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Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Searching... Author: SLEIGH, TOM Matches Found: 169 Sleigh, Tom Poet's Biography poems available by this author A VISIT Poem Text First Line: What she is waiting for never arrives Subject(s): Aging A WEDDING AT CANA, LEBANON, 2007 Poem Text First Line: He said, 'it is terrible what happens.' Subject(s): Marriage; War; Lebanon; Weddings; Husbands; Wives ACHILLES' HORSES First Line: Achilles' horses are weeping Last Line: The horse, shaking off a fly %turns his head away AFTER A LONG ILLNESS First Line: Ten thousand fathoms down: the self a mindanoa trench, and in Last Line: Your coming close, the room laboring in sleep AFTER MIDNIGHT First Line: After midnight in the summer heat Last Line: The car hurtling weightless through the open night AFTER ONE First Line: Pen marks trying to scratch their way to sense Last Line: But in my hand I hold a turning key %that even as I lay it down goes on turning AFTERWORDS First Line: The moon hugs the glass, a snail of phosphorus ... Last Line: Heady as perfume as we dabbed it %on our wrists and behind our ears %and sprinkled it in each other' ALP First Line: The mountain, harsh, redolent, green Last Line: The crush of history swaying forward, %crunching in my footsteps to the rim ANIMUS Poem Text First Line: A face, my face, stares back from glass pocked Subject(s): Doppelgangers ANIMUS First Line: A face, my face, stares back from glass pocked Last Line: I feel my heart open to enclose that welling salt %as the drops, bright, blood-warm, streak the glas ARMY CATS Poem Text First Line: Over by the cemetery next to the cp Subject(s): Lebanon; War; Bombs; Cats AUBADE First Line: Lathe of the ocean. Perpetual AUGUSTO JANDOLO: ON EXCAVATING AN ETRUSCAN TOMB First Line: When we lit our torches Last Line: Rose up in the glow and seemed to hover BEIRUT TANK Poem Text First Line: Staring up into the tank's belly lit Subject(s): Lebanon; War; Tanks (military Science) BLUEPRINT Poem Text First Line: I had a blueprint Subject(s): Language; Words; Vocabulary BOND First Line: Stillness. Abandon. Genius with words Last Line: Presence moving into genius with words moving into abandon, stillness BRIDGE First Line: It wasn't the sort of thing that's talked about Last Line: Dogs barked, barked, birds, madly sang and cattle %in pens balked, spooked, bellowing for their wayw BUOYANCY Poem Text First Line: A swimmer swims out through voids of drypoint, inkwash, Subject(s): Swimming & Swimmers CHILD'S DRAWING: BOY HOLDING A BALL AT A FUNERAL First Line: Next to crazily leaning slabs of slate, parents and children Last Line: Of the dead and the soon to be dying CRY First Line: Whose body is it anyway, shouts a voice in the street Last Line: Replenishing forever on its own echoes DEAR CUSTOMER First Line: Cattails fraying and ragged weeds in a jar Last Line: Bright, of routine life that lies %in a clutter on the desk:faithfully %arriving, unopened, anonymou DEMON First Line: Cars stalled, the light gone Last Line: My familiar flying through rising fumes %to drag from the car DON'T GO TO THE BARN First Line: The brick of the asylum shimmered in the sun Last Line: And try to hand yourself. Don't go to the barn %and try to hang yourself. Rose, don't got to the bar DOOR First Line: Fifteen years in each other's heat Last Line: Your face it appears to me; mine as it seems to you DREAMHOUSE First Line: Does it move inside him, that trembling of the earth? Last Line: And sweeping wall to wall to wall sunlight everywhere ECLIPSE First Line: When from among the dead the faces Last Line: They lock hands in an unbreakable chain. Variant Title(s): The Chai ELK AT BLACK FORK CANYON First Line: Great furred noses nuzzline at hay bales Last Line: Of fog lengthening down the mountain, %the trampled snow spattered %golden from their urine ENDING First Line: When I