Invictus

Invictus
William Ernest Henley

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

The Crystal Gazer

by Sara Teasdale
I shall gather myself into my self again,
I shall take my scattered selves and make them one.
I shall fuse them into a polished crystal ball
Where I can see the moon and the flashing sun.
I shall sit like a sibyl, hour after hour intent.
Watching the future come and the present go -
And the little shifting pictures of people rushing
In tiny self-importance to and fro.

At the End

by Ed Meek
He was so old his bones seemed to swim in his skin.
And when I took his hand to feel his pulse
I felt myself drawn in. It was as faint
as the steps of a child
padding across the floor in slippers,
and yet he was smiling.
I could almost hear a river
running beneath his breath.
The water clear and cold and deep.
He was ready and willing to wade on in.

The Eclipse by Richard Eberhart
I stood out in the open cold
To see the essence of the eclipse
Which was its perfect darkness.

I stood in the cold on the porch
And could not think of anything so perfect
As mans hope of light in the face of darkness.

Goldfish Are Ordinary

Goldfish Are Ordinary

Stacie Cassarino

At the pet store on Court Street,

I search for the perfect fish.

The black moor, the blue damsel,

cichlids and neons. Something

to distract your sadness, something

you don't need to love you back.

Maybe a goldfish, the flaring tail,

orange, red-capped, pearled body,

the darting translucence? Goldfish

are ordinary, the boy selling fish

says to me. I turn back to the tank,

all of this grace and brilliance,

such simplicity the self could fail

to see. In three months I'll leave

this city. Today, a chill in the air,

you're reading Beckett fifty blocks

away, I'm looking at the orphaned

bodies of fish, undulant and gold fervor.

Do you want to see aggression?

the boy asks, holding a purple beta fish

to the light while dropping handfuls

of minnows into the bowl. He says,

I know you're a girl and all

but sometimes it's good to see.

Outside, in the rain, we love

with our hands tied,

while things tear away at us.

Summer at Blue Creek, North Carolina

Summer at Blue Creek, North Carolina

Jack Gilbert

There was no water at my grandfather's

when I was a kid and would go for it

with two zinc buckets. Down the path,

past the cow by the foundation where

the fine people's house was before

they arranged to have it burned down.

To the neighbor's cool well. Would

come back with pails too heavy,

so my mouth pulled out of shape.

I see myself, but from the outside.

I keep trying to feel who I was,

and cannot. Hear clearly the sound

the bucket made hitting the sides

of the stone well going down,

but never the sound of me.

Unbidden

Unbidden

Rae Armantrout

The ghosts swarm.

They speak as one

person. Each

loves you. Each

has left something

undone.

--

Did the palo verde

blush yellow

all at once?

Today's edges

are so sharp

they might cut

anything that moved.

--

The way a lost

word

will come back

unbidden.

You're not interested

in it now,

only

in knowing

where it's been.

Leda

Leda
Eva Gerlach

you think a god is coming his wing
makes a kind of shadow I
you say and you are changed

You were just sleeping but now you can
never stop the shock even
if he hands you hat and whip bit and rein
like lightning rises with you, memory
blows off you where were you first casually
you stroke the down that is burning on you

Tao Lin

through repeated attempts at something impossible we will achieve 'intense
eyebrows'
'able to fall asleep faster at night' and 'is accepting human dishonesty,
unreliability
and superstition the same as accepting death
limited-time, and the mysteries of being and existence?'
an out0of-control placebo effect rips a tree out of the ground
then immediately plants it back to avoid social situations
i told you i never get angry, only sad, i'll be right back
i am thinking of something shiny and round

i keep thinking i might float away

i keep thinking i might float away
Noah Cicero

the other day i came out of the Plato class and was standing on the steps
leading out of the building. A bird made one of those weird bird noises

it seemed for like a piece of time during the bird noise

i might drift away into nirvana

and be blown out

or extinguished like a flame

and all my desires would leave

and with the desires my body would be gone

but it didn't happen

and it was still standing there

i've been sleeping a lot lately

it is my new hobby to escape reality

i always wake though

and my dick reminds me that i still want sex, even thought i don't want sex, my
dick still does

then my stomach growls and tells me i want food, even though i have no
interest in eating, i still want food

and tonight it was cold and my body told me i needed a heavy coat and shelter,
i have no interest in wearing a heavy coat or shelter.

So i sat and read Li Po

Li Po said to me

Man dies, his white bones are dumb without a word

then he said

The mountains crumbled.

And then Hughes visits me

i have no ambitions

i have no ambitions
Ellen Kennedy

i don't want to hate the president

i don't want to go to harvard

i don't want to win the pulitzer prize

i just want to sit in my bathtub

and think about relationships i will never have

with people i will never meet

and then go lay in my bed

and count all the stitched in my sheets

until i fall asleep

and wake up

to repeat again.

untitled

Untitled
Ellen Kennedy

yesterday i was talking to myself and i told
myself that i was going to write a book and
give it to you so i put paper in my bag and
put a pen in my bag and rode my bike to the
river bank and then sat on the ground and
thought 'i will never write a book' and watched
ducks swim away from me

$

$
Ryan Manning
age 26
living with parents
failed eleventh grade English
failed twelfth grade everything
no college education
watch a lot of movies
professional amateur
involuntary celibate
socially isolated
rock star

Late Fragment

Late Fragment
Raymond Carver

And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on earth.

Dark Thoughts

Dark Thoughts
Regina Derieva

I'm almost like that dark hallway
with a few framed photos
and lamps on the walls.
So many visitors have walked through me
dark and light,
depending on the illumination

Before Addressing the People

Before Addressing the People
Ronald Briedis

Before addressing the people
The prophet on return from the desert
Bends over the well
To quench his thirst
But freezes
When he sees his reflection--
His open mouth a zero

A Pity. We Were Such a Good Invention.

A Pity. We Were Such a Good Invention
Y. Amichai

They amputated
your thighs off hips.
As far as I'm concerned
they are all surgeons. All of them.

They dismantled us
each from the other.
As far as I'm concerned
they are all engineers. All of them.

A pity. We were such a good
and loving invention.
An airplane made from a man and wife.
Wings and everything.
We hovered a little above the earth.

We even flew a little.

Your Turn

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