| Now we’re inside the hat trick | What? You say I’m stuck up a magician’s sweaty sleeve, packed with flowers, a bunny, and silk? |
| I thought a hat trick was in sports. | Performing the nifty magic of being a man — are those roses or a crown of thorns? A fancy red hanky or was I coughing up blood? Is that my lucky rabbit’s foot or road-kill? |
| Three wickets, three goals, three strikes. | Maybe I’m a fire-eater, but you wanted a mind-reader. |
| What on earth is a wicket? | If I hold out a rope to the audience, slit its bight, do I slip the noose? |
| And why are they sticky? | Ouch, I cut to the high card, it’s a suicide king. |
| This is mixing metaphors. | Magician’s rent their doves. I thought you needed to know that. |
| I am confused. | Yes, that is the trick. |
| What is the narrative? | Let’s do the escape thing at the bottom of a tank of water. Or Everclear. |
| How does this tell us about men? | Dressed in my best flak jacket tuxedo. Either I undo the shackles or drown. |
Flower of Power
| Your head is a flower! | Yes, I am the beautiful “Metamorphosis.” Kafka’s vision abducted at birth, found alive in a crack of pavement outside Prague. Passionate. Unbowed. |
| “After a night of uneasy sleep, dreams pressing roots deeper into the soil, fingers aching like thorns, Gregor Samsa awoke to find he was transformed into a wild rose.” | |
| But sadly. | Yes, sadly past peak. Drooping and wilted. What can one do? |
| How do you see without eyes? | You mean how do I smell when it is I, rose, the center of the world? |
| It is for you to pluck and die with not knowing, to find your way to me by scent alone. | |
| You have become one, not many. | |
| You have sacrificed your humanity. | Liar!!! The world pulls through my veins into the very color of my petals. |
| What sustains us, the garden of origin and eternity. Let there be light – flowers were first to turn towards god. | |
| If only you too welcomed bees onto your face, felt their tongues. | |
| As well the wasps with murder in their eyes and bellies. They, too, dab for nectar. | |
| What? What would I know? | |
| You are just a begonia, high on plant food. | |
| It is really irritating. | My thoughts are a choke of pollen, wind sweeping across the pavement. Wipers pushing to and fro on the windshield of your car. |
| Please be practical. | My wife no longer needs a vase. She can clear out the cupboard over the stove. |
| And you? |
Going, Going, Gone Fishing
| Let’s use poems like can openers! | I’m lost in the isles of ACME, nobody knows where the can of worms might be. |
| Reader? Can you take a quick whack at it for me on Google or Amazon? | |
| Sixteen bucks??!?! | |
| I couldn’t wait, just did it myself. Reader – good help is hard to find. Can you please, please step it up? | |
| Open the SpaghettiOs of personal history. | When worms arrive dead. |
| Reader, I agree this is not your fault. | |
| And I accept your reticence in the matter of the SpaghettiOs. | |
| What other fun can we have with blades and gears? | Oh, yes, beware Tin Man! |
| Or Aluminum Man, or whatever. | |
| Cell phone ringing… | It’s you, Reader! What? Yes, I have violated the fourth wall, opened the tiffin of poems, the Tupperware of nightcrawlers. |
| A wriggling, moveable feast. | |
| You prefer SpaghettiOs. Fine. | |
| The container arrived, says “minced bloodworms.” | Blood and dirt a muddy soup. |
| Pour, heat, and serve. |
Word List – Ahkmatova
I am generally obsessed with Anna Ahkmatova, probably because nothing in my life has anything to do with firing squads, Gulags, or having my statue stare across the Neva river at the gates of Kresty prison in St. Petersburg. (Leningrad)
After the secret police executed her first husband, they arrested her second husband and son. She spent 17 months standing in front of the prison with other wives and mothers, waiting for word of either their execution or exile to the Gulags. What holds me there with her is when she wrote how someone in the line asked her “could one ever describe this?” and after a moment, she replied “Yes. Yes I can.” What astounding confidence, how sure her belief in her skill and her will to give voice to the unbearable. To which she wrote: “Mountains bow down before this grief…”
When I think of how necessary it is to write fearlessly, to stretch the fabric of my words until they tear, I think of Anna standing before the gates. “Yes. Yes I can.”
