Tuesday Poem: "Memory of a poem by August Kleinzahler" by Anna Livesey

There were two people (one in a blue dress).
They stood outside the ring the crowd made
around some spectacle
and spoke to each other.
It is not in the poem, but I think she folded her hands
in the skirt of her blue dress,
running the fabric between her fingers.
l think he touched her wrist, bare and white
in the light reflected from the spectacle.
They were behind the backs of several thousand people,
none of whom noticed them. Her wrist
looked very fine as it rose from the blue material.
Seeing the wrist, he was sorry for what he had said.
He said something else to her instead and she replied, quietly.
They made a small crowd of their own.


by Anna Livesey

For more information about the poet, Anna Livesey, see:

http://www.anzliterature.com/member/anna-livesey/

Tuesday Poem: Untitled by Yoshida Kenko

Blossoms are scattered by the wind

and the wind cares nothing,

but the blossoms of the heart

no wind can touch.

by Yoshida Kenko

For more information about the poet, Yoshida Kenko, see:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoshida_Kenkō

Photograph Credit: Leon Petrosyan 

Tuesday Poem: "Places Becoming Lonely" by Andrew M. Bell

Not a name on a marquee,

but a firmament in which a star could shine

this solid Earth, dependable unless we forget

the hard lessons of gravity

understated, not showy, he knew the places

his eyes could take the audience

there are more of us now and they say

we are more visually literate

and the images multiply daily

and yet there are more

places becoming lonely

Tuesday Poem: "The United Fruit Co." by Pablo Neruda

When the trumpet sounded, everything
on earth was prepared
and Jehovah distributed the world
to Coca Cola Inc., Anaconda,
Ford Motors and other entities:
The Fruit Company Inc.
reserved the juiciest for itself,
the central coast of my land,
the sweet waist of America.
It re-baptized the lands
"Banana Republics"
and on the sleeping dead,
on the restless heroes
who'd conquered greatness,
liberty and flags,
it founded a comic opera:
it alienated free wills,
gave crowns of Caesar as gifts,
unsheathed jealousy, attracted
the dictatorship of the flies,
Trujillo flies, Tachos flies,
Carias flies, Martinez flies,
Ubico flies, flies soppy
with humble blood and marmelade,
drunken flies that buzz
around common graves,
circus flies, learned flies
adept at tyranny.
The Company disembarks
among the blood-thirsty flies,
brim-filling their boats that slide
with the coffee and fruit treasure
of our submerged lands like trays.
Meanwhile, along the sugared up
abysms of the ports,
indians fall over, buried
in the morning mist:
a body rolls, a thing
without a name, a fallen number,
a bunch of dead fruit
spills into the pile of rot.


by Pablo Neruda

For more information about the poet, Pablo Neruda, see:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/pablo-Neruda