Poetry – Page 102 – As It Ought To Be

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: VALENTINA GNUP

Posted on June 22, 2013 by asitoughttobemagazine

WE SPEAK OF AUGUST
By Valentina Gnup

Alone in my kitchen, I copy
a chicken salad recipe from a Woman’s Day magazine
and plan tomorrow night’s dinner.

We don’t know what will happen
between one raindrop and the next,
yet we speak of August as if it were a contract,
a promise the sky made.

When I was twenty-five I married a drummer
and silenced him with disapproval.

Now I’m married to a poet—
he reads poems on the porch
and pets my head like a puppy.

My daughters grew tall as honeysuckle and left—
they took their soft skin, their buttermilk biscuit smell,
the endless hungers that organized my days.

My domain has shrunk to the narrow bone of my ankle.

I did what was asked.
I did what I feared.
Like every woman I have ever known,
I became my mother.

I stroll through the rows of houses and yards;
above me a skein of geese break in and out of formation—
fluid as laundry on a line.

Other women are out walking their dogs,
murmuring to the mothers inside their heads.

In the eastern sky the first star is out,
preparing for the long night of wishes.

At dusk every flower looks blue.

(Today’s poem originally appeared in Rattle , where it was given a Rattle Poetry Prize Honorable Mention in 2010, and appears here today with permission from the poet.)

Valentina Gnup has her MFA in creative writing from Antioch University Los Angeles. She is the winner of the Joy Harjo Poetry Prize from Cutthroat journal of the Arts and the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s Barbara Mandigo Kelly Peace Poetry Prize. In 2005 her chapbook Sparrow Octaves won the North Carolina Writers’ Network Mary Belle Campbell Book Publication Award. Her poems have appeared in the Hiram Poetry Review, Nimrod, Chelsea, Brooklyn Review, Crab Orchard Review and many others. She and her husband live in Portland, Oregon.

Editor’s Note: Today’s poem could be about regret or acceptance. It could be about rites of passage or about the inevitability of the cycle of life. The young woman makes mistakes. The experienced woman knows what it is to have made compromises, to have made sacrifices, to bend with the wind, and to become her mother. There is a nostalgia inherent in today’s piece; a longing not for the past, but a bittersweet looking both forward and back. Gnup’s startlingly honest reflection is paired with beautifully-wrought moments of language and imagery that heighten the joy and pain of a lived life.

Want to read more by and about Valentina Gnup?
The Best American Poetry
Nuclear Age Peace Foundation / wagingpeace.org
the-green-heart call

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: LEIGH PHILLIPS

Posted on June 15, 2013 by asitoughttobemagazine

DEAR NEW YORK CITY, LEARN GENTLE
By Leigh Phillips

The sky regrets itself. By sky, I mean me.
Don’t let yourself get lost
because you think someone’s going to find
you. The story goes: no one’s

going to find you. You’re going to be on the
highway sifting Mountain Dew
bottles full of trucker crank piss and trading
them to eye‑wild tweakers

for a ticket back to tender. You are what is
tender. By you, I mean me.
The song goes: Heart. Ribcage. Envelope.
Heart. Ribcage. Envelope.

(Today’s poem originally appeared in Thrush and appears here today with permission from the poet.)

Leigh Phillips is an Assistant Professor of English at Hostos Community College with the City University of New York. Her stories, memoirs, poems and criticism most recently appeared in Rhino, So to Speak: A Feminist Journal of Language and Art, and A Face to Meet the Faces: An Anthology of Contemporary Persona Poetry, edited by Stacey Lynn Brown and Oliver de la Paz. She is currently writing an epistolary novel in verse, generously funded by a grant from the City University of New York Research Foundation.

Editor’s Note: Firstly, I am a sucker for a killer end-line. It is done well rarely. But what is even rarer is a truly fantastic opening line. The kind of entry that embraces you. “Dear New York City, Learn Gentle” is that rare poem that offers us a fantastic first line. The first stanza goes on to take me exactly where I want to be taken. Beautiful. Lyric. Telling. Guiding me into the second stanza, where I am ready to fall into the poem’s soft downy or resonant emotion. But, no. Suddenly there is Mountain Dew and piss and—where am I? But a soft turn and I find I’ve got a “ticket back to tender;” I’m back in the heartbeat of the lyric. And then I’m sung a lullaby that blends into dreamscape: “Heart. Ribcage. Envelope. / Heart. Ribcage. Envelope.” Today’s poem is both finely-wrought and an unpredictable experience. In that way, it deftly mirrors the city it was written for.

