"One Art" by Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster. 

Susan Hertel

"Portrait of My Nose" by Mohammed El-Kurd

               Arrogant with height.
One nose away from clouds.

I have my grandmother's

and in the knot, tangled

a homesickness

for people generous with

      nose.

My grandmother's is beautiful; mine is

one nose away from beauty,

one         away from Anglo-Saxon.

I have my grandmother's

and my grandmother had pride

favored functionality

she was never a

       nose away from anything

       but jasmines.

Nabil Anani

"My Father's Nest" by Dunya Mikhail

Today four little robins
left the nest and flew away.
I turn time to a month ago
and see their nest growing
over my home’s lamp
stick by stick
beat by beat
song by song.
I turn to yesterday
and see their sunlit wings
lifting from the nest
leaving shadows with open beaks.
Today I missed them
as I did my father
when he left us and never returned.
Death didn’t give him a chance to get older.
I’ve passed his age.
He didn’t even finish the story he told me
about the orphan child
who walked on Earth
looking up at the sky
because he heard the dead live there.
He saw their faces in the clouds
and when he cried
the clouds rained with him.
I turn time back
so my father brings me toys
to share with the neighborhood girls
pausing that moment
while time takes the shape of a robin
who doesn’t seem to hear my calling behind. 

Louis Fratino

"American Sonnet for My Past and Future Assassin [“Why are you bugging me you stank minuscule husk”]" by Terrance Hayes

Why are you bugging me you stank minuscule husk
Of musk, muster & deliberation crawling over reasons
And possessions I have & have not touched?
Should I fail in my insecticide, I pray for a black boy
Who lifts you to a flame with bedeviled tweezers
Until mercy rises & disappears. You are the size
Of a stuttering drop of liquid — milk, machine oil,
Semen, blood. Yes, you funky stud, you are the jewel
In the knob of an elegant butt plug, snug between
Pleasure & disgust. You are the scent of rot at the heart
Of lovemaking. The meat inside your exoskeleton
Is as tender as Jesus. Neruda wrote of “a nipple
Perfuming the earth.” Yes, you are an odor, an almost
Imperceptible ode to death, a lousy, stinking stinkbug.

Tamagawa Sakura

"Green Mountain" by Li Po

If you were to ask me why I dwell among green mountains,

I should laugh silently; my soul is serene.

The peach blossom follows the moving water;

There is another heaven and earth beyond the world of men.

Wang Hui

"The Farmer" by W.D. Ehrhart

 

Each day I go into the fields
to see what is growing
and what remains to be done.
It is always the same thing: nothing
is growing, everything needs to be done.
Plow, harrow, disc, water, pray
till my bones ache and hands rub
blood-raw with honest labor—
all that grows is the slow
intransigent intensity of need.
I have sown my seed on soil
guaranteed by poverty to fail.
But I don’t complain—except
to passersby who ask me why
I work such barren earth.
They would not understand me
if I stooped to lift a rock
and hold it like a child, or laughed,
or told them it is their poverty
I labor to relieve. For them,
I complain. A farmer of dreams
knows how to pretend. A farmer of dreams
knows what it means to be patient.
Each day I go into the fields.

Vincent van Gogh

"The First Snowfall" by James Russell Lowell

 

The snow had begun in the gloaming,

And busily all night

Had been heaping field and highway

With a silence deep and white.

Every pine and fir and hemlock

Wore ermine too dear for an earl,

And the poorest twig on the elm-tree

Was ridged inch deep with pearl.

From sheds new-roofed with Carrara

Came Chanticleer's muffled crow,

The stiff rails softened to swan's-down,

And still fluttered down the snow.

I stood and watched by the window

The noiseless work of the sky,

And the sudden flurries of snowbirds,

Like brown leaves whirling by.

I thought of a mound in sweet Auburn

Where a little headstone stood;

How the flakes were folding it gently,

As did robins the babes in the wood.

Up spoke our own little Mabel,

Saying, "Father, who makes it snow?"

And I told of the good All-Father

Who cares for us here below.

Again I looked at the snow-fall,

And thought of the leaden sky

That arched o'er our first great sorrow,

When that mound was heaped so high.

I remembered the gradual patience

That fell from that cloud like snow,

Flake by flake, healing and hiding

The scar that renewed our woe.

And again to the child I whispered,

"The snow that husheth all,

Darling, the merciful Father

Alone can make it fall!"

Then, with eyes that saw not, I kissed her:

And she, kissing back, could not know

That my kiss was given to her sister,

Folded close under deepening snow.

Peter Rotter