My poem, Conjunctions and Other Synapses, is today’s featured Poem of the Day on The Blue Nib site. Many thanks to The Blue Nib team!
My Poem, Conjunctions and Other Synapses, is The Blue Nib Poem of the Day
13
Ritual
Ritual
Placing the dead is seldom arbitrary.
The Marquis de Sade’s grave in the forest at Malmaison
was planted with acorns so that he might be consumed by
trees, but my wife desires a shady plot in rural Texas,
where no one will claim her. In old Christian
graveyards the unclean were buried at the gospel side for
sinners. When her best friend died, she and his former lover
split a bottle of Johnny Walker Black and listened to Puccini.
The Nuer of Sudan place deformed dead babies by the river,
returning them to their true fathers, the hippos. After the fog
crushed Stevie Ray’s helicopter, I played Texas Flood on the juke
box and quit my job. In China, bones channel feng shui, becoming
part of the active landscape. Though she wanted her ashes to drift
in the Pacific, my mother’s body lies in a national cemetery in
San Antonio. On the northwest coast of Canada, the Kwakiutl
left their dead to the ravens, and my father has proposed
on numerous occasions that we shove a hambone up his ass
and let the dogs drag him off. I do not believe we’ll follow his
suggestion. In old England, suicides were often interred at
crossroads, impaled, to impede their restless wandering spirits.
The Torajans sometimes keep bodies wrapped in layers of absorbent
cloth in their homes for years. I’d like my incinerated, pulverized
remains released in the jet stream, if only to escape economy class for
once. Jellyroll Morton’s grave is in Section N, Lot 347, #4, in the northwest
quadrant of Calvary Cemetery, but some villagers bury stillborn
near a dwelling’s outer wall. Hugh Hefner is rumored to have acquired
the spot next to Marilyn Monroe. Placing the dead is never arbitrary.
Originally published in Middle Gray in 2013, “Ritual” was reprinted in the anthology Heron Clan III, and is included in The Circumference of Other, my offering in IDES: A Collection of Poetry Chapbooks. It also appeared here in July 2015 – the poem that refuses to die…
For those who might be interested, a glimpse at the genesis of the poem is included in this interview conducted by Dariel Suarez, the editor of Middle Gray: http://www.themiddlegray.com/mgblog/2013/12/19/robert-okaji
I Have Misplaced Entire Languages
I Have Misplaced Entire Languages
Neither this tongue nor that still dwells in my house.
The hole of remembrance constricts, leaving behind only debris.
As a child I mixed three languages in family discourse.
Now only one is comprehensible, and I abuse it daily.
The woman in the blue dress stands alone on the pier, weeping.
A pidgin is a simplified language developed between groups with no
common tongue. Sounds form easily, but meanings struggle.
My father is shipped to Korea without warning.
Some words insert epenthetic consonants to separate vowels. Years
later we arrive in Italy and my mother starts receding.
A fourth language emerges.
This morning I asked, “Ame?” “Yes,” she said, “but just drizzling.”
Some families share no common language and must forge without.
We have used pain, pane and pan without reference to etymology.
Having abandoned the familiar, she chose another, never accepting the loss.
These forms we can’t articulate, these memories we have not traced.
* * *
This was originally published in April 2014 as part of Boston Review‘s National Poetry Month Celebration, and also appeared on this blog in July 2015.
Refusal Charm
Refusal Charm
Every rock a precept —
a fist in a garden of palms
a skull is a skull
she says
and I am no iris
overnight the green beetles
have learned flight
now they lumber
into windows
bright asteroids falling
I prefer other voices
in the lantana or dirt
mounded in grids
asking may I come out
no it is late too late
My “Moving” Poem is Up on Silver Birch Press
This, too, was overlooked during the frenzy of the 30/30 Challenge in August, so I’m reposting it.
My poem, “Summer 1966: After France & Remembering Bobby, Who One Day Would Learn to Multiply and Divide, Write Love Poems, Define Home, Fight Unfairly and
Live with as Much Gusto as a 7-Year Old. Perhaps.” is featured on The Silver Birch Press “When I Moved” series.
This is a reworked version of a piece that originally appeared on the blog Holistic Journey.