Want to read more by and about Leigh Phillips?
Anomalous Press
Union Station
The Offending Adam
Softblow
Mad Hatters Review

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: CHRISTOPHER CRAWFORD

Posted on June 8, 2013 by asitoughttobemagazine

SO GAY
By Christopher Crawford

How gay is it
for two men
to stroke
the same dog
at the same time.

What if they’re both
sitting on a sofa watching
When Harry Met Sally.

How about two men watching
the same gorgeous sunset
from the same high ridge.

                           And if a man daydreaming
on a bus ride finds his eyes when focus returns,
             quite accidently, on the crotch
                           of the man seated opposite.

How about two men riding
a bus into a gorgeous sunset
or two gorgeous men watching
a sunset in silence. How about
two men daydreaming and stroking
a gorgeous dog and the dog makes
a strange deep sound of pleasure.

What if the men are old friends.
What if they’re brothers.
What if there’s music playing.

(Today’s poem originally appeared in Rattle, was a Pushcart Prize Nominee, and appears here today with permission from the poet.)

Christopher Crawford was born in Glasgow, Scotland. His poetry, essays and translations have appeared in magazines like The Cortland Review, Rattle, The Collagist, Agenda and elsewhere. His poems have been nominated for a couple of Pushcart prizes and he is a founding editor at B O D Y (bodyliterature.com).

Editor’s Note: We live in a day and age of extreme and imperative progress in the gay rights movement. Day by day, state by state, country by country, same-sex marriage is becoming legal and same-sex couples are fighting for—and winning—the rights they should have had all along. But the bigotry remains; the bullying, the violence. And this hatred is inextricably linked with language, with the politics inherent in language. When someone says “that’s so gay,” their intent may not be homophobic, but they are perpetuating discrimination none the less.

Today’s poem makes us consider the words we use—in our society, in our culture, in our day. What does it mean to be “so gay”? If you meditate upon the meaning of that phrase, Crawford shows us, you may discover the simple beauty of humanity.

Want to read more by and about Christopher Crawford?
The Cortland Review
Now Culture
Evergreen Review
The Collagist
Gray Sparrow

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: TIM SUERMONDT

Posted on June 1, 2013 by asitoughttobemagazine

BAYOU PIGEON
By Tim Suermondt

Crawfish shadows on the street
and a gossamer elm by the drugstore―

a blind man on the corner plays a saxophone―
the locals say “he sees with his heart”

and, darling, I think I know what they mean―
the world gives as much as it takes.

(Today’s poem originally appeared in Thrush Poetry Journal and appears here today with permission from the poet.)

Tim Suermondt is the author of two full-length collections: Trying to Help the Elephant Man Dance (The Backwaters Press, 2007 ) and Just Beautiful from New York Quarterly Books, 2010. He has published poems in Poetry, The Georgia Review, Blackbird, Able Muse, Prairie Schooner, PANK, Bellevue Literary Review and Stand Magazine (U.K.) and has poems forthcoming in Gargoyle, A Narrow Fellow and DMQ Review among others. After many years in Queens and Brooklyn, he has moved to Cambridge with his wife, the poet Pui Ying Wong.

Editor’s Note: Today’s poem offers us a little song, a little food for thought, and a little optimism. In the end, it’s all about perspective; how do you see the world?

Want to read more by and about Tim Suermondt?
The Backwater Press – Trying to Help the Elephant Man Dance
NYQ Books – Just Beautiful

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: JESSICA COMOLA

Posted on May 25, 2013 by asitoughttobemagazine

VALENTINE
By Jessica Comola

Let X stand for God. The one I love, let his name be God. And may we walk a wire taut with black birds. Let the wire snap quick as a switchblade across the back of a field. Where he is angry, where he pulls out a child’s shoulder blade like a bit of grey chicken, let there be a brick on his tongue. Let him smear an X across his chest in mud lie breathless in a field. The one I love, let him be a hare stained pink in the fur. Let him hold still in the long-grass like a railroad crossing. Where there is a brick’s weight, let it be the scream of a red siren. If you will be my Valentine, I will stand naked in the highway and burn pink. A switchblade snaps like a child’s hairclip. Somewhere a hare screams with a human voice. The railroad crawls on all fours. My Valentine holds his cross crossways and the long-grass makes a mud of it. If mud were a tongue we would speak it where the street makes a God at the stoplight. A siren sings through these wires. If the railroad is an integer, let it be a single switchblade. For what he did to a child, let him scream like a stoplight. If I crawl on all fours, let me go crossways. Let X equal Y. The one I love, let his name be God.

(Today’s poem originally appeared in Thrush Poetry Journal and appears here today with permission from the poet.)

Jessica Comola currently lives in Oxford, MS where she is an MFA candidate at the University of Mississippi. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Painted Bride Quarterly, Redivider, Thrush, Everyday Genius, and Anti-, among others.

