READINGS

TEACHING RESOURCE
Vendler, Helen. Poems, Poets, Poetry: An Introduction and Anthology. USA: Bedford Books:
2002. Accessible at https://sites.williams.edu/modernism/files/2014/02/Helen-Vendler-from-
Poets-Poems-Poetry.pdf

LITERARY TEXTS
"The Two-Headed Calf," by Laura Gilpin, from The Hocus Pocus of the Universe. © Doubleday
and Co. Reprinted with permission.
The Two-Headed Calf
Laura Gilpin

Tomorrow when the farm boys find this

freak of nature, they will wrap his body
in newspaper and carry him to the museum.

But tonight he is alive and in the north

field with his mother. It is a perfect
summer evening: the moon rising over
the orchard, the wind in the grass. And
as he stares into the sky, there are
twice as many stars as usual.

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Galway Kinnell, “Saint Francis and the Sow” from Three Books. Copyright © 2002 by Galway
Kinnell. Reprinted with the permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved,
www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com.
Saint Francis and the Sow
Galway Kinnell

The bud
stands for all things,
even for those things that don’t flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;
as Saint Francis
put his hand on the creased forehead
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch
blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow
began remembering all down her thick length,
from the earthen snout all the way
through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail,
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine
down through the great broken heart
to the sheer blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering
from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and blowing beneath them:
the long, perfect loveliness of sow.

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https://www.scribd.com/document/159515225/mother-s-break-docx
Mother’s Break
Merlinda C. Bobis

warmest noons when she feels breathlessly

wedged between sink and bed, she rips off
apron and womb to strike a regal pose
under the infinity of strings of wash.
drenched in midday glow, her colors show
beyond her husband’s myth—wife, woman,
whore at times—but she is real now!
stretching back and life in her thin house gown
which missed its print of roses long ago,
she affirms her non-fictionness
to sunlight, she sniffs rather airily,
and stamps her foot, perking up her ears
to hear the earth resounding—oh, but
the roast is burning, and the youngest
howling above the husband’s hungry call!
how well they learn their cues, she sighs,
flushed roses suddenly and hurrying,
aproned with her womb again, she rushes back
to them, to all of them auditioning for love.

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http://philiterature.blogspot.com/
Short Time
Jaime An Lim

I am haunted by the sadness of men

hanging out at night
in all the parks and alleys of the world.
They wait and meander
weighing, measuring
the safer distance
between dread and desire.
Every face a catalog of possibilities,
every look a whole vocabulary of need.

Tonight you are the dream

who walks in my waking sleep,
who bears miraculously
the shape voice motion of remembered love.
How can I resist the reckless
leap from the world
of furtive bushes and tunneling headlights
to this room, no less anonymous,
of thin walls, thinning mattresses
where we grapple and thrash
like beached sea creatures
breathing the dry unfamiliar air?

When you stand to go, I ease myself

into the hollow your body leaves.
I press the faint smell of you on my face.

O Christ, were I loving you

drinking your blood. eating your flesh!

But the morning betrays nothing.

The chair in the corner stands mute,
the mirror repeats your absence.
When the curtains are flung back
to let the harsh light in,
the bed looms empty.

I am finally all I have.

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http://pinoyreader.blogspot.com/2006/07/jose-garcia-villas-i-can-no-more-hear.html
I Can No More Hear Love's
Jose Garcia Villa

I can no more hear Love's

Voice. No more moves
The mouth of her. Birds
No more sing. Words
I speak return lonely.
Flowers I pick turn ghostly.
Fire that I burn glows
Pale. No more blows
The wind. Time tells
No more truth. Bells
Ring no more in me.
I am all alone singly.
Lonely rests my head.
—— O my God! I am dead.

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http://inwardboundpoetry.blogspot.com/2007/03/353-lots-wife-wislawa-szymborska.html
Lot's Wife
Wislawa Szymborska
Translated from Polish by Magnus J. Krynski and Robert A. Maguire

They say I looked back from curiosity.