Here is a word list from her poem “Requiem” If anyone randomly sees this page, feel free to write something and put your link in the comments.
salutation squirmed boots tyres brow icon cap torches poplar sways distance thumped hesitantly mighty doors bolted burrows softly scrape turn
Limonada
When Lorca held a dagger
to his poem's throat
and demanded angels
forsake their voice of haiku,
but must crow in telegrams
inscribed on carnations,
Those red roosters of heaven,
(you said only that their host was feathered –
did you not notice their craws, their combs,
Gabriel's stud-strut across the yard?)
crazed by their silencing,
voices locked forever on wax cylinders,
Like heavenly accordions
playing dust polkas,
like a cricket whose chirp
cannot be found in the wimples
of a nun, the mad search
and beating of sacred cloth with a cane –
Then oh Lorca, oh Basho,
outside, the smell of fruit trees
in Valparaiso:
The lemons, so sour –
Transubstantiation drinks
Scent of angel skin
Fussy Little Forms: “Slough”
A “Slough” is the poetic form of a muddy bog, or shedding dead skin, or stuff I say to my wife as we drive.
| Sloo | sluff | sloe |
|---|---|---|
| Small dark globose astringent fruit of the blackthorn | ||
| Zoroaster | Can you say “Wickaboxet?” | |
| Come visit the museum of spores | ||
| Mucilage | ||
| The tater-tot world of the arcane | ||
| Fetch the fiddle Mary! | Vacant lots: vacant are our lots in life | Madman mud man, grave digger with a trowel for your mouth |
| Drear, drear, the sheep do shiver in the rain | ||
| Willows weep as weep they must, their draped shrouds prepare for us the way | Yarmouth | |
| Mayfly may be the maybe-fly could would should fly, the can-fly, can’t-fly, will-fly, won’t-fly | Shooby-Do |
The News
April, early morning, birds have the microphone – the squawk box in full dither – I scan up and down the sundial sniffing for signal with my beak as if some frequency of light and shadow on my face will clear the static. The Byrds – classic rock, no, "First known use of 'chugalug' was in 1945" – talk radio, no, A woodpecker's twhack knocks on my bones: "Hey old man, I'm tawking to you!" and each tap bends another creaking nail, Filches in the bark of my tired muscles for grubs or honey or whatever leaves me flightless and famished in my walk down this dirt road every morning, octets of birds and peepers a Met Opera broadcasting Tosca on public radio, Those strings of my father's Puccini and Verdi lifted from vinyl and woven into nests that spiral outward, my mother belting "Praise the lord, and pass the ammunition!" waking us with her birdshot voice – are those notes or holes in the sky? Sun comes on the loudspeaker, it must be recess. I hear you say "hey" and finally I'm here, present, your hand, feathered in mine. A quiet settles in. I get the news.
Diner, June 13, 2019
The caller said your father had died. We were sitting in a booth at the Greek diner. Who better than Greeks to know Tragedy? Our waiter is from Guatemala. Maybe who better than Guatemalans to know tragedy. The restaurant is empty. Who better than empty to know loss. His wife will burn him. She can send the box if anyone wants it. If anyone wanted forgiveness, I would tell you a burnt heart closes like a door as the last customer leaves for the night. We pay the check and leave a tip in the jar. After we are gone the waiter will spread our coins like ashes.
First published Sept 2020 in the I-70 Review
Slap Happy
It's time for spring to play grab-ass with sunflowers – those handsy creeping vines and cheeky yellow buds, for daffodils to spin and slap winter right across the face
Rags and Feathers
It is snowing dead angels, a blizzard of choir robes and feathers Bombs and tanks and guns do that, as Suzanne told you long ago Her voice an echo from the harbor, now you finally understand her There never was such a thing as a Salvation Army A song blown out of the sky by .45's with a clip of sorrows
qbit 