say “YES” to cartoons

It’s the birthday of cartoonist B. Kliban

born in Connecticut (1935).

He once drew a cartoon in which a man is walking along the street with a walking stick and a cravat and shades, accompanied by two beautiful women,

while a policeman kicks people out of the way,

shouting, “Out of the way, you swine.

A cartoonist is coming!”
Poetry Almanac Jan 1,2021

New Year’s
by Dana Gioia

Let other mornings honor the miraculous.
Eternity has festivals enough.
This is the feast of our mortality,
The most mundane and human holiday.
On other days we misinterpret time,
Pretending that we live the present moment.
But can this blur, this smudgy in-between,
This tiny fissure where the future drips
Into the past, this flyspeck we call now
Be our true habitat? The present is
The leaky palm of water that we skim
From the swift, silent river slipping by.
The new year always brings us what we want
Simply by bringing us along—to see
A calendar with every day uncrossed,
A field of snow without a single footprint.

Dana Gioia, “New Year’s” from Interrogations at Noon, Graywolf Press. © Dana Gioia.

waiting for the cream

coffee spot posted by Char Jones

 

Pity the Beautiful
by Dana Gioia

Pity the beautiful,
the dolls, and the dishes,
the babes with big daddies
granting their wishes.

Pity the pretty boys,
the hunks, and Apollos,
the golden lads whom
success always follows.

The hotties, the knock-outs,
the tens out of ten,
the drop-dead gorgeous,
the great leading men.

Pity the faded,
the bloated, the blowsy,
the paunchy Adonis
whose luck’s gone lousy.

Pity the gods,
no longer divine.
Pity the night
the stars lose their shine.

“Pity the Beautiful” by Dana Gioia from 99 Poems: New and Selected. © Graywolf Press, 2016.