Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
Original poetry, translations and videopoems by the authors of this blog. (See Poets and poetry for criticism, etc.)
Fire
in a crowded theatre
the one word not
to be played with
we melt
on its urgent tongue
Fire
on command
an arm goes down
red blossoms
against the white-
washed stone
Fire
in the hole
the frantic leaping
of fish after
a chemical spill
Fire
the messenger
who brings no message
only his own
unbearable company
Small dark animals with long tails & pointed snouts: fishers, four of them. They walk into our camp from each of the four directions. Amazed, we drop to our hands & knees. Human & weasel circle each other warily, looking not for an advantage but some point of contact.
*
I feel something moving under my skin right below my shoulder — the same place where my mother once had a botfly larva hatch out after a trip to Peru. I pull up my sleeve & look. My arm is transparent, & the approximate color of amber. Various winged insects are suspended in it. A few have died, but most still struggle to escape.
*
I’m working as a freelance journalist for some highbrow publication on popular culture, in which capacity I have to do a phone interview with Metallica frontman James Hetfield. We talk about his flirtation with Christian Science, & he jokes that this was his substitute for a more fashionable heroin addiction. I pretend to know something about religion, about addiction, about making music, but I’m glad when the interview’s over. You don’t want a guy like James Hetfield finding out that you are a total fraud.
*
I decide that all nouns are clichés. I discover a way to display my poems electronically so that every time the page is renewed, all the nouns change. I program in a bank of nouns to draw from, like numbers in a lottery. Conspicuously absent are such poetic-sounding lies as light & stone & salt.
*
I usually leave my computer on all night in order to avoid messing up the wireless connection, but I feel guilty about the waste of energy, & I don’t like the way its hum permeates the house. Always in my dreams I am waking up, I am going downstairs & beginning to type. I am blogging my dreams in my dreams.
__________
Don’t forget to keep checking qarrtsiluni for more very short stories and poems. The special summer reading edition continues through the end of August.
Just as I’m about to take a freight train up my nose,
I stop with my head halfway to the rails:
a spider is swimming past my face,
like Rapunzel descending a single strand of her own hair.
Her hindmost pair of legs pays out the line,
the next two legs stick straight out for balance
& the two pairs of forelegs move in circles,
feeling all around for an anchor point.
Not here, I say, nudging her silk wake
to keep her off the mirror-tray
& its two parallel lines of white powder.
She reverses course like a yo-yo, heading for my finger.
I push the thread a little farther & she severs
her connection. Sorry, sister, I mutter
as she drops to the floor — a chaos of newspapers —
touching down without incident among the headlines.
It was no longer smoke, or dust, or even a cloud of fire. It was a living thing, a new species of being, born right before our incredulous eyes.
—William L. Laurence, Eye Witness Account: Atomic Bomb Mission Over Nagasaki (War Department press release)
There was a flash, so bright — as if
from the world’s largest camera,
come to capture everyone in
their work clothes.
We children ran to the top field
& turned & looked.
What new kind of cloud was this?
What new kind of tree?
It stood for hours on the horizon,
brewing its own weather, we guessed,
or setting fruit. No one could imagine just
how strong the wind, how terrible the rain.
But we were farmers’ kids.
When we saw white birds
streaming away toward the west,
we knew what to think.
__________
With apologies to Gregory Corso for the title.
UPDATE: Marja-Leena Rathje just reminded me about a post she did last year, Art of the Hibakusha, which described her friend Tomio’s recollection of watching the Nagasaki explosion from 80 miles away as a boy. I think this must have been the original seed of inspiration for my poem above. Thanks, Tomio and Marja-Leena!
Also, Japan Focus has just republished a searing editorial by James Carroll: The Nagasaki Principle. Do go read.
Married women in my area
want sex, you say, & I believe it.
Is this the hotshot stock alert
I’ve been waiting for? I could get
a laptop of my choice, on you,
or realize total & absolute power
& domination in bed. I am approved
for all loans, with no headaches,
no stomachaches, no come-down.
Your pills are soft & dissolvable
under the tongue. If I sign up
for help, I’ll be put into the hopper
for your daily cash giveaway.
Easy babes are looking to hook up.
