Poems February 11-28

THE ARTICLE:
"Raising a Milkshake to the Bride and Groom"
by Joyce Hor-Chung Lau
February 28, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/28/world/asia/28hong-kong-mcdonalds-mcweddings.html

THE POEM:
McWedding

I was never one of those girls
who knew their wedding colors
from age five

Never knew the names and sex
of my future children
and how far apart in age
I'd space them with care

I never made assumptions

Single motherhood is
still my safety

But I know for sure
if I'm lucky enough to
walk down the aisle
it will not be
a McWedding 


~

THE ARTICLE:
"Studied: Lipstick on Her Collar? Men Say, ‘O.K.’"
by Pamela Paul
February 27, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/27/fashion/27Studied.html

THE POEM:
permissible cheating
(a haiku)

she cheated on him
'twas a katy perry thing
he's cool, thinks it's hot


~

THE ARTICLE:
"Gay Male Secretary for the White House"
by Ashley Parker
February 26, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/26/us/26social.html

THE POEM:
social secretary
(a haiku)

he's gay and social
call him the secretary
the first of his kind

~

THE ARTICLE:
"The Food Crisis"
by The New York Times Editorial Board
February 25, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/25/opinion/25fri2.html

THE POEM:
grub shortage
(a haiku)

food prices soaring
rioting for bananas
or for grains of rice 


~


THE ARTICLE:
"Dr. Ruth and Nate Berkus on Clearing Clutter"
by Joyce Wadler
February 24, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/24/garden/24qna.html

THE POEM:
new furniture

the Holocaust and orgasms
don't go together
but she is not
consumed by one
or by the fact it took
her parents she
keeps a washcloth
from those days
sewn into a mitt
but doesn't keep it out
it's a time machine
not for everyday
memory making
she knew the bones
but knows the body
and its crevices that
ripple in all the right ways

there is a woman whose bedroom
is full of a no-more man's furniture
so she and the new-man
have sex in her car

Ruth says shut your mouth
give the bed to charity
and fuck on your
new furniture


~

THE ARTICLE:
"Midshipman, Then Pacifist: Rare Victory to Leave Navy"
by Paul Vitello
February 23, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/23/nyregion/23objector.html

THE POEM:
no

the letters that launched
a thousand lawyers
are two n and o
if given the order would you
a one syllable threat to
the whole system and
four years of
all-collar money
to build a man
who can lead but
look out it's a
one syllable
three-leaf clover'd
wrench in the
equation in
lips off'ring prayer
for the
accetable quota of dead
which begs
the tattooed question
what would Jesus do
what did Jesus do
did he tell the Romans
to lay down their arms
andis letting others fight
a second hand way to
clench a fist
the first word he spoke
I spoke you spoke
an n and an o
making no
no I would not

~

THE ARTICLE:
"Diet: High Fiber to Combat Death and Disease"
by Roni Caryn Rabin
February 22, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/22/health/research/22diet.html

THE POEM:
fiber!

this kind of health
goes
right
through
y
o
u

~



THE ARTICLE:
Special Report: Fashion
"Thinking Out of the Box"
by Suzy Menkes
February 21, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/21/fashion/21iht-rcentral21.html

THE POEM:
The Future of Fashion

volume becomes a model
whose face is washed in paint
whose body is a place to
display fabric and the threads
that holdit together
boxes are designed
out of

they become
boxee boxes
or the shapes
formerly known
as squares

the future of fashion is
voluminous

its liquid will balance out its
flesh hangers
and dry land

~



THE ARTICLE:
"House Votes to Continue Army Sponsorships in Nascar"
by Viv Bernstein
February 19, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/19/sports/autoracing/19nascar.html

THE POEM:
Recruitment

rubber meets the road
in matters defense

They've caught on that
the boys that like fast cars
are the men who'll
defend our right
to own them

They know 149 out of a hundred and fifty
won't listen at the mall

but they'll listen to speed that noisemakes in circles

they'll put their name on the line
for things that go zoom
in bright reds and blues

young warhawks in the making
their daddies will be proud
their mammas will cry

out here in the midwest
boys get older sooner

it's in some of their blood
to sign up to die

it's some people's job to
figure out how to
remind them so

~

THE ARTICLE:
"Planned Parenthood Financing Is Caught in Budget Feud"
By Erik Eckholm
February 18, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/18/us/politics/18parenthood.html

