Poem of the Day
Consecutive Preterite
By Jessica Laser
That summer I learned Biblical Hebrew / with Christian women heaving themselves / toward ministry one brick building at a time.
That summer I learned Biblical Hebrew / with Christian women heaving themselves / toward ministry one brick building at a time.
Out of lapis blue the face
rises
round and smiling like a bell.
Over, the kite’s flight; and of a sudden
is the realization of the morning overcome
by the echo of dark nights, silent witness
to the colorlessness crouching down before us.
Stealing time is what’s been happening all the time.
Is it because you’ve heard only your own cries,
fifty years earlier, too, as they went by, adulterated with death?
Or some shy, crumpled laughter carrying with it
the air of an unspoken but certain defeat?
I test the seasonal rains to see
if they construe how light matters.
Each evening as the clouds happen,
Once upon a time. Twice on her parents’ bed.
She freaked out when she found the human stain
In my hat I sit
in my cellar
waiting
The enemy’s late
The young girl is unable to change
The form of her habitual thinking,
The posture with which she corresponds to
She knew just about everyone and loved almost everyone,
including Stravinsky, and was greatly misunderstood.
She relived her life not from notes but from memory.
I speak of one whose triumph
is like his own despair
“a prison we all carry”;
his spirit eager for love
which is his only recognition.
I turn on the gas
heater to keep warm.
A long letter to Allen Midgette
who is living
in New York at the moment.
No word from Andy
or Paul. It’s Sunday
the day after the Anniversary of
the Victory of the War 1915-18.
Francesca home in bed with a head
cold. Peter is in
the bedroom asleep.
I’ll never forget the day I met
The author of Prufrock and his wife.
It wasn’t a big occasion,