American Poetry
Page 12
3.
Lily traverses
where ink is penchant windows reconsider
blue silt of fractional evenings
petals strewn
In a cast of syllables she could not have recognized,
until seeing across one recognizable floor
as threads in the heart of an opal.
Light cunning conducts—so records nothing—returning
body beyond form.
Forgotten the arc of memory reaches only so far as what has not yet occurred
Which she holds like a wand of crimson, illustrating diagrams in air.
4.
Diagrams of crimson
An echoing glass shell,
A glass dream with wooden breakers
Emerald sight stuttered
A child held in streamers wide
Begins, skeleton repeated from previous bodies.
Disrobes the dream—
A candle encourages
light through various windows to enter.
A basket of light, filled with thought.
5.
A basket of thought is internal
tempting the inner dawn.
Neither this thought, nor the movement entailed by mirror’s gravity contain solidity.
Both dissolve by approach.
Sitting, the body changes, in this illusion of stillness
the mind is transparent then, as if within water—
which was her hope, to be indistinguishable.
Steps from the known
to encompass another form,
(swathed in diaphanous clouds)
there is the remnant of a former, less bright form, of less
Fallen from permanent shoulderblades.
—A mirage lovingly drowns
To approach the former is to engage a solitary sea, a wind blown which covets a sail.
She sought the opposite of setting out, to be oneself a catalyst, to remember the irreversible.
Movement within the body which emanates from another source—
Her instrument them, a flowering chain.
6.
Her instrument then—
recites scattered wave upon stone.
Locates breath, opens lips to intone.
In reference to the body, breath betokens ink, inscribing form
syllable of permission
When speech yields milk she breathes
neither up nor down
the image dissolves.
Body and name dissolve,
Impearled instrument
Invisible vibration
7.
A name impearled, by permission
water coverlet
Awakens to light what the body has forgotten
kindling forehead—palm.
Removing a darker garment, she covers herself in metrical
hymns in the manner of exhaling a bird.
In the manner of a tiny brush, red bowers of henna traverse her
arms
She enters the syllable—
revolving the rays of the sun, buried embers, and counting the
night in measures of water.
8.
Measures of water
rest upon sky, sun rests upon the syllable
sung as it is resting within all elements
Blue of exceeding darkness
reveals a person seen within sun
whose eyes, and lips gold
gold of exceeding eye
The form of the person in the eye is the same as the form of a
bower of sunlight.
Worlds beneath the self within the eye.
What wish, she asks, shall I obtain for you by my song?
9.
Which song shall I wish for this body, now a continuous child?
Embers which yield
opal—waters
A wave of thought upon stone, in the manner of exhaling an
ember
invisibly hung upon brow
At noon, brilliant, as birds fly without support beyond wings,
carrying invisible winds to where they are needed.
Two Poems
James Tate
WITCHES
There are all kinds of druids and
witches living in the hills around here.
They don’t hurt anybody as far as we know.
But you can always spot them at the grocery
store. First off, they drive these really
broken down old pick-up trucks, often with
hand-made wooden shelters over beds
like they could live in there. And they’re
covered in layers of shawls and scarves
and bedecked with long gaudy earrings
and necklaces and bracelets. And always
the long, long hair. They buy huge amounts
of supplies, twenty pounds of cheese, giant
bags of granola, etc. They move quickly
as if afraid of being burned at a stake.
We all know who they are and like having
them amongst us on their secret missions
to decorate their inner Christmas trees
with bedevilled human chickenbones.
NEW BLOOD
A huge lizard was discovered drinking
out of the fountain today. It was not menacing
anyone, it was just very thirsty. A small crowd
gathered and whispered to one another, as though
the lizard would understand them if they spoke
in normal voices. The lizard seemed not even
a little perturbed by their gathering. It drank
and drank, its long forked tongue was like a red
river hypnotizing the people, keeping them in a
trance-like state. “It’s like a different town,”
one of them whispered. “Change is good,” the
other one whispered back.
