Poem of the Day
Consecutive Preterite
By Jessica Laser
That summer I learned Biblical Hebrew / with Christian women heaving themselves / toward ministry one brick building at a time.
That summer I learned Biblical Hebrew / with Christian women heaving themselves / toward ministry one brick building at a time.
The dogs tipped the garbage and the meat spilled out
the larger dog sniffed it
the smaller stood to the side and growled
the meat quivered on the floor
I’d kept it too long it was
slick and fat it had expired
all this while I stood in line
and then the ballot machine glowed greenly
yes yes yes I told it
while the large dog licked the meat
lifted it gingerly with its mouth
dropped it wetly to the floor
We flew through a thunderstorm on our way into
Pittsburgh, landing without incident, but a hailstorm
descended, delaying our bags.
The baby sings in her high chair
at the banquet.
I know most people at this table,
but not everyone. The keynote speaker talks
about how to make beauty in today’s world. A woman
we met during cocktails whispers
that she wants a picture of the baby.
Ray would say no.
He thinks he can protect her, but I don’t.
Iambi, 203
I’m not exactly from poverty, or from obscurity,
but I think it’s okay for me to complain.
Some people treat the right, or the ability
to make, or to talk about, poetry
as a matter of being born in the right place,
or as some kind of laying on of hands.
Epigrams, 56
When I began writing I felt like a constellation,
some new fixture in the sky,
a lamp with twenty wicks, or at least
an eternal flame. It was mostly a lie
I told myself, though a few
deek-teh
deek-tah-tor
behn-zeen
dee-seh-pleen
Joseph Moxon, Mechanick Exercises. Vol. 2 (1683–84), the first known manual of printing
i.
J. M. begins his book,
Every thought taken up from the block with a roll
Of the ball and inked on the form,
A Craft of the Hand which cannot be taught by Words:
“I thought to have given these Exercises
The title of Doctrine of Handy-Crafts but when I considered
The true meaning of the word I found the Doctrine
Would not bear it, therefore I shall not undertake
The things that abandon you get remembered different.
As precise as the English language can be, with words
like penultimate and perseverate, there is not a combination
of sounds that describes only that leaving. Once,
drinking & smoking with buddies, a friend asked if
I’d longed for a father. Had he said wanted, I would have
dismissed him in the way that the youth dismiss it all:
These days sleep comes
to me only through
the aid of three white pills.
Every night
I repeat the magic
words aloud—melatonin,
magnesium, ashwagandha
root and leaf extract
plus magnolia bark
extract that contains
honokiol and magnolol.
Pharmaceutical lullaby.
Charm to conjure
It’s very dangerous to know
too many words.
Each of them has its
flip side, which
also has its flip side
and so on ad infinitum.