THE POEM:
a way

at stake is
sixteen and pregnant
without a camera crew without
a baby daddy or magazine
cover me up with answers
I don't know yet

that three percent is looking good
that ninety-seven is what i should
do with my self my future
i'm not some pimp's girl i'm
somebody's daughter and
i'm about to be somebody's mother
need mine but she's got her hands
full with my brothers

this isn't some scripted chain of events
i'm improvising this shit

shoulda made him use a rubber
shoulda a lot of things

this wasn't planned
but i need one
Mister Man doesn't want
to give me any help but
I can't do this all by myself
don't even want the
easy way out just a way
into all of this 


~


THE ARTICLE:
"Remaking Wookiee: Chewbacca Becomes a Character on ‘Star Wars: The Clone Wars’"
by Dave Itzkoff
February 17, 2011
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/17/remaking-wookiee-chewbacca-becomes-a-character-on-star-wars-the-clone-wars/?scp=141&sq=february%2017,%202011&st=cse

THE POEM:
a wookiee haiku

guy back from London
greets his best friend with a Rrrrrrrowwwwr
translates to guy love 


~


THE ARTICLE:"Lawsuit Says Military Is Rife With Sexual Abuse"
by Ashley Parker
February 16, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/16/us/16military.htmlTHE POEM:

nuts for a little pussy

he entered me from behind and by surprise

covered my mouth so I couldn’t scream out

these men go nuts for a little pussy

no matter how it comes about

no matter if it’s not allowed

bring on the gays we’d be

safer in their company

than these man

starved sexually

I’ll tell my husband

I’ll tell the higher-ups

We’ve had good past enough

 
~

THE ARTICLE:
"Would the Bard Have Survived the Web?"
by Scott Turow, Paul AIken, and James Shapiro
February 15, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/15/opinion/15turow.html 

THE POEM:

On Spec

piano and drums mix in

our Harlem apartment

from my roommate making music

while I write poetry

to the beat of his

innermost insides

we compose on spec

for the audiences we

bet will come

sooner than later

the time signature of

our careers will be written

in savvy and sweat

it is not that extraordinary

to be brilliant

Shakespeare was a

pop artist

Warhol was one too

Chaz and I are artists

but we really need you

 
~

THE ARTICLE:
"What’s Your Six-Word Love Story?"
by Tara Parker-Pope
February 14, 2011
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/14/whats-your-six-word-love-story/

THE POEM:
Quatre Anneés

Il y a deux anneés:
Club Rainbow one man down. Yay!

Il y a une anneés:
Two girls, chopsticks, rice, and love.

Cette année:
Good God, who will Brad choose?

L’Année Prochaine:

New York: concrete jungle of love.

 

~

THE ARTICLE:
"No Argument: Thomas Keeps 5-Year Silence"
by Adam Liptak
February 13, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/13/us/13thomas.html

THE POEM:

Epic Silence

big stick and an epic silence

man looks like a big black hole

the kids used to tease him

about his drawl

it’s hard to grow

up in southern Georgia

chair lean

ponder the ceiling

dust the sleep out of

old eyes

hard to get a word in

on this firing squad

he stopped trying

five years ago

some women attempt

a silent birth

others go on

silent retreats

or talk with their hands

man looks morose

on his knees asking

the ceiling for answers

ceiling won’t talk back

his robes swallow him up

sometimes

only in public

behind closed doors

lips part loose like

a woman or

the red sea

decisions are made

inside of a man

he pokes a stick

through silence

until he hits

gold or

something good

 

~

THE ARTICLE:
"The Parent Trapped"
by Katherine Ellison
February 12, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/12/opinion/12ellison.html 

THE POEM:

hell

easy for hands to put

emotion in motion

two hundred sets of

thumbs at throats made

of the same bits and pieces

of physical traits and

mental states but

the carpool just got

to be too much

their father just left

they don’t understand

he’s not coming back

I’m too tired

created what

I don’t want

stopped praying for patience

when it stopped coming

Dear God, send me to your hell

this one’s done a number

on me

~

THE ARTICLE:
"Mubarak Refuses to Step Down, Stoking Revolt’s Fury and Resolve"
by Anthony Shadid and David D. Kirkpatrick
February 11, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/11/world/middleeast/11egypt.html

THE POEM: 
shoes in the air

soles of shoes in the air
voices chanting leave leave
leave and a man who won't

It's not about me
says a rock at
the bottom of a glass

power makes your
blood good and drunk
blow into this
on your way out

bloodshot eyes
looking at his
no-more people

phoning it in liver
drinking the stuff
that will kill him

Imaginary World

THE POEM:
"In Tokyo, a Crackdown on Sexual Images of Minors"
by Hiroko Tabuchi
February 10, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/10/business/global/10manga.html

