They are so sweet
and dark, down to the stone
in the center of their bellies.
Touch them and you come
away with sweetness
you can name as a color:
cherry-sweet, love-sweet,
tipple on the tip of your tongue.
Prayer Warriors
Sunday again: jellybeans
in a bowl. The golden calf
has sent a representative.
We are safe from the lions
of high noon, who lie
and digest like pundits.
The children must be taught
to pray for victory and not
worry about all the losers.
They must love their country
without thinking, mind
like a weed-free lawn,
pristine as astroturf. Purity
is the object here. If it’s power
you want, get an injection.
On Celebration
All the used clothing in drawers; the underwear; a mystery fez;
bandannas, socks, scarves, wrist warmers. Shirts that barely
close anymore when you button them—couldn't fix,
didn't want to take the trouble. Things were once new;
everything sparkled, often bought in duplicate: leitmotiv
for this culture of excess. I fear becoming a portmanteau,
ghost of previous and imagined selves. But I was always taught
history doesn't tell a dispassionate story. Who gets the spoils
is landlord, treasurer, archivist; barrister, warden, exterminator.
Jane, my friend, reminds me to always watch my back. LOQ:
keep personal information safe, preserve your self-authorship.
Like a marathon, this is a race hard to run, requiring bravado.
My resolve is not to shatter under the weight of colonization,
not to be erased, not to drown in the waters of futilitarianism.
Our daily oracle directs us to the voices of the ancestral,
pray for their protection; believe in the power of the potluck,
quash rumors of our failure to survive. So we celebrate birthdays: Benj,
Regin, & Ron—three cakes, relatives from east & west coast; sashimi,
sushi, oysters, & martinis. After seasons of mourning, we brandish
the gumption to cheer loudly, twist & shout, stuff the leftovers in one bag.
Until it's over, it's not over. Yeah, why not wear that frothy puff,
velvet vest, polished shoes? Confession: I wasn't born before my time,
want to party as hard as the rest of you; twirl beribboned.
Xylophones tinkle to signal the ice cream truck's arrival. Epic
yearning = epic expression (sometimes). So let's do without that club
zigging around in the electric slide—anything else, tell the orchestra.
Outlast
We were at a cedar barn for the wedding
of our nephew, with rows of chairs set out
on either side of a trellis overlooking a man-made
pond. The left was for members of the bride's party,
and the right for us; except we were vastly outnumbered by
her family's many relations and friends. All this made me recall
stories about my parents' marriage—it must have been a feat
of rhetorical and other kinds of persuasion, considering how long
my paternal grandmother held out before she gave her grudging
consent. My mother was only a farmer's daughter. But she was
aware of the ways of a world that wanted to put people in their
imagined place. My parents' union lasted over thirty-five years,
until my father's death. My mother, never the favorite
to begin with, counted as victory every year she outlasted.
Midsummer
You know what it's like when you step into a room
and every head swivels in your direction? How quickly
the comfort you've become used to as you move around
in your skin, in this world, can be unsettled. You follow
the GPS map, wondering why a wedding rehearsal dinner
would be held near a cemetery—but this is a small town
in the midwest, blond as the silk wrapped around the corn
growing thick and high in summer. After three wrong
turns, you pull into a driveway hoping to ask for directions.
There is a subgenre of horror whose elements include
an isolated rural setting, superstition and suspicion;
folk who band together against outsiders stumbling into
their community. This is the point where the odds are
even: either nothing could happen, or anything could happen.
You'd hear the wind blow through the fields, an animal bleating
in the trough; the click as a weapon is chambered and cocked.
Poetry Blog Digest 2024, Week 28
A personal selection of posts from the Poetry Blogging Network and beyond. Although I tend to quote my favorite bits, please do click through and read the whole posts. You can also browse the blog digest archive at Via Negativa or, if you’d like it in your inbox, subscribe on Substack (where the posts might be truncated by some email providers).
This week: the seeds of books, glamour and poverty, a gull funeral, the green of geckos, and more. Enjoy.
Continue reading “Poetry Blog Digest 2024, Week 28”Officialdom
you were the lions of empire
captured in local granite
you cling to your perches
as tightly as the shells
that gave birth to cicadas
those one-hit wonders
cultured in the dark
like wheels of cheese
you travel sitting down
or sleeping in compartments
raised on air quotes you lift
an eyebrow to the breeze
if a cocktail or paving stone
can become ordnance
the sky’s the limit to what
feathered lead might fall
a rampant weather fit
to exterminate vermin
Recoveries
On the roof of the shed,
under a bough bending with leaves,
one of the neighborhood cats likes
to stretch out in the middle of the day.
*
Once when we came home,
we saw another nest flung from
the high pine—night herons
pummeled by wind.
.*
Even the ghosts of cicadas are tenacious—
the shells they left behind as they pushed
their new bodies out remain
hooked to leaves.
Specialist
a caterpillar fallen from
its tree hurries past
the ground is a leaf
without end or underside
where to shelter from birds
and menacing clouds
you can hide on a plinth
if you’re still enough
convert all your unspent
currency to skulls
the ground is a mask
with too many eyeholes
how to disguise yourself
as a shadow or a hedge fund
if you’re made out of water
you can take any shape
says the fortune cookie
crushed by an impatient fist
Maps
8
You could say the sunflower
is one of my emblems—for how it tracks
a brighter beacon across the skies
through the day, for how it angles its head
toward some hidden aspiration.
There is another, smaller flower:
bright yellow and orange, but broom-
brittle. Women string them into garlands
and sell them as a kind of amulet
against time. Their name, the echo
of promises made by lovers. Or a life
sentence—how faithfulness ordained
can become the fate the flower
petals into, that roots it to the ground.