Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
Original poetry, translations and videopoems by the authors of this blog. (See Poets and poetry for criticism, etc.)
First cousin to mud, soft-shouldered,
I turn to quagmire. Ou sont les neiges?
God’s rain on the roof. The house vibrates
from the washing machine’s dervish waltz.
Standing on the porch, I hear a winter wren’s
summertime song: thin boneless notes.
Trunks of locust trees at the edge of the field
have turned green from all the rain.
Green columns glowing in the dim light.
The gray-brown ruin of a woods beyond.
Festival of the Trees #7 appeared a few hours early last night — I presume the host had a party to go to, unlike me — and was one of the last things I looked at before going to bed at around 11:45. The rain was loud on the roof. Just as I was drifting off to sleep, I heard a distant rumble. Thunder, I thought. But in January? It was followed by a second rumble a few seconds later. The surprise of it woke me enough to look at the clock and realize that it wasn’t thunder I was hearing, but human beings marking an arbitrarily designated moment of time by discharging guns and explosives. My first thought of the supposed New Year — “Thunder!” — had been a delusion.
I woke eight hours later, grateful for the rare gift of a full night’s sleep. When I stepped out on my porch, coffee mug in hand, I was greeted by thick fog and the honking of Canada geese. They flew right overhead, so low that I could easily hear the wing beats, though the cloud hid them from view. My first birds of the New Year had been invisible.
I was reminded of New Year’s Day 2000, which began here with a thick snow fog — and with the turn of the millennium still a year away, contrary to the widespread popular delusion. Looking back, it makes me a little sad to realize that the tenacity of that delusion prevented us from enjoying a really memorable, planet-wide millennium-ending celebration on December 31, 2000.
Ten minutes later, a single crow flew in and landed at the top of a tall black locust tree at the edge of the woods. Unlike the “maybe crow” in the poem I just linked to, though, there was no doubt about this one’s identity. At least, not on my part — for all I know, the bird itself was in the middle of an identity crisis. Corvids are certainly smart enough to be capable of self-awareness, and thus also self-doubt, I suppose. Anytime you see a crow by itself, you have to wonder what it’s up to. It sat there silently for less than a minute, then flew off to the southeast. My first omen-like observation of the New Year had been — as always — highly ambiguous.
My first mammal sighting was of a gray squirrel — no surprise there! — perched on the head of the dog statue in my front yard, chewing open the hard shell of a black walnut. This silly game, taking note of first things, had led me to focus on a scene that was no less charming for being commonplace.
After a while, I got up and fetched camera and tripod for a few pictures of the fog. This galvanized me to lace up my shoes and go for a walk — one of my very few, inflexible New Year’s customs. I didn’t realize until later, when I uploaded my photos to the computer, how much trouble the camera had focusing in the fog. My first photos of the New Year were out-of-focus!
I was getting pretty hungry by this time, so I only took a short walk. I noticed that a couple of the power poles appeared to have fresh bear markings on them, though most likely they’ve been there for a couple of months and I only noticed them today because last night’s rain made them stand out. The bears are probably all in hibernation right now, though as warm as the weather’s been, I wouldn’t bet too much on that. We’ve seen bears out wandering around in Januarys past, whether from insomnia or an improperly triggered internal clock, who can say? Something like a rumble of thunder might wake them up.
*
Another New Year, 8:30 a.m.
Like a bear making claw marks
on a telephone pole,
I decide to take roll.
Low-flying geese,
solitary crow,
squirrel on the head of a concrete dog,
the fog.
Here, I answer.
Here.
Here’s another recycled, pre-owned, gently used, like-new, encore presentation of a post. The wordier original version was here.
