Poem of the Day
The Channel
By Jana Prikryl
Humans are the animals
with speech who let all of his manuscripts
go poof.
Humans are the animals
with speech who let all of his manuscripts
go poof.
I take the dusty yearbook off the shelf
and scan the fledgling, mostly white, male faces:
a foreign country, but the aging self
I tried, and each attempt was a fiasco.
I yearned, but every love of mine was wrong.
I needed, and the shame was overwhelming.
The Museum of Modern Art isn’t hungry
Each wall is perfection
Leger says hello to Picasso
Today I wished without mercy
in the bloodless nations of the mind
that a city had gone down with you
A platter of walnuts, I think.
Shanghai and the banquet is festive.
Strong Chinese brandy and “Campi!”
He gave me a spruce lap desk
for writing in bed that Christmas.
It was rubbed into fragrance with oil of almond
With a great scuffle,
the meeting adjourned.
Calm turned to storm.
She sweated, sweated and swore.
She predicted a total eclipse
as if it were replenishing shade.
Loving that man was a way of hating God:
useless, and no sense of privacy.
The fates fell, like cats tumbling
Reading? Morning.
Reading morning and a sky like the olive.
Reading the morning in sandals sifting through soot.