American Poetry
Page 6
seamed by water and
left out to dry by a careless hurricane.
The tide-suck in the stomach as
the moon seduces the ocean away
from her lover on the black land, my land.
(Our wives—)
(blood)
list pinned to the zinc wall of the rum shop
sea-gull canoe man-eaters wild-pig
(no one)
marlin callaloo google-eyed fish frangipani
(wood word)
* * * *
A single tree—what name the tree have, yellow poui
the blossoms never matter to me at all, the name lost
in heaven and everything spoil, mash up: even the wave-dem
(on sea-wall)
some do the mashin’ dem call the police
some go to jail, others to seed, some to all that trouble
a graceful body that love the deep places
white flowers to amuse a girl
(no one to see)
(voyage)
I was coming back from Portland and took a mountain road that cut diagonal across the island, and at some points the wall of bush opened onto the valley meadows, with a pond and maybe a great house, and the spectacle caused me to stop and pick out the cows, not too many of them, and measure the acres by stretching my arms all the way out. You never see such a green. More driving very slow and out of no where a town and a roundabout, shops, bars, electric lamp posts, trucks. Pass and leave behind.
The glimpse of the valley meadows, the empty beautiful land—still I was glad to see them, though I saw no one in six hours on any field much less a man planting anything to eat—and thought back to the old use it or lose it, to the Queen’s permission, and a planter in rum, with bad breath on top of a housekeeper: tumbling down the hill and I couldn’t stop the tumble, till I got back into the Mercedes and went on.
(our wives—)
mosquito: untuned violin
coconut:
woman’s hair like surf: sea’s navel
that’s how lovely she is
* * * *
“We forgot how to read and cipher.
The admiral would not leave his stateroom.
The admiral—nothing more than an old shawl.
He wrote letters, exonerations, mea culpas
send reinforcements, send something
(a sail! a sail!)
The wind says:
You are not ready for this much death—you need mops,
furnaces, landfill dumps, sea trenches to hold civilizations.
You are not equipped: for example, Mexico, San Domingo.
What do you know about a man who shits in his pants?
(error—a stray)
* * * *
“Each day we collected specimens. Of what?
The botanist said: there is money in shells,
the flowers are strong aphrodisiacs.
The sky, the jungle, the sea—all hostile, choking.
No one. We make do with the Indians.
(—were we ever married?)
(time)
Amerindian graveyard: speech (skull) fragments
(cause of madness)
parrot, a tough meat
utterance at climate level
* * * *
—as in the photo of two dogs fighting—
—as in the mirror I carry in my pocket—
* * * *
“The soul grows desperate: the aromas
of salt and rotting wood, the proximity
of Sun’s plump face, or the crocodiles
that navigate the rivers like gondolas …
The thunder of surf has made me mad—.
My lords, make of these islands what you will.
(the yellowing heart
(leaf)
The curve surprises, with a loaded bus
over the edge of a precipice, and green
wetness on either side—am in it again
with confidence in the machine to touch
where the poui blazes and blue stretches
like an embrace, to cull out the accents.
(reef: shadow of green)
—The wind kissed the chest, the surf dilated with the sand-crab,
the night was a gentle breath that stirred the almond’s arms.
Each’s Cot An Altar Then
Susan Wheeler
… from the service of self
alone …
grasses in low wind high sun
(streamers of starlings)
Joseph hauling the leg with his hands, corn stubble to stalk, horizon
no house—
Low animal flash in the riot of leg—
all such good works as thou hast prepared for us to walk in
This one request I make if it mean foot or glove
Repair, deplete the debt as I am out of love
carrion calumny
and come into the field of blade poplars glinting,
leg pulled like a cart on the mule of the man
grasshopper of cropduster sprawled in the sun
desperate pastor all yield green pan
Limb lost? Likely.
Undone? Likely.
Let us grant it is not amiss
who bears the Count Chocula shipment up
who razors the retractable in the joint
who sings the bass of Anthony
who cries mercy in the placid field,
far now to go.
to reel the streets at noon—
so great weight in his lightness—
So. Bike at door.
On it. Avenue
of the Americas (against traffic)
a stream.
