my neck in a thoughtless, confident way.
Ten years maybe. One day the powdery blue
steel shutters pulled down over the window and door, not to be raised again. They’d lost their lease.
I didn’t know how at a loss I’d feel;
this haze around what I’d like to think the sculptural presence of my skull requires neither art nor science,
but two haircuts on Seventh, one in Dublin, nothing right.
Then (I hear my friend Marie laughing over my shoulder, saying In your poems
there’s always a then, and I think, Is it a poem without a then?) dull early winter, back on 18th,
upspiraling red in a cylinder of glass, just below the line
of sidewalk, a new sign, WILLIE’S BARBERSHOP.
Dark hallway, glass door, and there’s (presumably) Willie.
When I tell him I used to go down the street
he says in an inscrutable accent, This your home now,
puts me in a chair, asks me what I want and soon he’s clipping and singing with the radio’s Latin dance tune.
That’s when I notice Willie’s walls,
though he’s been here all of a week, spangled with images hung in barber shops since the beginning of time:
lounge singers, near-celebrities, random boxers
—Italian boys, Puerto Rican, caught in the hour of their beauty, though they’d scowl at the word.
Cheering victors over a trophy won for what?
Frames already dusty, at slight angles, here, it is clear, forever. Are barbershops
like aspens, each sprung from a common root ten thousand years old, sons of one father,
holding up fighters and starlets to shield the tenderness
at their hearts? Our guardian Willie defies time,
his chair our ferryboat, and we go down into the trance of touch and the skull-buzz drone
singing cranial nerves in the direction of peace, and so I understand that in the back
of this nothing building on 18th Street
—I’ve found that door
ajar before, in daylight, when it shouldn’t be,
some forgotten bulb left burning in a fathomless shaft of my uncharted nights—
the men I have outlived
await their turns, the fevered and wasted, whose mothers and lovers scattered their ashes and gave away their clothes.
Twenty years and their names tumble into a numb well
—though in truth I have not forgotten one of you, may I never forget one of you—these layers of men, arrayed in their no-longer-breathing ranks.
Willie, I have not lived well in my grief for them;
I have lugged this weight from place to place as though it were mine to account for,
and today I sit in your good chair, in the sixth decade of my life, and if your back door is a threshold
of the kingdom of the lost, yours is a steady hand
on my shoulder. Go down into the still waters
of this chair and come up refreshed, ready to face the avenue.
Maybe I do believe we will not be left comfortless.
After everything comes tumbling down or you tear it down and stumble in the shadow-valley trenches of the moon, there’s a still a decent chance at—a barber shop,
salsa on the radio, the instruments of renewal wielded, effortlessly, and, who’d have thought, for you.
Willie if he is Willie fusses much longer over my head
than my head merits, which allows me to be grateful without qualification. Could I be a little satisfied?
There’s a man who loves me. Our dogs. Fifteen,
twenty more good years, if I’m a bit careful.
There’s what I haven’t written. It’s sunny out, though cold. After I tip Willie
I’m going down to Jane Street, to a coffee shop I like, and then I’m going to write this poem. Then
We Real Cool
GWENDOLYN BROOKS
The Pool Players.
Seven at the Golden Shovel.
We real cool. We Left school. We
Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We
Sing sin. We Thin gin. We Jazz June. We Die soon.
N.Y. State of Mind
NAS
[Intro]
Yeah, yeah
Ayo, Black—it's time, word (Word, it's time, man) It's time, man (Aight, man, begin)
Yeah—straight out the fuckin' dungeons of rap Where fake niggas don't make it back
I don't know how to start this shit, yo—now;
[Verse 1]
Rappers; I monkey flip 'em with the funky rhythm I be kickin' Musician, inflictin' composition, of pain
I'm like Scarface sniffin' cocaine
Holdin' an M16, see, with the pen I'm extreme Now, bullet holes left in my peepholes
I'm suited up in street clothes, hand me a 9 and I'll defeat foes Y'all know my steelo, with or without the airplay
I keep some E&J, sittin' bent up in the stairway
Or either on the corner bettin' Grants with the cee-lo champs Laughin' at base-heads, tryna sell some broken amps
G-packs get off quick, forever niggas talk shit
Reminiscin' about the last time the task force flipped Niggas be runnin' through the block shootin'
Time to start the revolution, catch a body, head for Houston Once they caught us off-guard, the MAC-10 was in the grass, and
I ran like a cheetah, with thoughts of an assassin
Picked the MAC up, told brothers "Back up!" — the MAC spit Lead was hittin' niggas, one ran, I made him back-flip
Heard a few chicks scream, my arm shook, couldn't look Gave another squeeze, heard it click, "Yo, my shit is stuck!"
