Explore Poems: Language & Linguistics

what travessia/trip/travesia/trajet
             traverses
   the wreck/naufragio/
naufragio/naufrage
of…

                                                ly     ly
                                        ly     ly        

lighght

                                                all     all
                                        all     all        

Dear ferocious dreamer. Dear maven of song and surveyor of every flung star. Dear meandering romantic, audacious witness, dear listener with the whole of your covetous heart. Dear listener to the air’s brutal and gorgeous music, soft dancer to ballads...

It’s a shame this poem’s already been erased when
I go to read it. Like humid air that tugs
at my arm to catch what will fall, is
falling, and falls. What’s up with erasing? Glue,
scissors, and yarn make a shadow of barbed
wire....

say i ‘well
particular in one no to
backed ive time first the isnt this
disaster a of out us

He and I sought together,
over the spattered table,
rhymes and flowers,
gifts for a name.

He said, among others,
I will bring
(and the phrase was just and good,
but not as good as mine,)
"the narcissus that loves the rain."

We strove for a name,
while the light of...

Words, like weeds,
are sprouting everywhere.
My mouth and throat are choked with them,
wild fairy rings waiting to be gathered and dried.
I pick through them and press them between
sheets of cheap paper,
stuff them into envelopes
and mail them out
to anyone who’ll have them.
I’m...

The spoons have clattered
Aren’t children little pears and observant birds
I note that the green blanket is askew again briefly
I have flung my sweater over the banister again
The corn cockle is beautiful
For months I’ve owed someone I’ll call Amy Rossini a...

In my language
we distinguish
sueñu from suañu.
The first tethers us to the ground,
stuffs stones in our pockets
so we don’t get soaked
by heavy clouds.
The second leads us
to summit
impossible peaks
skipping with joy.
There is a moment
when the day, gentle, wanes,
in which suañu takes
sueñu by...

Na mio llingua
estremamos
el sueñu del suañu.
El primeru átanos al suelu,
ponnos piedres nos bolsos
pa que nun nos mueyen
les nubes cargaes.
El segundu llévanos a
trescombar
los cumales inalcanzables
con reblagos alegres.
Hai un momento,
cuando’l día, mansu, declina,
en que’l suañu garra
de la mano
al sueñu
y nesi eclipse d’estraña
guapura...

how the blood it fit into the body? how the body it fit
into the family, and how the grandmother she fit
into the blood? how grandmother of me she fit into
tongue of her? how gender of her it fit into
mouth of...

Your voice translated me,
a lucid memory.

You videotaped my hands, words.
Now that’s all gone to the birds.

What led you to sign, to grasp?
Your fluency made me gasp.

You turned deaf to others sneering.
Your ears were so used to hearing. 

Translate me one more...

anak like a sigh born every day
ilong lead by scent and know-how
tanong asking questions about the world
sayaw like how dance that comes from joy
sayang can sway so close to sorrow
bayan how shame could be an entire country
pinto or an open-doored question
kailangan needing, needful, and needless
ilaw illuminating a path
ikaw to you,...

give me a name & i’ll answer
         whenever a mother calls it out across the park
wanting only her child & not some tired queen
         sitting alone on a bench with a bottle
in a brown...

        #

Listen to the children
who know their way about the forest
and return with stories

which the thief steals
exchanging them
for a kind of music.

        #

Listen to the music
which knows its way about the forest
and returns with...

I'm reading John Wieners chapbook, Pressed Wafer, at one of the giant tables upstairs in the archives where I work, when a visiting scholar asks for help with research. And that's how I learn that, in 1882, landscape architects at...

kaddish  tore    a   boulevard through          bird              lung
       say hyssop   sing       thirst       less
                   subtle   saplings       down the      sewer
                   straight    into    the silo
                                  father
                     put    me   on ...

In other sounds
 E wants a mother
[unclear] I hear

bad. Trachea,
 trace—translate
[hiss] chase

meaning’s
 severed half-
lives for cantos.

Mine pine
 after dorsal
fins. Drafts

drown in
 throat. I’m
pssst tense

subjunctive
 unfolding
spine, needling

form’s tomb
 marrow sonata.
Tingly

E taunts bow
 fingers dawn
lightly butchers

an author
 botches cadence
mutters in violet.