Poem of the Day
1981
By Asiya Wadud
in a world the orange sun resets
in a world the orange sun resets
I remember how I would say, “I will gather
These pieces together,
Any minute now I will make
You are not the first man to have the shakes,
the wheels, the horrors, to wear the scarlet
snowshoe, nor yet the invincible harlot
One by one they appear in
the darkness: a few friends, and
a few with historical
A trifle pompously, my love, you move among
the mass of nerve-
tissue in my cranium:
Like a seal
in broken sleep,
aware of how
The just man followed then his angel guide
Where he strode on the black highway, hulking and bright;
But a wild grief in his wife’s bosom cried,
In his memoirs, Ehrenburg a recognized arbiter of taste in the Soviet Union speaks enthusiastically about the Twenties. He calls that period “the era of poetry,” contrasting it with our times
In a prominent bar in Secaucus one day
Rose a lady in skunk with a top heavy sway,
Raised a knobby red finger—all turned from their beer—
Of this aspiring burgher who disdained
(Dumb in his pride of mortified reserve)
The usufruct of half a continent.
The ice plant is not in flower:
it extends, a springy floor
over the rocks and the sand