These poems! Charlotte Hamrick has highlighted some recent favorites. Read especially the first three poets. The fourth one’s okay, though I’m often at odds with him. 🙂
Poems I’m Mad Over Right Now
6
Monthly Archives: June 2018
When to Say Goodbye
When to Say Goodbye
If all goes well it will never happen.
The dry grass in the shade whispers
while the vines crunch underfoot,
releasing a bitter odor. A year ago
I led my dog to his death, the third
in five years. How such counting
precedes affection, dwindles ever
so slowly, one star winking out after
another, till only the morning gray
hangs above us, solemn, indefinite.
Voiceless. If I could cock my head
to howl, who would understand? Not
one dog or three, neither mother nor
mentor, not my friend’s sister nor her
father and his nephews, the two boys
belted safely in the back seat. No.
I walk downhill and closer to the creek,
where the vines are still green.
In the shade of a large cedar, a turtle
slips into the water and eases away.
* * *
“When to Say Goodbye,” drafted during the August 2015 Tupelo Press 30-30 challenge, was published by Oxidant | Engine in May 2017, and subsequently nominated for a Best of the Net 2017 award.
Somewhere: 28 Rue St. Jacques
Somewhere: 28 Rue St. Jacques
Or eating spam fried rice in the courtyard
after kindergarten, and playing cowboys
with Thierry, the kid next-door. We shared toys,
but not comics. Written language was hard
to decipher, unlike the spoken. I
never captured the nuances, and lost
the rest over the years. Today the cost
eludes me, like moths fluttering by. Try
to recall that particular morning light,
how it glanced off the French snow, and the
way our mother smiled at breakfast, no trace
of sadness, yet, the lines marking our heights
rising along the wall, limbs of a tree
we’d never climb, out there, somewhere, in space.
* * *
This was originally drafted during the August 2015 Tupelo Press 30/30 Challenge. I was never satisfied with it, and didn’t see any reason to revise. But those memories are worth sharing!
Year’s End
Year’s End
If I lose myself in breathing,
will the air forgive my forgetfulness?
This oak, too, will stand long after
the last train exits the tunnel.
I worry that my friend may never
clamber past his lowest ambition.
Different and unabated, our words
now stumble over themselves.
Every night forms a morning somewhere:
each year, combined in our shared darkness.
* * *
“Year’s End” is included in my micro-chapbook Only This, available via free download from Origami Poems Project. Many thanks to editor Jan Keough for taking the mini-chap and offering this opportunity to so many.
Vesuvius
Vesuvius
When the earth shrugs,
some warnings are better
heeded. A little
smoke, some ash.
A knife point held to the chin.
Why listen at all?
The man in the big house hides in its vastness.
Surrounded, he walks alone.
People speak, but he hears only himself.
Meanwhile,
the mountain
belches
and the birds fly north
seeking firm ground
upon which to land.
* * *
“Vesuvius” was first published in The Big Windows Review in December 2017. Thanks to editor Thomas Zimmerman for accepting this piece.
Introduction to the arrival of the cat’s death
Jeff Schwaner’s poem about impending loss strikes me hard today.
Introduction to the arrival of the cat’s death
You have been coming this way for over a year
And I know it has taken a lot from you
Moving so slow
But I cannot let you in just yet.
He is too weak to move from our bed
These last few days but he still purrs
When he’s aware we are with him
And you can’t come into this room.
I will bring him down to you in a day
Or maybe two
There is so little left of him and by the time
I lift him from the bed everything
That’s valuable will already be gone.
I have carried them down before you know
I will not leave you waiting
Any longer than it takes in the meantime
There’s coffee a piano some books to read
The chairs I know are not comfortable
Down here where you wait
Self-Portrait with W
Self Portrait with W
One might claim a double victory, or after the Roman Empire’s fall, a reclamation
from the slurred “b” and its subsequent reduction.
Survival of the rarely heard, of the occipital’s impulse.
The oak’s crook performs a similar function.
Shielding myself from adjuration, I contemplate the second family
root, weighted in weapons, in Woden, in wood.
Not rejection, but acceptance in avoidance.
The Japanese homophone, daburu, bears a negative connotation.
Original language was thought to be based on a natural
relation between objects and things.
Baudelaire’s alphabet existed without “W,” as does the Italian.
The recovery of lost perfection is no longer our aim.
When following another, I often remain silent.
As in two, as in answer, as in reluctance, reticence.
We share halves – one light, one shadowed, but both of water.
Overlapped or barely touching, still we complete.
* * *
“Self-Portrait with W” originally appeared in the Silver Birch Press Self-Portrait series in 2014, and was reprinted in my chapbook, The Circumference of Other, included in Ides, a one-volume collection of fifteen chapbooks published by Silver Birch Press and available on Amazon.com.
Letter to Gierke from the Future’s Past
Letter to Gierke from the Future’s Past
Dear Ken: I’m fixated on open faucets and drained tanks,
on cracked PVC and browned grass, denial and what’s to
come, thinking of old dogs and accusations and how
the morning’s lopsided beginning has wrung out every
shred of positive emotion absorbed overnight. Then
a pinpoint emerges, swelling, until I can see, as through
a spidery windshield, tomorrow and its improbabilities.
Last weekend I built a window screen to exact measurements,
only to discover the sill tilted on the north by a quarter-inch,
and in order to install the damned thing I had to shorten
its right side, ruining the rectangle. Perfection eludes me,
even when guided by tape and square, especially in this
climate of exacerbated deterioration, which has not, alas,
excluded me – sciatic nerve, shoulders, knees, hands, etc.
But enough whining. Tea leaves predict that in a few hours
I’ll cross the creek trickling over the road, check the cisterns
and drop off tomorrow’s drinks before heading home to
swat mosquitoes and grill sage-rubbed pork kebabs while
sipping hoppy brews. That’s as far into the future as I
care to venture. The Cowboys drafted a lineman named
Taco, the weeds need mowing and my belly says noon
is fast approaching. I’d like carnitas, but have only rice
and beans, which probably signifies something far deeper
than my conscience will admit, trials I’ll never face. A
thunderstorm looms in the forecast, but my left ankle says
it ain’t happening. What do your mended bones claim?
Mine usually plead the fifth, but hey, they’re careful,
these days, and with good reason. Take care. Bob
* * *
“Letter to Gierke from the Future’s Past” was featured at Vox Populi in December 2017.
Letter to Okaji on the Past Not So Perfect
Ken Gierke’s reply to “Letter to Gierke from the Future’s Past.”
Letter to Okaji on the Past Not So Perfect
Dear Bob: I often think that things are just as they should be. The house is just right. My car is running fine, on it’s way to 200,000 miles. The young are healthy, the elders nearly so. And then the lawn dies under another heat wave, after it’s third planting, and the throttle body on the car sucks more water than air as it chokes and dies during a 700 mile drive to a funeral in the dead of winter. But I limp home after a major repair with engine flush and decide not to tell the local shop they cracked the oil filler cap when they changed my oil. I learn to live with weeds and balance water consumption with a scraggly lawn. I also remind myself that a sore knee when I make that mid-nightly trip to the bathroom…
View original post 60 more words
Irene Hergottova (7 Poems)
Daniel Paul Marshall is unearthing some gems in his stint as editor of Underfoot Poetry. Case in point: these poems by Irene Hergottova.
O at the Edges 