Weekly Edition #16
Air Empathy by Jeffrey McDaniel
On the red-eye from Seattle, a two year-old
in the seat behind me screeches
his little guts out. Instead of dreaming
of stuffing a wad of duct tape
into his mouth, I envy him, how he lets
his pain hang out. I wish I too could drill
a pipeline into the fields of ache, tap
a howl. How long would I need to sob
before the lady beside me dropped
her fashion rag, dipped a palm
into the puddle of me? How many
squeals before another passenger
joined in? Soon the stewardess hunched
over the drink cart, the pilot gushing
into the controls, the entire plane, an arrow
of grief, quivering through the sky.
Art by Andrew Brennan
Other poems I read this week:
"if I in my north room
dance naked, grotesquely
before my mirror
waving my shirt round my head
and singing softly to myself:
“I am lonely, lonely,
I was born to be lonely,
I am best so!” If I admire my arms, my face,
my shoulders, flanks, buttocks
against the yellow drawn shades,-
Who shall say I am not
the happy genius of my household?"
-Danse Russe by William Carlos Williams
"You’ll be peeling an orange or watching a bird
spring from the edge of the rooftop next door, noticing how,
for an instant, its body is stopped on the air, only a moment before
gathering the will to fly into the ruff at its wings and then doing it:
flying." -How It Will Happen, When by Dorianne Laux
"Oh hush up
about the
Future: one
morning it
will appear,
right there on
your breakfast
plate, and you’ll
yell “Take it
back,” pounding
the table.
But there won’t
be any
waiters." -Breakfast by Everette Maddox "We begin like this: all of us
walking in solitude
walking a desert earth and
unforgiving bodies. We cross lines
we dare not speak of; we learn and
unlearn things quickly, or intentionally slow
(because, that, we can control)
and give ourselves new names
because these selves must be new
to forget the old blue." -Beginnings by Mahtem Shiferraw
Recommended Listening:
Thich Nhat Hanh on Compassionate Listening
Radiohead - Present Tense: Jonny, Thom & a CR78
She Just Likes To Fight - Four Tet
Links of the Week:
Artist Jean Jullien Explores How Travel Inspires Creativity Threads, an animated short by Torill Kove How to Stop Saying Sorry When Things Aren’t Your Fault Elemental Haiku (the Periodic Table composed of 119 science haiku) Growing Up in the Library
What are you hiding? by Jerry Pinto