10 Poems // January 10
new year, new poems
hello and welcome to 10 poems – a newsletter where I send 10 vibe-setting poems on the 10th of every month. that’s it, that’s the prompt! <3 fiona
1//
Living Instead // by William Bronk
Nothing much we can do about it so we live
the way old bones and fossils lived, the way
long-buried cities lived: we live instead
—just as if and even believing that here
and finally now, ours could be the real world.
2//
from Böhmen liegt am Meer // by Ingeborg Bachmann
Sind hier die Brücken heil, geh ich auf gutem Grund.
Ist Liebesmüh in alle Zeit verloren, verlier ich sie hier gern.
Bin ich's nicht, ist es einer, der ist so gut wie ich.
[translation]
If bridges here are sound, I will walk on safe ground.
If the labor of love must be wasted in any era, here I will waste it gladly.
If it’s not me, it’s someone who could be me.
3//
Phosphorescence // by Cynthia Cruz
Photographs of photographs and Polaroids
of stacks of books on fragments
and photographs and pamphlets
on letters sent and imminent
collisions. What the body does not know
it wants. And the mind.
In the song I wrote,
I said I wanted to be
like you, but then
I pulled back.
I am afraid most of the time
of my own intensity.
Not its kinesis, its brilliant light
and energy, but that it might
frighten you.
I have tried my whole life
to contain it, hold it
back. Make myself
into the perfect song,
the most contained
poem. But now I am
letting go of all that.
I have taken to photographing
my every moment
in an attempt to locate
the place where I lost myself.
When the body and the mind conflate
or, rather, when the body and language.
That is the moment I have been waiting for.
4//
Darling // by Sylvie Legris
Je fais ce que je peux.
Which is to say, midwinter
and poems are as difficult as flowers.
Roots are secrets, my heart
mulch-heavy—a flowering shrub
under leaves and leaves,
rotting beech and oak.
I do what I can, which is to say,
there is little going on aboveground.
5//
Song to be Spoken, Not Sung // by Joe Bolton
Say snow drifting through some small town at dusk,
And listen to the syllables die in your bare room
Like snow drifting through some small town at dusk.
Say Fall, rain! as the rain falls down on you
But know it would have fallen anyway.
Say this world and let it be enough, for once.
Say the drunk dancing in the middle of the intersection
At three in the morning didn’t have to go on
Turning green, then yellow, then red, then green again.
Say you didn’t have to feel the one you love
Grow distant in the parentheses of your arms.
Say this life and let it be enough, for once.
6//
Catch a Body // by Ilse Bendorf
Salinger, I’m sorry, but “Don’t ever tell
anybody anything” is a string of words
I would like to wrap up in canvas and sink
to the bottom of the Hudson, or extract
by laser from the ribcage of all of us
who ever believed it, who felt afraid
to miss someone, to be the last one
standing. “Tell everyone everything” is
not exactly right, but I do believe that if
your mother looks radiant in violet
you should tell her, or when a juvenile
sparrow thrashes its wings in dustpiles
and reminds you of a lover’s eyelashes,
you should say so. We are islands all of us,
but we are also boats, our secrets flares,
pyrotechnic devices by which we signal
there’s someone in here we’re still alive!
So maybe it’s, “don’t be afraid.” We can
rewrite Icarus, flame-resistant feathers,
wax that won’t melt, I mean it, I’ll draw up|
a prototype right now, that burning ball
of orange won’t stop us, it’ll be everything
we dream the morning after, even if we fall
into the sea—we are boats, remember?
We are pirates. We move in nautical miles.
Each other’s anchors, each other’s buoys,
the rocket’s red, already the world entire.
7//
from Heliocentric // by Keith S Wilson
I’m saying I can’t say
when I’ll return. Remember me, for here are
dragons and the noble songs of sirens.
Stars that sway
elysian. Ships that will not moor, lovers
who are filled with blood and nothing
more. Who could love you
like this? Who else will sew you in the stars?
Who better knows your gravity and goes
otherwise, to catastrophe?
I’ve schemed and promised
to bring you back a ring
from Saturn. But a week passes, or doesn’t
manage. Everything steers impossible
against the boundless curb of light.
Believe I tried
for you. Against space. Time
takes almost everything
away. To you. For you.
A toast to the incredible. I almost wish
I’d never seen the sky
when always there was you. Sincerely,
8//
Everything is Going to be All Right // by Derek Mahon
How should I not be glad to contemplate
the clouds clearing beyond the dormer window
and a high tide reflected on the ceiling?
There will be dying, there will be dying,
but there is no need to go into that.
The poems flow from the hand unbidden
and the hidden source is the watchful heart.
The sun rises in spite of everything
and the far cities are beautiful and bright.
I lie here in a riot of sunlight
watching the day break and the clouds flying.
Everything is going to be all right.
9//
from The Sycamore // by Wendell Berry
There is no year it has flourished in
that has not harmed it. There is a hollow in it
that is its death, though its living brims whitely
at the lip of the darkness and flows outward.
10//
from January Drought // by Conor O'Callaghan
I have reservoirs of want enough
to freeze many nights over.