Sherry Chandler

In the waiting room

In the dentist’s waiting room this morning, dentist delayed, I finally got a chance to read some of the July/August Poetry that I’ve been carrying around for two months.

Was it my mood? For some reason, the issue seemed jam packed with aphoristic lines of the type that may someday show up on my sidebar here:

The problem with calling our leader a bugger,
she insisted, was her special fondness
for buggerers…
—Robert Wrigley from “Little Prick”

And so we drift off to an unformed prayer…
—Brad Leithauser, from “Furnishings of the Moon”

Some were jubilant;
others were broken-hearted.
I have always been both.
—Edward Hirsch from “Late March”

and

Nothing means what it says,
and it says it all the time.
—Tony Hoagland from “Big Grab”

And you must read all of Hoagland’s poem “Barton Springs,” especially if you are a human of a particular age, as am I:

When I get my allotted case of cancer,
let me swim ten more times at Barton Springs,
in the outdoor pool at 6 AM, in the cold water
with the geezers and the jocks.

…

It was worth death to see you through these optic nerves,
to feel breeze through the fur on my arms
to be chilled and stirred in your mortal martini.

I don’t think I’ll try to memorize this poem — it’s 28 lines long and my brain is a little hardened up with amyloid plaques — but I will remember it.

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The Eclectic Living Room

“In Praise of Limestone”

A. E. Housman

The Enormous Room

Dylan Days Creative Writing Contest

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