Speak of an itch & it will appear,
pure miserable temptation
to turn on ourselves,
to rub our bodies clean
of all sensitivity. Existing
mainly in the details,
its names are legion:
arm itch, thumb itch,
calf itch, back itch,
breast itch, chest itch,
lip itch, rib itch,
forearm itch, foreskin itch,
elbow itch, ankle itch,
facial itch, anal itch,
mouth itch, muscle twitch,
groin itch, gum itch,
head itch, heel itch,
wrist itch, fingernail itch,
kneecap itch, behind-knee itch,
leg itch, neck itch,
nipple itch, nose itch,
scalp itch, stomach itch,
eye itch, eyelid twitch,
vaginal itch, clitoris itch,
testicle itch, penile itch,
thigh itch, shin itch,
underarm itch, eyebrow itch,
ear itch, cheek itch,
sole itch, shoulder itch,
knuckle itch, upper arm itch,
buttock itch, foot itch,
hand itch, finger itch,
palm itch, jaw itch.
Even an amputee’s missing part
can somehow itch, on the other side
of an unbridgeable absence.
It’s a bait-&-switch.
What we miss — we’re convinced —
is simply the scratching.
I’m digging up old poems and rewriting when necessary. Some require extensive revision, which I’ve been neglecting for three years now. Some may not have even known they were poems. I found the germ of this poem in a prose piece from July 19, 2004. I’m hoping that readers can still appreciate it without knowing all the plants and fungi invoked.
Enchanter’s nightshade,
rattlesnake plantain,
a deer fly stumbles —
jumpseed —
through my matted hair.
In the daylong dusk of midsummer woods,
I find him with the flat of my hand.
White moths dot the ground,
flopping like landed fish.
Who knows what goes on up there
where the leaves run out?
The trees sweat.
Every fifteen feet, another web
& a spider the size of carpet tack.
Stinkhorn,
squawroot,
I wield my walking stick like a fencer’s foil.
No damage done: this species of spider
eats her own web each night,
starts fresh in the morning.
Listen, these woods are far stranger
than anything I can write.
Here’s a mollusk without a shell,
a four-inch hermaphrodite,
gray pinstripes stretched on a bed of moss.
I crouch down to watch its lubricated progress.
Eyestalks swivel to tune me in.
Somewhere close by, a tree gives way,
roots loosened by weeks of intermittent rain.
After the crash, a wood peewee
keeps bending the same two notes.
Earth tongue,
fly agaric,
his fondest wish is for the clouds
never to part.
1. A veil for a sailor, to ward off the covetous eye of the sea.
2. Sackcloth made of nimbus, used for storing multiple outcomes.
3. A pod full of seeds too lucky to ever sprout. Logic dictates a creation ex nihilo by an ad hoc committee.
4. A cross between foam and flotsam. In particular, a bottle with a ship for a message.
5. A piggy bank, when its change turns into rent money.
6. A sort of mammalian exuvia, soft and spongy after being vacated by the internally boned organism and its shrill cicada cry.
7. An old wineskin.
__________
for R., with love
Next door to Dorothy, there’s
another girl who stays behind
in Kansas, who sleeps through storms,
her father a slab-faced drunk,
mother vicious with regret
for this brood she should have
drowned at birth, because they so
distract her from her spells
& weather-making. The daughter
hides in her bed & petitions
the great and powerful wizard
for a way out.
Thirty years on, oblivion doesn’t
seem any closer. She has two
kids of her own, now, who creep
quietly past her bedroom door.
A tornado comes & makes off
with the neighbor’s roof. Sirens,
helicopters. She stirs awake.
Why couldn’t it have been me,
my house, she asks the crack
in the ceiling.
Oz is only three clicks of the mouse
away, & the fact that it’s no place
like home is an inducement
to visit often. But we read her latest
messages & lose our appetite
for dancing in circles. Weeds
sprout between the yellow bricks.
Maybe I should retrieve that old
heart from its safe-deposit box?
I lie awake shivering as the first
serious snowstorm of the year turns
the world back to black & white.
May, 1905. The run-down end
of a village in Hungary, where
the peasants are marrying
& giving in marriage, the same
as ever. A slight young man
with a silk bow fastened to his neck
is taking a strange-looking machine
from its case & assembling it
on a stool. The hurdy-gurdy player
watches as he inserts a cylinder
& attaches a brass horn.
What kind of music does it make,
he asks. All kinds & none,
says Bartók, his voice
crackling with wonder. It’s an ear
with a perfect memory.
He points to the stylus.
They finally invented a pen
that knows how to speak!
