Go by Kathleen Ossip

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend June 9, 2016   Go   Kathleen Ossip

It is a cube, it is red, it is mountainous, it is a bird of fire, it is the bones of the pelvis, it is a walnut, it is treasured. It is yellow Saturn wobbling in its orbit. It is danger, squawking.   It is the desire to sit down with strangers in cafes and then it is the strangers in cafés, it is the man with the black T-shirt labeled UNARMED CIVILIAN and it is the blind man with him   and his painful trembling. Always it is oxygen and more oxygen. It is the fight in you and the fight in you dying. It is the need for water and the water that falls from the sky.   It is desperate for a theory and it is the acts you call evil when you know there is no evil only desperation. It is that bravery, that arrogance, that blindness. It is the pink morning and your smile in the pink morning.   It is a phantom and the thin neck of a tree it is a little project called loving the world. It is howling in the dirt it is an extravaganza. It’s the abandoned sports bra, in the dirt beside howling you.   It’s the windchimes in the thin-necked tree and it is tonguetied. It is asleep. It is waking up now. It is a small cat on the bed. It is the threads of a leaf and it is the Three Graces:   Splendor, Mirth and Good Cheer. It is their heartfelt advice: You can’t let it hurt you. You must let it hurt you.   It is a careless error and the hotel pool blue with chemistry. It’s a kiss of course it is a kiss. It’s an old strange book newly acquired but not yet catalogued, it is crazy.   It is you, crazy with honesty and crazy with ambition. It’s the sun that stuns over and over again. It’s your tablet, which is every tablet everywhere. It’s an explosion it is every explosion everywhere.   It is pavement, mineral and hot and wet with droplets. It’s the stars that pitch white needles into the pond. It is provable, it is a lotion, it is a lie. It is a baby because everyone is a baby.   It talks to you, always to you, it moves swiftly, it is stuck, it moves swiftly, it is stuck, it moves swiftly. It’s the impenetrable truth, now clear as ice. It is serious, it is irreversible, it is going, going.   It is flying now laughing strong enough to know anything.            Copyright © 2016 Kathleen Ossip. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   “I’m obsessed with radical inclusiveness, with the idea of writing a poem that has everything in it. It’s impossible and I keep trying.” —Kathleen Ossip   Kathleen Ossip is the author of The Do-Over (Sarabande Books, 2015). She teaches at The New School and lives in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York. Poetry by Ossip   The Do-Over (Sarabande Books, 2015) "I’m Over the Moon" by Brenda Shaughnessy "Lion Felling a Bull" by Robyn Schiff "How the Milky Way Was Made" by Natalie Diaz Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038