180 more Extraordinary poems for every day

First Hour Sharon Olds That hour, I was most myself. I had shrugged my mother slowly off, I lay there taking my first breaths, as if the air of the room was blowing me like a bubble. All I had to do was go out along the line of my gaze and back, out and back, on gravity's silk, the pressure of the air a caress, smelling on my self her creamy blood. The air was softly touching my skin and tongue, entering me and drawing forth the little sighs I did not know as mine. I was not afraid. I lay in the quiet and looked, and did the wordless thought, my mind was getting its oxygen direct, the rich mix by mouth. I hated no one. I gazed and gazed, and everything was interesting, I was free, not yet in love, I did not belong to anyone, I had drunk no milk, yet--no one had my heart. I was not very human. I did not know there was anyone else. I lay like a god, for an hour, then they came for me, and took me to my mother. The Alien Greg Delanty I'm back again scrutinising the Milky Way of your ultrasound, scanning the dark matter, the nothingness, that now the heads say is chockablock with quarks & squarks, gravitons & gravitini, photons & photinos. Our sprout, who art there inside the spacecraft of your ma, the time capsule of this printout, hurling & whirling towards us, it's all daft on this earth. Our alien who art in the heavens, our Martian, our little green man, we're anxious to make contact, to ask divers questions about the heavendom you hail from, to discuss the whole shebang of the beginning&end, the pre-big-bang untime before you forget the why and lie of thy first place. And, our friend, to say Welcome, that we mean no harm, we'd die for you even, that we pray you're not here to subdue us, that we'd put away our ray guns, missiles, attitude and share our world with you, little big head, if only you stay. Waking with Russell Don Paterson Whatever the difference is, it all began the day we woke up face-to-face like lovers and his four-day-old smile dawned on him again, possessed him, till it would not fall or waver; and I pitched back not my old hard-pressed grin but his own smile, or one I'd rediscovered. Dear son, I was mezzo del' cammin and the true path was as lost to me as ever when you cut in front and lit it as you ran. See how the true gift never leaves the giver: returned and redelivered, it rolled on until the smile poured through us like a river. How fine, I thought, this waking amongst men! I kissed your mouth and pledged myself forever. The Floating Rib Lucia Perillo Because a woman had eaten something when a man told her not to. Because the man who told her not to had made her from another man's bones. That's why men badgered the heart-side of her chest, knowing she could not give the bone back, knowing she would always owe them that one bone. And you could see how older girls who knew their catechism armed themselves against it: with the pike end of teasing combs they scabbarded in pocketbooks that clashed against the jumper's nightwatch plaid. In the girl's bathroom, you watched them wield the spike in dangerous proximity to their eyes, shepherding the bangs through which they peered like cheetahs in an upside-downward-growing grass. Then they'd mouth the words to "Runaway" while they ran white lipstick round their lips, white to announce they had no blood so any wound would leave no trace, as Eve's having nothing more to lose must have made lll her fearless. What was weird was how soon the ordinary days started running past them like a river, how willingly they entered it and how they rose up on the other side. Tamed, or god no . . . your mother: ready to settle with whoever found the bone under her blouse and give it over, and make a life out of the getting back. TO THE DUST OF THE ROAD W. S. Merwin And in the morning you are up again with the way leading through you for a while longer if the wind is motionless when the cars reach where the asphalt ends a mile or so below the main road and the wave you rise into is different every time and you are one with it until you have made your way up to the top of your climb and brightened in that moment of that day and then you turn as when you rose before in fire or wind from the ends of the earth to pause here and you seem to drift away on into nothing to lie down once more until another breath brings you to birth Excerpted from 180 More: Extraordinary Poems for Every Day All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.