Poem of the Day
Yellow Striped Pajamas
By Shamsher Bahadur Singh
walking silently on his paws, he emerges from the semidarkness and disappears into it.
walking silently on his paws, he emerges from the semidarkness and disappears into it.
Two poets 20 and 23 years old,
Naked in bed with the shades drawn
Intertwine themselves, suck nipples and
At three A.M. we passed
through the Great Pit
and our boat, which had always been creaky
withdrew instantly
The memory of Lisa descends again
through night’s hole.
A rope, a beam of light
When Lisa told me she’d made love
to someone else, in that old Tepeyac warehouse
phone booth, I thought my world
Auto in sunlight: every trace of gloss
Is dulled a rusting green.
Even the fenders are a dirty chrome
After a dingy rain I walked out
Through a world stripped bare of narrative,
How faceless their pathos, the ovals
of these heads, huge, smooth, hermetic
as eggs, and solemn, especially the man’s
You could be turning it in your fingers like a planet.
A knife would do, if you're good with knives,
bracing the hard fruit in your slender hand;
No stranger to the faith of eyes
asleep under the surgeon's lancet,
to time gambled with every try
Who's to say where the man ends,
the world begins; what it is
that wakes him in a visible sweat,