Painted Bride Quarterly's new issue

Painted Bride Quarterly's new issue is online, including one of my poems.

This is very exciting for me. And it's partly because the name "Painted Bride" always reminds me of Painted Bride Art Center, which helped fund Llory Wilson's amazing dance piece "This Chordate Carcass," based on the life and work of Frida Kahlo. I saw that piece in 1989. The dance, my introduction to Kahlo's work, and the name Painted Bride have stayed with me ever since.

Spoon!

Have you ever watched the cartoon The Tick?

Tonight, while dishing up dinner, I pulled my big spoon out of the drawer, and it reminded me of this quick (draft) of a poem that I wrote for the April PAD in 2008.

Spoon


It's a big and made of plain metal
with a wood handle worn by use,
by washing. It stirs the pasta
or the onions, the peppers in olive oil,
it serves wherever it is needed.

How bright the sun poured
as we walked out our new door,
under the thick leaves of old trees,
past the jail, circles of razor wire catching the light,
and onto the broad boulevard,
or that's what it was called.

Our first night in our first apartment
together, our first morning
and a trip to the diner for breakfast.
We lingered by the tables
of the church ladies' sidewalk sale,
and we bought this practical spoon--
our first utensil in our new life.

After two decades,
I'm on the other side of the country
and the husband has passed,
but the second-hand spoon keeps
its place in the drawer, more
treasured than the meat fork it came with
or the glass bowl I bought
when I was twenty, even
the colander handed down
from my grandmother
that has a dent and is missing
both handles and that I can almost
let go of. The spoon stays.

Alas, the colander is still waiting for its next use out in the garden. But the spoon does stay.

New poem online

I have a new poem up at CHEST magazine, inspired by our bouts of whooping cough back in 2005.

And for all of you writing medicine-inspired poems, poems about the body, I recently found in my email inbox a link to another medical-arts journal: Hektoen International.

I'm not quite sure how I ended up in this niche, but it seems to be what I do.

Happy Inauguration Day!

Here's the poem I wrote for that inaugural ode contest:


To This America, Our America


The stars are hidden in the indigo
depths of this long night. We live in winter
yet now the light arrives earlier
every morning. We have come this far.

We know the wind blows hard. We know
the swirl of flood, the mud and loss it leaves.
We see the ghosts of our dead in the dreams
of our children. We have come this far,

and we are turning to the sun, turning
to each other, to feed and shelter our people,
to bury our lost with honor. We rise
to change, with joy that we have come this far

and seek to lead the world in learning how
to live with one another. Yes, we can—
together we have come this far
and we are walking onward into hope.

From a previous election

In an Election Year


The heron isn’t talking.

The willows keep sorrow
to themselves.

The lake holds counsel
in a low voice.

Farther up the hill,
jack pines rise.

The sun draws a new line of light,
across the parchment sky.

In October’s press,
through low-lapping fog

and the ancient warnings
of deep water, cold

nights, we listen for the sound of ice.

Third person

Today's NaPoMo poem-a-day prompt from Poetic Asides is to write a poem in the third person. Although you can write about yourself and put it in third person, the exercise was to take yourself out of the poem, so I wanted myself out of the poem as much as possible. Here is my draft.


Sunday Visit

How carefully she navigates the shifting
sands of conversation that sink, without warning, drift
from one story to the next. She
asks a question, and her face smoothes
like a mask, porcelain and serene. She nods
as the answer blows through her like the April wind
and follows with another query,
even as the new leaves shiver,
the shadows of words winging
away from this sunlit afternoon. She leans
on instinct and years of good manners,
knows how to carry grace even
in such quiet calamity. The third question slips
in delicately, an innocent--the fourth,
a vase of dahlias on the table. Then the light
behind her thin curtains fades just a thumb,
the difference between one moment
and the moment after, and she reaches
for the next card in her hand,
returns to that first question, begins again.