Four Poems
Honor Moore
DELINQUENT MUSE
heels dug in, the shoulders
shape in darkness
skin I must reach for
washed with music
can’t see eyes
day through a window
or back to desire
at last it speaks
what I can’t describe
red of tanager
handsome is
rising like land
the shoulders
or laughter where
he always stands
waiting waiting for music
so light breaks and I see
an ocean there
hand on his hand
cliff edge slung down
splash of flesh at the sleeve
like night, the sun
my arms a necklace
through a cloud
for his shoulders
how do you paint
my arms a laughing necklace
a face?
heels dug in and leaning
here oh come here
I see the future
so I can see him
at the shore, ocean, a globe
in one hand
at his cheek
only once for the kiss
how do you paint a face?
or can you?
smudged by rain, his
face clear across the room
hand at my back
luxury as my eyes
depict what’s vanished, shadows
rest at his hairline
shoulders
and sweep
how have you
down the length of him
where have you
gone now, inexplicable
face, its planes articulate
feeling, no I’d call it
light but the lips
pain, paint the lips
glass, then eyes
one after the other
finally again blue
later I could
look and
green, looking back
remember early summer
lashes
dark slow to come
at entrance shoulders
music into night
in the white room his flesh
a way to understand
the color of a rose
what he is
I remember in light
after so much time
the blue glass, he turns
toward me now
swear oh swear the question
and the kiss
THE LAKE
Pale water, mountains almost black, clouds
lifting from the lake—an old dock creaks
at loose moorings, and from the summit, mountains
until the horizon goes blind. What thousand
do you count, walking a narrow bridge
or bending as your canoe glides under it?
This is a language we have written from
always, though it bears its own fate—color
of fern in shade, such a green it must tell
the truth; a thatch of grass points to
then obscures underground water, another
tree dead across the path. Compare a sentence
broken as you talk at a table, a gun
in the pocket of a child, the survivor
alone at her desk. She did not teach this—
high heels, gray suit cinched at her waist, red
lipstick, evident jaw. Tell me, how is it
she comes back now? Nor did she teach this—
to hear only one’s own voice in the quiet;
or to think alone, out into the dark
pardon of the night. She had no husband,
her hair curled garishly. I can’t get back
her voice, just her mouth gesticulating,
and blond Peter who killed himself in London
after we grew up. In the darkness, silent
numbers etch themselves in red. I remember
the pale disk traversed by hands, figures
marking place along a circumference
that lay in wait once, like the future.
In the city night, a door closes—
refrigerator, car, you can’t tell which.
What does it mean, she asked us, to be good?
I ask to understand the impulse toward
murder. I ask to be loved. And quiet,
my head between those wide hands, a river
spreads north in autumn light, pale as a lake.
I’ve seen the beginning of that river,
narrow as a brook, nothing built at its edge.
At the end of the path, a woman turns
to look back, wearing white, holding roses.
HOTEL FLORIDIA
We are at the beach, Susan carrying her bed.
I have no bed and night is approaching, the water is dark.
Nor do I have appropriate clothes.
All morning I dream what I want, the hot right at my collar breathing.
I can see you don’t understand.
I am scaring you.
The sky is teal, the ocean, color of a razor.
A woman carries a butter yellow umbrella and her daughters follow her.
That evening in the city, his hand low on my back, we walked.
When he kissed me on the hotel banquette he said he didn’t care.
Ocean the color of a razor
Once when I was a child, a small child, my father swept his long black cloak around me
and we climbed the stone stairs.
Already men were singing
the roof struts meeting like fingers or the inside of a woman.
Susan is carrying her bed.
I have no bed. It’s colder.
After he held me that way, he wouldn’t talk.
I was the one to turn the shiny knob
shut the door behind him
not watching as he pressed for the elevator.
I open the faucet and water breaks from it
turning pale teal as the tub fills.
Hot is on the left.
It was evening. I could hear men singing across the street
the bell in the tower.
I saw my house collapse, and a man came to the door
with two small children.
He opened the gate and we climbed the stone stairs.
It was cold, so he wrapped me in his long wool cloak which was heavy and black.
During the last hour of sleep, Susan beckons me to the ocean, an ocean
the color of razor blades for which I am not prepared.
She carries a bed, but I have no bed.
Children race from the sand into the water as the dark rises.
We will sleep here.
