Poem Swallowing Itself
Reading aloud—
people turn their heads
and step back, never
imagining what lies behind,
expecting neither snakes
nor bear traps nor other ambush.
Beginning where one ends, or
continuing a conversation
over decades, the truth
rises then subsides,
like soaring vultures or
cubes in scotch whiskey.
Measuring volume by
glance, the poem shivers,
opens its mouth wide.
“Poem Swallowing Itself” first appeared here in April 2016.
In Praise of Darkness
Night falls, but day
breaks. A raw deal,
no doubt, but fairness
applies itself unevenly. Who
chooses weeds over
lies, flowers over truth?
Last night’s rain fell, too,
but didn’t crack the drought.
Again, we think injustice!
Again, we consider falls.
“In Praise of Darkness” last appeared here in March, 2016, and is included in my chapbook If Your Matter Could Reform.
In the Fifth Chamber Lies the Hour’s End
To fairly allocate irrigation resources, the Persians measured time with water,
sinking a bowl in a larger vessel and tallying the count with pebbles.
And what is time but counting, determining the number of units within a set?
The sum of beats between silences and their diminishing echoes?
Its symbol in the West grew from fig and ivy leaves, while early medical
illustrations depicted pine cone-shaped organs.
In most reptilians, the aorta receives only oxygenated blood.
Qanats pump by gravity. The hagfish’s second resides in its tail.
Recognize the empty as full. Squeezed shut, we open.
Contraction and flow, ejection, inflow, relaxation.
Emotion as electrical impulse. Murmuring valves. The color red.
The fifth chamber remains silent and undetected.
The primitive fish’s chambers are arranged sequentially, but in an S-shape.
Ancients believed arteries transported air through the body.
The Buddhist figure, too, originated in leaves, symbolizing not love
but enlightenment. The ache of failure confounds us.
“In the Fifth Chamber Lies the Hour’s End” was first posted here in May 2016.
Agave
It might deceive.
Or like a cruel
window, live its life
unopened,
offering a view
yet reserving the taste
for another’s
tongue, ignoring
even the wind.
The roots, as always, look down.
* * *
This first appeared in Ijagun Poetry Journal in December 2013, was featured in poems2go in April 2016, and is also included in my micro-chapbook, You Break What Falls, available for download from the Origami Poems Project: http://www.origamipoems.com/poets/236-robert-okaji
Galveston, 1900
First the wind, then a tide like no other
uprooting the calm,
a visage tilted back in descent
as if listening for the aftermath.
And later, the gardener’s lament
and the building’s exposed ribs,
light entering the eternal
orchard, nine children tied to a cincture.
Not even the earth could retain its bodies,
and the sea remanded those given to its care.
“Galveston, 1900” first appeared here in January 2015.
Scarecrow Dreams
If by night I move without aid,
what then? Precious flesh, precious
bone, never mine to lose – the difference
between nothingness and no thing. A
pity that my friends fly at the merest
movement, but when the air’s breath
stills, they sing and rattle among the
grain, scribing their days in song
and footprints, seeking the available
on the ground. And what scrolls lower
than the sound of sunflowers turning?
The laughing daughter runs around
my lattice spine, scattering joy like so
many seeds, and when my hollow
fingers clench, the earth quivers, or
so it seems. Then midnight returns
and I disengage and stalk about,
scaring rodents and their predators,
hooting in harmony with the owls
reveling in the night air, remembering
the holy shirt, a yellow glove, corn
silk’s gleam at noon and the warmth
of your fingers against my burlap skin.
I do not breathe, I say, but I exist. By
morning what joins me but the tune
of yet another bird, unseen, melodious,
the pulse of morning’s dew. Eternity.
How my straw tongue longs to sip it.
“Scarecrow Dreams” first appeared in the summer 2017 edition of Eclectica. Many thanks to poetry editor Jen Finstrom, for publishing several of my scarecrow poems.
Memoir (Cento)
Your hands touched
everything. Will you
be a fountain
or a sea?
A woman sleeps next to me
on the earth. Now
nothing else keeps my eyes
in the cloud.
Each rock is news.
* * *
A cento is composed of lines from poems by other
poets. This cento originated from pieces in:
77 Poems, Alberto de Lacerda
Because the Sea is Black, Blaga Dimitrova
Body Rags, Galway Kinnell
Song of the Simple Truth, Julia de Burgos
Love Poems, Anne Sexton
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
This last appeared on the blog in May 2016.
Shadow’s Tale
If I call,
will you
reply?
Questions
left unwritten
shape
themselves
like words
we see
but don’t
read. Signs
fade then
reappear,
and the oaks
droop
in the still
heat.
No rain
again. If
you call,
will I
reply?
“Shadow’s Tale” first appeared here in June 2015.
My poems “Black Lilies,” “Forgotten” and “Palinode (Texas, cedar, misery)” are featured at ISACOUSTIC. Many thanks to editor Barton Smock for taking these.
O at the Edges 