Tonight at the poetry meeting,
I should warn you about the cheese plate:
Be careful of the sharp cheddar.
It really is sharp. I sliced my finger wide open
Trying to spread it on a cracker.

Here are some rules (and one demand)
For dealing with a cut finger
At a social gathering:

Rule One: No matter how much blood
You are losing, do not try to refill your
Veins with many glasses of red wine.

Rules Two: If your pen goes dry,
No matter the temptation, do not
Write out the remainder of the poem
In blood. The Devil is always lurking,
Out of sight, when poets meet, and He
Will pounce on any and all red words
As proof that you’ve sold your soul
To Him (and ninety-nine percent
Of the time, He’s not wrong).

Rule Three: Under no circumstances
Should you risk bringing communicable
Diseases into your host’s home. In fact,
Be incommunicative to everyone in your life:
Your spouse, shrink, friends and parents,
Even your bartender. Drive them away with
Your stark silence. Trust me, it’s for the best.

Rule Four: Wear your best red top
With those jeans. Yes, I know it may
Be an egregious fashion mistake, but
At least nobody will notice that it’s
Your finger’s time of the month.

Rive Five: Stay away from bulls, lest they
See the red and try to run you down.
Give them a wide berth. Don’t even come
Close to their shit on the ground. In fact,
Avoid bullshit altogether. Be brutally honest.

And, finally, the one demand:
You all need to look at me,
Attend my words and recognize
That it wasn’t just my finger
That got cut, and it wasn’t just
My epidermis that started bleeding...

...It was my heart.

—Isaiah Pittman

Around the world,
We use our languages like barbed-wire fences to keep the strangers out.
Tacking up "No Trespassing" signs in our mother tongues,
We use our words like weapons to protect our native sons and daughters
From the barbarians at the gate. 
(Those foreigners who don't pronounce their r's and l's like we do.)

Mogli e buoi dei paesi tuoi. 
Better to look for wives and cows in your own hometown
Than in villages far from home 
As some Italians like to say. 
Why wander the world in search of love and money 
When we all know that the journey ends at exactly the same place where it began?
Why build a Tower of Babel
When love and truth and beauty need no translation?

We talk of multiculturalism,
The United Nations, the European Union, a global partnership to stop climate change. 
Isn't that why the Roman Empire crashed and burned?
Because they tried to herd everyone from Scots to Persians under one big tent?
What's the point of getting lost in translation
When the Inuit have a hundred words for snow
And here in America we have dozens of different names for the sweet, black liquid that Starbucks pours into our paper cups each morning?

We all see the world from own perspective, through a glass darkly, 
And use different words to describe it. 
And what's wrong with that?
Let's call it a day or a tag or a giorno. 
Let's slap on labels so we'll all know who's who and what's what
And who belongs to the club and who doesn't. 

Whether we're wearing business suits or burkas,
Head scarves or yarmulkes,
We're still tribes, warring and sacking and grabbing 
An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,
Forgetting nothing and learning nothing, either. 
Despite all our technological advances, the Old School will always be in fashion. 

This is why the story of civilization so often ends in tears,
With a stream of well-heeled refugees clutching their possessions
And scrambling to find another place to hang their hats and raise their kids. 
Statues fall, buildings crumble and the victors burn the books
And the people who wrote them.  

And then the cycle begins anew
With a handful of ragged scribes
Preserving the scraps of knowledge that survived the fire,
With words -- only words -- to keep them company 
Throughout that long and lonely night.

Rosalind Resnick
Dec. 13, 2015

Sometimes it's good to be hungry.
Not the searing pain of starvation that bloats an empty belly,
Not the hunger of a holy fast, a diet or an act of self-denial,
Of day after day without the taste of anything on your tongue
Except your own saliva.
For me, I crave a different kind of hunger,
A hunger as sharp as it is delicious,
A hunger that is at once anticipation, longing and desire,
A hunger that knows my pain and understands my pleasure.
It is the hunger that I feel while waiting for my lover who is always late
To show up in his leather jacket, buttoned-down white shirt and stone-washed jeans
To pull me toward him for a kiss.
Famished, we feast on each other's bodies,
Biting and chewing every succulent morsel
Until our passion runs out and our knives and forks are put to bed.
That is the hunger that leaves me satisfied. 

Rosalind Resnick
​Dec. 8, 2015