American Poetry
Page 17
can’t-be-said-here. The afternoon of after rain
dazzles with cloudlessness and a painful green
set casually against blue: light
mottled by fractal leaves
freckles your outstretched arm,
repeating apple, apple, apple, sour
fruit and crabgrass. A damp T-shirt
takes on that color, nothing
will wash it out. I wear it for weeks.
October
doorway, flutter, moth
or leaf in flight, in fall
foyer, stammer of wind, a patter
hovering, dust hushed or
pressed to trembling
glass, smut, soot, mutter
of moth or withered stem,
late haze, gray stutter
crumpled, crushed,
falter, fall, a tread …
November
williwaw, brawl in air,
shunt or sinew of wind shear
blown off-course, pewter skew
vicinity, winnow and complicit
sky preoccupied with grizzle,
winter feed of lawns’ snared
weathervane, whey-faced day
brume all afternoon of it
(lead reticence of five o’clock)
remnant slate all paucity and drift
salt splay, slur and matte brink
snow stammers against sidewalks
December
White light seen through
the season’s double window
clouding the room reveals the roses’
week-old gift of petals bruised purple-black.
Dry paper falling on white cloth
seconds white room’s wonder
at cold sun flurried, crumbling stars
compacted underfoot: lattice
of fixed clarity, wintrish eidolon
half patience, half in prayer.
NATURALISM
Between them is only difference.
—Saussure
The error was the inspiration
Trees I’ve never seen with names I knew
real word but not true wood,
ginkgo male or female, always
only one kind: a living fossil, oldest
gymnosperm, ‘naked seed,’ reproducing
by means of direct contact
with air (resistant to pests
and pollution): there shouldn’t
be flowers, shouldn’t be fruit
White flowers one book says
are yellow, Ginkgo biloba,
scientific names strew themselves across
damp sidewalks, appellation sheds
petals in May wind, simile, similitude,
have I compared, the only extant
member of its order, Ginkgoales,
Ginkgoaceae, domesticated
by description (extinct otherwise)
Wrong attributes over everything,
petals stuck to soles, imagined
into subject matter, fan-like leaves
framed by mistake, words (Chinese
or Japanese? my sources
are unclear) for silver apricot, silver
nut: tiny plums prized for their kernels
(plum-like), the ripe flesh stench between
two fingers, beneath two feet (which one?)
They fall after first freeze, heavy
with frost (an unambitious tree, wrinkled
fruit barely an inch across: tiny
cherries?), stepped on in early winter
Iowa the stink comes back
of August, late summer smell
smeared through December
(red-purple when the book says
yellow, and smelling of nowhere)
Write only what you see, it said,
first this, first that (I walked past them
every day, under them, three in a sidewalk
row: a commonplace tree, no real interest
at all, reeking fruit fouls the sidewalk all fall,
cross the street to avoid them)
The read tree and the real tree
(this happens only in writing): never
an even number, three of one kind
Knowing the names with nothing
to paste them onto (trees I’d seen
but never known, misnomer
printing petals on wet pavements): just one
kind at a time, white four-petaled
flowering May, clear green lobed leaves
cover summer, gold in fall (perhaps
some strain of ornamental plum):
first come flowers, first come leaves
Not the same tree at all
—for Robert Philen and Lawrence White
Two Poems
Barbara Guest
BLURRED EDGE
It appears
a drama of exacting dimension.
Anguished figure,
reign of terror.
Craft and above all
the object within.
Softness which precedes
blurred edge.
A hint disappears inside the earlier one.
Softness still nudging,
A different temperament,
inside an earlier plan.
Upon this stool is draped material
arabesque of an iron stool,
bare bones of the iron seat.
The arrangement of objects announced
more firmly than before.
Observation. Candor,
where candor approaches the cube.
Dark siphon bottle mood
of blurred edge
Life permitted no privilege
no exegesis
no barnyard door. The feathered visage the domed hat
allowed no strange air or music.
An attempt to get beyond the arrangement,
vibration of a peculiar touch.