Ain't no ravens here

You see wings the color of night
and want to say it's the shaman's bird,
find portents in the clicks and caws
that crack the morning. You want
mystery and the mystic,
truth unfolding as light as feathers
or as dark as death, to know
their wheeling flight at dusk reveals
a world no longer common.
It would be that romantic,
but Brother, I have to tell you
those are crows.

Back to school?

The past few days have seen a flurry on Jeannine's blog regarding schools of poetry.

If we posit that there is indeed a New York School and a Deep Image School (or is that a movement?) and Surrealists and a School of Quietude, here are my own additions to the fray:

School of Shock
An abundance of images, and each image is more important than the poem as a whole.

School of Slam
Usually, less emphasis on images or metaphor, but heartily rhythmic, with attention to audience and momentum.

School of Unusual Punctuation
Marked by a use of brackets ([ ]).

I admit that, although I understand that its use may be perjorative, I have a hard time feeling bad about the phrase "School of Quietude." I think it's because of this old poem:

In the Season of Quiet


One night shy of a half, the moon hung near the top of the sky
and the last light brushed thin wisps of cloud
pink and coral, the color of salmon flesh,
the color of old roses braving October’s end.
The reflection bloomed on the flat gray face of the Skagit.
You found a cloud that looked like an arrow.
Or a plane, I said, then saw a coyote wagging its tail,
yapping at something out of sight.
Dark furrows creased a land
already canting toward winter and frost.
The fields spread out around harbors of alder and birch,
gilt leaves paled by the kneeling down of the day.
The coyote faded to lead.
Struck slow by so much space, I ached to breath it in,
suck the light through my skin, dig a fine garden.

"In the Season of Quiet" originally appeared in Arnazella.

A darker part of this winter

I haven't written, here or anywhere, about what happened and what's been happening in our neighborhood. It's hard. It is not a good story.

At 7:00 P.M. on New Year's Eve a young woman named Shannon Harps was stabbed to death in front of her apartment building. It was just a few blocks from where I get off the bus after work, and not far away from where I live.

The police released a sketch of someone who was alternately described as a "suspect" or a "person of interest." They have received about a hundred tips. They have not arrested anyone. They have not detained anyone.

I've heard women say that they're afraid now to walk in the dark, even early in the evening. I realize that I'm feeling that way, too.

The police have not provided much information about the progress, and no one knows why this tragedy, this violence occurred. Questions. No answers.

I was thinking about this as I was walking home tonight, and I was feeling angry that no one seemed to know anything, and then I wondered what it would be like to be a police department spokesperson, and to have to stand in front of a community and say, over and over again if necessary, that you had no new information at this time. I thought about what that person might say if he or she could say anything. I did what I do. I wrote this poem.

I hope it's okay.

(Draft)


What the Policeman Would Say


We wanted to tell you we understood,
that our own natures had changed,
the scarves of safety unraveling.

We wanted to say that we understood
the new taste of fear in your mouths,
the thousand shuttered eyes
hiding behind the bushes,
waiting fingers wrapped around the knife's grip.

We wanted to tell you we
heard her screams
when we walked after dark,
imagined the blood beneath her
a pillow, a sad bed. We, too,
now jumped at the rustle
only to find an old piece of paper,
an abandoned plastic bag
shuttled by the wind
and we started to breathe again,
waited for our hearts to gentle.

We wanted to tell you that we knew
it could have been our sisters,
our daughters. We, like you, have been trying
not to call them at three in the morning,
asking into the darkness
Are you there? Are you okay?
and beg them to stay inside
at all costs. We understood the costs.

We wanted to tell you what we knew.
We wanted to hand you results
and justice. Even vengeance.
But we had to stick to less than facts,
less than we knew, and that was so little.

UPDATE: Apparently, the police have someone in custody, although details are still few.

Another reply poem

I had that feeling again, today, when I read a poem and I wanted to answer. Today's poem on the Verse Daily website is "Saint Anthony Falls" by William Waltz.

