Frozen Life “There is nothing left for you here.” The head of this shadowy figure Tilts towards the ground. Salt is scattered about, Shimmering, The snow a blinding mirror, Human figures in the distance Tiny as the hairs on his chin, Visiting from An old Chinese painting. Queen of All Under Heaven The moon reigns over the night sky, Queen of all under heaven. The stars serve her: What she wants, she gets. I stand below the kingdom As…
EMBASSY I am teaching a few diplomats about some skeletons that keep walking with their words that sound like extra ribs squeezing a breeze from a stump. My powerpoint is almost pointless, snitches, flogs, knuckles, slumbers, skulls, during the late morning of being alone with so few. They might soon speak like me, with ghosts, with sunlight turned in a rifle scope, and with a treaty that has no bullets for one hour. This is where I think I am…
definitions (poetic gestures) voters? X slaves * descartes, the man who saw himself in half * prose racket – poetry’s mime The Art Lovers (Departure Lounge, Cork Airport) Shadows slowly brushing barley – cheers from The Last Call bar ridge (poetic height) the oak, statues of silence, gesture grand- ly to the planes being poems, main-à-dieu bay plo- vers, tou- ch & go * wil- let, car- ved dou- bt * seal- pier- ced mis- t …
Olea Europaea Considering the microscopic scales that let your silver- green, shimmering leaves retain water in desert sun, your fruit so fraught with energy it fueled clay lamps in Greece, I feel more squat, gnarled, tolerant of heat, admire without envy your thousand-year life span. Winds of Italy La Tramontana blows tra monte, between mountains, female in a land where wind, vento, is male. La Bora bears down from the Adriatic, makes harsh Slavic sounds. Dante called il Grecale…
LADY Every time someone says Signorina I see the word in my mind – it lingers for just a moment and then disappears into the æther letter by letter, until only one letter remains and the final letter that remains keeps haunting me late into the night this letter of glory that the wizards and sages call G I NEVER GET INTO TROUBLE Walking through town carrying my purple suitcase unless I wander into a neighborhood filled with purple…
Comet It was a Japanese Space Agency probe that landed and filmed. I imagine them cheering, exchanging high-fives, bowing to a boss who came through, beaming, to offer deserved congratulations. Traditionally poets, even lifelong slum-dwellers, knew the names of birds, wildflowers, trees, which enabled them to put readers and themselves in a landscape. I never did. I could learn – the probe brought samples back – the composition of those rocks, but no need. Two peaks, a crevasse, the one…
The best thing in life Without exception Is chocolate fudge Down on the boardwalk Until you’re old enough To buy some for the girl You saw on the beach Or diving through waves Glistening in the sun Like a teenaged Aphrodite Set free from her parents Set free from islands Across the pond The best thing ever Is to sit with her On the bench By that beach Smiling a goofy smile She’s just fine with And your thick glasses…
One evening I was walking along a path, the city was on one side and the fjord below. I felt tired and ill. I stopped and looked out over the fjord—the sun was setting, and the clouds turning blood red. I sensed a scream passing through nature; it seemed to me that I heard the scream. I painted this picture, painted the clouds as actual blood. The color shrieked. This became The Scream. —Edvard Munch (1892) The past before…
SMILE You often seem to smile even when asleep, light wrinkles on your forehead, a barely audible hiss from your nose. Your smile, by night as by day, emanates not just from your lips and gaze, but also from your chin, cheeks and temples, from how your whole body lies on the bed or moves around. It goes beyond corporeity, is smoothly metaphysical, and metamental. Your smile, and your letting me draw so heavily and freely from it, as…
Edward’s Pout Why the pout Edward Hopper? Your many self portraits interchangeable Turned down mouth Empty eyes Stoic Sour Brooding Not a hint of a punch line But always impeccably dressed What lies beneath? Your marriage to Josephine, Jo Reads rather contentious, tumultuous Yet she was your subject Diminutive Combative muse Bedraggled nude Expressionless Perhaps eating from tin cans Transformed you both to granite Brushstrokes of simplicity Your artistic gifts portrayed loneliness Dark shadows Deep thoughts Solitude Isolation Until you…