first learned Last Line: Pure facelessness %which turned from me %and hung in the blind distance, unraveling %into the vacant FABLE Poem Text Recitation by Author First Line: But where, oh where is the holy idiot, Subject(s): Antiwar Movements; Anti-war Protests FABLE First Line: She seems, almost, the hero in a fable Last Line: Her hand over his to keep him calm, her smile %forgiving him the feelings he still feels FENIX Poem Text First Line: Face cross-hatched by violet shadows that fall round her like a net, Last Line: And on the other lens my ass Subject(s): Dreams; Social Classes; Man-woman Relationships; Nightmares; Caste; Male-female Relations FIELD First Line: Once I left the room Last Line: Into a solitude beyond %appeal or recall FIGHT First Line: The street speaks the language of the street Last Line: A mute satisfaction pulsing in my veins FIRST LOVE Poem Text First Line: A slightering rustle through ivy and leaves Subject(s): Love - Beginnings FISH STORY First Line: I was reading plutarch's lives, about the gods FISSURE First Line: Your power to make me feel that I am Last Line: Moving with the ice pack toward open water FLESH First Line: He is still flesh, animal flesh whatever worlds his madness Last Line: While his hand shakes and shakes holding the pencil FOR ROBERT OWEN SLEIGH, C.F.C., 100TH DIVISION First Line: The men you killed with a grenade that day Last Line: Blown through the wall just your shape and size FOR THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE FALLEN Poem Text First Line: The little boy crying out Subject(s): Rector, Liam (1949-2007); Innocence; Suicide FORMAL OCCASION First Line: The tidal flats stretched far and awkward Last Line: We turned %our backs to the view, we walked along FRAGMENT First Line: ...And round the shield's rim ran the stream of ocean Last Line: And swerving fish bolted shadow to shadow GOD First Line: A warming pulsing flood like blood surging through Last Line: Are nothing in my hands but my hands moving. GRID First Line: Faces swell, then flatten into the million-celled grid Last Line: The sun at night makes its smoldering way HAMMOCK First Line: Your hand pushes me away Last Line: Love draws the soul %the way a magnet draws iron HARBOR: 1. MOSAIC First Line: Your face clears of expression, your eyes Last Line: Our flesh/fish bodies puddling molten Subject(s): Boats; Relationships; Water HARBOR: 2. BATH First Line: Buoyancy lifting us on each wave's crest Last Line: The swell of your razoring whiplash tail Subject(s): Boats; Water HARBOR: 3. ARGUMENT First Line: The lighthouse light there, then not Last Line: Higher and higher up the scale HARBOR: 4. HARPOON First Line: The wooden handle cracked but seasoned tough Last Line: Crystal on crystal holding fast Subject(s): Boats; Relationships HARP First Line: Stopped at a light halfway to the terminal Last Line: All eyes and ears, nothing before or behind HERACLES First Line: Strongman. Father. Provider. Savior Last Line: As the bow bends and the tensing fingers curl HISTORY LESSON First Line: Hamstrung, your genitals hang down, the hair Last Line: But your eyes blaze like twin projector beams %until the rinsing, neon cloud drifts down HOME First Line: Why, tonight, is the hot air Last Line: Blare her voice calling all %around him in the hot night air, %'here, over here, home is here ...' HOPE First Line: Overhung by evergreen, your house was cool Last Line: Go fish in the boneyard,' I hear you say, %your eyes poker-faced, impenetrable IN JUNE: 1 First Line: Figs we tear open looking for the worm Last Line: A wet finger slowly round %the rim until the close shed rings %with a crystal hum IN JUNE: 2 First Line: The stars turn jittery Last Line: Your eyes' hard blue %unflinchingly deliberate, %wet lips stinging %sweet from ouzo IN JUNE: 3 First Line: The cove rock Last Line: As you rouse from the shallows %and wade out into the bay, %dive and dissolve %into a wave IN JUNE: 4 First Line: Your song, off-key, melts and puddles Last Line: My body pressed to yours, waterline to shoreline ... %then your sleeping breath unmoored, an island IN THE HOSPITAL FOR TESTS First Line: A dripping, numbing girl, surf tearing her Last Line: Ripping into flame as on her lips a smile of wide-eyed %and lacerating gaiety darkens to a firm, unt INTELLIGENCE Poem Text First Line: Wiretaps and tapes, concealed Subject(s): Intelligence Agencies INTELLIGENCE First Line: Wiretaps and tapes, concealed Last Line: And then, edging %the hero closer to the cliff, pointing %out the harbor, he'd push INVALID First Line: He rose late most mornings and took a walk Last Line: Though we always stopped to touch %the burns at the tips of a dogwood bloom ISLAND First Line: After our last week together Last Line: Your footstep so light not a grain %of sand shifts beneath its weight JENNY FISH First Line: Slender jenny fish, you danced with your dad Last Line: As above you, in a fist, your twining hands %clenched with draconian affection JOY ON A SUNDAY First Line: Pulsing there like a wound in the air Last Line: Happening while the record turns JUDAS WAKING First Line: His name, his habits, burnt off like a foul gas Last Line: Naked, shivering, he hugged himself, %but no heat took the chill from that embrace LA BUFADORA First Line: The sea spouts out of rocks and rains down Last Line: I hear the tick of moonlit stones dragged %in the tide's maternal suck LAMENTATION ON UR First Line: Like molten bronze and iron shed blood Last Line: May this disaster too be torn out of mind LAND'S END DIALECTIC First Line: Januaries the tall sea Last Line: Though a lowering cast on the mind's brink %hints at the smoke in last night's dream LAST WISH First Line: The cars flashed like scales as the hearse-headed snake Last Line: But what he lacked in brains he made up in looks.' %and staring straight through me: 'you ought to w LAST WORD First Line: As if your half-witted tongue LOGOS First Line: You walk on the road accompanied Last Line: As coal-embers: it speaks you, only you, %your name's furnace that you pass through LULLABY First Line: Bellying out in the full sail of dream Last Line: The music echoing %and drifting in the breath between notes M. ON HER THIRTHIETH BIRTHDAY Poem Text First Line: Sometimes I think I could be a yogi Subject(s): Coming Of Age; Parents; Death; Parenthood; Dead, The M. ON HER THIRTIETH BIRTHDAY First Line: Sometimes I think I could be a yogi Last Line: Mother twenty. I guess that's what it means to be %grown up,to know you wished them gone, and now th MARCHE AUX OISEAUX First Line: I was in such a hurry I climbed MEADOW First Line: Across the road from where we nap Last Line: Our eyes like x rays pierce the frost %stalking every step the living take MUSICKE OF DIVISION First Line: Spring is dead. The leaves' fat mature laughter Last Line: Registers like guns pointed to our heads, %the chambers clicking off like drops of blood NECESSARY WEBS First Line: Night galls over and over Last Line: The ragged center of our lives %until the savage feathered clock begins to swing NEW YORK AMERICAN SPELL, 2001: 1. OMEN First Line: What was going on in the new york american Last Line: What's big, red, and eats rocks?' NEW YORK AMERICAN SPELL, 2001: 2. IN FRONT OF ST. VINCENT'S First Line: A woman hugging another woman Last Line: Were pulled swiftly along down the sidewalk NEW YORK AMERICAN SPELL, 2001: 3. JOKE First Line: Faces powdered with dust and ash, there they were Last Line: Ash smearing down their faces as they chewed NEW YORK AMERICAN SPELL, 2001: 4. SPELL SPOKEN BY SUPPLIANT TO HELIOS First Line: Under my tongue is the mud of the nile Last Line: And tell them everything truthfully NEW YORK AMERICAN SPELL, 2001: 5. FROM BROOKLYN BRIDGE First Line: Sun shines on the third bridge tower Last Line: Is air vanishing into clearer air NEW YORK AMERICAN