I am fascinated by this poem by David Young.
The Sealey Challenge Day 24
I like it when my friend has lovers, their happy moans,
unrestrained, fill the house with the glee of her prowess.
—from “For Every Heart,” in Perpetua, by Olga Broumas
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The Sealey Challenge Day 23
...and the globe
might shake us off its flank like quarry dust
and start again with something less
free, less
wrecked by greed but it suffers us
on its blue cetacean patience
like festered barnacles.
—from “The Massacre,” in Perpetua, by Olga Broumas
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The Sealey Challenge Day 20
By day, I ask of those who come to me for answers,
what would you say, asked by a poet
whose tongue and nails have been removed, whose nipples
are cratered with ash, to account for your freedom?
—from “Evensong,” in Perpetua, by Olga Broumas
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The Sealey Challenge Day 18
I cut it off myself
both times I married, veiled
the attentive temples, the long spine.
To spite, to tease, to be and not be his
look-alike, his twin. I hid the woman in his heart
so long I had forgotten. Face
I’m forever about to know.
—from “Body,” in Pastoral Jazz, Olga Broumas’ third book
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The Sealey Challenge Day 17
To love
the body to love its work
to love the hand that praises both to praise
the body and to love the soul
that dreams and wakes us back alive
against the slothful odds...
—from “Sweeping the Garden,” from Soie Sauvage, Olga Broumas’ second book
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The Sealey Challenge Day 16
In the gazebo-like café, you gave
me food from your plate, alert
to my blood-sweet hungers
double-edged
in the glare of the sun’s
and our own
twin heat.
“Amazon Twins,” from Beginning With O, Olga Broumas’ first book
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The Sealey Challenge Day 15
Now I know less,
and better. I’ve grown less lean,
less easily pleased: I’m tenderer,
harder, angry at all I’ve
not become; I’m more worn,
more generous, more strengely
myself. And more horny.
“Snapshot,” from Selected New Poems
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The Sealey Challenge Day 14
Beyond naming names,
nothing can help.
I learn my limits,
I write what I can:
I didn’t become
a poet for nothing.
from Before Sleep, Philip Booth’s sixth book.
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The Sealey Challenge Day 12
It is being offshore: nothing that’s not horizon.
It is, beyond beacons, sailing alone.
Nothing, beyond one’s compass, to point or warn.
from “It Is Being,” in Available Light, Booth’s fifth book.
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The Sealey Challenge Day 11
...we grope,
for clothes and coffee, our selves
woken by waking beside
each other: who climb back down
from separate sleep
and are, by morning, married.
from “Native to Valleys,” in Margins, Booth’s fourth book.
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The Sealey Challenge Day 10
...the poem,
the poem that must
map the bottom
of here, would be
some sort of base
to start out from.
from “Heart of Darkness,” in Weathers and Edges, Booth’s third book.
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