Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
This horse chafes at the bit: it wants
no rider, only its own hard will astride
the saddle, urging the road to go faster,
the encroaching landscape to spin into a blur
greener than hummingbirds at the feeder.
Do you wonder why it always seems faster
coming back? Speeds clipped by cobblestones,
by stops and starts, false obstacles— why
does it take so long to get there?
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Never challenge an onion to a game of strip poker. ~ D. Bonta
Ashes can substitute for black pepper in a pinch.
Best used fresh, like everything else; and only sparingly.
Carbon: it all breaks down into carbon anyway—
don’t worry, no need to bring out the syrup of ipecac,
expectorate, induce. What’s the most odious thing you’ve had to eat?
Foie gras, shudders my friend the wealthy doctor. Ducks fed
grain by gavage— two to four times a day, the animals
held, their throats expanded under a funnel fitted to a tube.
It’s this wild dilation and overfeeding that renders
king-sized livers: two lobes of mousse-like, buttery consistency.
Leafed out like that upon a plate, punctuated with a dollop of
mustard cream or raspberry confit: could you bear to eat with
nary a twinge of conscience or remorse? It may be that a stew
of carrots, lentils, and potatoes is neither innocent: some hand
pulled tubers out of the soil, peeled or pared and sliced them into
quadrants on the chopping board. You know how dominoes cascade,
rush river-like? Caveat: they fall at the merest touch. Why
sing to pickled things in a minor key? For
the ice sheet in Greenland that has almost all melted, for sea
urchins that, even if they might not be currently endangered, could
very soon wind up on that list: admire their powerful scraping jaws
which I found out are called “Aristotle’s lanterns.” None will be
exempt from ruin and devastation— so quit behaving like
you’ll have a golden ticket out. Heed the poet who points out
zen in the onion’s innermost chamber: stripped clean, empty.
In response to Via Negativa: How to cook.
Some words lisp before you can
even say them: say thistle.
Say chant. Say tuft
lit up by the sun. Fields
spread with a wealth
of accidental sound.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
No curtain between rooms, no wall could keep out the unseemly or un-ignorable. Bindings are always coming undone; treads wear down to the shaft. But sweet currents live there, too— those quickenings resembling the flutter of garments with an open weave, paper thin as onion skins we used to write all our missives on, in dark, rich inks. You prime a sheet of Canson with a quick wash of water, then apply a drop of color with just the tip of the brush: then watch it spread like a rumor of lace across its surface. I have come to the conclusion, therefore, that intention is never a single arrow shot into the dark; is not a line to draw, without a waver or a tremble in the wrist, from one end of a long hallway to the other. I suspect it might not even be about starting or stopping, getting waylaid, detoured, shanghaied, hijacked, distracted or seduced— Not that the air might not be laden with the scent of salt or jasmine, coffee or bitter greens, engine oils, blood, or sex; but only that every narrative must find its own particular plot. And those dull yearning aches: sometimes they are the only stand-ins for that cheering squad or Greek chorus. Their prompts are quicker than the clapper on a movie set.
In response to I have wandered like a flood.
Joyously. Because otherwise what’s the point? ~ D. Bonta
She wonders what it’s like to go back, or if the boxes of books and papers bundled with cord are still in the attic; she wonders what happened to the cabinet with glass doors, where her mother stored the hand-sewn dresses and gowns she wound up wearing only once or twice— Such sumptuous fabrics: silks and lace, brocade, velvet; panels of crisp organza. In that time, special was always an occasion, and egg cups could be ceremonial. The point being that here where she now lives, she needs to find rapture again, even in the window blinds.
In response to Via Negativa: How to question authority.
Not so much unremembered, as splintered into humid fragments: as in last night’s dream of being taken by the hand and led into a crowded house somewhere in the countryside. Was it some kind of storage shed, or stable? Sacks of grain stacked end to end formed beds, as in a dormitory. Old women spread cotton sheets across them and gestured at what would be my space. The windows had no panes. They looked out over dust-speckled fields, skies the color of soot. You were nowhere to be found. Light bulbs swung from wires in the bathroom stalls. The drains were slow. A child showed me a door that led into a yard. Someone had fixed the rainspout to double as a shower. We tilted our chins up, but only moths swirled out of the shadows, the touch of their wings slighter than drops of rain we were sure would come.
In response to small stone (112).
Here it is, then: another message to you, sent from this wrought iron table under the dogwood where I sit writing. The birds are masters of solitude or concentration, or ninjas in disguise. They hurtle past, one after the other, intent on one thing at a time. What else would you like to know? I’ve told you about the secret name I was given in childhood to confuse the gods, so liberal with their gifts of illness and malaise; I’ve told you about the black sow my grandfather brought from his farm, a gift on my fifth birthday. I had just been discharged from nearly a month in the hospital— for what, I don’t really know, and cannot remember. They penned it up for the night in the unfinished bathroom, next to the also unfinished kitchen (I think it was being expanded). It kicked at the plywood slats all night and squealed, or bleated. Is that what you call the sound of an animal that knows it is going to be sacrificed in the morning? I didn’t see, but I could hear the men sharpening knives and starting a fire by the guava trees. I shut my ears and burrowed into the bedclothes. They were so happy I had been returned, that time had wrought its little miracles. What did I know, and who was I to say that such a feast was not in fact the payment required? I no longer burned with fevers. The purple eruptions on my lips were gone. The animal’s shirt of hair would be singed, its insides bled, its sacs of bile and pulsing liver hung up in the trees— dark garnets glinting among the leaves.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
“Did I say the day was a sea? I may have meant the day is a diffusion and a scattering of trajectories…” ~ Seon Joon
Or an inlet. An inlet might be good. Might be a little enclosure, a leading into or away. Marsh, lagoon, bay, sound. Estuary, tide pool, terrace, shelf, strand. As in, to be stranded for a little while with me, myself, and I might learn to work free of pretense, defense— Tonight, even the youngest girl said, If we’re going out for dinner, can it be someplace where there isn’t a lot of noise? Guinness World Records lists the anechoic test chamber of a lab in Minneapolis as the quietest place in the world. They say, sitting in the dark in its double walls of insulated steel, concrete, and fiberglass acoustic wedges, you’d hear your heartbeats echoing, your organs paddling in their shallow pools: you would become the sound. The longest anyone has sat there is three quarters of an hour, before he begged to be released, became disoriented; I believe it. How many times have I woken at dawn from dread spreading through my chest, loud pounding in my ears, the telephone’s insistent chime? My students, facile with their shiny hoard of new discursive phrases, write of the liminal. I lodge there often, where possibility is its most ambiguous flower.
In response to cold mountain (55).
Let us dispense with.
Have you receipts
for my ripened figs?
You took my pleasure,
you skimmed the trees
without so much
as touching down.
I took you for
abundance, unasked-
for sugar, fat in
a time of drought;
in return you pressed
my substance, absently,
into a distant fold—
slip of paper shedding
its metaphors.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Boats slip into the harbor.
At one end of the dock, we walk
through a makeshift arch festooned
with flags, left over from the last
festival. Pretend it is a portal
to another time: choose one,
before this quiet flowers
into a battering ram.
I dont know where
you’ll wind up,
I don’t know
where I am.
In response to small stone (111).