September 2007 Archives
Center
i.
Come back to the center,
advertises the flyer, we must all
come back to the center at last.
But in an expanding universe
there is no center, at
the beginning of things no
distance, but all one point, not
a place in space but the only, the
suck & kiss of us on top, under, next
to us—and now what was that nexus grinds
every place, center in all
corners, so that
you come back to the center every time you touch your face.
ii.
You were my foot and I
was in your eyes. Our hands
formed one dove. Veins
carried blood both to
and from our super-dense hearts,
but they did not carry.
The stars dropped from their own fingertips,
bodies pulled into waves of song.
I heard our voices say no name.
Expats
The distance retreated into the distance, a lake unto itself.
Between the arches we saw elements of an artwork: scope,
plan, a masterful brushstroke about the children in the fountain.
But we sipped tea.
In the corner of that lemon room, a table, oriented
towards eventual discovery, as books left open, shop-doors,
as the sleep in the matinee and the window where a bird alighted.
We disposed of less attractive thoughts.
A family’s children met in the afterglow of three in the plaza,
participated in a danced recreation of the morning’s riot. Yes,
movement had by then happened in the anteroom. A hearse blacked
out the memory of the victim, exile, passed between us and the sun.
And then it struck four and we changed to wine.
These poems originally appeared in the 11.1 (Fall 2006) issue of The 2River View.
Pulitzer Winner to Take Over as New Yorker's Poetry Editor:
Alice Quinn, the poetry editor of The New Yorker, is stepping down after 20 years and will be succeeded by Paul Muldoon, the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet.
Rare and Commonplace Flowers
Where we ran wild
there are two
scars from the same
damned accident. The air
grows wide. The weeds
move with lily
and rose, hollyhock,
show the glim of
that white torso
you take to first
when you wake
alive with dreams
you will later pack
underground, with
the feathers, the Rottweiler,
the best-seller,
that bone. The past
is a sump, a hollow
really, a pot half-turned.
As for the tulip
isn’t it just
a void of sorts?
Without a real god,
only your earrings
stand guard
and in the end
there’s nothing
left to do
but lift
the garbage out
and burn
the burlap sack.
Stillness
Still. My palms sweat like tea glasses on the wicker table brought out
with the stories of lost uncles on Labor Day when no one here mentions
the four boys who beat that man up and left him to die in the bleached heat.
What talk there is—of basketball and trucks, a word or two about the war—
comes down to gratitude that Skip came back alive.
The only snake in the August garden, that unspoken question, How is she?
She’s dying, thank you, but not fast enough to save her posture, her teeth,
her eye for fashion, her sarcasm. I don’t add I miss them.
Never ask—can someone tell me how to lose the one they loved and hated
to love? How it felt to hold her chilly paw with their wet fingers?
What they said to strangers bringing food and flowers in the stillness after.
These poems originally appeared in the 11.1 (Fall 2006) issue of The 2River View.
