poem quotes Flashcards
Assisi
-“sat, slumped like a half-filled sack”
-“over whom he had the advantage //of not being dead yet.”
-“illiterate the goodness// of God and the suffering of His Son. I understood// the explanation and the cleverness”
-“a rush of tourists, clucking contentedly.”
-“it was they who had passed the ruined temple outside.”
-“who’s eyes wept pus, whose back was higher than his head”
-“said Grazie in a voice as sweet as a child’s when she speaks to her mother.”
Basking Shark
“To stub an oar on a rock where none should be”
“I count as gain”
“That room sized monster with a matchbox brain”
“This decadent townee// stuck on the wrong branch of his family tree”
“Emerging from the slime of everything”
“So who’s the monster? The thought made me grow pale.”
Aunt Julia
“Very loud and very fast”
“I could not answer her// i could not understand her.”
“She wore men’s boots, when she wore any”
“I can see her strong foot”
“She was buckets// and water flouncing into them”
“She was winds pouring wetly.”
“Silenced in the absolute black of a sandy grave”
“I can hear her still, welcoming me”
“With so many questions//unanswered.
Visiting hour
“The hospital smell combs my nostrils”
“What seems a corpse”
“I will not feel, I will not // feel, until // I have to.”
“So much pain, so many deaths”
“A withered hand trembles on its stalk”
“The distance of pain neither her nor I can cross”
“Books that will not be read and fruitless fruits.”
Brooklyn cop
“Built like a gorillla but less timid”
“He walks the sidewalk and the thin tissue over violence?
“He hoped it he truly hoped it”
“He is a gorilla”
“Should the tissue tear, should he plunge through into violence”
“What clubbings, what gunshots”
“Whose home is a place, he might this time never get back to”