SPELL, 2001: 6. FROM THE PLANE First Line: Pressed against our seats, then released to air Last Line: Slowly or cruising unblinking, jaws open or closed NEW YORK AMERICAN SPELL, 2001: 7. SPELL SPOKEN BY SUPPLIANT TO... First Line: This is the charm that will protect you, the charm Last Line: Dyed purple, hang it round your neck and wear it NEW YORK AMERICAN SPELL, 2001: 8. ROLL OF FILM: PHOTOGRAPHER MISSING First Line: Vines of smoke through the latticework of steel Last Line: Recording in the foul-smelling air NEW YORK AMERICAN SPELL, 2001: 9. LAMENTATION ON UR First Line: Like molten bronze and iron shed blood Last Line: May this disaster too be torn out of mind NEWSREEL First Line: It was like being in the crosshairs of a magnifying glass Last Line: Possessed by shadows, dispossesed brain NIGHT JOURNEY First Line: We passed a funeral at midday Last Line: An iridescent buoyant mass, surging %beneath the spray above the hosed-off sidewalk NOBODY Poem Text First Line: Line after line smearing off into elephantine Subject(s): Writing & Writers; Illness O.D. Poem Text First Line: I was surprised to find them Subject(s): Drugs & Drug Abuse; Music & Musicians; Narcotics; Opium; Cocaine; Crack; Heroin OBSEQUIES First Line: We stood in line like the deeper vowels Last Line: You gazed into the blare of the dust-hazed sun, %then rammed the barrel to the iron nipple OCTOPUS First Line: As if childhood swam out, all soul and human-eyed Last Line: Gold hammered thin canceling his face OMEN First Line: The week after you had gone I woke Last Line: The sluggish air with a throbbing whine, %gray gun-turrets gleaming in the sun ON THE PLATFORM Poem Text First Line: The omen I didn't know I was waiting for Subject(s): Railroad Stations; Bombs ON THE SEVENTH FLOOR: CANCER WARD First Line: We are the elect in this inverse hell Last Line: The white shoes whisper room to room %as word by word we lose our lives %in someone else's hope, ano ONE SUNDAY First Line: Something in the mind can't rest, can it Last Line: The common and the sheraton commander ORACLE Poem Text First Line: Because the burn's unstable, burning too hot Subject(s): Engineering & Engineers; Rockets; Fathers; Death; Dead, The OUTCAST First Line: Looking up from his drink Last Line: To carry him back home %its eyes are wet PAINTER First Line: I knew a painter once, though not exactly Last Line: Having listened, as he painted, %while I read the golden ass aloud PHYSICAL First Line: Wrung out and clammy, my shirt stuck to my back Last Line: Enclosing him thickly in his flesh %as aides crowded round, muscling him off PORCH SWING First Line: The chains and creak Last Line: --you can see just how pretty--and here, this one's %of the layer cake we baked for her retirement p PRAYER First Line: God of flesh, god of pleasure Last Line: Shadowy as bodies giving themselves away PREMONITION First Line: Your girdles, wigs, your stretchmarked flesh turned out Last Line: What was it you saw when you looked at me. %your soap-slimedhands churning underwater? PURITY SUPREME First Line: Space station walls of my bedroom revolving Last Line: Falling with one long murmur of conspiring laughter RAFT First Line: Dr. Pepper and the bible on the shelf together, a tricycle Last Line: Adrift, absorbed, our swimming suits drying, then dried REFUGE: I First Line: A premonition in the marsh Last Line: Gorged on our silhouettes. %we couldn't tell which was which REFUGE: II First Line: A cage of shade entraps the bed Last Line: And watch the wings in the scything reds %of the smog-flawedsun, beat upwards ROOT CELLAR First Line: A slithering rustle through ivy and leaves Last Line: An onion like an apple: my mouth waters %for the sweet white flesh stinging my eyes to tears Variant Title(s): First Lov ROUND Poem Text Recitation by Author First Line: Somebody's alone in his head, somebody's a kid, Subject(s): Human Behavior; Conduct Of Life; Human Nature