Hello, blog readers, and welcome to another installment of our Pick-a-Poem feature. If you don’t know, this is our weekly dose of poetry for you if you’re looking to discover a new poet. These poems come from Poetry Daily and are generally from poets you may not have heard of, or whose work you may not have ventured into. This site is great because it curates a new poem for you each day. Today’s poem is entitled Invocation, and a Sort of Lullaby and is written by Jonathan Weinert.
According to his page on Poetry Daily, Jonathan Weinert has written two books, In the Mode of Disappearance (Nightboat Books, 2008) — which won the Nightboat Poetry Prize — and Thirteen Small Apostrophes (Back Pages Books, 2013). Weinert was also a co-editor of Until Everything is Continuous Again: American Poets on the Recent Work of W. S. Merwin (WordFarm, 2012).
Invocation, and a Sort of Lullaby, by Jonathan Weinert
~
Bills unpaid, and half the rent, the baby
Pleistocene with borrowed heat,
I sing. No one coaxesor demurs. Empty fail the savage pines,
their stock of seed already spent.
Three finches huddle in the planter.~
Go to sleep, my little dinosaur,
with no accounts or credits. Sleep,
while sleep alone is due. Soona frozen blanket will be pulled,
and all the local rodents will descend—
a fall election, and the virgin birthagain. My little five-eighths Jew,
such doings mean as much to you
as Keno to a coelacanth. Sleep.If I could strip my postures bare,
or stripe my knees to charm
obsequious poetry, I’d singa wiser, more distinguished song.
My little mastodon, stay warm.
The agencies are everywhere, and cannot care.
I hope you enjoyed this week’s featured poem! For more of these posts, click this link.
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