From Modern Poetry

All poems on this site are written by E. M. Weaver, a current student at Columbia University.

This poem was inspired by a brief exercise in a Modern Poetry class.

When I stop at a poem,
it peers at me through the peephole
and buzzes me upstairs,
where I arrive -
out of breath with a bottle of wine.

We brush kisses on each other’s cheeks
and it takes my coat, ushering me inside
and showing me to the table.

Here, chairs squeezed closetogether,
a rambling Whitman winks at Milton
who blushes into his porridge,
and Dante, one arm around Beatrice’s waist,
argues loudly with Tennyson -
bits of stuffing spewing from his mouth.

Meanwhile, we, the nameless, draw near
with our humble gifts.



- 10/12/08

 

Sunday Morning

It’s Sunday morning,
and Death is doing the crossword,
there, in his flannel sweatpants-
teeth rattling with droughts
from his mug of bitterness,
(taken with a dash of cinnamon).

Raising a bony eyebrow, he suggests,
It’s not you; it’s me.
It wasn’t a long-term thing, he said,
Just a bit of fun for the evening.
He runs an icy finger up my spine, grabs his coat,
and leaves.

- 2/07/08

 

Appreciation

Dump trucks, scabs, bits of wool -
all the things that never got a line,
this is for you.

- 1/26/08

 

On Reading the Menu in a Fancy French Restaurant

When I am tumbled, hung to dry,
will they baste me with white wine
or just let me fry?

- 1/13/08

 

Bacchanal

Come, those lingering in coffee mugs,
sucked into the isolation of society.
Dance with me in secret groves;
pluck the fruit from its burdened vine,
and we will gorge ourselves together-
fingers sticky with purple nectar.

- 12/10/07

 

Stir-Fry of the Ages

Seasoning us first with fragrant spices,
Time lines us up on countertops for dicing-
Vegetal beings: cold, unfeeling,
He cuts us into little shapes with his gleaming knife
and scrapes our souls from the cutting board,
sliding us neatly into our graves.

- 10/29/08

 

Big Tent, Vernacular

To people raised in other tongues,
English sounds, I hear, like grumbling
rumbled out from bearish lungs,
which let pregnant “r”s clatter
to the floor of a thousand conversations,
and growl every syllable without hesitating.
Yet methinks we bears dance not for cosmic circuses;
but rather, blanketed in downy fuzz,
call out directly to the stars,
rattling our cage’s gloomy bars with the reverberations
of one hundred lovely voices.

- 10/29/08

 

Beauty

Tonight my nerves are torn,
fraying like a wire nibbled by rats,
and I’m no Plato; I’m tired of ideals only
and of hobbling through life forlorn
on my two legs -
as useless now as yellowed spats
from ancient days.

Imaginings don’t satisfy,
nor pictures in books
or potatoes boiling on the stove -
only the illusion of your body next to mine
and the jazz pouring out of the radio.

- 10/29/08

 

Au Lecteur

I have waited for you a long time, my reader -
seated at my desk in an empty room,
peering shyly through the slatted blinds
or pressing quarters one by one
into a ticking meter-
carefully bending, crafting lines.

I have sat while rain fell
like rhymes to the pavement -
wondering whether time might find
an answer to my bereavement:
cast off, folded, draped over a spindly chair-
If one day I might look and see you there,
a portrait only, framed in the doorway,
and holding my work in your hands.

- 10/29/08

 

A Heavy Haul

I dip into history,
pulling up its tiny fish
with my glistening net:
Generals, battles, dates-

I heave them all dripping
onto the table,
and, without a glance
for their intricate stripes & patterns,
begin filleting them one by one.

- 10/28/08

 

A Taste

I wonder how philosophy never dreamt of it -
Its simple way, always before us
seen and unseen after so many dictions and contradictions,
after the great rolling together of many wits
like tobaccos in a cigarette, fuming fictions in tired doorways,
but at last the universe has spread itself on my antique bed
lying out to profess:
Love is like a basket of rolls,
set down on your lonely table–
there for the taking beneath a checkered napkin,
waiting quietly beside the salt shaker,
and best enjoyed hot.

- 10/28/08