I was reading poetry from a collected book...an old Pushcart Prize for Poetry that Michael had found at the Salvation Army. This is a good way to keep up with contemporary poetry without having to commit to buying it all individually and taking chances. Poetry is such a personal preference. What appeals to me doesn't often appeal the man I love or my best friend or my kid. I think our own personal collection of views on the world decides what pushes us forward to a style of poetry.
In this book there was a four part poem from a larger collection of number poems of the same idea. Mariko Nagai wrote a book called "Histories of Bodies" that appeared in the 2009 Pushcart book as well as winning the 2005 Benjamin Saltman Award. The fourth stanza of this poem touched me the most.
Histories of Bodies
IV
The proof is the body, not in words: you lie on your stomach, slowly
rocking yourself
to sleep as if the bed is another body you can ease yourself into. I lie
next to you, my thighs slightly open like a window, or a door,
anyone can look
in, even you. But we have stopped our movements already. In this
early morning, words are bodies
heaped up high, each body imprinted with past, they are
remembrance. But we have already turned
our eyes inward, we do not hear. Each come-cry hides in the cave
of the mouth,
stays inside of us like doves in a magician's pockets, waiting for the
signal they've been trained to recognize.
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