SATURDAY NIGHT JUDY GRAHN POEM 8 JANUARY 2011

(Judy Grahn, January 1988, Oakland CA, photo by Robert Giard)

Every Saturday evening I post a Judy Grahn poem. Much of her best work is already up here (check Labels to the right for her name) but there is still a wealth more to share. If she'd been a straight white man, they'd have declared her poet laureate a long time ago -- but then she wouldn't be writing the stunning language that she does.

The most blonde woman in the world
one day threw off her skin
her hair, threw off her hair, declaring
"Whosoever chooses to love me
chooses to love a bald woman
with bleeding pores."
Those who came then as her lovers
were small hard-bodied spiders
with dark eyes and an excellent
knowledge of weaving.
They spun her hair into long strands,
and altogether wove millions of red
webs, webs red in the afternoon sun.
"Now", she said, "Now I am expertly loved,
and now I am beautiful."


© Judy Grahn, from The Work Of A Common Woman

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HUBBLE THURSDAY 6 JANUARY 2011

(NGC 7742 is a face-on unbarred spiral galaxy)

Every Thursday, I post a very large photograph of some corner of space captured by the Hubble Space Telescope and available online from the picture album at HubbleSite, followed by poetry after the jump.


A SHORT TESTAMENT

by Anne Porter

Whatever harm I may have done
In all my life in all your wide creation
If I cannot repair it
I beg you to repair it,

And then there are all the wounded
The poor the deaf the lonely and the old
Whom I have roughly dismissed
As if I were not one of them.
Where I have wronged them by it
And cannot make amends
I ask you
To comfort them to overflowing,

And where there are lives I may have withered around me,
Or lives of strangers far or near
That I've destroyed in blind complicity,
And if I cannot find them
Or have no way to serve them,

Remember them. I beg you to remember them

When winter is over
And all your unimaginable promises
Burst into song on death's bare branches.

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LOLCATS WEEKLY ROUND-UP 4 JANUARY 2011

Here's the weekly best of what I've gleaned from I Can Has Cheezburger efforts. There are some really creative folks out there.

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