All Poems

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Cats

© Arthur Seymour John Tessimond

Cats no less liquid than their shadows
Offer no angles to the wind.
They slip, diminished, neat through loopholes
Less than themselves; will not be pinned

One Almost Might

© Arthur Seymour John Tessimond

Wouldn't you say,
Wouldn't you say: one day,
With a little more time or a little more patience, one might
Disentangle for separate, deliberate, slow delight

Cocoon For A Skeleton

© Arthur Seymour John Tessimond

Clothes: to compose
The furtive, lone
Pillar of bone
To some repose.

Flight Of Stairs

© Arthur Seymour John Tessimond

They curiously investigate
The shells of buildings,
A hollow core,
Shell in a shell.

This is not Love, perhaps,
Love that lays down its life,
that many waters cannot quench,
nor the floods drown,
But something written in lighter ink,
said in a lower tone, something, perhaps, especially our own.

The Man In The Bowler Hat

© Arthur Seymour John Tessimond

I am the man they call the nation's backbone,
Who am boneless - playable castgut, pliable clay:
The Man they label Little lest one day
I dare to grow.

Betrayal

© Arthur Seymour John Tessimond

If a man says half himself in the light, adroit
Way a tune shakes into equilibrium,
Or approximates to a note that never comes:

Nursery Rhyme For A Twenty-First Birthday

© Arthur Seymour John Tessimond

You cannot see the walls that divide your hand
From his or hers or mine when you think you touch it.You cannot see the walls because they are glass,
And glass is nothing until you try to pass it.Beat on it if you like, but not too hard,
For glass will break you even while you break it.Shout, and the sound will be broken and driven backwards,

Buying Stock

© Denise Duhamel

"...The use of condoms offers substantial protection, but does not
guarantee total protection and that while
there is no evidence that deep kissing has resulted in
transfer of the virus, no one can say that such transmission
would be absolutely impossible."

On Being Born The Same Exact Day Of The Same Exact Year As Boy George

© Denise Duhamel

We must have clamored for the same mother, hurried for
the same womb.
I know it now as I read that my birthday is his.
Since the first time I saw his picture, I sensed something
and with a fierce bonding and animosity
began following his career.

Crater Face

© Denise Duhamel

is what we called her. The story was
that her father had thrown Drano at her
which was probably true, given the way she slouched
through fifth grade, afraid of the world, recess

Ai

© Denise Duhamel

There is a chimp named Ai who can count to five.
There's a poet named Ai whose selected poems Vice
just won the National Book Award.
The name "Ai" is pronounced "I"

The Threat

© Denise Duhamel

my mother pushed my sister out of the apartment door with an empty
suitcase because she kept threatening to run away my sister was sick of me
getting the best of everything the bathrobe with the pink stripes instead of
the red the soft middle piece of bread while she got the crust I was sick with
asthma and she thought this made me a favorite

June

© Denise Duhamel

The blue forest, chilled and blue, like the lips of the dead
if the lips were gone. The year has been cut in half
with dull scissors, the solstice still looking for its square
on the calendar. Perhaps the scissors were really

Buddhist Barbie

In the 5th century B.C.
an Indian philosopher
Gautama teaches "All is emptiness"
and "There is no self."

Yes

According to Culture Shock:
A Guide to Customs and Etiquette
of Filipinos, when my husband says yes,
he could also mean one of the following:

Snow White's Acne

At first she was sure it was just a bit of dried strawberry juice,
or a fleck of her mother's red nail polish that had flaked off
when she'd patted her daughter to sleep the night before.
But as she scrubbed, Snow felt a bump, something festering

Kinky

They decide to exchange heads.
Barbie squeezes the small opening under her chin
over Ken's bulging neck socket. His wide jaw line jostles
atop his girlfriend's body, loosely,

Sex With A Famous Poet

I had sex with a famous poet last night
and when I rolled over and found myself beside him I shuddered
because I was married to someone else,
because I wasn't supposed to have been drinking,