Poem for Monday, January 26, 2009

It is Born







by Pablo Neruda







Here I came to the edge
where nothing at all needs saying,
everything is absorbed through weather and the sea,
and the moon swam back,
its rays all silvered,
and time and again the darkness would be broken
by the crash of a wave,
and every day on the balcony of the sea,
wings open, fire is born,
and everything is blue again like morning.






Burke's Book Store
936 South Cooper
Memphis, TN 38104
(901) 278-7484
www.burkesbooks.com

Poem for Monday, January 12, 2009

At the Corner

by Charles Simic

The fat sisters
Kept a candy store
Dim and narrow
With dusty jars
Of jaw-breaking candy.

We stayed thin, stayed
Glum, chewing gum
While staring at the floor,
The shoes of many strangers
Rushing in and out,

Making the papers outside
Flutter audibly
Under the lead weights,
Their headlines
Screaming in and out of view.

Burke's Book Store
936 South Cooper
Memphis, TN 38104
(901) 278-7484
www.burkesbooks.com

Poem for Monday, January 5, 2009

from "Elegy for Elvis"

by Richard Blessing

Dr. Nichopoulous was saying, Come on, Presley,
breathe for me, but you were happy. You'd played
your last request. Snow settled around you
like a thousand paternity suits. Ice
filled the island trees. You had gone farther
than a gossip magazine. You planned to name
your shadow for the first American to say,
I never heard of him.

Presley, you always breathed for me,
rock-bellied, up from Tupelo, a place
pastoral enough for elegy. Now one of us
is dead. Tender as Whitman's lilac sprig,
I leave these plastic flowers in the snow.
What perishes is only really real.
I twist the dial and you are everywhere.

Burke's Book Store
936 South Cooper
Memphis, TN 38104
(901) 278-7484
www.burkesbooks.com