poetry

"Motor"

Ant legs' vicissitude--
piston sigh,
sweaty valve.

Smoke escapes into the hail;
rain drops bisect
missiles out the dada hatch
of a soured, gray cloud.

No audio.

"Saltwater"

My mother's eyes warned
in brown, black, and saltwater,
of death's mighty appetite
for moon-fed fruit trees--

so I snuck through gardens
in the middle of the night,
munching on sour apples,
feverishly scanning hillsides.

But death was the worm in the apple,
and I've never spoke good saltwater.

While we crowded
round rifling
through piles of sticky glass bottles

chasing each other's
phlegm-stained smoke signals
through the woods,

inspiration slipped
behind a tree to listen;
she relishes:

our baited anger
blind humor
and swallowed tears.

Her sighs slip
into our heads at night
and sustain our madness.

Black kenyan tea
drips down my esophagus
like the lonely
silent tears of a farmer
down leathery
black, line-worn cheeks in the rain,
shaved head bent
towards the wet black soil's
whispers of balance
whose echo is nausea;

a meditation
on irreparable loss.

The Academy of American Poets (www.poets.org), has a mailing list that you can sign up for and during April they send everyone on this list one or two themed poems a day in an e-mail with links to even more related poetry.  It's very, very cool and a great way to discover quality new poetry and keep up, at the same time, with contemporary styles.
 
Today's really caught my eye:
 
"History of Hurricanes"
 
by Teresa Cader

Because we cannot know—