SCATTERING First Line: Not buried by the highways or in the ruined temples Last Line: Horizon to horizon the wheat grows even thicker SEAL First Line: The mist was a face SEVENTH CIRCLE Poem Text First Line: And after the fight the moment of awakening Subject(s): Boys; Fightng; War; Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) SEVENTH FLOOR: CANCER WARD Poem Text First Line: We are the elect in this inverse hell Subject(s): Cancer (disease); Hospitals SHAME Poem Text First Line: If only I'd known then what I was reaching for Subject(s): Nature SHAME First Line: If only I'd known then what I was reaching for Last Line: Each reminding the other, if they ever think of it at all, %the american, remember, who was the thie Subject(s): Nature SNAKES First Line: Lying in sand, I looked for the whale-herd Last Line: Of what in the egg we must struggle %to break through to, become, and are SONG First Line: Faces of my lai, faces Last Line: Leisure of watching %what happens happen SONG THAT ONLY COULD BE SUNG ONCE Poem Text First Line: Variable, changeable, yes, there are days when Subject(s): Conduct Of Life; Man-woman Relationships; Male-female Relations SPACE STATION Poem Text Recitation by Author First Line: My mother and I and the dog were floating Subject(s): Mothers; Dogs; Weightlessness SPEECH FOR MYSELF AS A GHOST Poem Text First Line: Whoever I was, whatever I may have done, speaks to me Subject(s): Future Life; Ghosts; Supernatural; Retribution; Eternity; After Life SPEECH FOR MYSELF AS A GHOST First Line: Whoever I was, whatever I may have done, speaks to me Last Line: Coolly transparent through migrant shadows Subject(s): Future Life; Ghosts; Supernatural STILLNESS First Line: Slow waking in this stillness so luxurious Last Line: Keeps sifting grain by grain into my mouth STONE First Line: Will, nerve, the stone heads of the kings of judah STONE GOD AND GODDESS IN AN ARK Poem Text First Line: Out of the stone ark that carried them this far Subject(s): Death; Dead, The STRANDING Poem Text First Line: What came wafting Subject(s): Lebanon; War SUNDAY DRIVE First Line: Beyond the window fields of milkweed pass Last Line: That slow to a standstill beneath the turning stars. %his eyes slowly close on the eyes of the world TANK First Line: In his black tube top and tight black mini, his flesh Last Line: The barred door shooting closed in the steel groove THE ADVANCE Poem Text First Line: Out the barred window sandbags Subject(s): Lebanon; War; Dolls; Death - Children; Death - Babies THE BREEZE Poem Text Subject(s): Language; Wnd; Words; Vocabulary THE DOOR Poem Text First Line: Fifteen years in each other's heat Subject(s): Doors; Perception THE HAMMOCK Poem Text First Line: Your hand pushes me away Subject(s): Life; Love THE HARBOR: 1. MOSAIC Poem Text First Line: Your face clears of expression, your eyes Last Line: Our flesh/fish bodies puddlng molten Subject(s): Boats; Relationships; Water THE HARBOR: 2. BATH Poem Text First Line: Buoyancy lifting us on each wave's crest Last Line: The swell of your razoring whiplash tail Subject(s): Boats; Water THE HARBOR: 3. ARGUMENT Poem Text First Line: The lighthouse there, then not Last Line: Higher and higher up the scale Subject(s): Lighthouses THE HARBOR: 4. HARPOON Poem Text First Line: The wooden handle cracked but seasoned tough Last Line: Crystal on crystal holding fast Subject(s): Boats; Relationships THE HOLE Poem Text First Line: Out in the garden, the wind was like a dog Subject(s): Poetry & Poets THE LAST WORD Poem Text First Line: As if your half-witted tongue Subject(s): Death; Language; Dead, The; Words; Vocabulary THE MEADOW Poem Text First Line: Across the road from where we nap Subject(s): War; Death; Cemeteries; Dead, The; Graveyards THE SEAL Poem Text First Line: The mist was a face Subject(s): Seals (animals) THE VERY END Poem Text First Line: My eyes are strange to the print tonight