Category: Poem of the Week

When we look around for proof
of basic epistemological matters,
that life isn’t only seemings smattered,
a dream brought on by snaggled meat,
often the self blocks the view
of the tree or cat or car race
so all we find are me-leaves, me-meows,
me-machines of speedy impulse-me.
Maybe the point’s to see the self
as a kind of film that tints everything
bluer, more you-er and yet look through.
whatever you have to do, volunteer
at a shelter changing the abandoned
hamster’s litter, put together a coat drive
for the poor, go door to door for your candidate,
be devoted to a lover or lose yourself
cheering in a crowd, Go Hens! Go
higher, go lower, to see perhaps the sky
as a rock might, meditate until you become
a beam of light, be divided as a 3 by 27
and not get overcome by your identity ending
or expect to reappear after the decimal.
Perhaps you should be practicing not having
a self to claim, one day it’s baggage
we’re without, no longer waiting
for it to squirt out onto the conveyor belt
with all the others that look so much alike.
Yet it is sad to imagine no me around
to press his nose into your sleeping hair.
I worry death won’t care, just a bunch of dust
rushing up, some addled flashes, chills
then nil. I like too much that old idea
of heaven, everyone and pet you’ve lost
runs up which could not happen
if there’s no me there to greet.
Self, I’m stuck with you
but the notion of becoming unglued is too much
and brings tears that come, of course,
because you’re such a schmuck. Some days
you crash about raving how ignored you are
then why the hell don’t people let you alone
but I’ve seen you too perform small
nobilities, selfless generosities.
One way or the other, we’ll part I’m sure
and you’ll take me with you?

To lighten the language up, or to dark it back down
Becomes the blade edge we totter on.
To say what is true and clean,
                                                                to say what is secret and underground,
To say the things joy can’t requite, and to say them well …

This is the first conundrum.
The second is like unto it,
                                                     the world is a link and a like:
One falls and all falls.
In this last light from midsummer’s week,
                                                                                      who knows which way to go?

The great blue heron wheels up the meadow
                                                                                          and folds into Basin Creek.
Only the fish know which angle his shadow will make.
And what they know is not what he knows,
Which is neither light nor dark nor joy,
                                                                                 but is just is, just is.

Please don’t ask me, America.
I don’t remember
on which street,
with whom,
or under which star.
Don’t ask me …
I don’t remember
the colors of the people
or their signatures.
I don’t remember if they had
our faces
and our dreams,
if they were singing
or not,
writing from the left
or the right
or not writing at all,
sleeping in houses
on sidewalks
or in airports,
making love or not making love.
Please don’t ask me, America.
I don’t remember their names
or their birthplaces.
People are grass –
they grow everywhere, America.
Don’t ask me …
I don’t remember
what time it was,
what the weather was like,
which language,
or which flag.
Don’t ask me …
I don’t remember
how long they walked under the sun
or how many died.
I don’t remember
the shapes of the boats
or the number of stops …
How many suitcases they carried
or left behind,
if they came complaining
or without complaint.
Stop your questioning, America,
and offer your hand
to the tired
on the other shore.

Just pretend my writing is like somebody else’s
What things are important to you?
I am deeply concerned about your opinion of me.
To you I want to appear pleasant
& then invisible.
I want to be an interesting story
none of you really remembers.
Just a kind of nervous thing you have, really.
& then nothing.
Nothing.
Almost an eternity of nothing.
& then a terrible cataclysm.

Enfettered, these sentences repress free speech. The
text deletes selected letters. We see the revered exegete
reject metred verse: the sestet, the tercet – even les
scènes élevées en grec. He rebels. He sets new precedents.
He lets cleverness exceed decent levels. He eschews the
esteemed genres, the expected themes – even les belles
lettres en vers. He prefers the perverse French esthetes:
Verne, Péret, Genet, Perec – hence, he pens fervent
screeds, then enters the street, where he sells these let-
terpress newsletters, three cents per sheet. He engen-
ders perfect newness wherever we need fresh terms.

