This first poem started as an assignment to go to an art museum and write an ekphrastic poem (a poem engaging with a piece of visual art). You can see the paintings I wrote about here: http://www.nga.gov/cgi-bin/pimage?60908+0+0 (Still Life with Dead Game); http://www.nga.gov/cgi-bin/pimage?71660+0+0 (Banquet Piece with Mince Pie).
The Dutch Cabinet Gallery
If corpses can gaze, these portraits’
faces gaze at us like corpses.
I move quickly to the still lifes—
no people, but full of life,
overflowing with fruit and flowers,
with light streaming in from all sides—
and find among gleaming tulips
and peeled oranges and limes
Still Life with Dead Game:
a plush dead rabbit and three dead birds.
They’re tied at the feet in a weird bouquet,
blood pooling at nose tip and beak tips
and dripping onto the marble floor.
This kill is fresh; the rabbit’s eyes still shine;
its inner ear’s pink’s fading, but still pink.
And what to make of this one,
Banquet Piece with Mince Pie, this aftermath of a banquet,
a crumpled, bone colored tablecloth
hanging as if half-yanked off the table,
glass like a photograph of glass, some of it shattered,
a dented silver pitcher, a candle snuffed out,
soiled forks and knives, food scattered
all over, olives, oyster shells, the crust of the mince pie
crumbled. The one thing whole
in this arranged disarray is a piece of bread
in the middle, unbroken. Bread’s the body of Christ,
the pamphlet explains. The banquet’s over,
the bread untasted. The candle snuffed out.
The artist’s studio’s unlit, the fur, the silk and fruit
he loves to paint invisible now. It’s late.
Outside, October afternoon:
the low sun’s dim beams
slant in at sharp angles,
autumnal.
Night’s not the kind of darkness
anyone’s worried about, really.
As the title indicates, the next poem came from a visit to the 7/11 one Friday night in Charleston, WV. D had just come home from a week of court and I was happy to have him back.
7-11,
Friday Night
People congregate
on the sidewalk,
talking of feasting,
for Friday
is a little holiday.
Look how the lights
inside illuminate
the bags of chips,
the candy bars,
the slick plastic wrappers’
sheen: Cheesy!
Spicy! Salty!
Chewy! Filled
with caramel and peanuts,
peanut butter and nougat!
Dark chocolate! Milk chocolate
and white!
And the beer cans,
gold and silver splendor,
promising, however brief, oblivion…
What shall we buy?
And how shall we pay?
Ah, Friday,
little paycheck
of the week.
Nothing is expensive;
the night sparkles
with plenty.
A poem about an encounter with a homeless man:
Poem with descent and the opposite
This one’s wheelchaired
on the corner of 1st and East Capitol,
legs lopped off at the knee,
clean shaven, camouflaged and crew cut,
clear eyes that I, headphoned and sunglassed-in,
don’t have to meet. Like me,
the business-casualed populace strides by,
elsewhere-bound. I glance up from my slow sinking
underground to see
a black-coated man extend a folded bill
in his gloved hand, and think
he’s somehow saved the rest of us, this morning.
This one fulfilled an assignment for open quatrains in syllabics, and one for a poem that was all one sentence. It ended up being one I really liked.
Addressee Not Known
Future tragedies
are like packages
that are going to
arrive in the mail
but you don’t know when
or what to expect
when you break the seal
which of course you must—
unless it arrives
untaped, whatever
it is bursting from
ragged cardboard ed-
ges: accident can-
cer crash flame funer-
al et cetera,
or something else un-
thought of despite the
long careful hours
you’ve spent in the dark,
anticipating
how it might appear,
the ways you might hide
your mailbox, how you’ll
try to send it back…
This last one is an ottava rima, which means 8-line stanzas that have an abababcc rhyme scheme. Another fun poem about living in WV.
On the West Side
Loud music comes to Hazelwood with spring,
and gaudy flowers bloom among the trash.
I, like my neighbors, settle on my porch swing
and watch the children playing tag and catch
in the street. A girl, round-bellied, her mouth ringed
with something pink and moist, climbs up my porch
and thrusts at me a brownish plastic cup.
I’m selling this, she says. It’s Cheerios and 7-Up.
It’s all we have to sell—it’s for the poorless—
(a poorless man was going through our trash).
Teacherly, I correct her: you mean the homeless.
She shakes her head and smiles. Do you have cash?
I decline her wares but give her two dollars,
watch her climb porch after porch, smile and sashay,
for sale, for sale! Across the street she leaves
the gate ajar. A second girl appears,
a taller, thinner girl with clearer eyes.
You didn’t shut the gate, she says, shuts it,
and takes her sister by the hand and sighs.
Ah! This girl has what it takes to shut a gate;
she’ll surely escape this street of grimy
vinyl siding, sloped yards, and dim kitchens,
I think. I watch the sisters, hand in hand,
walk down the hill to home—or to the store for candy.
Meanwhile on Hazelwood huge roses bloom
amidst our recent winter’s rusty trash.
The crows and bluebirds shriek and dart and zoom
down for seeds and worms, or whatever they can catch.
Somewhere close by the poorless shuffle, hum
to themselves, daydream of cash and porches.
Each afternoon I wander through warm spring.
Sometimes I hear the sisters fight, or sing.
2 comments:
You write different now. So do I. It's fun to read us writing as grown ups. I like these.
I like this last one best. There's a lot happening in the poem, showing not only the girls but you, also, especially your spirit and mood. I, too, like to read this and think back to the poet whose work I read now eleven (!) years ago while running from menacing geese and terrifying thunderstorms. Maybe you should come to Chicago and petition your landlord in person -- then you can stay with me!
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