Category Archives: My Poetry

Don Yorty reads from Fucking (Poet Laundromat)

… On Sunday, April 29, I was featured at the Zinc Bar with two other poets, Ed Friedman and Elinor Nauen. I woke too early and was tired and talked too much between poems a little incoherently. But the crowd … Continue reading →

Dear Words

25 Feb ’18

… Reverberating on my eardrum’s skin you come in like a finger on a guitar string. Sound sends me quivering. Some places hands can’t go. You touch the soul. But I’m not saying hands can’t talk or what is meant … Continue reading →

At the Grave of Walt Whitman

24 Feb ’18

… I was in Philadelphia and crossed the bridge to Camden. “I’m satisfied,” I said. “There’s grass growing here and I no longer care what anyone might think of me or what the future holds or when and if comes … Continue reading →

For John Keats: This Living Hand

23 Feb ’18

… I think that I’m a candle whose flame stays round the wick whether set in one place or carried never wavering an inch from where I’ve always been. I hold out my hand like you did. When I’m happy … Continue reading →

Sonnet 193: rocks and friends

13 Aug ’17

… Like all of human kind the rocks along The narrow beach are all somewhat alike Yet each entirely different. We Pick them up, Honey and I, searching for The ones we want, the ones that touch us. They Are … Continue reading →

208

1 May ’17

… I’d rather watch fireflies than fireworks pressing against the dark. “They’re vicious beasts,” Dad says: “All they do is have sex and eat their prey by the light they make. There’s the first one now!” I look watching it … Continue reading →

Fucking

14 Jan ’17

… for Janis A bedroom. North Philadelphia. 1972 Ouvrez-moi cette porte où je frappe en pleurant. Open this door where I knock weeping. … I I WILL COME TO YOU WITH A CANDLE BURNING light a stick of incense comb … Continue reading →

Home

10 Jan ’17

… on walking through a caterpillar plague They come down the threads they make crawl in a straight line. There is the sound, soft rainlike fall of leaves chewed off. One’s crawling on my arm. Shaken to the ground my … Continue reading →

Revenge of the Rejected Ones

11 Dec ’16

… By way of explanation before you read: Revenge of the Rejected Ones is part of Fucking, a poem I wrote for performance in the 1970s that I pretty much finished in 1976 and continued to perform in both Philadelphia … Continue reading →

The Watersnake

5 Dec ’16

… In the South Mountain along a road that goes from an ocean to a great lake not far from my parents’ home I walked up to a water snake whose lower end a car had crushed revealing in blood … Continue reading →

Uncle, part of Fucking and Sonnet 149

26 Oct ’16

… On Saturday at Freddy’s Bar, which is a very nice bar by the way, I participated in a poetry reading that was a celebration for a new book of poems by Kryssa Schemmerling, Iris In. The other guest poet … Continue reading →

38

22 Aug ’16

… The last two swallows swoop down over all going toward the barn flying from sight. In ripples of wind out of the west light dies in many clouds and in darkness falls on the pond. Shadows in leaves, the … Continue reading →