Poems Flashcards
Resumé
Razors pain you; Rivers are damp; Acids stain you; And drugs cause cramp. Guns aren't lawful; Nooses give; Gas smells awful; You might as well live.
Because I could not stop for Death
Because I could not stop for death -
He kindly stopped for me -
The carriage help but just Ourselves -
And Immortality.
We slowly drove - He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For his Civility -
We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess - in the Ring -
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain -
We passed the Setting Sun -
Or rather - He passed us -
The Dews drew quivering and chill -
For only Gossamer, my Gown -
My Tippet - only Tulle -
Metaphors
I'm a riddle in nine syllables, An elephant, a ponderous house, A melon strolling on two tendrils. O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers! This loaf's big with its yeasty riding. Money's new-minded in this fat purse. I'm a means, a stage, a cow in calf. I've eaten a bag of green apples, Boarded the train there's no getting off.
The Small Hours
No more my little song comes back;
And now of nights I lay
My head on down, to watch the black
And wait the unfailing gray.
Oh, sad are winter nights, and slow;
And sad’s a song that’s dumb;
And sad it is to lie and know
Another dawn will come.
Spillcorn
The road is now a shadow of a road, overgrown with scrub pine, blackjack oak. Years back one of kinsmen logged here, A man needing steady work no hailstorm or August drought could take away, so followed Spillcorn Creek into the gorge, brought with him a mule and sled, a Colt revolver to kill the rattlesnakes, and always tucked in his lunch sack a book: history, sometimes novel from the Marshall library, so come midday he might rest his spine against the bark and read - what had once roughed his hands now smooth as his fingertips turned the leaves, each word whispered soft as the wind reading the trees.
Burning the Hornets Nest
The great paper lantern in the apple tree does not come on at dark, is shaded even from starlight. But waiting until night you climb up into the belfry
of limbs and feel it near,
approach not jarring the branch
it’s soldered to. A rancid
heat emanates from where
they sleep, a crackling like acid working.
Light the kerosene-soaked cob and jab
at the aperture. Burning the fabric eyeball seems even bigger. Jerking
outer layers catch and peel
upwards. Pellets drip out.
The sunflower heads of wet
larvae are reluctant, seethe
like juices and drop off hole post offices
of trout bait smoldering in the damp
weeds. Next morning survivors clamp
to the rags hanging around the empty socket.
Theme for English B
The instructor said,
“Go home and write
a page tonight.
And let that page come out of you-
Then, it will be true.
I wonder if it’s that simple?
I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem.
I went to school there, then Durham, then here
to this college on the hill above Harlem.
I am the only colored student in my class.
The steps from the hill lead down into Harlem,
through a park, then I cross St. Nicholas,
Eighth Avenue, Seventh, and I come to the Y,
the Harlem Branch Y, where I take the elevator
up to my room, sit down, and write this page:
It’s not easy to know what is true for you or me
at twenty-two, my age. Big I guess I’m what
I feel and see and hear, Harlem, I hear you:
hear you, hear me- we two- you, me, talk on this page.
(I hear New York, too.) Me-who?
Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love. I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.
I like a pipe for a Christmas present,
or records-Bessis, bop, or Bach.
I guess being colored doesn’t make me not like
the same things other folks like who are other races.
So will my page be colored that I write?
Being me, it will not be white. But it will be a part of you, instructor. You are white - yet a part of me, as I am a part of you. That's American. Sometimes perhaps you don't want to be a part of me. Nor do I want to be a part of you. But we are, that's true! As I learn from you, I guess you learn from me- although you're older- and white- and somewhat free.
This is my page for English B.
To live in the borderlands means you
Gabacha: a chinano term for a white woman Rajetas: having betrayed your word Burra: donkey Buey: oxen Sin fronteras: without borders
