The RetroLounge Daily Poem Thread (Tue 5/5/2009)

[RetroLounge]

Proposal

Show me a tent of well-dressed witnesses
and I'll show you how a circus catches fire:

elephants trying to squeeze down the aisle,
monkeys dancing from pole to hot pole

until the roof collapses. Will you be water?
Will you be ashes? Will you be enough gauze

for a gown? In the stampede, a woman runs
ten yards before noticing the hand she holds

is not her husband's. She keeps running.
Do you blame her? Convince me eternity

is just this art of surviving, over and over.
Promise you're worth my weight in burning.

Sandra Beasley

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Sandra Beasley is the author of I Was the Jukebox, winner of the 2009 Barnard Women Poets Prize, selected by Joy Harjo and forthcoming from W. W. Norton. The prize is for the best second collection of poems by an American woman poet. Her debut book, Theories of Falling, was selected by Marie Howe as the winner of the 2007 New Issues Poetry Prize (New Issues Poetry and Prose, 2008). Recent work can be found in AGNI online, Blackbird, Barrelhouse, and Black Warrior Review, which published Bitch and Brew: Sestinas in their chapbook series. Her work has been anthologized on Verse Daily and in 2005 Best New Poets, Bedside Guide to No Tell Motel (Second Story), and the forthcoming Online Writing: The Best of the First Ten Years.

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:hi:

RL

[BlueIris]

1. Another good one from this author. nt

[RetroLounge]

3. Yeah, I seem to be fixated...

:hi:

RL

[BlueIris]

7. Nothing wrong with fixation

where poetry is concerned.

[RetroLounge]

12. Agreed

:9

RL

[blueraven95]

2. morning

:hi:

[RetroLounge]

5. Morning!

:hi:

RL

[Chorophyll]

4. I think I've read this one before...

probably in a real live literary magazine(!). :hi:

[RetroLounge]

6. Or I may be repeating myself...

I'm old and have killed brain cells...

:9

:hi:

RL

[Tuesday Afternoon]

8. Someone has posted it before. I am pretty sure I read it here.

I guess if Blue had posted it, she would admit it. :shrug:

Its a good one:o

:donut: :hi:

[RetroLounge]

11. it was probably me...

:hi:

RL

[Chorophyll]

13. I don't think you're repeating yourself in this case.

Somewhere in my house is a lit mag with a bunch of her poems in it. I'll have to try to find it.

You probably have dead brain cells anyway... just not in this particular case. :smoke:

[Chorophyll]

14. Of course, I could be wrong...

:smoke:

[RetroLounge]

15. ...

:rofl:

:hi:

RL

[CaliforniaPeggy]

9. It's beautiful, my dear Retro!

:hi:

[RetroLounge]

10. ...

:hi:

RL

[RetroLounge]

16. kick

:kick:

RL