Poems Rethabile Likes

After the Loss of a Limb by Elena Wilkinson | Poems Rethabile Likes After the Loss of a Limb by Elena Wilkinson After the family surgeon has severed my hand and wrist from the forearm, And I have carefully washed the separated hand with the connected hand, And done its fingernails, and put a drop of perfume at the pulse of the wrist, And soothed the hand, and stroked it, and spoken to it Until it understands everything, why the operation was necessary, And I have kissed each finger before picking it up by the thumb And packing it with colored tissue in a nice box, And with some difficulty wrapped it and sent it away, And when you receive the package...

Ars Poetica by Rethabile Masilo | Poems Rethabile Likes Ars Poetica by Rethabile Masilo During an empty period one still expects words, accepts them like a betrayal and lives them. There will be questions with no answers for the day will be funereal. But when they kill a kid and you receive babble from a three-year old, name that time Babel. Let his mother's wails frown on you, then add her cries to the child's. Get turned into a fist at first, in apartheid jails. Pielkop! Then become a dog. Kaffir! Gaan fok jouself! In exile, beg yourself for release from the dungeon where you put yourself, hoping to starve and die. ...

Nothing Gold by Kim Addonizio | Poems Rethabile Likes Nothing Gold by Kim Addonizio "Nothing gold can stay." —Robert Frost And nothing else can stay, either— not the pay phone or parking meter, not the coo and keck of the passenger pigeon or the ambivalent lover returning to his wife. A banner saying Everything Must Go sags over the failed restaurant supply store. A plane takes off with a living brother and lands with a dead one. Another black car arrives at the gates. Dear anyone, tell me how to hear the sea's consoling murmur as it withdraws, then savages the shore. Tell me how to...

Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note by Amiri Baraka | Poems Rethabile Likes Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note by Amiri Baraka Lately, I've become accustomed to the way The ground opens up and envelopes me Each time I go out to walk the dog. Or the broad edged silly music the wind Makes when I run for a bus . . . Things have come to that. And now, each night I count the stars, And each night I get the same number. And when they will not come to be counted, I count the holes they leave. Nobody sings anymore. And then last night, I tiptoed up To my daughter...

A Blessing by James Wright | Poems Rethabile Likes A Blessing by James Wright Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota, Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass. And the eyes of those two Indian ponies Darken with kindness. They have come gladly out of the willows To welcome my friend and me. We step over the barbed wire into the pasture Where they have been grazing all day, alone. They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness That we have come. They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other. There is no loneliness like theirs. At home once more, They begin munching the young t...

They Sit Together On The Porch by Wendell Berry | Poems Rethabile Likes They Sit Together On The Porch by Wendell Berry They sit together on the porch, the dark Almost fallen, the house behind them dark. Their supper done with, they have washed and dried The dishes—only two plates now, two glasses, Two knives, two forks, two spoons—small work for two. She sits with her hands folded in her lap, At rest. He smokes his pipe. They do not speak, And when they speak at last it is to say What each one knows the other knows. They have One mind between them, now, that finally For all its knowing will not exactly know Wh...

The Encounter by Louise Glück | Poems Rethabile Likes The Encounter by Louise Glück You came to the side of the bed and sat staring at me. Then you kissed me—I felt hot wax on my forehead. I wanted it to leave a mark: that's how I knew I loved you. Because I wanted to be burned, stamped, to have something in the end— I drew the gown over my head; a red flush covered my face and shoulders. It will run its course, the course of fire, setting a cold coin on the forehead, between the eyes. You lay beside me; your hand moved over my face as though you had felt it also— you must ...