The
spareribs hot against
his knees.
fiduciary re
no sib
ability re-
spond dis
Eisenhower, Eisenhower
sty
pend
sur
plus one is
x, solve for, solve
vent
A kind of Mamie-dress, that’s right, with the bodice—
no—you’d need darts here first. But that kind
of print—
kind of
a clear light above Joseph and his leg and the dry dry stalks and the
clatter he makes
seek a proper return for our labor
Three Poems
Ann Lauterbach
FRAYED EDGES
Domain at hitherto causation listening booth page
will show you who is right, has stood the test
anecdotal soul
à la carte
lay the blame on, bear the blame
Too late na na
new neighbors have arrived
in their slender
that’s another pair of shoes, dead men’s shoes
they
have descended the ladder
to the philosopher’s hole, his
spider and butterfly and bird.
Here find the linear broken below
a human form—
hard shell of certainty,
parody and reverence braided together,
tiny beats of the heart—
traced back to that other plan
eternally existing
the young doing such a thing,
the big, what’s the big?
cabinet of curiosities, what
you may be looking at, unexplained.
Now I am newly sad although my house is fine:
a silver pencil, a distinction, a thing for him.
In the gap between sadnesses
a man is talking and I
will come, it is probably a shame
and you are a pattern of tact, come to deceive us, but I
I cannot the infinite
(as a child, no harm)
but I’ll try
aloud, not guessing, I would have telephoned,
thirty
miles
much, well, highly
over what I have said, so
so thought
abraids first proof. This opinion flatters
no previous flourishing
no surefire procedure, as when
three into six gets two.
Five into five gets one.
The catastrophic interim is here
in the cold
foxglove, foxglove.
Against whose mercy shall I apply my wares?
Clarity pins us to our cause
as we walk down aisles of flameproof trees.
I am pointing at what is not there.
You are standing as close as a child
Let us show the cat a film of crows.
Explain
one of the limbs or organs by which the flight of a bird, bat, insect,
angel is
effected, part in, corresponding to,
supporting part,
and comes on the wind,
takes under, his are sprouting
high, low, and the north was added on the beat
which spread,
and the arrow with eagle feathers, the shaft and ambition
his spirit,
the steps, the horse, the god
and Victory, its way to its mate, the air
Explain
blue, brown,
of day, in the wind’s, right, left,
beam, mote, clap,
up to the, open, wipe,
throw, cast, hook,
glass, bath, cup,
bright, brow
Now the sky seems beautifully organized
but everything we care about is flawed.
The pool fills with leaves.
The funny pains of aging, artificial tears, and the false
verdict in the note,
drawing on her pride, her shame, her position
and step at the start, before the mirror,
without the medium, without coin,
despite the prophet
and the audience still waits for a voice from afar.
Out in the yard sparrows itch at the ground
and the grave flags flicker on their sticks.
In the coming years, you will find
a treasure,
favor and mercy, at the feet where there is no sense in it, although the
terms are reasonable. How do we
ourselves? We must take it, it pays, it pays,
almost impossible, but necessary
with time to read,
courage, heart,
one’s way
to where another is, crouching
under the day in a ghost file.
How bright the fence in sunlight!
And how acute the transformation, in which
a caterpiller becomes a butterfly
and what is really there becomes a jingle about Paradise
as a red car. The red car is really there
driving along the big streets
with the soprano singing her tune
and the young man with long black hair
smiling into the wind.
The crowd
behind the barricades, trying to see
suggests something,
a fine blossom, pierces beneath things,
and that there is a reason in it, good
enough for an outward display. Why did he do it?
To give it away, to give her what is enough,
and fair, to give it all away.
The price is merely a sweltering crypt
where drawings of saints,
Saint Paul and Saint Michael, Saint Peter, Saint Andrew, Saint Elmo, Saint Bartholomew, Saint David,
drip pink tears, and the two-note hum
in the dead of night
na na. kap shus
rr rr
loo ahs anpay kistre
The churchgoers move inside, the chorus
in another room sounds victorious. Someone
drives by, blue canoe
strapped on, headed for the river.
The reverie begins again
near the silt path in front of the trailer.
People seem to need a reference
else the shore
is too far to be traversed. They want to know,
is it typical as well as indigenous,
is this an actual archival wound or repro,
spliced together by the magician
who would not have it, saying the living is in it, that it came to him free.
In a sliding scale
each thing refers to another,
scandal and code
fall together in a new font.
We cross the Bridge of Triage
swaying high over the river.
Down through the murk
a cluster of shapes, black
and dandelion yellow, swift by.