Relentless, the rebel peddles these theses, even when
vexed peers deem the new precepts ‘mere dreck.’ The
plebes resent newer verse; nevertheless, the rebel per-
severes, never deterred, never dejected, heedless, even
when hecklers heckle the vehement speeches. We feel
perplexed whenever we see these excerpted sentences.
We sneer when we detect the clever scheme – the emer-
gent repetend: the letter E. We jeer; we jest. We express
resentment. We detest these depthless pretenses – these
present-tense verbs, expressed pell-mell. We prefer
genteel speech, where sense redeems senselessness.

my phone is haunted by another shadow
her name is Linda Lee
every day there are calls from collection agencies
Linda owes money everywhere and
has skipped town
leaving me with her details
her phone number that doesn’t spell anything

I feel a strange sneaking guilt when they call
as if I might really be Linda Lee
they might somehow prove it
the irrational blush of the good girl
accused of lying
who suddenly doubts her own truth

the second week I say things like
Linda’s a tour guide in the
Dominican Republic now
I don’t think she’s coming back
or
Linda left to work with Greenpeace
she disappeared last fall
a tragic dinghy accident they were
chained to a Russian whaler

these telephone voices remind me of
my ex-husband parental somehow
slightly disapproving but
too polite to accuse one of anything
to spell it all out

It must have been after a
birthday; at Christmastime
daylight hasn’t the lambency
I remember as part of
the puzzling present somebody
had given me: a scribbler, empty pages, but
not for scribbling in.
Instead of a pencil box there was
a jellyglass set out, with water, and
a brand-new paint brush.

The paper was not pretty.
A pencil-point might in an upstroke
accidentally jab a hole in it.

But, painting it –
as I was told to, with only
clear water, “Behold!”
my whole being sang out, for “see”
would not have been adequate.

The pictures that emerged
were outlines? I remember
only the paper, and the wonder of it,
and how each page was turning out to be
a different picture.

There were no colours, were there?

In the analogy, there are
glorious colours
and, in some way that lacks
equivalents,
deepening colours, patterns that keep
emerging, always
more to anticipate.

For that there is no other process.

Locked in the picture is
missing the quality of the analogy of
morning light
and the delighted holder of the paint-brush
and who gave him the book, and where he found it.

The thing about the dove was how he cried in
my pocket and stuck his nose out just enough to
breathe some air and get some snow in his eye and
he would have snuggled in but I was afraid
and brought him into the house so he could shit on
the New York Times, still I had to kiss him
after a minute, I put my lips to his beak
and he knew what he was doing, he stretched his neck
and touched me with his open mouth, lifting
his wings a little and readjusting his legs,
loving his own prettiness, and I just
sang from one of my stupid songs from one of my
vile decades, the way I do, I have to
admit it was something from trains. I knew he’d like that,
resting in the coal car, slightly dusted with
mountain snow, somewhere near Altoona,
the horseshoe curve he knew so well, his own
moan matching the train’s, a radio
playing the Inkspots, the engineer roaring.

Before it can stop itself, the mind
has leapt up inferences, crag to crag,
the obvious arpeggio. Where there is a doorbell
there must be a door – a door
meant to be opened from inside.
Door means house means – wait a second –
but already it is standing on a threshold previously
known to be thin air, gawking. The Black Spruce
point to it: clarity,
melting into ordinary morning, true
north. Where the sky is just a name,
a way to pitch a little tent in space and sleep
for five unnumbered seconds.

Man’s Song

Sideways,
I glimpsed your face drawn on the trunk of a palm
and saw the sun, black in your hands.
I tied my longing to that tree and carried night in a basket
                                                                carried the whole city
and scattered myself before your eyes.
                                                Then I saw your face hungry like a child’s.
I circled it with invocations
and above it I sprinked jasmine buds.

Woman’s Song

Sideways,
I caught sight of his old man’s face
robbed by days and sorrows.
he came to me holding his green jars to his chest
rushing to the last supper.
Each jar was a bay
and a wedding held for a harbor and a boat
where days and shores drown
where seagulls probe their past and sailors divine the future.
He came to me hungry and I stretched my love toward him,
a loaf of bread, a glass cup, and a bed.
I opened the doors to wind and sun
and shared with him the last supper.