Poem of the Day
The Channel
By Jana Prikryl
Humans are the animals
with speech who let all of his manuscripts
go poof.
Humans are the animals
with speech who let all of his manuscripts
go poof.
The writing of poems
and the living of life
seem to require
because there is no reason for my sitting here laughing
O fate, O sad duty, / O mankind, O life, what does it mean?
Mmmm
I get up and am seized by the present
Whose presence is
Loneliness comes rushing toward me
Why does it move so fast
When I am moving toward it
When I am dead and gone
they will say of me,
“We never could figure out
“I’m going out for a pack of cigarettes.”
At one point in the history of our language —roughly
from the 1920s into the early 1950s is my guess —those
Beautiful, an O fell from your mouth
You were born already beautiful
My little wife suggested that I tell you this story / because she received such pleasure from it, / and I such pleasure in the telling.