Poem of the Day
The People’s History of 1998
By Gbenga Adesina
The Yangtze River in China lost its nerve / and wanted vengeance.
The Yangtze River in China lost its nerve / and wanted vengeance.
We watched her raise herself; her eyes, unseeing
The damask walls and delicate ornament,
As if she thought she heard a servant thieving,
What can she tell him now, now that the hour
Is vanished from the room, the furniture
Flat without freshness, flat without power
Be reticent and elegant,
Twist the opal on your hand,
Turn your pale eyes on me,
There is a city whose fair houses wizen
In a strict web of streets, of waterways
In which the clock tower gurgles and sways,
Psychoanalysis
Pursued by a tiger in his sleep
he turned himself into a horse turd
’Tis I Master, Francesco, come
to awaken you for noon refreshment.
See how he sleeps; as easily
That was a pretty one, I heard you call
From the unsatisfactory hall
To the unsatisfactory room where I
I will not sleep.
Men sleep and the beasts sleep, and no one watches.
The paid watchmen going their rounds
Love, we who ply forked tongues to speak
Note what critique
Kelp, cork, and shell
If maybe we could form a little group
Say something like Bloomsbury and we all
Could write biographies of each other