Subject(s): Grandparents; Death; Grandmothers; Grandfathers; Great Grandfathers; Great Grandmothers; Dead, The THE WORK Poem Text First Line: Today, this moment, speechlessly in pain, Subject(s): Fathers; Illness; Hospitals THE WOUND Poem Text First Line: When I woke the darkness was so thick, Subject(s): Dreams; Nightmares THIS DAY ONLY: 1 First Line: Zone innavigable of being, unforeseeable zone Last Line: And withering so particular it can't be argued over? THIS DAY ONLY: 2 First Line: Whether we are or aren't immortal, whether we know Last Line: We're creeping along the edge of your abyss THIS DAY ONLY: 3 First Line: Your comings and goings, your heavens and hells Last Line: And ungraspable flowering from the paint can THREE HORSES First Line: Out in the pasture, in the clear twilight Last Line: Hooves scraping, neck bowing in the moonlight. %her daughters prick their ears, but do not answer TICKET First Line: False-faced monument, monument of mind that fades Last Line: Mouth moving: once you were the angel; now what are you? TO THE OTHER First Line: You leave, gray as the mist, the way a shadow Last Line: Around the knuckles of the branches and warped %a thousand glittering ways across the night TO THE SUN First Line: Crowned in hydrogen, it travels incognito, Last Line: To hang by the river and pass around the wine %until ours minds buss like hives of honeyed light. TOKEN First Line: Pitted and hollowed out %a miniature moon Last Line: To the crater's %molten lip TRACKS First Line: Evanescent engine in it ether-housing Last Line: Arriving at each moment beyond as far as it can go TRAIN First Line: Train wheels like battle sounds lulled the carriage Last Line: Drifting rootless all night above the deep TRANSFUSION First Line: I saw it, visible aura, unstoppable flow Last Line: The soul shed its mask to stare its keeper down TREES BY FIRELIGHT First Line: What shapes they make are shapes they hide from day Last Line: Our backs to the shadowy corners of the house TRIUMPH Poem Text First Line: My mother, sure, everything I know Subject(s): Mothers UCCELLO First Line: The world holds out its threat and hope: he looks Last Line: The anguished words unknot in his throat: 'I am paolo of thebirds, paolo uccello' UNDER THE PINES First Line: Down the nave of twisted pines Last Line: Off too quick %to follow after UTTER STRANGER First Line: Late summer, clear sky Last Line: Are careful to call grace that gleamed %from the dark privacy of that mouth VERY END First Line: My eyes are strange to the print tonight; Last Line: The dates marked for birth, %marriage, death, asks that I float you on my breath VISION First Line: The year I had my operation I Last Line: How far-off and strange she seems, that girl VISIT First Line: What she is waiting for never arrives Last Line: Over the stony waters that %ceaselessly pour out VOWS First Line: The cracked creekbed sang with heat that afternoon Last Line: As you spat in the rust-eaten coffee can %and shrugged back,eyes open, to your pillow WAKING First Line: Near that hour of the dawn when the swallow Last Line: As a single flame, and that imagined blaze %so singed me that it broke my slumber WORD First Line: Like a ruin living in its own destruction Last Line: Coughs and spits until the water runs dry WORDS TO A FORMER MUSICIAN First Line: Your hand that does not reach for mine Last Line: Whose music's throbbing stop and start %floods us with a ceaseless beat WOUND First Line: When I woke the darkness was so thick Last Line: On the glass, its light carving out the curtains %like the shadow of a wing across the windowpane WRECK First Line: Spirit, is it, or only my own mind Last Line: Watching for them to come back round to zeroes YOU HAVE HER EYES First Line: Note and not your fingers play and bring me Last Line: Distant, unreachable in the glass, %as you raise your eyes and our looks cross |
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