But I could have had reasons other than curiosity.
I looked back from regret for a silver bowl.
From distraction while fastening the latchet of my sandal.
To avoid looking longer at the righteous neck
of Lot my husband.
From sudden certainty that had I died
he would not even have slowed his step.
From the disobedience of the meek.
Alert to the pursuit.
Suddenly serene, hopeful that God had changed His mind.
Our two daughters were almost over the hilltop.
I felt old age within me. Remoteness.
The futility of our wandering. Sleepiness.
I looked back while laying my bundle on the ground.
I looked back from fear of where next to set my foot.
On my path appeared serpents,
spiders, field mice, and fledgling vultures.
By now it was neither the righteous nor the wicked --- simply all living
creatures
crept and leapt in common panic.
I looked back from loneliness.
From shame that I was stealing away.
From a desire to shout, to return.
Or just when a sudden gust of wind
undid my hair and lifted up my garment.
I had the impression they watched it all from the walls of Sodom
and burst out in loud laughter time and time again.
I looked back from anger
To relish their great ruin
I looked back for all the reasons I have mentioned.
I looked back despite myself.
It was only a rock that turned back, growling under foot.
A sudden crevice that cut my path.
On the edge a hamster scampered, up on his two hind feet.
It was then that we both glanced back.
No, no. I ran on,
I crept and clambered up,
until the darkness crashed down from heaven,

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and with it, burning gravel and dead birds.
For lack of breath I spun about repeatedly.
If anyone had seen me, he might have thought me dancing.
It is not ruled out that my eyes were open.
It could be that I fell, my face turned toward the city.

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https://www.ablemuse.com/erato/showthread.php?t=526
Penis Envy
Ai

My wife deserved to be shot.

I served time in the Gulf,
and I am telling you
when I came home and found her packed up and gone,
it wasn't long until I hatched a plan.
I located the man behind it all,
staked out his apartment and his job.
Then one afternoon, I dressed up in camouflage,
loaded up my AK-47
and went to Hot Dog Heaven.
I found them in the parking lot,
sharing kisses over lunch.
I came up from behind, but changed my mind
and walked right in front,
and aimed through the windshield,
before they had a chance to see who it was.
I shouted my name, hoping she would hear it as she died,
then I went to the passenger side
and fired at his head. A red mass
exploded like a sunburst.
At first, I couldn't believe I'd done it,
then I put the gun down
and looked at my hands, which were steady.
I pulled open the door,
before I knew what I was doing.
I just had to see what he was hiding in his pants.
It was pathetic, a sad, shriveled thing
there between his legs
and not the foot-long
she had said made her scream with pleasure.
I did hear screams, but they were coming
from my mouth, not hers.
Nose, I thought, as I fired at her body again.
Of course, I'd turned the gun on myself.
What else could I do to erase it all? -
the 911 calls, the sirens in the distance,
but the ordinariness of murder overwhelmed me,
possessed me like a spirit
and I thought how easy it would be
to take two or three more people with me.

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Instead, I decided to give myself up,
plus I was out of ammunition.
I guess it is my destiny,
to be a living example for other men,
who are only bluffing when they threaten violence.
Now one a week, I write a column on relationships
for the prison publication,
I base my advice on actual situations.
For example, Clarence Thomas.
He had a dick fixation, just as I did.
For me, it was a torment and my downfall
and nearly his.
Ultimately, the question is always
how far are you willing to go?
I think within her perimeters,
Clarence went the distance.
As far as I'm concerned, he's earned his place on the Supreme Court
and stands tall beside all the other men,
who haven't given in to a woman's scorn,
who are born again from the fire of their ridicule.
If you ask me, Anita Hill got off too easily.
I would have caught the bitch
some afternoon, while the cherry blossoms
were in bloom
and boom, solved all my problems.
Oops! I think I wobbled over the line
that separates fantasy from crime.
The counselors tell me all the time
I've got to get it straight
how the imagination sometimes
races on without us.
But I know Debby and Ed are off somewhere
eating wedding cake
and letting me take the fall for their betrayal.
Is it fair that I the other side of this wall
Clarence has it all
and I have nothing but a ball and chain?
That reminds me, I checked this Othello play out of the library.
It's about a guy
who loses his reputation and his wife,
Well, he kills her, but she made him.
I found some parallels to my own life and Clarence's.
Othello's black.
But the other subtler thing is how a man

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must stand up to humiliation,
must retaliate, or lose himself,
who when he finds some pubic hair
in his can of Coke
must ask, regardless of the consequences,
who put it there?