It changes between eye and alarm,
the hibiscus,
more gifted.
Part of the tension,
is illusory.
A hint of what was going to be.
Covering and uncovering necessary.
Self pouring out of cloudedness.
If views of the lower body
do not conform,
a risk of being exposed,
Rain and altitude.
This is not sand, it is drama.
The anguished figure, sand blew away
that armor. A look extends the blur.
Other creatures alive
word exchanged for meaning,
moment of descriptiveness.
Sand blows away.
In distance,
figure passing,
unworded distance at edge.
PATHOS
Arms flutter close to the body, skating on pure ice, harmonious composition,—
body in mellifluous line—
face in profile withheld itself, thin smile,
self approval.
Lithe her romp!
lithesome her romp upon the indignation of ice.
She is falling!
Shiver of the fallen,
of the tulle skirt.
Disarrangement of the composition,
Snow falling from tree.
So young in this electric world—,
something Katya needs to know. Something is needed,
fiction is overturned.
Something she must know about hazard, what spills out—
—disturbance,—pathos.
Equilibrium is never fixed—
losing momentum in the trials—boot tossed away,
a gesture she made.
Making difficulties for herself in the wrong direction.
Fear of the word, haunting of fear—
the word passed through that haunting.
Weight of the useless word and narcissus,
mirror moving backward,
impromptu surface of the alphabet when she fell side
ways
with irascible measure—the pit of the plum
rolled onto ice, and her silhouette merged quickly
with ice in that chapter.
Opened the entrance door,
and make-believe arrived with a doll on its surface,
arrived with the soil of the moon, it was impermanent
living with shifted screen life.
Lived not for pleasure, to hear the cry
in a small coil
of ice.
And heard through the oak panel—,
amazing to listen to speech
by way of adulthood.
To articulate velvet,
without noise or spectacle.
Life in that eccentric balloon.
To scribble ice figures,
and drink out of the cup when bolder.
The electric world sends its current through her legs,
a global concern for her being.
The globe is drawn into this, and the frills,
the sorrow of falling
into an historical position, the legs will finish
this position, music
use up the irresistible current, lived
with the shifting screen.
Lived not for pleasure, to hear the harp-like
cry in a coil,
to live in an eccentric balloon.
To scribble across ice
and drink from an orange cup. When they were nearer
historical legs used up this position,
falling down historical legs, anxious writing.
Foreignness enters the hallway in the Debussy—
hinting at the fable
resisting her.
Do they wonder at her pathos/ dressed in tulle,
athletically inclined on jumping bars.
One at a time
misleading her./
She is part of the moment/ unrequited amour/
icing machine.
This motion in her eyes,
going outside, the red brook
flowed into her eyes, her winsome eyes,
drawstring of light.
Two Poems for the Seventeenth Century
Donald Revell
FOR THOMAS TRAHERNE
The ground is tender with cold rain
Far and equally
Our coastlines grow younger
With tides
Beautiful winter
Not becoming spring today and not tomorrow
Has time to stay
Easter will be very late this year
Thirty years ago
I saw my church
All flowery
And snow
Melting in the hair of the procession
As tender as today
A sight above all festivals or praise
Is earth everywhere
And all things here
Becoming younger
Facing change
In the dark weather now like winter
Candling underground as rain
FOR ANDREW MARVELL
Tiger of luster of swordplay is just a stick
On a sandpile
I remember because everything is all of its characteristics
Apart just once
Together for eternity in death’s unlimited magic
Ilex conjures acanthus
I’ve never tasted quince I like the snow apple
Filled with sirocco
An austere example
And my son knows
In his tigerish swordplay
Once apart as I board the usual airplane
I remember
Magic I’ve taken from his hand and pressed like sharp sharp sand into mine
Resemblance
Paul Hoover
Placing ancient birds
in absent skies,
the midst is
endless. To rise
alone is clear,
the sudden plum
of a mountain,
a reckless cabin
inhabited by ghosts,
its weather rainy
with ash and
bones. Sire of
light. Color and
substance joined like
coasts. In earth’s
black dream, objects
take shape as
mind and scum.