At morning sun fills the house so you can see every fault
the chip in shiny white paint
but at evening it is the leaves of ficus you see, grainy in the dark,
evening still giving pale light through the white accordion blind.
And so, she said, you come to him quite stripped.
We have been friends for years now, and she has watched me.
She has been with me through all of it,
an ocean the color of razors.
You must have been lonely, he said.
I don’t know if I was lonely, I said.
When we got near the avenue we stopped.
All morning you dream what you want, choosing your music.
DARLING
You came to me one long night in two dreams.
It was the day of your funeral, but you were still alive, vividly
making last-minute arrangements, greeting guests.
The room had the gray shadowy light of a place that has no use for day
but then it opened to sunlight and the walls turned
cream or peach, and there on a platform was a coffin the color of chalk
awaiting you. You seemed to wear green, spring green, long-sleeved, green-sleeved
and once in a flash you looked like a woman, as I imagine your mother—
dark hair, decisive eyebrows angled in surprise across a narrow brow.
Everyone we knew arrived, and people I didn’t know,
a great gay poet, old now and tall, with a bright face, wearing glasses, a shawl
handwoven of sienna brown wrapped around his head as if he were an Arab woman.
You embraced. It was the first time I had seen one man kiss another and call him darling
and I wondered what had brought you to look at each other that way,
to call each other darling here at the edge of death.
Suddenly there is no one in the room, the courtyard
where the coffin is, where the death will take place, no one but you and me
All at once, the coffin, which has been floating on water, on water faintly blue
begins to disintegrate, to break apart
like something soluble, and you, in your weakness and illness
step into the water, which comes to your thigh, and, with some annoyance
almost crying at the effort, try to raise it from the water to keep it whole.
I watch, and then I am in the water with you, lifting.
I wake from the dream, but in spite of the morning light, I am asleep again
and you are there, almost well, turning on the stairs.
As we climb to a large room, I tell you my dream
about the tall gay poet, so old and distinguished in his shawl, who embraced you
whom you held and called darling. Oh yes, you say, with a far off smile
and take me in your arms, lift me and carry me as I protest. I don’t need
to be carried, you are dying, you’ll hurt your back.
You are dressed now, like a servant boy in tattered
linens, as if costumed for a play.
Dear one, I have met a man who touches me so it burns.
I am weari
ng beautiful pale clothes, and we are standing in a room, my hands open as he
feels at the length of me, as he looks seriously into my face, or down
my body, his hand holding the place between my legs, waiting there or
questioning, as I burn down into his fingers, my arms
loosening, whoever I am sheared away.
I tell you this even though I’m not sure what you’ll say back.
In life you might have shrugged, keeping quiet
all those years of sex, what happened those nights you left after dinner
before you got sober, before the disease came that took you and all your friends
and with them, a certain languor and handsomeness.
I imagine that in death whatever kept our silence may have broken
that you might now understand what this man’s hands force me to question
how far desire takes the body before mindfulness leaves it,
what it was for you when a man’s touch
burned you open, or burned you back to such blankness and hope
there was nothing you wouldn’t do to have him.
From The Tango
Leslie Scalapino
is subjunctive—the man starving lying dying in garbage?—there not being black dawn—?
no. not anyway—that is, anywhere.—or: subjunctive is only ‘social.’ both.
then (when alive).—(subjunctive.)—black dawn isn’t?—so it has to pass. both.
________
to ignore one’s shape/events ‘so’ it goes on wildly—and—anyway.
magnolia buds—that haven’t opened—subjectivity/language only—both
words ‘black dawn’ as shape (instance that has no ‘other’ occurrence) which is ‘their shape/and their conceptual shape.’
to subordinate magnolia buds—that is real-time—both.
________
‘not’ for there to be ‘magnolia bud (not-opened)’—
bud ‘dis-placing’ is lineage—both. single is ‘tree’s buds there’ (as only one’s ‘social’—at the same time.
a given in space—dis-place blossoming trees.
________
people’s behavior being blossoming trees—per se (just as that)—and the action of it (their ‘behavior’) in the trees blossoming prior—which is separate, sole
bound as ‘split’ (one’s) ‘to’ conception of change as, or in, behavior—