I get some of my best poems from the Sunday Washington Post Book World. Here are two I found recently and loved.
The first makes reference to "folding chairs":
Moving Day
Scraps and small reminders said the scissors to the shelf
Why do I feel empty said the oven to itself
Some of us are hungry said can opener to tin
Tell me said the radio how much you want to win
And take us along when you go.
All the way from Thailand said the topmost row of cans
Rise and turn around again explained the standing fan
None of us are broken said the tumblers to the towel
Scratch me up or polish me said banister to dowel
And take us along when you go.
When they come to get you said a carton to its box
Count your lucky hours said a doorjamb to its locks
Will she will he will she sang the plumbing to the void
Did you mean to build me will I ever be destroyed
Carpet said to ceiling Can I offer any more
Nothing I can give you said the lintel to the door
You always overlook me said the baseboard to the stair
Board games valise said the attic and a folding chair
And take us along when you go.
Stephen Burt
Don't think about this next poem too hard - just enjoy.
Pumpkin Envy
How many hours did I lie in bed, thought stapling
my sixteen-year-old arms to the sheets,
thought’s curare, when I finally did dial Tami Jamison,
numbing my lips too much to speak?
How often did I think, “I’m dead,” feeling
my strength leak away, phlegm drown my lungs,
sarcoma thrust like red toads up out of my skin
in the three days between the blood-drawing
and the doctor’s benediction: “Negative.”
Thought is a rope that pulls the kite out of the sky—
a cramp that locks the boxer’s chin as fists hiss
toward his head. “What sharks?” my friend demands,
launching the sea-kayak that gives him so much fun.
How many odes would Keats have traded for one
night with Fanny Brawne? What did understanding do
for Nietzsche, but make him more insane?
Thought is more deadly than crack or heroin.
Its pipe to my lips, the needle in my vein.
I loll in my dark room, and envy pumpkin vines.
Whatever’s in their way, they overrun. Unafraid
of blight, birds, drought, or humans’ being
they stretch out in the heat, let their roots drink deep
and—never giving a thought to anything—
make a million copies of the sun.
Charles Harper Webb
And one final poem from Billy Collins.
I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide
or press an ear against its hive.
I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,
or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.
I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.
But all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with a rope
and torture a confession out of it.
They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.
Billy Collins