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https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/32778/siren-song
Siren Song
Margaret Atwood

This is the one song everyone

would like to learn: the song
that is irresistible:

the song that forces men

to leap overboard in squadrons
even though they see the beached skulls

the song nobody knows

because anyone who has heard it
is dead, and the others can't remember.

Shall I tell you the secret

and if I do, will you get me
out of this bird suit?

I don't enjoy it here

squatting on this island
looking picturesque and mythical

with these two feathery maniacs,

I don't enjoy singing
this trio, fatal and valuable.

I will tell the secret to you,

to you, only to you.
Come closer. This song

is a cry for help: Help me!

Only you, only you can,
you are unique

at last. Alas
it is a boring song
but it works every time.

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https://movingpoems.com/2020/10/the-wild-iris-by-louise-gluck/
The Wild Iris
Louise Gluck

At the end of my suffering

there was a door.

Hear me out: that which you call death

I remember.

Overhead, noises, branches of the pine shifting.

Then nothing. The weak sun
flickered over the dry surface.

It is terrible to survive
as consciousness
buried in the dark earth.

Then it was over: that which you fear, being

a soul and unable
to speak, ending abruptly, the stiff earth
bending a little. And what I took to be
birds darting in low shrubs.

You who do not remember

passage from the other world
I tell you I could speak again: whatever
returns from oblivion returns
to find a voice:

from the center of my life came

a great fountain, deep blue
shadows on azure seawater.

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https://writingonwomenwriters.wordpress.com/2013/04/26/whats-the-true-story/Eve the
Fox
Paula Gunn Allen

Eve the fox swung

her hips appetizingly, she
sauntered over to Adam the hunk
who was twiddling his toes and
devising an elaborate scheme
for renaming the beasts: Adam
was bored, but not Eve for she
knew the joy of swivelhips
and the taste of honey on her lips.
She was serpent wise and snake foolish,
and she knew all the tricks of the trade
that foxy lady, and she used them
to wile away the time: bite into this,
my hunky mate, she said, bending
tantalizingly low so her warm breasts
hung like peaches in the air. You
will know a thing or two when I get
through to you, she said, and gazed
deep with promise into his squinted eyes.
She admired the glisten of sweat and light
on his ropey arms, that hunky man of mine,
she sighed inside and wiggled deliciously
while he bit deep into the white fleshy
fruit she held to his lips. And wham-bam,
the change arose, it rose up in Adam
as it had in Eve and let me tell you
right then they knew all
they ever wanted to know about knowing,
and he discovered the perfect curve of her
breasts, the sweet gentle halfmoon of her belly,
the perfect valentine of her vulva,
the rose that curled within the garden
of her loins, that he would entered like bees,
and she discovered the tender power
of his sweat, the strong center of his
muscled arms, she worshipped the dark hair
that fell over his chest in waves.
And together riding the current of this
altogether new knowing they had found,
they bit and chewed, bit and chewed.

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Fiction
All Summer In a Day (Ray Bradbury)
http://www.doshisha.ed.jp/information/attached/news20160214_09.pdf

Pinikas (Jayson Parba)

https://www.xu.edu.ph/images/carayan_journal/doc/
CJ_Vol_3._No.1_2017/4_Ed__Pinikas_Parba_f.pdf

Greatness Strikes Where It Pleases (Lars Gustaffson)

PDF available at this website: https://mcla.instructure.com/courses/759303/pages/texts-and-
readings

CNF
My Family’s Slave (Alex Tizon)
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/06/lolas-story/524490/

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