Tried to cock it, it wouldn't shoot, now I'm in danger Finally pulled it back
And saw three bullets caught up in the chamber So, now I'm jettin' through the buildin' lobby
And it was full of children, prob'ly couldn't see as high as I be (So, what you sayin'?)
It's like the game ain't the same
Got younger niggas pullin' the triggers, bringin' fame to their name And claim some corners, crews without guns are goners
In broad daylight, stick-up kids, they run up on us .45’s and gauges, MAC's in fact
Same niggas will catch you back-to-back, snatchin' your cracks And black, there was a snitch on the block gettin' niggas knocked So hold your stash 'til the coke price drop
I know this crackhead who said she got to smoke nice rock And if it's good, she'll bring you customers and measuring pots But yo, you gotta slide on a vacation
Inside information keeps large niggas erasin' and their wives basin' It drops deep as it does in my breath
I never sleep, 'cause sleep is the cousin of death Beyond the walls of intelligence, life is defined
I think of crime when I'm in the New York State of Mind
[Chorus]
New York state of mind New York state of mind New York state of mind New York state of mind
[Verse 2]
Be havin' dreams that I'm a gangsta, drinkin' Moëts,holdin' TEC's Makin' sure the cash came correct, then I stepped
Investments in stocks, sewin' up the blocks to sell rocks Winnin' gunfights with mega-cops
But just a nigga walkin' with his finger on the trigger Make enough figures until my pockets get bigger
I ain't the type of brother made for you to start testin' Give me a Smith & Wesson, I'll have niggas undressin' Thinkin' of cash flow, Buddha and shelter
Whenever frustrated, I'mma hijack Delta
In the PJ's, my blend tape plays, bullets are strays Young bitches is grazed, each block is like a maze Full of black rats trapped, plus the Island is packed
From what I hear in all the stories when my peoples come back Black, I'm livin' where the nights is jet-black
The fiends fight to get crack, I just max, I dream I can sit back And lamp like Capone, with drug scripts sewn
Or the legal luxury life, rings flooded with stones, homes I got so many rhymes, I don't think I'm too sane
Life is parallel to Hell, but I must maintain And be prosperous, though we live dangerous
Cops could just arrest me, blamin' us; we're held like hostages
It's only right that I was born to use mics
And the stuff that I write is even tougher than dykes I'm takin' rappers to a new plateau, through rap slow My rhymin' is a vitamin held without a capsule
The smooth criminal on beat breaks
Never put me in your box if your shit eats tapes The city never sleeps, full of villains and creeps
That's where I learned to do my hustle, had to scuffle with freaks I'm a addict for sneakers, 20's of Buddha and bitches with beepers In the streets I can greet ya, about blunts I teach ya
Inhale deep like the words of my breath
I never sleep, 'cause sleep is the cousin of death I lay puzzled as I backtrack to earlier times
Nothing's equivalent to the New York state of mind
[Chorus]
New York state of mind New York state of mind New York state of mind New York state of mind
Sonnet for the Garlic Clove Inside Me
OLIVIA GATWOOD
Yesterday I groveled in the bathroom, broke a nail against my denim crotch,
squirmed in line, twisted knees at the grocery store, dug up a buck to buy a bulb of you,
come evening you were in my bathroom, then skinned knuckle caught in the quarter machine plucked, peeled, and wedged into the copper mine you small burn, you small baker, kneading bread in a dark, damp room, working overtime.
Sam says, The taste will make its way to your mouth by morning, and that’s how you know it worked, and when I fish you out with my whole hand
you take the thick poison with you, martyr lily, saint of soil, sear me clean again.
