The Sixth Daily Poem Project, Week Ten Call for Votes

THE SIXTH DAILY POEM PROJECT, WEEK TEN

Here are the poems to vote for in the tenth week of the sixth Daily Poem Project (the poems on Poetry Daily from Monday, May 3, to Sunday, May 9):

May 9: A Walk on Long Beach Island, by Eamon Grennan
May 8: War Stories, by Charles Bernstein
May 7: Of What Is Good Enough and Finished First, by Dick Allen
May 6: A Childhood Memory of Wordsworth's, Yves Bonnefoy, tr. Hoyt Rogers
May 5: The Dew-Tasters, by Lola Haskins (vote only on the first poem)
May 4: Survivor, by Tadeusz Różewicz, tr. Joanna Trzeciak (vote only on the first poem)
May 3: Winter Grasses, by Mary Leader

HOW TO VOTE: You can send your vote to me by email or as a comment on the blog (or as a comment to my Facebook link to this call for votes). If you want to vote by commenting but do not want your vote to appear on the blog, you just have to say so in your comment (I moderate all comments on my blog). If you want to vote anonymously, that's okay, but please choose some sort of pseudonym so I can keep track of different votes by anonymous voters. I will post comments as they come in.

Please make a final decision and vote for only one poem (although it is always interesting to see people's lists).

Please VOTE BY SATURDAY, MAY 15! But I will still accept votes as long as I have not posted the final results (which I might not be able to do until Monday, May 17).

Feel free to pass on this call for votes to anyone who might be interested!

The winner of week one was Trick, by Sam Willetts.
The winner of week two was Ecclesiastes, by Khaled Mattawa.
The winner of week three was To a Jornalero Cleaning Out My Neighbor’s Garage, by Eduardo C. Corral.
The winner of week four was In the Men's Room at the Café Provence, by F. D. Reeve.
The winner of week five was The Bus Driver, by Hédi Kaddour, tr. Marilyn Hacker.
The winner of week six was Winter's Tale, by Maxine Kumin.
The winner of week seven was H1N1, by Robyn Schiff.
The winner of week eight was Montana Sky, by Don Welch.
The winner of week nine was Arcadian, by Dan Beachy-Quick.

Stars Are Better Than War

Stars Are Better Than War (Eamon Grennan, The Cortland Review)

is what the chalked scrawl on the footpath says.
But think of the trouble one would cause, falling,
its blind havoc of brightness without warning—
though for days your cats would be scratching
in and out of the house, tail-hairs spiked
for no reason. And why are the birds flying
upside down in ragged formations, or a ragtaggle
raft of geese rambling North in November
against the natural drag of goose-blood? All
the patterns that would shatter if any errant star
pitched us its curve ball breaking into rose
and gas, all that lethal radiance that would
leave us, at best, ash? Every night now
your dream-life is full of exploding cars, train
wrecks, bridges burning, children disappearing—
one ache after another finding its local, homely,
known face, ferreting you out till you lie there
in five o'clock not-light, your eyes trying to read
the future in the leaf pattern on the curtains,
in the ceiling cracks or the whispers and little
metallic moans of the heating system, or in the
steady breath beside you, the precise particular
clench of the hand sliding towards and finding
your hand, and holding, till you slip back into sleep
with its war-dreams, word-glimmers, shooting stars.