Carolyn Forche Poems

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languid at the edge of the sea
lays itself open to immensity
leaf-cutter ants bearing yellow trumpet flowers
     along the road
left everything left all usual worlds behind
library, lilac, linens, litany....Read more of this...

 Dipping our bread in oil tins
we talked of morning peeling
open our rooms to a moment
of almonds, olives and wind
when we did not yet know what we were.
The days in Mallorca were alike:
footprints down goat-paths
from the beds we had left,
at night the stars locked to darkness.
At that time we were learning
to dance, take our clothes
in our fingers and open
ourselves to...Read more of this...

 What you have heard is true. I was in his house. 
His wife carried a tray of coffee and sugar. His 
daughter filed her nails, his son went out for the 
night. There were daily papers, pet dogs, a pistol 
on the cushion beside him. The moon swung bare on 
its black cord over the house. On the television...Read more of this...

 By way of a vanished bridge we cross this river
as a cloud of lifted snow would ascend a mountain.

She has always been afraid to come here.

It is the river she most 
remembers, the living
and the dead both crying for help.

A world that allowed neither tears nor lamentation.

The matsu trees brush her hair as she passes
beneath them, as do the...Read more of this...

 Grandma, come back, I forgot
How much lard for these rolls 

Think you can put yourself in the ground
Like plain potatoes and grow in Ohio?
I am damn sick of getting fat like you 

Think you can lie through your Slovak?
Tell filthy stories about the blood sausage?
Pish-pish nights at the virgin in Detroit? 

I blame your raising me up for my...Read more of this...

 Our life is a fire dampened, or a fire shut up in stone.
 --Jacob Boehme, De Incarnatione Verbi

Outside everything visible and invisible a blazing maple.
Daybreak: a seam at the curve of the world. The trousered legs of the women
 shimmered.
They held their arms in front of them like ghosts.

The coal bones of the house clinked in a kimono of...Read more of this...

 In Spanish he whispers there is no time left. 
It is the sound of scythes arcing in wheat,
the ache of some field song in Salvador.
The wind along the prison, cautious
as Francisco's hands on the inside, touching 
the walls as he walks, it is his wife's breath
slipping into his cell each night while he
imagines his hand to be hers. It...Read more of this...