THE POEM:
Imaginary World

the maid is making popcorn
and I hose her down from
head to toe

I get excited down there
while corn pops up
everywhere

is this real life
or life in cartoon
hips that are swirls
of ink and eyes that
never blink they stare

my wife is an
elementary school student
in a teeny white
bikini

her mother looks on
while she poses for
my camera

don't you know
creativity thrives
on 'anything goes'

don't you things are
Developing Now
over seventy minute
montages of plot-
less girls in
costumes and
compri-musing
positions

call me a pervert
don't be absurd
this is a completely
imaginary world

I Have Sinned

THE ARTICLE:
"Forgive Me, Father, for I have Linked"
by Maureen Dowd
February 9, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/09/opinion/09dowd.html

THE POEM:
I Have Sinned

Bless me Father for I have sinned
It's been fifteen logins since
my last confession and I've been
asking questions of myself
like Have I been guilty of masturbation?
and Have I advised my sister to have
an abortion?

I logged in as a priest and they
didn't ask me if I've been acting gay
they asked me if I've been flirting away
because the web has a soul now
a viral soul on its axes of
sin x and penance y

I hear those hymnal tunes praying to the gods
of theology through technology on the
organ bodies swaying to the beat of
an eagle's wings flapping in tune

A married man shouldn't
masturbate a teenage girl shouldn't
be anything but chaste because
sex and vocation are
incompatible if you're a woman and
you want to marry the Church
it says so on the screen

Century twenty-one sex on tv and in
the palms of some hands in other hands
the glow of Christ in little booths of
I'm sorry and and forgiveness

An old German pope said
get with the times an old
German pope said the Church
isn't past its prime forget those
scandals forget those holes
we're climbing ourselves up from
to number 42 on a list that reeks
of modernity take that all you
anti-Catholics all you sinners
all you no-confession-go-ers

Bless me Father for I have sinned
It's been five stanzas since
my last confession I've been asking
myself questions like
Do I believe?
Will you love the bastard I will conceive?
When I grieve, do you grieve?

turn on the dark

THE ARTICLE:
"Good vs. Evil, Hanging by a Thread"
by Ben Brantley
February 8, 2011
http://theater.nytimes.com/2011/02/08/theater/reviews/spiderman-review.html

THE POEM:
turn on the dark

$65 million and
a few laughs in
unintended places
later I am on the street
post-turning on the dark
in an unplanned moment
of opps meets technical
difficulties and I think to
myself what a wonder
that this town is full of
songs that don't
meet their potential
in scale and soul and
fourth walls that
are broken by
being human in
spaces where we're
meant to be the most
human and the most
spectacular at
intersecting points in time

when this hurt is gone

THE ARTICLE:
"Outré Dance Music That Revels in Otherness"
By Jon Caramanica
February 7, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/07/arts/music/07robyn.html

THE POEM:
when this hurt is gone

In a California ranch Emily
lets me play the
new anthem from
a tough Swedish blond
saying when this hurt is gone
I've got to get myself together
over and over because she loves
me not the song
and we both hope this is one of those times
when hearing something
enough times
makes it true

Em says she doesn't like that one part
because she thinks I'm clever
that's her only beef the other bits about
my mind being gone are all they're
lyrics screwed on just right

robins in the California sky
I run up hills lined with palm trees
and in San Francisco I think of
the pictures I would take with
the man I might still love
with the Golden Gate Bridge
backdropping two frames

Emily says love without respect
is just nostalgia

She says you're quiet
I don't tell her sometimes I cry in the car
between places and that's a lot
of places because we drive everywhere
in this city and I cry because I thought
everything would just get better
by running away to here and I cry the night before
I have to go back because I have to go back

They gave me some pills
they're little and white
just like me
just like Robyn

I feel better
like there's not a heavy child
sitting on my chest
at all hours of the day

I am Harlem-bound
to the company of a
young black musician
who greeted me at the door
with a guitar and a smile
my daddy likes him
and so do I

I am Harlem-bound
to the company of
three jobs and I can
pay my rent with my
passion what a dream
coming true for an
artist of twenty-two

too damn high

THE ARTICLE:
"Get Married, Save Thousands on Tuition"
by Tess Townsend
February 6, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/06/us/06bcmarriage.html

THE POEM:
too damn high

~ a series of haikus on the blasphemous cost of education in this country, our United States of America ~

college is the new
high school diploma so I
really need to go

but i can't afford
to pay thousands of dollars
solution: marriage!

will you marry me?
out-of-state tuition is
outlandishly high

let's get hitched tonight
avoid debt and maybe have
sex if we want to

it can be fake or
as real as a bill for my
first semester-eek!

one true thing I know
tuition is too damn high
for a single girl

so say you'll be mine
on paper pretty puh-lease
I'll be a good wife

less white

THE ARTICLE:
"In Census, Young Americans Increasingly Diverse"
by Sabrina Tavernise
February 5, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/05/us/05census.html

