Red Grapes

BY HUANG FAN TRANSLATED BY HUANG FAN AND MARGARET ROSS

In order to see the world’s evils clearly
They redden their eyes on the branch
Until they believe the warm wind’s praise
In order to become waves in our blood
They offer their lives to the wine cellar

In my glass, the blood of their youth
Tries to send waves through my heart
It’s a jockey riding my bloodstream
Loosening age’s reins—

I used dirty words I don’t normally use
Nearly scaring awake my dead relatives
I fell fast asleep with my arms around love
And, waking, couldn’t find my lover

I fit right in at a banquet in the city
And finally realize, love is wine’s tax
High taxes make wine noble

A crate of red wine
Is a crate of Van Goghs—do you believe that?
A crate of red grapes
Is a crate of nipples—do you believe that?

This poem is called Red Grapes, so my guess id the wine the author is talking about is red wine probably made form red grapes. It is also talking about some of the effects wine has on the author.

All My Friends Are Finding New Beliefs 

BY CHRISTIAN WIMAN

All my friends are finding new beliefs.
This one converts to Catholicism and this one to trees.
In a highly literary and hitherto religiously-indifferent Jew
God whomps on like a genetic generator.
Paleo, Keto, Zone, South Beach, Bourbon.
Exercise regimens so extreme she merges with machine.
One man marries a woman twenty years younger
and twice in one brunch uses the word verdant;
another’s brick-fisted belligerence gentles
into dementia, and one, after a decade of finical feints and teases
like a sandpiper at the edge of the sea,
decides to die.
Priesthoods and beasthoods, sombers and glees,
high-styled renunciations and avocations of dirt,
sobrieties, satieties, pilgrimages to the very bowels of  being …
All my friends are finding new beliefs
and I am finding it harder and harder to keep track
of the new gods and the new loves,
and the old gods and the old loves,
and the days have daggers, and the mirrors motives,
and the planet’s turning faster and faster in the blackness,
and my nights, and my doubts, and my friends,
my beautiful, credible friends.

This poem is kind of talking about complicated relations that anyone can have.

A Double Standard

BY FRANCES ELLEN WATKINS HARPER

Do you blame me that I loved him?
If when standing all alone
I cried for bread a careless world
Pressed to my lips a stone.

Do you blame me that I loved him,
That my heart beat glad and free,
When he told me in the sweetest tones
He loved but only me?

Can you blame me that I did not see
Beneath his burning kiss
The serpent’s wiles, nor even hear
The deadly adder hiss?

Can you blame me that my heart grew cold
That the tempted, tempter turned;
When he was feted and caressed
And I was coldly spurned?

Would you blame him, when you draw from me
Your dainty robes aside,
If he with gilded baits should claim
Your fairest as his bride?

Would you blame the world if it should press
On him a civic crown;
And see me struggling in the depth
Then harshly press me down?

Crime has no sex and yet to-day
I wear the brand of shame;
Whilst he amid the gay and proud
Still bears an honored name.

Can you blame me if I’ve learned to think
Your hate of vice a sham,
When you so coldly crushed me down
And then excused the man?

Would you blame me if to-morrow
The coroner should say,
A wretched girl, outcast, forlorn,
Has thrown her life away?

Yes, blame me for my downward course,
But oh! remember well,
Within your homes you press the hand
That led me down to hell.

I’m glad God’s ways are not our ways,
He does not see as man,
Within His love I know there’s room
For those whom others ban.

I think before His great white throne,
His throne of spotless light,
That whited sepulchres shall wear
The hue of endless night.

That I who fell, and he who sinned,
Shall reap as we have sown;
That each the burden of his loss
Must bear and bear alone.

No golden weights can turn the scale
Of justice in His sight;
And what is wrong in woman’s life
In man’s cannot be right.

The poem is talking about how it is unfair that women are held to this higher standard compared to men, and in God’s eyes everyone is the same no matter their gender.

They shut me up in Prose – (445)

By: Emily Dickson

They shut me up I Prose –

As when a little Girl

They put me in a Closet –

Because they liked me “still” –

Still! Could themselves have peeped –

And seen my Brain – go round –

They might wise have lodged a Bird

For Treason- in the Pound –

Himself has but to will

And easy as a Star

Look down upon Captivity –

And laugh – No more have I –

I like the patt where Emily states they could have seen her brain. It was very good imagery

won’t you celebrate with me 

Launch Audio in a New Window

BY LUCILLE CLIFTON

won’t you celebrate with me
what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman
what did i see to be except myself?
i made it up
here on this bridge between
starshine and clay,
my one hand holding tight
my other hand; come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.

I see one biblical allusion that being babylon. It seemes the author is questioning themselves but wants to celebrate with someone.