Editor’s Note: Today’s poem is dense like a forest. Alive and full of things you can neither pass through effortlessly nor understand at first glance. Don’t be afraid to spend some time within it. Let the story underneath the story grow roots and take hold. Find your steady ground in its alliteration, then stay a while. You may never leave.

On a personal note, because this series often touches on the personal, as I was preparing today’s post I received word that my MFA Thesis has been approved! I write to you, from this point forward, as Sivan Butler-Rotholz, J.D., M.F.A.

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: CARL PHILLIPS

Posted on May 18, 2013 by asitoughttobemagazine

CHROMATIC BLACK
By Carl Phillips

Of the many things that he used to say to me, there are two
I’m certain of: You taste like a last less-than-long summer afternoon
by the shore just before September; and

You’re the kind of betrayal, understand, I’ve been waiting for,
all my life. When did remembering stop meaning
to be lit from within—bodily—
and the mind, briefly flickering
again out—wasn’t that forgetting? Somewhere
abandon’s still just a word to be turned away from, as from a man
on fire. Remorse, I think,
is not regret. How new, as in full of chance, the nights here
still can seem to be,
if you keep your eyes closed. Here’s a lullaby:
“No more bondage, no triumph either, no more the bluing waves
of shame…”

(Today’s poem originally appeared in Ploughshares and appears here today with permission from the poet.)

Carl Phillips is the author of twelve books of poems, most recently Silverchest. He teaches at Washington University in St. Louis.

Editor’s Note: Carl Phillips is a master of the-line-that-blows-you-away. “You’re the kind of betrayal, understand, I’ve been waiting for, / all my life.” “Somewhere / abandon’s still just a word to be turned away from, as from a man / on fire” “Remorse, I think, / is not regret.” This poet speaks the truth, rewriting the world in a way we all wish we could. I, for one, am humbled.

Want to read more by and about Carl Phillips?
Poets.org
The Poetry Foundation
Q & A on Smartish Pace

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: TONY HOAGLAND

Posted on May 11, 2013 by asitoughttobemagazine

THE COMPLEX SENTENCE
By Tony Hoagland

The kind Italian driver of the bus to Rome
invited her to his house—she was obviously
hungry—and gave her sandwiches
and raped her.

All those years ago—she smiles
while telling it—contemptuous,
somehow
of her younger self,

who drags behind her like a can.
Grammar is great
but who will write the sentence that includes
the story of the damage to her soul

and how she thought her bad Italian
was at fault, and
how it took a month for her to say
the word for what had happened
in her head?

But that’s why
we invented the complex sentence,
so we could stand at a distance,

making slight adjustments
of the harness,
while following the twisty, ever-turning plot:

the loneliness of what we did;
the loneliness
of what was done to us.

(Today’s poem originally appeared in Ploughshares and appears here today with permission from the poet.)

Tony Hoagland has published five books of poetry and prose about poetry with Graywolf Press.

Editor’s Note: Isn’t language amazing? How it unfolds, at once telling a story and creating the safe/dangerous/charged space that story can exist within? Tony Hoaglan is a true master of the sentence. He understands its complexities, knows how to manipulate the malleable material with his pen. How complex the sentence needs to be that can carry the weight of today’s message, how artful the poet who brings the sentence and the story to life.

Want to read more by and about Tony Hoagland?
Friday Poetry Series on As It Ought To Be
Poets.org
The Poetry Foundation

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: SPRING!

Posted on May 4, 2013 by asitoughttobemagazine

New York’s Jefferson Market Garden in full spring bloom; the editor enjoying the same.
Flower photos by Sivan Butler-Rotholz. Editor photo by Frank Ortega.

Poems & Excerpts For Spring:

For winter’s rains and ruins are over,
And all the season of snows and sins;
The days dividing lover and lover,
The light that loses, the night that wins;
And time remembered is grief forgotten,
And frosts are slain and flowers begotten,
And in green underwood and cover
Blossom by blossom the spring begins.

– Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909)
Atalanta in Calydon (1865)

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough.

– A.E. Housman (1859–1936)
A Shropshire Lad (1896)

The month of May was come,
when every lusty heart beginneth
to blossom, and to bring forth fruit;
for like as herbs and trees bring
forth fruit and flourish in May,
in likewise every lusty heart
that is in any manner a lover,
springeth and flourisheth in lusty deeds.
For it giveth unto all lovers courage,
that lusty month of May.

– Sir Thomas Malory (d. 1471)
Le Morte d’Arthur (1485)

A little Madness in the Spring
Is wholesome even for the King.

– Emily Dickinson (1830–1886)
No. 1333 (c.1875)

(Today’s poems are in the public domain, belong to the masses, and appear here today accordingly.)

