I thought I’d repost this as it was given short shrift during the frenzy of the 30/30 Challenge in August.
Many thanks to editors Andrea, Jeff and Ryn for including my poem “On the Burden of Flowering” in the current issue of Panoply, another of my favorite poetry journals. I’m thrilled that they were able to take this piece.
Mole (Pipian)
Always the search beneath texture,
layers captured in subsidence,
the drift to interpretation: a mixture, meaning
sauce, and its journey from seed to mouth,
the careful blend of herb and fire,
dismembered chiles,
the crushed and scorched fruit
rendered to preserve for consumption
the most tender qualities
and their enhancement towards art.
This is of course not about the mammal with the subterranean lifestyle, but rather a version of the Mexican sauce, pronounced “mo-lay,” which includes, as a main ingredient, pumpkin seeds. It takes a while to put together, but is well worth the effort.
“Mole (Pipian)” made its first appearance here in February 2015.
Setting Fire to the Origami Crane (the one floating on Muscongus Bay) at Sunset
Who is to say which comes first, the flaming crane
or the sunset’s burst just over the horizon
and under the clouds? There are causes and causations,
an illness named bad air and another attributed to wolf
bites, neither accurate. There is the paraffin to melt,
and the folded paper resting comfortably nearby, with
a small, unopened tin of shoe polish and the sound of
tears striking newsprint. You know the myth of the
Viking burial — the burning ship laden with treasure
and the deceased clothed in all his finery. But pyres
are lighted to make ash of bodies, to ease the soul’s
transition to the heavens. Think of how disturbing
it would be to come upon the charred lumps of your
loved one washed ashore. And other myths — various
versions of the afterlife created to bend wills and
foster hope where little exists — to which have you
departed? There are no returns in your future, no more
givings, and your ashes have dispersed among the clouds
and in the water. They’ve been consumed by earth and
sky, inhaled and swallowed, digested, coughed out but
never considered for what they were. So I’ve printed
your name a thousand times on this sheet, and will
fold and launch it, aflame, watching the letters that
comprise you, once again, rise and float, mingle
and interact, forming acquaintances, new words,
other names, partnerships, loves, ascending to the end.
This was written for the August 2015 Tupelo Press 30/30 Challenge. To read the story behind the poem’s title (which I was unaware of), you might visit Jilanne Hoffman’s blog.
I’m touched, honored, and looking forward to that beer!
Several times, Robert Okaji has given us his take on classic Chinese poems, based on literal translations found at chinese-poems.com. He admits to liberal interpretation in his versions, based on his perspective in life. Inspired by Bob, I have decided to try my hand at it and will post some of those as I hone my “skills.” In the meantime I present this very liberal interpretation (actually, an adaptation imagining a meeting with Bob) of a classic Chinese poem by Tu Fu, Written for Scholar Wei. The original translation, as presented at chinese-poems.com appears at the bottom.
An Evening with a Poet in Texas
Many years behind us, never to have met
Distant, apart like Orion and Scorpio
But now, we meet on this special evening
One night, like a candle
Burning brief, but bright
While we sit here, gray
Talking of poets past
Would it come as…
View original post 259 more words
Another adaptation, which first appeared in April, 2014.
Peach Blossom (after Li Po)
Ask why I stay on the green mountain
and I smile but do not answer; my heart rests.
A peach blossom floats downstream –
Heaven and earth, apart from this world.
The transliteration on Chinese-poems.com is as follows:
Ask me what reason stay green mountain
Smile but not answer heart self idle
Peach blossom flow water far go
Apart have heaven earth in human world
There the poem is titled “Question and Answer on the Mountain.”
Onions
My knife never sings but hums instead when withdrawn from its block, a metallic whisper so modest only the wielder may hear it. Or perhaps the dog, who seems to enjoy the kitchen nearly as much as I. A Japanese blade, it’s a joy to hold, perfectly balanced, stainless steel-molybdenum alloy, blade and handle of one piece, bright, untarnished, and so sharp as to slide through, rather than awkwardly rupture and divide, its next task on the board.
We’ve never counted the chopped and rendered onions, the fine dice, slender rings and discarded skins, but if we could gather all the corpses we’ve produced together over the years, we’d form a monument to our work, cooperation of metal and man, a Waterloo mound in memory of the bulbs laid there, the planning involved, the missteps and serendipity, and the tears shed along the way.
The blade doesn’t care. It is. It works. It moves things, it lifts, it parts them, and in return is cleansed, and later, in the quiet room, maintains its edge with a silvery rasp, angled steel on steel in a circular motion, over and over, until finally it hums its way back into the block. But it never sings.
“Onions” first appeared on this blog in June 2015.
My poems “Scarecrow Dances,” “Tuning the Beast,” and “Synapses and Other Conjunctions” have been published at The Blue Nib. The latter two were written during the August 2015 Tupelo Press 30/30 Challenge.
Biography (Cento)
I am becoming
one of the old
men, but you,
you are earth.
Where is the moment
that lingers,
the static of lost
voices and the feel
of the cleft in the bark.
Ask me anything.
Why am I
grown so cold?
Have you been here?
Thinking
is wind in a cage;
it does not say anything.
* * *
Credits:
James Wright, Cesare Pavese, Ruth Ellen Kocher, HD, Eduardo C. Corral,
Adelaide Crapsey, Denise Levertov, Blaga Dimitrova, Jacques Roubaud,
* * *
A cento is composed of lines from poems by other poets.
For further information and examples of the form, you might peruse the Academy of American Poets site: http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/poetic-form-cento
Palinode (soubasse)
In the land of two-dollar mornings, those things
we barely sense take precedence: uncaressed
skin sheathed in ivy, the punctuation mark diverting
power. Insidious corn, the cries of distressed trees
(cavitation in the xylem), soubasse, the ghost note,
prickling from below. Singularity. The appointee’s
hubris. The defining weight of a zero’s center.
A zero’s center defines emptiness, meaning nothing,
or, diverted light, a vacuum. Regard plenum: an air-filled
space, or a complete gathering of a legislative body. And
how did we arrive here from there? From the body we
compose units of measure: an ell, digit, fathom, the mile’s
thousand paces. I expose film to light, concealing yet
establishing a rational point.
Concealing the point implies position without extension,
a moment shedding its cracked sheath and giving rise
to the divine: above, below, male and female, hot or
cold. Reconciliation. A plateau. The still place linking the
infinite to the open hand, limitless black. Burning, I
calculate oxidation and dispersal, tendrils, a flaxen leaf,
its proposition to endings.
This first appeared, in slightly different form, in ditch, in January 2014.
While Walking My Dog’s Ghost
I spot a baby rabbit
lying still in a clump of grass
no wider than my hand.
It quivers, but I pretend
not to have seen, for fear
that the dog, ghost or not,
will frighten and chase it
into the brush, beyond
its mother’s range,
perhaps to become lost
and thirsty, malnourished,
filthy, desperate, much
like the dog when we
found each other that hot,
dry evening so long ago.
O at the Edges 