First Things RSS Feed - Kim Bridgford

The Births of Aphrodite and Athena

Sat, 01 Dec 2012 00:00:00 -0500

The one swirled out of foam, the other mind;
The one disturbs the fish, like bright, lost jacks
Around flung testicles; the other takes
A scholarly approach, as is designed
By scrolls unrolled to myth. The cause of beauty
Is sex; the cause of wisdom is a thought
That shows the hallowed way it must be brought
Into the world. Athena has a duty,
But Aphrodite’s an opal of desire,
And though she’s born of sea, she makes a fire.
Athena is more cautious, purposeful;
She knows the impulse, yet she acts on rule.
One rises with a kiss, from fields of coral;
The other walks with armor and a moral.

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Juliet on Facebook

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 00:00:00 -0400

I saw his Facebook picture, met for chat,
And then the two of us said that was that :
Except the world can always change online.
(I knew that already from his Rosaline.)

I felt the Capulets and Montagues
Were always asking the two of us to choose.
And all we wanted was the sweet IM
To jolt us in our bed at 3 A.M.

Have you been bullied? That’s what it was like:
The dread of all of the comments on the wall,
The feeling that they’ll get you, one and all.
When he thought I was dead, it killed his soul.
I had to kill myself, and for his sake.
Now people can make comments: “Like. Dislike.”

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Stringed Instrument

Sun, 15 May 2011 00:00:00 -0400

So what if your strings break. How many strings
Does someone need? Make smaller music then,
And if your instrument is out of tune,
Do not despair. Play melancholy songs.

This fetishizing takes a lot of time”
The strings intact and sounding as they should,
The concert-goers waiting for what’s good.
(The same is true when worrying a rhyme.)

Just play. And if it’s not quite what you thought,
Remember that, so often, errors heard”
The ones that woke you up, caught in your throat”
The audience missed. Don’t reach for what is hard.
Convince yourself that there is no lost ground
Between perfection and what’s merely sound.

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On The Birds

Sat, 01 May 2010 00:00:00 -0400

Is love like this? A trap, a whirring thing
That hunts you down by beak, and flock, and wing,
And makes you turn, with mesmerizing stare,
To see it gathered in the folds of air?

Perhaps not love. Perhaps what you will take
For love, when it’s all else that you’ll forsake
To have the feeling, pecking at the glass,
That whelms the self until the moments pass.

What causes this? Oh, it’s so hard to tell.
Boredom. Daily life not going well.
A tingling in a dream of what could happen,
A witch that whispers that the dark will open

To a word, a thought, an ordinary glance:
And all the birds fly in on circumstance.

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