In the Key of Your Hour
In the Key of Your Hour
The words I sing are draped in silence,
wedged between notes yet flowing forward.
Stop-time presents the illusion of interrupted tempo and meter.
Perception informs our spirits.
The old guitar hangs on the wall and seldom speaks,
preferring instead to lightly hum when the wind blows just so.
The conceit of two right hands. A slamming door.
Music enters my room by subterfuge, but exits boldly.
If simultaneity is relative, how do we assign primacy
to an overtone? One voice, one whole.
We must respond to our bodies. In kind, with trust.
I ask you to listen without considering the requisite commitment.
The broken circle represents common time replete with imperfections,
linking the measurable to the internal well.
Gather what comes, no matter the source.
Mark time and repeat: harmonics, the quivering string. Breath.
“In the Key of Your Hour” appears in my chapbook-length work, The Circumference of Other, which is included in IDES: A Collection of Poetry Chapbooks, published by Silver Birch Press in 2015.
My Poem “Between” Is Up On Clade Song
I thought I’d repost this as it was given short shrift during the 30/30 frenzy.
Many thanks to editors Joshua McKinney and Tim Kahl for including my poem “Between” in the current issue of Clade Song, one of my favorite poetry journals. A recording is also available for your amusement. And please check out the beautiful and intriguing musical piece on the home page – composed of various animal calls, guitar, flute and shaker.
Hail
Hail
My hands know the sadness of rock,
of unfinished lines and rough
sides tapering to sharpness.
The shape of solitude, turning.
Now the stones fall as water,
a woman lets down her hair
and laughter chokes through silence.
Into this dream I ascend.
An Introduction To Robert Okaji
I feel a tad self-conscious about reblogging this, but am grateful to Daniel for taking the time and effort. Thank you, Dan.
Which Poet, Which Beer (3)
Nebraska Brewing Company’s Melange a Trois, a strong Belgian-Style Blonde ale, aged for six months in French Oak Chardonnay barrels, carries a good bit of the wine, with citrus and a hint of vanilla. A little musty, with an excellent frothy head, which, I believe, could describe me most mornings. But I digress. Deceptively strong (11+ ABV) with a pleasant bitterness. I would pair this with a plate of cured meat and David Wevill’s Other Names for the Heart: New and Selected Poems 1964-1984.
He writes in “Grace”:
… Sometimes lately
a bird you can’t identify has flitted close
and sung from the branches of his hands.
He leaves us touching ourselves.
Over the past thirty years, much of Wevill’s writing has left me with unrequited questions, with an itch to branch out, to learn more, to delve deeper into what makes us human.
But there are those days when introspection flies out the back door into the overgrown backyard, and all you want to do is sit back, watch the football game, relax, be entertained, escape. On those days I’ll break out a few cans of Austin Beerworks Pearl Snap, a German-style pilsner, moderately malty, straw-colored, with citrusy hops evident. A clean, palate-cleansing drink, good with nachos or chips, or hell, even with a Greek salad (heavy on the feta and olives, please). And if you’re like me and can’t devote yourself fully to the game, multitask – dip into Jeff Schwaner’s Goat Lies Down on Broadway, and absorb “Goat Reads the Signs”:
The sun rises like music
every morning. Wind goes
around the world and comes
back in a week or two. Goat
waits on top of a hill, judging…
As do we. Don’t stop there. Continue. Turn off the tube – one team will win, the other will lose. But Goat never wins. Goat never loses. Goat befriends Jerry Falwell. Goat eats Jerry’s tie. Goat ingests Sartre. Goat dies. “Goat is never dead.” A lively read, to say the least.
And speaking of lively, Independence Brewery’s Lupulust is a traditional Belgian-style tripel with a touch of modern hoppiness. It pours with a big head and spicy, floral notes, with a dry finish, reminding me of Karen Craigo’s No More Milk, in which she speaks of life – ordinary life – which, in her hands, becomes like that floral scented, big, hoppy beer. In “Scat with Mourning Dove” the narrator wakes “to syncopated song” and marvels at the bird’s jazz refrains from her place in bed with “a body warm against mine,” celebrating
how God made us, made jazz,
made an instrument of a dove.
Sip this book. Share it with friends. Take it to bed with a glass of warm milk. Savor it.
O at the Edges 