Tag Archives: culture

Scarecrow Listens

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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.

 

 

More Jim Harrison

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thigh

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.

 

 

Even the Sotol Believes

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Even the Sotol Believes

If we must discuss logographic systems, let us begin with fish.
And how might one mistake an entrance for a perch?

A movable rod for a desert spoon?

Today’s lesson excludes a poorly rendered door.

Hinges are merely mechanical joints, the origin of which means to hang. Concentrate there.

D is the tenth most frequently used letter in English.

Depicted on rock wall paintings, the sotol has provided food, sandals,

blankets, ropes, tools and spirits for millennia.
Slow cook the roots for three nights, crush, then ferment for seventy-two hours in

champagne yeast. Distill, then age in French oak.

We shall neither open nor close, nor mention those things that do.

Like bivalves. Bottles. Eyes. Shops. Caskets. Books. Mouths. Circuits.
Its flower stalk rises up to fifteen feet. Its leaves are long, thin and barbed.

Surrounded by orange ochre flames and black smoke, the sotol spirit appears.

Dalet will not enter our vocabulary today.

 

image

Originally published in Otoliths 41 (October 2013), and posted here in October 2015.

Max Ritvo

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The world will see no more Max Ritvo poems, and for that, I grieve.

Read Helen Vendler’s review of his Four Reincarnations in Poetry. Better yet, read the book. It’ll make you ache.

Having Survived Myself I Lean Away

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Survival

Having Survived Myself I Lean Away 

You know that
but not
why

the mockingbird mocks,
or how one note

marries others,
forming blissful

chords. And the skies
flaring each night

betraying your willful
ignorance,

while you paint
the words for love

in seven languages
you can’t
speak.

Where are you now,

whose bodies
have you denied,

wrapped in linen,
bagged or boxed,
arriving unseen?

Sagging, I observe your
counted victories, the
smirk claiming

exceptionalism
and destiny or
nobility of purpose,

as even your own shadow
recoils.

cemetery

This first appeared here in October 2015.

Recording of “Scarecrow Considers the Afterlife”

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Scarecrow and Friends

You might read the poem at Eclectica, where it was published with two companion pieces.

 

Recording of My Poem, “Icarus”

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Icarus

Currents of breath, the slight curve and lift
within a single motion, once

poised then released as if to say
the wind is mine, or wait,
I am alone –

the story we most fear, not height nor gravity’s
fist, but to exist apart, shadow and

mouth, rain and smile, feather
and sun, all denials reciprocal,

each tied fast and renewed.

sun

“Icarus” first appeared here in April 2016, and subsequently was published in The Basil O’Flaherty in November 2016.

Mushrooms I Have Known

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Mushrooms I Have Known

Reticent and tired, withdrawn,
dejected, I return.

Emerging overnight from nothing,
then withering back to zero.

Does light incite you?
The shade?

I walk by and say hello.
You do not speak.

 

 

3 Poems Up at Quiet Letter

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stroller

I’m delighted to announce that three of my poems are live at Quiet Letter. The three (“Cutting Down the Anniversary Pine,” “Strollermelon,” and “Memory and Closets“), were written during the 30/30 challenges I undertook during the past two Augusts to raise funds for Tupelo Press, a non-profit literary publisher.

Scarecrow Pretends: Robert Okaji’s Metallurgy

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This is kinda fun. The Slag Review published “Scarecrow Pretends” back in January, and now this has appeared on the Long River Review’s blog. I’m always grateful when someone extends the life of one of my poems. Thank you, Benjamin Schultz.