THE POEM:
less white

dj jazzy jeff and the freshest of royal in a T-shirt and
baggy pants black and proud singing parents just
don't understand and it's truer now than it ever was
'cause things are shifting take-off lifting away from the
white picket fence in the burbs of american i get a
white family two kids tv garage and a dog sure but
no sir mind the gap between grandpa and the
paper boy he says see and he says si and they don't
see eye to eye

all those rainbow colored youths roygbiving themselves
into the skylights of our cities they're black and yellow and
brown and multi-everything n sexing each other
to make multigrain babies who'll grow up to be even more
a-grandpa than their own parents just don't understanding

little apples

THE ARTICLE:
"Abortion Rate in New York Defies Easy Explanation"
by Anemona Hartocollis
February 4, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/04/nyregion/04abortion.html

THE POEM:
little apples

two out of five little apples don't make it to
the big apple where things move quickly
and there's not much brainorsoilspace to
grow expensive shrubs or trees

forty one out of every hundred acres
full of pulled-up roots and sunflower weeds that
won't grow up in rain won't grow up
in between the pieces of concrete sidewalk
where hustling pairs of shoes walk on by
the walk ups where no one stops
to smell the roses Apartment 4A is
growing on its terrace

it's not the teenagers for once you can't
blame it on those stupid kids

it's a lot of things

it's the law of the land it's the
schools that don't teach it's
the people that don't care it's
the men and the money that
aren't there

four into ten eight over twenty
is a lot of little apples with and
without worms

As if you could forget

THE ARTICLE:

“Cameras, and Rules Against Them, Stir Passions in Delivery Rooms”

by Katharine Q. Seelye

February 3, 2011

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/03/us/03birth.html

THE POEM:

As if you could forget

flash and frames of

blood and shit

a body opening

itself for another

trapped in squares and

moving sets of images

like a real-time flip book

to remember forever

as if you could forget

the way things got quiet

amidst the screaming

and how things went quickly

the way you wouldn’t expect them to

it’s one of those times when

you forget to be hungry

you expected to be hungry but

your body had other things

on its mind

some women want to

put their vaginas

on the internet

share their bloodied

canvases with the world

their doctors have mixed feelings

don’t want their work up on the web,

like unedited manuscripts

in new hands

new mothers and their

tiniest achievements

one whose soft skin is

not yet battered

the other who has been

through the kind of hell

you so easily forget 

The Gender of Our Language

THE ARTICLE:

“Where Are the Women in Wikipedia?”

 Why are there so many more men than women contributing to a ‘free encyclopedia that anyone can edit’?

February 2, 2011

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/02/02/where-are-the-women-in-wikipedia?

THE POEM:

The Gender of Our Language

He says I know this and here are the facts, man

She’s more inclined to say it’s my opinion that such and such

On virtual paper in a public [space] a man feels

entitled to say the things he knows are true

in long-winded spurts of 411s and here’s the deals

Maybe it’s nerd avoidance

Maybe it’s a manner of

good manners

and the women that

have them

They’re in the kitchen, fighting again:

Sam says you always do this and that

Lily says I feel like you don’t x and y

Sam: Examine the Evidence in Table E sub 1!

Lily: Examine the dimensions of my EQ!

S (throwing something): Grr!

L (tearing up): Question!

Maybe it’s a matter of control

He believes he has it and

She knows better

They’re in bed, making up:

Sam says I love you

Lily says You make me feel so safe

Sam: I got you this gift

Lily: I framed your diploma

S: proof of my love in words and limbs

L: a combination of sighs and kisses

S (entering her): Grr!

L (tearing up): Ah!

Some women don’t like edit wars

They prefer to be social

and discuss things in

round collections of people

They apologize

more often and

when it’s not

their fault

Being correct is a man’s business

Being right is a woman’s

The gender of our language

The sex of our speech

unfolds across the

world’s wide web of

screens and marriages

apple

THE ARTICLE:

“Bush’s Daughter, in a Break, Endorses Gay Marriage”

by Michael Barbaro

February 1, 2011

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/01/us/politics/01bush.html

THE POEM:

apple

something about apples

and trees comes to mind as

a bush catches fire in a

not so holy Old Testament

kind of way

to say

join us

in college the gays

loved her

they made assumptions

about her daddy

but invited her to

their parties

they voted for

the other guy

but danced with her

in public

she swore he

wasn’t a bad guy

it’s just

most people don’t

separate a person’s

opinions from

his politics

she traded

New Haven for

New York where

everyone should

have the right

to marry the

person they love

because

New York is about

fairness and

equality

people across the country

will do the math and

disagree on

the distance between

this apple and its tree