10.05.2009
10.04.2009
From Emma's Scrapbook: 1944
Too many died in the world war
for Emma to save the obituaries,
instead she keeps the clippings
about the deserter gunned down
on Liberty Street, right beside
her and Dale’s house in Clarion.
Dale says, Enough is enough,
swear that when he retires
they will move to the forty acres
on Scotch Hill. Any excuse to leave
town, Emma thinks. She’s of two
minds about moving back to a farm
—half of her likes being away
from the work she’s always known.
The Clarion News says the man
claimed to be a veteran
of the Pacific campaign,
incapacitated by malaria,
that he traveled all over,
always keeping a full tank,
a shotgun in his trunk,
and a revolver on his person.
Where the man made his mistake
was in trying to settle down.
A man like him has to run,
Emma thinks, has to keep
his steps soft, his picture
out of sight, not take a job
driving dozer at the mines.
He should have gone out West
like her brother, and never
got found. Emma was startled
by the gunshots next door,
the police lights pinwheeling
and chasing the air ahead.
She wishes he had vanished,
had not reminded her that those
who are running might be right
beside you, might be somewhere
you are trying hard to live.
:: Naton Leslie, Emma Saves Her Life (2007)
for Emma to save the obituaries,
instead she keeps the clippings
about the deserter gunned down
on Liberty Street, right beside
her and Dale’s house in Clarion.
Dale says, Enough is enough,
swear that when he retires
they will move to the forty acres
on Scotch Hill. Any excuse to leave
town, Emma thinks. She’s of two
minds about moving back to a farm
—half of her likes being away
from the work she’s always known.
The Clarion News says the man
claimed to be a veteran
of the Pacific campaign,
incapacitated by malaria,
that he traveled all over,
always keeping a full tank,
a shotgun in his trunk,
and a revolver on his person.
Where the man made his mistake
was in trying to settle down.
A man like him has to run,
Emma thinks, has to keep
his steps soft, his picture
out of sight, not take a job
driving dozer at the mines.
He should have gone out West
like her brother, and never
got found. Emma was startled
by the gunshots next door,
the police lights pinwheeling
and chasing the air ahead.
She wishes he had vanished,
had not reminded her that those
who are running might be right
beside you, might be somewhere
you are trying hard to live.
:: Naton Leslie, Emma Saves Her Life (2007)
10.03.2009
Net-Man Blues
Hell, I’ve half-hitched myself to death: this
Around and through, around and through.
I must have knotted my way across the universe
A hanging at a time, line after line,
And worked my way back by some circuitous route
Mending my way across a vast web of space
Stitching string rhomboids between those stars
On this slow-rocket mending needle hand-haul.
Ah, but those nets they made by hand
Must have diced their minds neater
Than the flesh of a fisherman
Rolled up tightly onto his own drum.
:: John Skapsi, in Going for Coffee (1981)
Around and through, around and through.
I must have knotted my way across the universe
A hanging at a time, line after line,
And worked my way back by some circuitous route
Mending my way across a vast web of space
Stitching string rhomboids between those stars
On this slow-rocket mending needle hand-haul.
Ah, but those nets they made by hand
Must have diced their minds neater
Than the flesh of a fisherman
Rolled up tightly onto his own drum.
:: John Skapsi, in Going for Coffee (1981)
10.02.2009
Vista Point
I dreamed Dori and the baby
were in the kitchen and it was so sunny
that the sky was all stiff and brittle.
Then the goldfish in the bowl on the table
went wild and jumped out of their water.
Dori ran with the baby into the park,
while the earth split up in chunks
and big palm trees sunk straight down
without swaying, just like phone poles
dropped into water.
Everyone was screaming.
The sky broke like windshield glass
and where the blue pieces fell away
there was the most brilliant white light
behind the sky: it was
so beautiful that I cried.
Lately I’ve been wondering a lot.
Not about anything in particular—
not looking for meaning in the cosmos
or anything like that, I’ve done enough
of that—but wondering about
little things that don’t amount to much.
And the wondering doesn’t go anywhere,
I just don’t know about it.
Sometimes I’m working
and my boss gets crazy about, say,
building the front to this or that
old wreck with wooden plugs and glue
instead of nails. Or sometimes
laying on top of Dori in bed—
once I just laid there for an hour,
watching my seed, in my mind,
seeing it in her,
like a small, eager river,
glowing white inside her—but
a river with a beginning and an end,
just a piece of a river.
I love her more than I can say—
there’s no one else’ll ever do—
but there’s something else
or things else
that I don’t even call by name
that come on me.
Sometimes in the truck after work
I park at the lookout
on the way back to the city and stare
at the sun going under the ledge of seawater.
And it’s like my body rebels and wants
to go after it. I’m like a seabird
whose leash is tied to it, who follows it
at night and pulls it up before dawn.
And I just punch the roof of the cab—
by now it’s got dents all over;
looks like a hail storm’s beaten it in.
I feel so caught
in the things that can be—
some dragonfly in amber—and called
also by the things that can’t be,
a man with feet
and no place for them.
If I didn’t have fists then,
I think I’d just die . . .
I don’t know, I love my wife,
love my son,
but there’s a plastic tether
maybe, made of time and place,
that I’m always stretching, pulling at.