August. In Paris to compete
for the Prix Rubenstein, Bartók visits
the Moulin Rouge — so many butterflies
of the night with painted faces,
he writes in a letter to his mother —
& a cabaret called Le néant.
Here instead of tables
there are wooden coffins,
the walls are black & decorated
with human skeletons or parts
of skeletons, & the waiters
are dressed as if for a funeral.
The lighting is such that our lips
take on the color of blackberries,
our cheeks a waxen yellow,
nails violet — in other words,
we look like cadavers —
& for entertainment, one
of our party lets himself
be wrapped in a winding sheet
& changed into a skeleton
before our eyes.
1915. The Great War
restricts travel to a few counties
in the interior. Bartók writes,
I often leave the road & cut
through the woods, where I find
a great many insects.
That’s my other collection now —
it too will keep me occupied
long after my return.
The peasants here are poor
but very hospitable. I am bound
always by gratitude, never
quite free. But on Sundays
we go to collect songs
in the neighboring villages,
taking the long way around
& hiking through the mountains
whenever we can. I’ve started
taking photographs, too,
a difficult thing.
January 1943. New York.
At what will turn out to be
his last public performance,
Bartók is soloing with his wife Ditta
in the Concerto for Two Pianos
and Orchestra: the New York
Philharmonic, conducted by Fritz
Reiner. Suddenly Bartók veers
off-score, leaving his wife
& the others to grope along
after him as best they can
on this new path through
the same, steep terrain.
Afterwards, Reiner is furious.
How could you risk everything
on a whim? They are riding
in a New York taxi cab.
After a long silence, Bartók turns
to his wife beside him & says,
The tympanist! It was
the tympanist who started it.
He hit a wrong note — & suddenly
there was a new idea
that I had to try out right then
& follow wherever it led.
I couldn’t help it. That moment
will never come again.
Fog until 9 a.m.
Sitting in their trees,
the hunters hear
every drip.
A silent crow flies past,
something dangling from its beak.
Water beads
on the coiled tendrils
of wild grapes.
Unmistakable, the sound of hooves
on wet leaves — until it stops.
The fog thins.
A pair of does stand frozen,
raising & lowering the white
alarms of their tails.
It started with angels:
a chain gang, joined
at the wings.
Or children holding hands,
their blank faces
& androgynous bodies
ready for the magic
of markers. Seven
to eight, it seems,
was the Age of Paper.
In the lunchroom,
older boys passed on
the lore of cootie catchers
& diamond-shaped
footballs folded
from a notebook page.
Back in class,
we made snowflakes
& taped them to the high
classroom windows,
bait for the gods of snow
& early dismissal.
In December, we draped
the blackboard & doorway
with Christmas chains,
red linked with green
linked with red,
& come February, learned
the simplest cut of all:
the craft-paper heart.
This time, though green
might’ve seemed more apt,
only red would do.
The teacher showed us
how to turn them into cards
with the addition of
a recipient’s name
on the outside
& some simple message
hidden in the fold, making
a virtue of the necessary,
indelible crease.
She was the only child, she says — she never
got to play. Mother put her to work as soon
as she could walk, a brand-new list of chores
every morning. Pennsylvania Germans
were very judgmental, she says,
her eyes made enormous by thick glasses.
Whenever anything bad happened, it could only be
punishment for some slip: the Lord is good.
Now, with both parents dead, she thought
she was unlikely ever to go back.
But after the surgery, she had to lie prone
for two weeks while her eyes refilled with fluid.
Short trips to the bathroom were O.K.,
as long as she didn’t look at anything
but the floor. If she tilted her head back just once,
the ophthalmologist warned, her eyes might collapse
into their sockets. She felt like a slug,
complete with retractable eyestalks.
Her husband bought her a laptop
& placed it on a chair at the foot of the bed
where she could comfortably reach the keys,
& she bookmarked pictures of the sky.
They helped her fall asleep — a few, difficult hours
wrested from the interminable wakefulness.
She dreamt of crossing darkened fields
& forests on tall stilts, the lamp-lit kitchens
of her childhood teetering below.