Onion Days
MRS. GABRIELLE GIOVANNITTI comes along Peoria Street Every morning at nine o’clock With kindling wood piled on top of her head, her eyes Looking straight ahead to find the way for her old feet.
Between Two Hills
Between two hills The old town stands. The houses loom And the roofs and trees And the dusk and the dark, The damp and the dew Are there. The prayers are said And the
Two Neighbors
FACES of two eternities keep looking at me. One is Omar Khayam and the red stuff Wherein men forget yesterday and to-morrow And remember only the voices and songs, The stories, newspapers and fights
Buckwheat
1THERE was a late autumn cricket, And two smoldering mountain sunsets Under the valley roads of her eyes. There was a late autumn cricket, A hangover of summer song, Scraping a tune Of the
The Hangman at Home
WHAT does the hangman think about When he goes home at night from work? When he sits down with his wife and Children for a cup of coffee and a Plate of ham and
The Liars
(March, 1919)A LIAR goes in fine clothes. A liar goes in rags. A liar is a liar, clothes or no clothes. A liar is a liar and lives on the lies he tells and
Poems Done on a Late Night Car
I. CHICKENS I am The Great White Way of the city: When you ask what is my desire, I answer: “Girls fresh as country wild flowers, With young faces tired of the cows and
Flat Lands
FLAT lands on the end of town where real estate men are crying new subdivisions, The sunsets pour blood and fire over you hundreds and hundreds of nights, flat lands-blood and fire of sunsets
The Red Son
I LOVE your faces I saw the many years I drank your milk and filled my mouth With your home talk, slept in your house And was one of you. But a fire burns
Two Items
STRONG rocks hold up the riksdag bridge… always strong river waters shoving their shoulders against them… In the riksdag to-night three hundred men are talking to each other about more potatoes and bread for
The Year
IA STORM of white petals, Buds throwing open baby fists Into hands of broad flowers. IIRed roses running upward, Clambering to the clutches of life Soaked in crimson. IIIRabbles of tattered leaves Holding golden
Three Balls
JABOWSKY’S place is on a side street and only the rain washes the dusty three balls. When I passed the window a month ago, there rested in proud isolation: A family bible with hasps
Murmurings in a field hospital
[They picked him up in the grass where he had lain two Days in the rain with a piece of shrapnel in his lungs.] COME to me only with playthings now. . . A
Silver Nails
A MAN was crucified. He came to the city a stranger, Was accused, and nailed to a cross. He lingered hanging. Laughed at the crowd. “The nails are iron,” he Said, “You are cheap.
Jug
THE SHALE and water thrown together so-so first of all, Then a potter’s hand on the wheel and his fingers shaping the jug; out of the mud a mouth and a handle; Slimpsy, loose