Today, at the House of Anemones,
a woman called herself mad.
She confused me, in her quiet barn.
I bought a bouquet of violent flowers.
The thing refuses its gospel.
The humped range is not shiny enough
to reflect instruction’s bliss,
the luminous arc dispersed without shelter.
Try climbing over yourself, try
breathing on the glass a valedictory kiss.
A dispatch of boys
made the water rise,
came forward roped into eddies, ripping
lilies as they came.
The Beautiful Writers
in downtown Shanghai
wear silver on their toes.
They study aphoristic slang.
The empty dress floats
toward the horses
galloping out from night’s tarnish.
Na na, theater of vigilance, graphic cloud.
Na na visceral digest, spitting birds.
Leave, yes, but to where?
Is Heaven? Did you read that? Are you going? Showed me they were, but does it touch our interests? Are you looking? Shall we, if prices fall now? I don’t know, to have is the sense of it, is the use of trying. Places they sing. I am weakest in facts. Your treasure. Go. You like it, send him. He will be taken care of, the ancients knew nothing, we know little. That’s it. Do you come from? Are you going? The whens are important.
Na na.
SPLENDOR
The dream ascends its microcosm, making not sense
and the atavistic goons clash
at the edge of the park, sky
sky plumed
all prepared
for the haunted bailiwick of strangers
trailing incognito across the past.
But the light seems musical, lowered
against the ridge
into andante
shift shift shift
News of earth: the fabulist knee-deep in mud,
fists of green, tinsel dripping by degrees,
shoe left in the meadow,
the sentence elongated and
patched onto the war zone.
It could be dark, theater of dark,
the unsheltered sentence bloodied,
the opaque moon, the glassed in record,
the will to rise.
Call it the person things will go back to sleep
as if forgotten and the difficult will seem easy
walk into the light
show the precarious stays
set off fires from above
there will be no one to count no two to include no three to beg for mercy
the trail of time will be easy to follow
good old oaks, billowing lilies along the roadside
no four to divide
the valley is incrementally cold
down up down down
mediated by the memoir’s fake torture
and the one-way war
panic of recognition
dangerous evident sun.
But in the slovenly small-eyed dream, surely
we are victorious,
our kisses stamped into wet clay,
our harrowing ended in song.
Rah! Rah!
as the struts of tomorrow fall to ground
and tears arrive from afar in new boxes.
INTERLEAVINGS (Paul Celan)
Snowfall, denser and denser,
a knight’s breath
Snowfall, as if even now you were sleeping.
A collar of cold at his neck
above it, endless,
a foreign sky.
Below, hidden,
where my hand held the soft stuff
was den Augen so
prone, entire
almost fetched home into its
delay, the cast-off limb
posted.
The watch and music
in twin branches:
what body falls through the bridal mass?
is the colored cloth a flag?
Arc of His Slow Demeanors
Clark Coolidge
1.
I didn’t respect him exactly but I collected his sensibility
sun on gouged hull of the same pitched home
he never tooted but fronted
on a new loop to the belt in a carry
the neighborhood wideners wouldn’t shun
so neither of us fell for whose blinders?
a soaking we didn’t?
a melting back from the gladness tax?
He would have chosen a diamond over a mirror any day
the mustard pumps removed from his cable socks
the better to mix an alarmist with the least of collateral bettors
mimsy were the clasps to his carbons of will
in a living room if had half a mind to
rope from here to sausagery
velvets in his background
looms for vetted sailors
felt crowns doffed in the forgetting
I wouldn’t be writing this to him if I knew anything veteran
are you sorry and only then do you brighten?
I’ll bet he was the Kellogg of his math class
rolled off a brass asbestos and to the windward
they never had galleries in that landlocked burdenroad
sky was his mention and pardon
the trust woman clanking off for slaghorn stanchion and points Viennese
Did we ever quite meet up?
I doubt the drift of that
flags forming on the upper staves as I watch
harmlessly getting his own goat I only wish
was a lot of trouble about the gray brakes
worries lashed together into habits to be stepped off
I’d make a wince of his ceiling belts to the public transom
You get a throat for that door I’ll stopper it
slopes off after January, maybe March
maybe then April won’t rain so much
curtains to contain a backyard in wires
glows where you don’t notice
won’t afix the phallus it’s wrinkled the first collapse I notice