Here is my response:


Paterson Falls

You bring me here to show me
that you have nature even in North Jersey,
where water thunders pale over the falls.
A rickety iron catwalk's closed.
Warnings tinge the air,
the river where garbage bobbles
by the edges, and cream-colored scum
that could have looked like lace
heaves up along the dark rocks.
On the far side, summer trees rise,
leaves an old green, lush summer stained
by living. The Passaic runs as though
she could still be wild, instead
of dressed in clothes the mills made.
This was a factory town, famous for its silk.
She was a working girl.
We watch the water, listen,
drift away across the road
drawn by the diner's lights.

(Laurie, does this sound right? Did the diner have some famous specialty? Probably hot dogs, back in those days when I didn't eat meat.)

Quickly

Do you ever read a poem and then, while you're appreciating its resonance, realize that it's not quite hitting the spot—for you? Do you ever want to reply?

A couple of years I had this reaction and wrote a poem. Yesterday, I read a beautiful poem on the Poetry Daily website, "The Continuous Life" by Mark Strand, and I had the same experience.

Here, for what it's worth, is the draft I came up with.

After the Blackberry Season


In the purple light of dusk, where children hide
under lilacs long gone to seed
and watch the grown men and women
on the porch, or in the yellow kitchen, slowly
surrender themselves to the end of the day,
the sound of ice in a glass of tea or gin
and maybe guitars on someone's radio.
Teach your children that lives
wind long, and as much as you don't want to leave
the house, the yard, as much as you've grown to love home,
some days are too short for chores, that the sun will set
a little later each evening and then a little earlier,
that this darkness is only
one of many small leaps and leanings
until night comes finally. Let the mop and the broom
rest in their corner. The cooking and cleaning can wait
at least for this just now, when a rustle of leaves
means it might be time to come in, when conversation
hums with the pleasure of settling still
and watching the shadows deepen
until they can't be seen anymore
and the stars, and the stars

P.P.S.

My daughter has an assignment to find song lyrics that describe who she is, so we are now listening to as much of her iPod as will fit in one evening. The assignment reminded me of a poem that I wrote for her years ago. I read it to her tonight.

A Love Poem


She, my soliloquy,
anomaly, chips at packed earth
with a dull trowel discovered
in the emerald surf of unclipped grass
that has swallowed her ankles.
She is three and harbors visions
of princesses in the forest,
gowns resplendent with jewels,
fingers gladdened
by dime-store finery.
She would live in a tree,
bathe in the rain
and eat apples with honey.
She would knock down leaves
to carpet the drab duff,
then pirouette past the peeling limbs,
the ripening fruit,
the other princess trees.
Royalty knows its desires
and she shuns the queens' lapis lazuli,
digs instead for marbles
the color of tropical frogs,
for sharks under the garden.
We can find them, she says,
if we go far enough.
An ocean swells beneath the hellebore,
a sea of shimmering silver and green
for my glimmery fish,
my under-the-surface girl.

"A Love Poem" previously appeared in Pontoon Number One.

Just for fun

Everything in this poem really happened:


The Vegetarian


A man with red hair said
Coney Island. Birthday. Every year.
I heard Rollercoaster, shook my head

No

(No thank you)

and stayed in the dark party
of dancers, lithe and splendid bodies
crowding the SoHo studio.
I watched the choreographer cook,
forgot about the guy on the subway going south.

I saw him again
when dinner was served.
It was great, he said.

I hadn't tasted meat in years,
but I ate chicken.

A Spike poem

As I said before, I find it hard to write about pets—but here is one poem that I wrote some years ago for the inimitable Spike. I remember that I was a little upset with him when I started work on it.

The Hunter


Why does he leave this last
morsel, small and still,
with the splayed gray feathers
at the bottom of the stairs?

The size of a pebble
and licked clean,
the bird heart is not eaten,
although no evidence remains

of the scaled feet, curved bones
or delicate skull. Not even the beak.
Only this nexus,
dead drum, without a beat.

Such small gifts unwind me,
betrayed by true nature.
Later, he will robe my lap
with fur that glistens like night

I had a couple more lines, but I think I'll end here.