They were short. They could squat
on their haunches for hours.
They knew the right times for things.
They remembered what they heard
in a way that we who have been trained
by the measured tread of text cannot.
They had bad teeth, but better than
the farmers who followed them.
They squinted a lot.
They knew every conceivable grief
except for the small, dull kind
that accompanies the purchase
of some interchangeable part.
Last Supper
The first thing you need to know
is that it happens right here,
time & again. And also
that the heavens do not open
because they already gape as wide
as they will go: witness young Iscariot,
those stars in his eyes
about to go nova. He means to see
justice done, because somebody —
Tax collectors? Call girls? —
must pay for this profligacy. Ah,
there he is again, on the front page,
in black & white.
That corrupt bastard
who’s married to his wife. Well,
I’ve always been a straight-shooter,
he thinks, & raises the picture
to his lips.
Legerdemain
I was dealt a singular hand, & learned
to do tricks with the light:
sun sugar, bittering
at an insect’s approach.
I donned a conjurer’s robe of air plants.
Below ground I have discovered
the prosthetic tooth of a glacier,
round & granitic, & I hold it
like hard candy in my mind,
that ultimate rope trick of rootlets
& mycorrhizal hyphae
that never quite touch.
__________
In response to the Read Write Poem prompt, “be a tree.” Other responses are here.
(UPDATE) Hyphae, also called mycelia, are the “roots” of fungi; mycorrhizal means they are symbiotic with plants. See here:
In the ectomycorrhizal symbiosis between fungi and trees, the fungus completely ensheaths the tree roots and takes over water and mineral nutrient supply, while the plant supplies photosynthate. Recent work has focussed on gene expression in the two partners, on the effects of global change and nitrogen deposition rate on the symbiosis, and on the role of mycorrhizal fungi in connecting individual plants to form a ‘wood-wide web’.
Spring cleaning
The melting of the snow offers a reverse review of the winter, like scrolling slowly down through a blog — a gray & granular roll-call of storms, dotted with patches of yellow. The snow gets dirtier & dirtier until the point where the ground starts to appear, when it looks white again by contrast. Even before the first wild onions, the bare brown earth is infinitely more complex than anything you can cover it with. I mean, where did these sticks come from all over the yard? Who threw them? The honeybees start flying before the last snow melts, drinking from sapsucker wells & other fresh wounds. Soon only the white buildings will remind us of winter’s blankness — tombs for the Asian ladybug beetles that infiltrated them by the thousands last Fall, thinking they were cool chalk cliffs, & died of thirst. The south-facing windows have been stained with the grime of beetle feet. Vacuum cleaners howl. Outside, three doves try to out-mourn each other, as if this disreputable yard were another Jerusalem.
__________
Don’t forget to visit qarrtsiluni, where the first posts for our Nature in the Cracks issue are beginning to appear.
Doubletake
I wasn’t terribly keen on yesterday’s poem, but then I listened to this reading of it and almost started to like it. The recording was completely unsolicited, and is by someone who wishes to be identified only as “a nameless friend.” In response to my grumpy comments about the poem, A.N.F. wrote:
No, it’s not a perfect poem — for one thing, I thought the penultimate lines were amazing, but not the final one. And you probably overdid the repetitions just a bit.
But I like it, and I liked it even more as I read it aloud. Praise Whomever for imperfect things.
Supposition
Suppose it’s true: that as you walk,
another is walking within you, perfectly
coterminous with your own walking.
Suppose it’s true that as you sit,
another sits within, weathering you,
like the coal inside the ember.
I don’t like to think that our bodies
are mere vessels — or vassals —
but suppose it’s true. It might explain
these odd, apparently random urges
to hold & be held, or to lose ourselves
through concentration: the not-us within
wants to reach the not-us without.
It might explain why, as we slowly
tighten around our cores,
strands of white begin to appear
on our heads, an extra light glimmers
behind the eyes, & a network of cracks
under the skin begins to offer glimpses
of an inner blue. Suppose it’s literally true
that heaven is within. Would even this
be as illuminating as the knowledge
that we are risen from the ocean,
descended from the trees?
__________
Ending re-written 8/8/13. For the original poem, listen to the recording in the following post, Doubletake.
In response to a Read Write Poem challenge to make use of repetition. Other responses are linked here.
And speaking of RWP, I have a guest column there today, Poetry out loud: audio blogging for poets. Feedback on that from anyone with experience in audio blogging or podcasting would be very much appreciated.
