The doors swing
both ways; be careful.
From either side,
the other looks like out.
This mystery your body
is like a Klein bottle,
all surface, no way in.
From the inevitably
flawed models, it appears
to intersect itself:
it dwells within the without.
That’s why the wind —
or is it breath? — can’t
be held, & you need
a fourth dimension
to lose those edges
called sickness,
to become whole.
Poem for Display in a Public Library
To enter fully into another’s words
is to leave your own fixed residence,
part coffin, part cocoon.
The walls fall away.
Letters the color of night
swell with sirens & the call
of the whip-poor-will.
Out in the open book,
anything can happen except sleep.
Dreams may be redeemed
for a small deposit.
This is why, in the public library,
everyone is homeless.
Poem for Display in a Veterans’ Memorial Park
Veterans beware: remembering is a form of lying
at which politicians and war-mongers are especially adept.
Flag-burners beware: the U.S. Flag Code identifies fire
as the only proper & respectful way to dispose of a flag.
War memorial builders beware: pigeons are a kind of dove.
Whatever you do, they will have the last say, & it won’t be pretty.
Readers beware: all poets are traitors.
This poem was written from the prison of a bad conscience.
Poem for Display at a City Reservoir
Attention suicides: please have the consideration
to drown elsewhere. It is not that your body
would be especially toxic — that’s a myth.
But what we crave in water is an absence of taste,
not the taste of absence.
Also, kindly make sure your water bill is paid up.
It’s the least you can do for your neighbors,
who will soon probably be needing to recharge
their own reservoirs, those brown or blue pools
in which on occasion you may have glimpsed yourself,
smaller than life.
Poem for Display in a Subway Car
While you sway, tired, staring, your electronic earplugs
delivering their intravenous drip of distraction,
it is still there, running just
under everything,
that third rail.
Poem for Display in a City Bus
A reckless poem crushed between ads —
there’s nothing to see here, folks.
Keep moving.
__________
I’m not done writing tool odes, yet, don’t worry! I just got this other idea for what will probably be a shorter series — poems to be placed in public spaces, written with an awareness of their contexts. I’d welcome suggestions of other locations for these poems.
For examples of actual public poems, see the archives of NYC’s Poetry in Motion project, the Pennsylvania Center for the Book’s Public Poetry Project, and especially the CityPoem World Index at the New Urbanist website ErasmusPC.
Lines for a cold May
first clear day in weeks
butterflies walk slowly over
the dry forest floor
interrupted ferns’
delicate tips are still clenched
against the cold
in the cold wind
a gnat clings to a bobbing
pink lady’s-slipper
tent caterpillars
the vernal pond quakes under
a coat of leaf-pieces
oak apple gall
I bend down for a closer look
such a fresh green globe
The first two photos are from last week; the others are from yesterday evening.
Ode to a Hoe
What begins with this
singular L?
New worms, certainly,
from the splitting
of their parent self.
Whole new cities
of aerobic bacteria.
Stones from rocks.
Sprouts of pigweed, lamb’s-quarters,
purslane, dock: seeds
that had lain dormant for decades
until the hoe stirred them
into life.
This italic L spells
hills for yams,
channels for irrigation water,
a level bed for flowers.
Its thick tongue
uncovers an instant palate.
Luh, it says.
Luh luh luh luh.
The shocks travel
up the aching arms.
Ode to a Spirit Level
Who would have thought that two vacant globes
preserved in alcohol
could so hold a construction
worker’s attention,
a devotional gaze otherwise reserved
for gravity-defying breasts or buttocks
if not always the eyes that go with them,
that cool disregard
that elicits a squint & a whistle
at whatever fails to fall into line.
Incantation
[audio:http://www.vianegativa.us/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/incantation.mp3]
The caterpillar tents start appearing
just as the leaves burst their buds,
as if someone with a white marker
were doodling in every crotch of limbs.
My dad goes into the hospital to have
a large, non-malignant tumor
removed from his lower spine,
& I picture a white knot swelling
with caterpillars of pain.
A day after the surgery he’s taking
his first steps without it, this thing
that has made almost every position
of repose impossible for weeks,
forcing him to stand or to walk
slowly for hours each day.
Now it has been thoroughly cast out
through the surgeon’s art,
excised, exposed: bulb that burned
but gave off no light.
Sexless flower. Empty tent.
Be gone. Be gone. Be gone.
Here in the woods where my father returns
in a couple days to resume his walking —
this time to heal rather than assuage —
flashes of scarlet as a tanager
snatches gnats & caterpillars from
the not quite fully opened leaves,
singing a line of his hoarse song
between each mouthful of wings,
each mouthful of spines.