I should not entertain any atom
of fear, as all required arrangements
have been made for the transfer,
but my response is needed.
If I want to be removed — &
sometimes I do — I can click
below. What have I done to deserve
so much consideration?
When the whites come to plant tobacco,
first thing they do is fell all the trees
so the Indians won’t have a place
to hide. No surprise, then,
that some snow-bound frontiersman
should see the profile of a former neighbor
starting up out of the firewood.
He reaches for his pocketknife.
By spring, here’s a faithful scout,
dumb as a stump, to stand
at the corner of the trading post.
If the grain’s too pale, a little
tobacco juice rubbed in with a rag
will make an authentic-
looking redskin, spit & shine.
So here I am, two centuries later,
still playing host
to strangers’ fantasies,
flies with sticky feet,
the white moths of morning.
My wooden lungs ache with dry rot,
still waiting for a light.
I was David, slayer of tens of thousands,
dancing half-naked before the Ark.
Power flowed through me: everyone saw
how the Lord gloried in his tool.
Abigail, Michal, Ahinoam — where were they?
Forgotten on their pillows of goats’ hair,
like the graven image that slept in my bed
on the night I staged my first
tactical retreat.
Don’t look at me like that! Remember,
Jonathon was dead, whose love had been
more wonderful than the love of any woman.
The Lord had taken my seed
for his own: my sons would be his sons.
But what does a virgin know about love?
I danced, I circled back on myself
like a serpent, honey-tongued.
I fucked Bathsheba & had her husband killed.
A flash of anger in your eyes — good.
I hold nothing back; neither should you.
More than anything else,
El Shaddai loves openness.
Ah, but Absalom, beautiful in outrage,
broken at the bottom of a pit!
What kind of arch is supported
by a single pillar?
You have heard these stories a hundred times,
I know. They are all I have left.
I keep hoping somehow to set you aflame, poor girl,
forced to cuddle with this soft cold worm
your King.
__________
Abishag – see I Kings 1:1-4
dancing before the ark – II Samuel 6:12-16
the graven image that slept in my bed – I Samuel 19:11-17
more wonderful than the love of any woman – II Samuel 1:25-26
the Lord had taken my seed – II Samuel 7:12-16
Bathsheba – II Samuel 11
a single pillar – II Samuel 18:17-18
For another take on the real David behind the layers of tradition, see Baruch Halpern, David’s Secret Demons: Messiah, Murderer, Traitor, King (Eerdmans, 2001)
Look, the night doesn’t fall like a curtain
or rise from any ground. In fact,
it doesn’t move at all.
It’s still there, even in the heat of noon.
Ay, Carnival.
Fields of dog grass.
We pass through that black purse
like stones through a gizzard,
grinding against each other, a currency
no sooner earned than spent.
Our features fade, rubbed smooth.
Veins appear just under the skin.
Strands of silver.
Ay Carnival,
bald as a nickname.
Now more than ever, I am nothing you’d
care to save. But night still rattles
with the dreams of poor Indians,
in their hats & shawls like broody hens
unwilling to abandon the egg
that will never hatch.
Big overblown Carnival.
__________
Lines in italics are taken from Quechua folksongs collected by Jesíºs Lara and translated by Maria A. Proser and James Scully (Quechua Peoples Poetry, Curbstone Press, 1976).
For background on Potosí, see here.
Imagine having to go on with no way to touch.
Giving birth to the child of who knows which
stoned soldier, & never knowing the silky
feel of his skin, whether to caress
or to shove away, away.
I let him nurse to ease the swelling in my breasts.
I licked him like a cat — it was all the salt I could get.
Were they not terrible, those severed hands,
when they stood back up at last
& began to point?
Click on the photo for a larger image
After mother remarried, her new husband
shot the horse that had returned
with an empty saddle.
It hadn’t let anyone but me ride it since.
You couldn’t slam a door or fire a gun,
it would kick down the stalls.
We’d put it outside during thunderstorms.
I’d hear a frantic drumroll of hooves
circling the pasture,
& something heavy — the Sunday roast — scraping
across a table. I mean, the way it sounds
from underneath,
crouching among the chairs, hungry,
keeping a wary eye on those tooled
leather boots.