Editor’s Note: Why? “For winter’s rains and ruins are over,” and the trees are “hung with bloom[s] along the bough.” Because “that lusty month of May” is here, and there is “[a] little Madness in the Spring.” Because everywhere I turn there are bright colors, sweet sights and smells of spring blossoms, and new life overtaking what was once the winter earth. Because it is spring! Nature is putting on her party dress and blessing us with glorious, beautiful spring. And what better way to welcome this lovely season than with poetry?

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: ARLENE KIM

Posted on April 27, 2013 by asitoughttobemagazine

By Arlene Kim:

(Today’s poems originally appeared in Diode and appear here today with permission from the poet.)

Arlene Kim grew up on the east coast of the U.S. before drifting westward. Her first collection of poems What have you done to our ears to make us hear echoes? (Milkweed Editions) won the 2012 American Book Award. She lives in Seattle where she reads for the poetry journal DMQ Review and writes poems, prose, and bits between.

Editor’s Note: The biography of Prince Sado is fascinating, but there is no entry into this (or any) history quite like that of a poet. Arlene Kim has latched onto this fascinating tale, and in her telling she not only invites us into a history, but also makes that history entirely new, entirely her own. Who was Prince Sado—in both his life and death—and how does he live anew in the imagination of the poet?

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: CATHERINE PIERCE

Posted on April 20, 2013 by asitoughttobemagazine

Photo by Megan Bean

BECAUSE I’LL NEVER SWIM IN EVERY OCEAN
By Catherine Pierce

Want is ten thousand blue feathers falling
all around me, and me unable to stomach
that I might catch five but never ten thousand.
So I drop my hands to my sides and wait
to be buried. I open a book and the words
spring and taunt. Flashes—motel, lapidary,
piranha—of every story, every poem I’ll never
know well enough to conjure in sleep.
What’s the point of words if I can’t
own them all? I toss book after book
into my imaginary trashcan fire.
Or I think I’ll learn piano. At the first lesson,
we’re clapping whole and half notes
and this is childish, I’m better than this.
I’d like to leave playing Ravel. I’d like
to give a concerto on Saturday. So I quit.
I have standards. Then on Saturday,
I have a beer, watch a telethon. Or
we watch a documentary on Antarctica.
The interviewees are from Belarus, Lima, Berlin.
Everyone speaks English. Everyone names
a philosopher, an ethos. One man carries a raft
on his back at all times. I went to Nebraska once
and swore it was a great adventure. It was.
I think of how I’ll never go to Antarctica,
mainly because I don’t much want to. But
I should want to. I should be the girl
with a raft on her back. When I think
of all the mountains and monuments
and skyscapes I haven’t seen, all the trains
I should take, all the camels and mopeds
and ferries I should ride, all the scorching
hikes I should nearly die on, I press
my body down, down into the vast green
couch. If I step out the door, the infinity
of what I’ve missed will zorro me across
the face with a big L for Lazy. Sometimes
I watch finches at the feeder, their wings small
suns, and have to grab the sill to steady myself.
Metaphorically, of course. I’m no loon.
Look—even my awestruck is half-assed.
But I’m so tired of the small steps—
the pentatonic scale, the frequent flyer
hoarding, the one exquisite sentence
in a forest of exquisite sentences.
There is a globe welling up inside of me.
Mountain ranges ridging my skin,
oceans filling my mouth. If I stay still
long enough, I could become my own world.

(Today’s poem originally appeared in Diode and appears here today with permission from the poet.)

Catherine Pierce is the author of The Girls of Peculiar (Saturnalia 2012) and Famous Last Words (Saturnalia 2008). Her poems have appeared in The Best American Poetry, Slate, Boston Review, Ploughshares, FIELD, and elsewhere. She lives in Starkville, Mississippi, where she co-directs the creative writing program at Mississippi State University.

Editor’s Note: Today’s poem speaks to the troubled inner workings of the Writer. Writer with a capital W because the poet speaks for writers at large. For the crippling fear that lies at the heart of my new mantra: Everything you want is on the other side of fear.

Catherine Pierce gets it. And she says it better than most, despite her willingness to “toss book after book into [her] imaginary trashcan fire” for the frustration of “every poem [she’ll] never know well enough to conjure.” The road to creation is paved with becoming “so tired of the small steps” because “There is a globe welling up inside of [you,]… oceans filling [your] mouth.” Yes, and yes, and amen.

Today’s poem is dedicated to Jenny Stella. Because. And then because, again. As for me, I have shared the poet’s struggle in my own art, in comic form, though admittedly with far less eloquence.

I should also note that I have had the pleasure of sharing Catherine Pierce’s work on this series before, and am continually drawn to the poet’s unparallelled way with words.

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