Self Help. Elizabeth Poreba
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Don’t you know me?—
you had my sympathy.
Maybe knowing Greek got you in.
God knows how you translated
what you could scarcely understand,
but God, we’re told, draws straight
with crooked lines, a relief to us both,
good with words, but at the wrong times.
Hear my prayer, Philip,
fifth of the twelve. Your gaze suggests
disquiet can be stilled.
Aubade
“Modern longevity . . . .presents a new challenge to marriage.”
I would like to march downstairs where you are eating Cheerios
and watching the NBC Morning News to inform you that
an out-of-tune crow is terrorizing the neighborhood.
As you grind your coffee beans, I would like to remark that
the rain keeps promising a comeback then sighs
and disappears behind a cloud cover.
I would like to ask you, What’s up? Does that crow have a hook in its gut?
His situation seemed dramatic, but the other crows only croak nownownow,
as you’ve been known to do.
Whitman’s widowed mocking-bird mourned his mate in melody,
and the swan’s cry of loss moved Valmiki to lyric poetry,
but right now I could be that crow causing a ruckus,
and I’d like to ask you, what about this?
The Boxer at the Met
The artist limed his wounds with care
and swelled his cauliflower ear.
It’s a brief interval between bouts.
He looks back. Who’s out?
Resting his elbows on his knees,
hunching, bulky, an abject beast.
Once people stroked his feet for luck,
leaving the unguent of their touch.
Invaded, Romans buried him deep.
Dirt chewed him brown and verdigris.
Now he’s earth and art enmeshed,
his bronze friable as flesh.
Around him, the standing statues pose
silent as stone dolls,
But this one crouching, close to defeat,
suffering, seems to speak.
Retiring the Red Pen
I no longer got their jokes. I confused Celina with Cecily and Selin,
Sean and Shané, Jane and Janay, Jenna and Jana.
There was a year when Sofia, Safyah, and Susa sat together.
Liam, Ian, Nina, Lena, Liana. Two Mildreds and an Azalea.
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