Poems thread

I also like this:

Wading Out

We're crossing an open field, sweating in December's heat,
with First Squad covering from the brush to our left;
and I could be shot dead by a sniper, easily, this
could be the ground where I bleed out in ninety seconds,
but it won't be. There's a patch of still water
I'm about to walk into as I always do,
with too much adrenaline and momentum in my stride,
as my boots sink ankle deep and still I slog forward,
M4 held up over my head, though Fiorillo
sinks up to his knees off to my right—he backs up,
makes it out of the septic runoff I'm up to my thighs in,
the stench filling my nostrils now, and it's funny enough
to laugh at once the mission's over, Turner running in to swim,
but no one's laughing anymore and the months are turning
into years gone by and still I'm down there slogging
deeper into the shit, shoulder deep, my old platoon
with another year of bullets and mortars and missions
dragging them further in, my lieutenant so far down
I can't reach him anymore, my squad leader hunting
for the souls that would mark him and drag him under
completely, better than any bottle of whiskey,
and I keep telling myself that if I walk far enough
or long enough someday I'll walk out on the other side.
But will Jax and Bosch and my lieutenant make it out, too?
If one day we find ourselves poolside in California,
the day as bright as this one, how will we hose ourselves off
to remove the stench, standing around a barbecue
talking football—how will we do that?

Brian Turner

Edited to add the poet's name

That doesn't rhyme either.

Gecko

Blessed be the morning
of childhood when
I found myself
sister to the gecko
acrobat.
On the wall of the room
utterly at ease
just like me
tumbler
on the edge of the planet.

Astrid Cabral

Navajo Windtalkers speak your name in reverent tones.

I'll try to take that personally; thanks.

A Flow of Army Ants

They came.
No one knew from where.
Legions and legions:
minuscule steps
minute blades. . .
They came without warning
like so many other cataclysms.
Cunning in the pitch-black night
they came to disembowel Surinam cherries
and strip bare the mango trees.
They came in a rage,
slow but treacherous.
The muffled sound
of the crunching of the stalks
came to us beneath our sheets.
With the trembling of the leaves
there also came to me
my fear of their scissors
cutting my nails and body hair
eyelashes eyebrows my very curls
my nightgown lacework, all snipped to bits.
I could see myself in little pieces
dragged off by force by that
crackling, greenish flow,
crawling down the drowned backyard
on my way to the frying pan of the ants
hidden in the realms of hell.

Astrid Cabral

Salon

She sat before a "hair technician" who talked with his hands, that is,
he wasn't paying attention to her hair, which he parted and sheaved
and tied into a dozen tiny bundles.

To discourage deer or other animals, scatter hair around your garden.

Imagine her scalp sowed with rice seedlings, blonde shoots
shaped like Ys, bound with purple rubber bands.

Worse than a hair in your soup, is a long one pulled
from a bite of meat.

She was polite, though the man wasn't worth it, and foul water
stirred under her "nice" membrane.

Hair is an outgrowth of dead skin, keratins, proteins, chains
of amino acids also found in hooves, feathers, teeth.

It was her first dance, first date, first time she had her hair done.
She stood in the shower, distraught, ripping out the little plants.

That it continues to grow after death is a myth.

She thought she would die, would rather be dead than dance
with such hair.

It is true when a girl sinks, her hair spreads like a flower
across water, the last of her to go under.

--by Sarah Gorham

I like "Salon" because it reminds me of being 14 and getting ready to go to a formal school dance; my mom tried to help me do something fancy with my hair, but I was stressed out about looking good enough, and wasn't satisfied with anything. I had chosen a very modestly-cut dress, and suddenly realized how out of place I'd look with my peers. I hoped my date wouldn't be disappointed. Anyway, dashing Phil danced with me-- Phil with his saucily flipped green tie, sparkling eyes and ruddy youthful countenance.

What an odd poem. Strangely compelling, and I hate poetry.