The weight of
water pouring on
your head is
one reminder, but
our habit is
confession and the
dirt of history
even in these
photos by André
Kertesz of people
reading, the true
light of seeing
in the midst
of squalor, on
balconies and roofs,
even a bug
grazing a page
of Voltaire. A
frocked monk is
reading in a
painting on the
shelf, where a
layer of dust
has fallen on
the pears. How
often nothing happens,
how often it
is shared, and
then toward evening
this feeling of
completion. In its
own carnal grammar,
recurrent entries in
the book of
skin. Normal as
form, every button
shines. To be
entered is all,
breathless and sinking
in the sweat
of love found.
The new place’s
old dream darkens
like a world.
This is birth:
the beating and
the drum, eternity
and the parrot,
meaning and the
feeling, chaos and
the boy. Breathless
acts are fragments,
degrees of desire.
None are structure,
all are numb.
The length of
the bridge, its
gesture elegiac, a
string of chinese
lanterns is firm
as direction. We
can still remember
the garden and
its foxes, baby
and its cake.
Are you marked?
A lark in
sauce? There’s warmth
in not needing,
but still you
want with ripe
eyes open. It’s
like the movie
Wind with its
rhetoric of silence,
where a flag
of a man
struggles toward the
door, only to
discover the recent
day is closed.
On a monochrome
screen, he comes
to resemble darkness
and time, a
meaningless object and
its useless sign.
Five Poems
Elaine Equi
FURTHER ADVENTURES
The bird carries her off in its beak
her prettiness
(ribbon heart’s rouge)
straining against flight, doing what she never
dreamed (actually, what she often dreamed
but never dared). Up high
one can see the breath of Time,
its cold exhale. Time has carried her off
and the world is rearing up on hind legs
like the statue of a general on his horse.
The girl carries the world off
(its prettiness and twin ugliness)
as surely as she is carried, yet can’t stop
feeling she has forgotten something:
a necklace of beads, a train of thought,
a funeral procession with a broken clasp.
Something shining benea
th the world
(a word a charm).
Something is calling her back.
LEAN-TO
The eye of the walking stick opened,
polished with ego (of good quality).
A crutch is a useful thing.
Shadow in shadow,
character in character,
mano a mano,
we walked the length of the city
(a wheezing a many-chimneyed thing).
What is a story, I asked.
A story is a poultice, you said
applying its pressure.
A story is a blindfold
for leading the blind.
The ego glittered,
the city slowed.
Cautiously, the eye
of the walking stick opened.
“YOUR PURPLE ARRIVES”
Purple flower.
Purple heart.
Heap of sharp
and muddy edges.
Bruise or blossom?
Harp strings
trickle-down
realignment
of morning’s slow …
bright bug
with a crumb of window
on its back.
DESSERT
This caramel is scriptural.
This lemon tart more beautiful than a Matisse.
It’s the way paintings (and heaven) taste
as they dissolve and we internalize them.
Gurus know it.
Don’t you remember after they slapped us
with peacock-feather-fans,
the little piece of rock candy
we each got and sucked in the corner,
thinking that if the mantras didn’t work,
at least there was this.
OUT OF THE CLOUD CHAMBER
and into the street.
Out of the art-deco prison
and into the cozy burning house,
the bleak house,
the decadent steak house.
Out of the mouths of tulips and slaves.
Out of the frying pan and into the choir.
Out of mimesis endlessly mocking.
Out like a debutante,
in like a thief.
Out of pocket,
out of reach.
Out of time
and into being.
Out of sight
and into seeing.
Out of your mind
and into your pants.
Out like a light
and in like a lamp.
Conjunctions
Norma Cole
-1.
(to not turn on machine with light in eyes)
you ask me state of nature
most two hundred of our time
all good nothing, silent treatment
those girls, the cousin, the bakery