Dazzling work by David Cooke in Underfoot Poetry.
David Cooke (6 Poems)
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Monthly Archives: May 2017
Palinode (birds)
Palinode (birds)
Simplicity, as in the cloaca. One aperture for all: eggs,
urine, sperm, feces. The majority of birds copulate
by joining the openings of their cloacae (most male
birds lack penises). Nothing is for nothing.
Nothing is for nothing, but the ache of emptiness
bestows its own reward. That movement from outer
world to inner, to anima, to breath, to flight,
approaching heaven. Birds know the way.
Knowing the way, birds express our envy of the
boundless, testament to the unity of earth and sky,
instinct’s voice. We see feathers not as epidermal
outgrowths, but as emblems of what we forever seek.
As emblems of what we seek, crows exploit man’s
folly, exposing hidden truths. Thought and memory
recede, leaving us foundered. Altered consciousness,
flight, the space to believe, simplicity’s forms in one.
“Palinode (birds)” first appeared in slightly different form in Otoliths in fall 2016.
Daniel Paul Marshall (6 Poems)
The first issue of Tim Miller’s new venture, Underfoot Poetry, features six poems by Daniel Paul Marshall as well as poetry from Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia.
Two Poems in Steel Toe Review
My poems “How to Do Nothing” and “And All Around, the Withered” have been published in Volume Four of Steel Toe Review, available for purchase here.
Many thanks to editor M. David Hornbuckle for taking these pieces.
microreview & interview: Roberto Carcache Flores’ A Condensation of Maps
José Angel Araguz reviews Roberto Carcache Flores’ excellent A Condensation of Maps, and follows it with an interview.
review by José Angel Araguz
Treatment – Roberto Carcache Flores
If I could
I’d be your
therapist,
playing
smooth jazz
through
the morning,
one eye
on the clock,
another in
your folder.
I’d browse
through
all those cries
you scribbled
using watercolors
while waiting
for a ring,
to usher
you inside.
My hands
would shake
in yours
like swarms
of moths
around a
lamp shade
until you
grab a seat,
and look me
in the eye.
*
Reading through A Condensation of Maps (Dink Press), I found myself again and again impressed by a poetic sensibility capable of creating images that evoke physical and conceptual movement. In the above poem, this work is set up by the narrative implied in the title, “Treatment.” The speaker develops a brief hypothetical scene, the short lines driving home the intimacy of the address. While the first two stanzas navigate the title’s conceit strictly…
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Mother’s Day
Mother’s Day
The dog is my shadow and I fear his loss. My loss.
I cook for him daily, in hope of retaining him.
Each regret is a thread woven around the oak’s branches.
Each day lived is one less to live.
Soon the rabbits will be safe, and the squirrels.
As if they were not. One morning
I’ll greet an empty space and walk alone,
toss the ball into the yard, where it will remain.
It is Mother’s Day.
Why did I not weep at my mother’s grave?
I unravel the threads and place them around the dog.
The wind carries them aloft.
“Mother’s Day” first appeared in The Lake in July 2016.
Scarecrow Listens
Scarecrow Listens
These silences I hear, are they not
music? Interspersed with sunlight and
air flowing through fragrant grasses,
insects ticking in the leaves or burrowing
towards moist darkness, and my friends
cawing from their perches, if I arrange
their presence in sequence, perhaps
around the day’s bones, will you
know my spirit? And when I interweave
these tunes, independent and unrelated,
shaping them into one separate melody,
will you recognize its heart and shiver
to the beat? Ornette Coleman freed
his playing, celebrating the territories
of the unmeasurable, the unnamed. The
real is, no matter what you call it. Take
this leaf and place it atop three others.
What have you? And what am I if not
a gathering of the unwanted, scraps
melded to serve a thought-free purpose,
another’s need. Fleshless, boneless,
breathless, bloodless, I know only
that I am; having no ears, still I listen.
“Scarecrow Listens” first appeared with two companion pieces in Eclectica in summer 2016.
Two Poems in GFT Presents: One in Four
My poems “The Boy Who Wouldn’t Hoe Corn” and “Scarecrow Believes” are included in GFT Presents: One in Four, a semiannual, print literary journal published by GFT Press, and available for purchase here.
Balance
Balance
Navigating
by stars,
one ball
buried,
another
gathering,
the dung
beetle
straight-lines,
maintains
position,
forever
looking forward
and up.
“Balance” first appeared here in February 2016.
More Jim Harrison
Chef Mario Batali interviews Jim Harrison in this brief Food & Wine article. I particularly enjoyed Harrison’s take on America’s “big curse,” and his reply to the last question is priceless.
O at the Edges 