a  flawless poem
if such there were,
will always be,
the next one

my poor soul,
my rag tag heart
has no censor,
so careless, reckless,
as if words were but
frivolous treasures,
easy spent, easy get

if only, how I wish I
could harvest my best,
with golden cutlery excise
the single flawless poem,
that I know in my possess

lay down this hand so weary
from cupping tears,
be satisfied at long last,
so much so,
that my casket lowered,
hands in repose companioned,
clutching his best, easing his rest,
a paper record to join his ash,
his flawless poem,
at long last

“wordlessly watching, heartlessly helping “

an early morning insertion,
says writes a love poem of
necessity, no formal request,
but as I am quiet bound to
her chest rhyming rising, falling,
she, caught between eyes closed,
but ears open, in pretense of deep
sleeping,
leaves me treading words,
“wordlessly watching, heartlessly helping “
borrowed for reuse, as waves
that have been here moments ago,
but only now just splashing me
to a place of inspiration, I look
up at the jambalaya of verses,
and declare myself satisfied,
both in love and wish this:

a completed poem that satisfies a
noisy urging~surging to tell her I
love her without disturbing her
peaceful state of drowsy and
permitting me too
(thinking pause)
to
taste a piece
of peace, so
well completed

CAIN

By Ariana Reines

The city was humming gently under me
Like an adolescent quaffing deeply
      from the cup of righteousness

Out of practice with my own world
I was looking at how someone else saw it

Longer than I realized
Longer than I care to admit

Those goggles left a mark on me
Then I stared at my own face

An invitation came with my face
To melancholy while Nature

Purred at the edges of my perception
And before me lay a broad road

Enjoining me to do of myself and make
Of myself according to the American

Tradition. Secretly I felt and knew
Things I had not perceived my body

Turning into secrets. In other words
I did not notice the mechanism

By which something within me noted
My experiences and apprehensions  of ‘the truth’

Would not be met with favor if I  spoke them
Which is not to say one speaks  only to find favor

Only that unreciprocated realities  have a boring
Way of haunting the cells

Pulling them somehow down
Like the countenance of Cain

Which fell one day and never rose
Again, and the fall of his face

Rhymed with the fall out of Eden
Leading to the first ******  and the invention

Of cities, where we now find ourselves
Each tower the ghost of a farmer

Who failed to meet the favor of the Lord


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Anne Boyer is a poet and an essayist. Her memoir about cancer and care, “The Undying,” won a 2020 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction. Ariana Reines is a poet, a performing artist and a playwright from Salem, Mass. “A Sand Book” won the 2020 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. She runs Invisible College, a study hall for poetry, sacred texts and the arts. This poem is from her next book, “The Rose.”

Joel, just so you know

I have it on good authority that our heavenly poets
are always near exhaustion, as the clean air, and the
distraction-free life gives one inspiration by the unending,
poetry the common language in the babel up above

but to be sure they see our messages and scrips, I forward them upward via Messenger, from down here to their seemingly inactive page, but don’t you poet, disbelieve me, they may not be able to send or reply to you via Fedex Direct, but they are receiving just fine

So I send them poems just so they’re knowing that they are
still on my mind…right Joel?

or do I say,

Write on Joel?