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A number of American poets are adept at describing
places and the people who inhabit them. Galway Kinnell’s great poem,
“The Avenue Bearing the Initial of Christ into the New World”
is one of those masterpieces, and there are many others. Here Anne Pierson
Wiese, winner of the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets,
adds to that tradition.
Columbus Park
Down at the end of Baxter Street, where Five Points slum used to be, just north of Tombs, is a pocket
park. On these summer days the green plane trees’
leaves linger heavy as a noon mist above the men playing mah jongg — more Chinese in the air than English. The city’s composed of village greens; we rely on the Thai place on the corner: Tom Kha for a cold, jasmine tea for fever, squid for love, Duck Yum for loneliness. Outside, the grove of heat, narrow streets where people wrestle rash and unseen angels; inside, the coolness of a glen and the wait
staff in their pale blue collars offering ice water. Whatever you’ve done or undone, there’s a
dish for you to take out or eat in: spice for courage, sweet for
chagrin.
Poem copyright © 2003 by Anne Pierson Wiese.
Reprinted from Floating City, by Anne Pierson Wiese, (Louisiana State University Press, 2007)
with the permission of the author and publisher. Poem first published in West Branch. American Life in
Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation
(www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of
English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Ted Kooser served as the U.S. Poet Laureate from
2004-2006. For more information, go to www.americanlifeinpoetry.org.
septemberlakepoems #1
little
garter snake
you have a scant week or so
to sleep in the sun
this morning I swam
so close to a
cormorant
it turned its walking-stick neck
to look at me before
diving
I’ve read that bird flu
decimated the
crow
population you couldn’t
tell by the
confabulation
fighting over the
sweet corn tailings
on our midden
heap
© Jacqueline Jackson 2007
This article appears in Sep 20-26, 2007.