Nature in the Cracks
On the Outside
A half-hour before the first bell,
as the kids from the early buses
were milling around in the hall
waiting for the library to open,
a robin began to assault
the courtyard window.
A crowd quickly gathered.
He wants in!
Look at him.
What’s wrong with this fucking bird?
Hammering the glass
with its beak & wings
& ineffectual claws.
The jocks thought it was a riot.
Look out, Jim — he’s after you!
He’s gonna kick your ass.
Then the librarian unlocked the door
& everyone ran to get a seat
& a newspaper, except
for one girl with lank hair
& clothes from the Salvation Army.
He don’t want to come in, she murmured.
He wants that fat thing
that mocks his every move
to meet him outside.
*
Every time we post a new theme announcement at qarrtsiluni, I find myself writing poems in response to the theme without really intending to. As one of the two managing editors, I can’t submit my own work, but none of the rest of you are bound by any such restrictions, so go check out the Call For Submissions. The theme this time is “Nature in the Cracks,” with guest editors Brent Goodman and Ken Lamberton. They write,
We’re seeking prose, poetry, and artwork that celebrates the nature of the world revealed by time, weather, decay, cycle, and neglect. It’s the understated beauty of the stain inside a teacup, not the ornate pattern decorating the porcelain. It’s a sadness for old barns slouching in fog, the branch you accidentally break that turns the owl’s moon face your direction. It’s the liver spots on your grandmother’s forearm, the crooked curl of her fingers over the rocker arm. It’s the well-worn patch of wood stain faded smooth there. […]
It’s in the cracks where nature adjusts, changes, and teems, a marginal place that exists without borders, physical or theoretical, a place where something new might evolve out of the muck. “Nature in the Cracks” seeks writing about wildness found in strange places — from landfills to prisons, sidewalk cracks to salad crispers.
Read the rest here.
The claw
Click to see larger
Snow annealed by sun
on a tin roof, followed
by a cold night, holds
together the next day
as it slides off
the edge & begins to yaw,
curling under the eaves:
a white claw. I think
of a Siberian tiger
with corrugations for stripes,
hell-bent on breaking
out of its fort. The icicles’
dagger-tips drip with
their own fluid —
saliva of a sort.
A wavy sky always denotes
a clash of dry & wet:
unsettled weather.
An ambiguous threat.
__________
In response to the Read Write Poem prompt, weather. Read other responses here.
Snare
Following animal tracks through the former grape trellis & into the woods, I pass between wire & shadows. The crusted snow tugs at my feet, as if to fix me in place like so many others.
I watch the way things surface & think of a snow-shark rearing a hammer head, or some other cryptozoological prodigy. It’s the shadows more than the sun that pull me uphill. The bright, still morning seems just right for a sighting.
Then on an unused game trail, I almost trip over a loop of new wire staked between two bushes. I freeze & stare.
This must be what the game laws call a cable restraint, as if it were simply a fancy kind of leash for recalcitrant canids. No wonder the songdogs here so rarely advertise their presence!
I reach down & pull it out by the roots, then spot the fresh bootprints on the other side. They are enormous.
I will track this creature to its den.
Ode to a newspaper article
Below the fold you continue
in two columns, the body of your text
committed now to carry through
after the titillating lede. What’s next
beyond the jump, that brief
moment of vertigo around
your midsection? Briefs
for neither side. You sound
a note of caution at partisan-
ship, strive for balance, blend
levity with gravity. It takes an artisan
to reach such a well-rounded end.
__________
Written for the Read Write Poem prompt, an ode on the body. Links to other responses can be found here.
UPDATE: Just now, catching up on the Christian Science Monitor, I came across a grim reminder that odes and journalism both remain very serious business in some parts of the world:
Saw Wai is a Burmese poet known for his love songs. His eight-line Valentine’s Day ode, about a brokenhearted man in love with a fashion model, was a particularly tender one. But there was one problem.
If read vertically, the first word of each line formed the phrase: “Power Crazy Senior General Than Shwe.”
The senior general himself, head of Burma’s (Myanmar’s) military junta, could not have been amused. The head of the censorship board was urgently called to the capital; the weekly “Love Journal” has been shut down and copies of the offending edition were yanked from newsstands.
Saw Wai is now in jail, where apparently he will spend Feb. 14 in isolation, behind bars.