The first is a poem by Brenda Hillman called "A Violet in the Crucible" from the Autumn/Winter issue of The Journal. I'm providing a link to it since it has a bit of funky formatting that's better left to the experts.
And here's a poem by Michael Meyerhofer, from the Fall 2007 issue of Arts & Letters:
Limbic Self-Loathing, Post Emperor's Chicken
I almost forgot about the stone penguin
left under my bed after the tornado,
which you gave me after my father and I
sought shelter in your storm cellar,
rapelling down a cable into the darkness.
And since this was the dream-world,
it made sense that I'd see you again, Lisa,
whom I haven't thought about in years
and was never, I think, in love with
although in my dream, I was disarmed
by your charitable grin, waving
in your Future Farmers of America tee,
during what it took for my neural firestorm
to shock me back up to consciousness.
We were driving along Iowa back-roads
when the tornado touched down
on the barren gravel, spared us by looking,
then I saw you in the distance
and led shelter into your storm cellar.
So you gave me a stone penguin
to remember you by, which I then kept
under my bed for reasons that made sense
at the time. I'll also say, since readers
of poetry are either lovers or haters
of Freud, that the penguin's bill
was erect as a cavalryman's saber,
that I had trouble rapelling down your cellar
which was, in turns out, a swamped pit,
that your ex-marine father did not approve
but your mother found me charming,
and that you--that girl I'd forgotten
until I dreamt about her--chose another.
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