The way the very elderly
cling to any handhold
in a world gone strange,
this snow
on the daffodils.
Testament: last lines
for all those I have plundered (nothing I have is mine to give away)
I can’t decipher my stale devotion
it’s made up entirely of curse words
no condoms for the heart
will save you daily from three dozen blessings
pale orange branches, pale blue sky
there are always more
the mother’s slim hands vanishing into blurred velvet
her compound bird-span wings disguised as eyes
in twilight, curves as hard as nutshells
and beyond, the bright flying splinters of the stars
they shower onto the earth
to house its want
elusive green whorl
and I hid it like a mutant twin
unraveling the dark seam of winter
notch between hills
I am as empty as the mourning dove calling today –
whoo-ah-ooo-ooo-ah
__________
In response to the Poetry Thursday challenge, “Write a poem to, for, or about a poet.” If you’re reading this on-site (as opposed to the RSS or email version) the poem may appear all or mostly blue on first reading, reflecting my mood early this morning before I started putting it together. But unrhymable orange is its proper color, I think. Therefore each reader must complete this on his/her own by clicking on all the lines, in any order.
You can find links to the other April 5th PT poems here.
The Dog
He’s gone, my leader.
Turned into a bird or some other
uncatchable thing.
The world without him
tastes like a thrown stick.
I don’t know what to do.
I take a running step
& stop: there’s no tug
on my collar,
no comforting rebuke.
I keep trying to call
his name & get
the same old howl.
This week at Poetry Thursday, again the prompt was ekphrasis, but with a prosopopoeic twist: to speak from within the work of art.
The Quickening
Chauvet Cave, ca. 25,000 B.P.
for Marja-Leena
Under the earth
the slaughtered bison dons a new flesh
made entirely of hands.
Not under the earth but in it–
the small intestines.
Not flesh but hide,
shift, disguise.
Not hands but glowing coals,
each with five flames:
that fire from behind the navel.
It begins to dance.
Neanderthal
The young girl on TV is shown at the moment of realization. Run away, run! she had been shouting at the wounded hairy thing as it foundered & went down in a circle of men with spears, & now she is turning a heartbroken face to the cameras from the future, she is calling down destruction on her own kind, because we did not see as clearly as she did that these too were people. She is saying, when the last of the others has been killed, there will be no one left on earth. How can you live without dreams? She is saying, we are all others after dark.
Finish Line
I’ve never written in response to a Poetry Thursday challenge before, but this week it was ekphrasis — just like the current theme at qarrtsiluni, the literary blogzine I help edit. So how could I resist?
This fairly inconsequential little poem was written in response to “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” by Judy W, from this post at Elegant Thorn Review.
The secret to us
staying together, I said,
is just not to think
about the finish line.
You got to keep your eyes
on the road. Out by
the speedway, we found a bench
with all of its slats intact.
The roar of the cars & the crowd
came in waves, like the ocean.
You could smell the exhaust.
We had everything with us,
but it wasn’t enough for her.
You go on, then, I said.
I was already carving
our love into the wood,
but stopped before the plus sign
& her own six letters.
I don’t want to miss
this chance, I said.
One of those waves
isn’t going to stop.
[Poetry Thursday – dead link]
The Owl
A large owl glimpsed
in flight at the edge
of the spruce grove,
wings clipping against
the locust saplings as
it drops from its roost
& glides down the hillside
through trees as brown
as its feathers, a glare
off the snow & above,
the deepest blue:
I think of it again
just as I’m falling asleep.
The wind is shaking the house,
& I am wondering if this
is what it feels like
to be happy.
The Poet Poem
stanley
plumley
ivy alvarez
pier paolo pasolini
alison fell
faiz
ahmed faiz
ono no komachi
cornelius eady
galway kinnell
william
carlos williams
lucille clifton
ishikawa takuboku
william kloefkorn
vassar
miller
yehuda halevi
salvatore quasimodo
ed dorn
andre
codrescu
june jordan
nazim hikmet
d. j. enright
randall
jarrell
lawrence ferlinghetti
alicia suskin ostriker
kate light
Guerillera
An old poem, reprinted in honor of International Women’s Day.
We cut them down at daybreak
at the head of a dry wash
with their dogs & their rifles asleep
in the thorn scrub,
soon to flower
as I remember it growing up:
the sudden reds & purples
against the ground,
the clouds of bees
& I close my eyes
for a heart-
beat or two–
but not, I assure you,
from any faint-heartedness.
It’s only men who tremble
when their guns go off.
I could tell you about the girl
I used to be: quiet,
solemn in the face
of the world’s inevitable cruelties.
Helping my uncle at slaughtering time
I loved the way he made
his blade shimmy right through
the toughest joints so fast
they hardly moved–
one moment a carcass
complete with bone & gristle,
the next an exclusive
disjunction. Even now
I can hear him singing
as he feeds the low fire,
scraps of fat simmering
for soap:
One knee for Doña Sebastiana,
both knees for God alone.
It’s a dull knife that cuts the hand.
Keep your heart still
& your shoulder to the sky.
__________
Doña Sebastiana: In Mexican folk religion, personification of Death as a female saint. See photo here.
The Hokey-Pokey
An enormous army-green helicopter squats on the roof. We pass through the hokey-pokey checkpoint, revolving in a kind of dance with our hands above our heads, praise the Lord. That’s what it’s all about. Then echoey corridors, the squeak of new boots. Craning my head to peer through a skylight, I see HONDURAS still etched into one of the battlements. I know I have nothing to fear, but keep my thoughts to myself in any case, sitting in silence at the desk I’ve been issued, or dividing up an enormous baked squash with a butter knife as if it were a pie, as if it were a circle only temporarily stretched out of shape. The orange meat crumbles as the blade passes through. Nobody here can eat another bite. The busboy fumbles with something under his fatigue jacket & my mouth goes dry: in another moment we will be filled with shards of metal and foreign flesh. If I’m lucky, I’ll live out my life with fragments of the enemy lodged in my side. I will turn myself around.
_______
Note: According to the OED, hokey-pokey (or hokey-cokey in the UK) comes from hocus pocus, the all-purpose conjuror’s formula dating back to the early 17th century. The nonsense Latin is popularly believed to derive from hoc est (enim) corpus (meum), “this is my body” — the words spoken when the priest elevates the consecrated host, marking the moment of transubstantiation. An 18th-century abbreviation of hocus pocus gave us the word hoax.
For what it’s worth, I didn’t know any of this when I wrote the first draft.