I sometimes think if I went off
after the sun,
I’d not burn up there; I’d be
some kind of fire in my own right.
I have a private ambition:
to build a staircase in a Swiss town maybe
or in some southern church back home
where the miraculous still comes
home from the swamp—
a spiral staircase, much like a barber pole,
and one made without a single nail or joint,
inexplicably made so that no one piece
could have been done
without all the others first being finished.
A puzzle and a miracle I want it to be.
And then when it’s done, I plan to leave
the clapboard town by night,
like St. Joseph, on a mule maybe,
or just afoot with sandals,
never having spoken to anyone,
rector or wives,
leaving them each to wonder
what visitor it was who made this
and if, oh, if they dare to climb the stairs
and if the treads would make them holy.
I’d like to tell the baby about this,
but he’s like the fish sometimes,
steering around the chairs like he was
in corkscrew grass. If he could
he’d uproot it all, let it float: tight, white roots
all naked; chairs, rugs, me, lying sidelong
on the ceiling.
He likes the fish; I show them to him
all the time. I show him the lime tree
on the sill. I show him my picture
of the earth,
the lapis-like mix of the world
seen from above,
looking like an ear-jewel, a marble,
another eye, staring placidly back.
He kicks like a turtle at it.
I wanted to have him with me
at the lookout today after work.
There were a lot of picture-takers
there today, all squinting into a lens
for a picture of the seal herd on the rocks,
all shooting right into the sun.
They don’t bother me anymore. I know they come
and go home to long pants
and high position. They only travel
in order to go back and throw whale fins
up onto their walls for whatever neighbors
they have in their high-rises on the Loop.
To me they’re just little figures
against the sunset,
going down to L.A., going up to Eugene.
They never stay away from the motels
so near to dark.
I was thinking about the baby.
The sun turned a lemon color, then
almost colorless; and the cliffs
turned a brass color, the sky a bird-like gray.
The baby is eighteen months old;
he would have liked it.
When I was there alone,
a row of pelicans flew by. Seven of them.
Just above the horizon,
not touching the sun at all,
as if they’d been burnt by it.
And all at once, I just went wild—
a sort of cold wildness I’d never felt before—
that shook me as if I was freezing.
I was standing all alone
on the cliff edge, taking the peaches,
one by one, out of the crate
I had in the bed of the pickup,
and I was throwing them one at a time
at the sun,
cursing nonsense at it and crying
like a baby, the whole while
it sunk down,
down to Japan and China, to Rome
and all those places they take pictures of.
The fog came in.
I needed the headlights
it was so dark when I left,
the empty crate rattling in the truck.
Oh Dori, Dori,
woman, I love you best and forever,
but there’s ambition in me
which we all need to fear.
:: Richard Ronan, Narratives from America (Dragon Gate,1982)
were in the kitchen and it was so sunny
that the sky was all stiff and brittle.
Then the goldfish in the bowl on the table
went wild and jumped out of their water.
Dori ran with the baby into the park,
while the earth split up in chunks
and big palm trees sunk straight down
without swaying, just like phone poles
dropped into water.
Everyone was screaming.
The sky broke like windshield glass
and where the blue pieces fell away
there was the most brilliant white light
behind the sky: it was
so beautiful that I cried.
Lately I’ve been wondering a lot.
Not about anything in particular—
not looking for meaning in the cosmos
or anything like that, I’ve done enough
of that—but wondering about
little things that don’t amount to much.
And the wondering doesn’t go anywhere,
I just don’t know about it.
Sometimes I’m working
and my boss gets crazy about, say,
building the front to this or that
old wreck with wooden plugs and glue
instead of nails. Or sometimes
laying on top of Dori in bed—
once I just laid there for an hour,
watching my seed, in my mind,
seeing it in her,
like a small, eager river,
glowing white inside her—but
a river with a beginning and an end,
just a piece of a river.
I love her more than I can say—
there’s no one else’ll ever do—
but there’s something else
or things else
that I don’t even call by name
that come on me.
Sometimes in the truck after work
I park at the lookout
on the way back to the city and stare
at the sun going under the ledge of seawater.
And it’s like my body rebels and wants
to go after it. I’m like a seabird
whose leash is tied to it, who follows it
at night and pulls it up before dawn.
And I just punch the roof of the cab—
by now it’s got dents all over;
looks like a hail storm’s beaten it in.
I feel so caught
in the things that can be—
some dragonfly in amber—and called
also by the things that can’t be,
a man with feet
and no place for them.
If I didn’t have fists then,
I think I’d just die . . .
I don’t know, I love my wife,
love my son,
but there’s a plastic tether
maybe, made of time and place,
that I’m always stretching, pulling at.
I sometimes think if I went off
after the sun,
I’d not burn up there; I’d be
some kind of fire in my own right.
I have a private ambition:
to build a staircase in a Swiss town maybe
or in some southern church back home
where the miraculous still comes
home from the swamp—
a spiral staircase, much like a barber pole,
and one made without a single nail or joint,
inexplicably made so that no one piece
could have been done
without all the others first being finished.
A puzzle and a miracle I want it to be.
And then when it’s done, I plan to leave
the clapboard town by night,
like St. Joseph, on a mule maybe,
or just afoot with sandals,
never having spoken to anyone,
rector or wives,
leaving them each to wonder
what visitor it was who made this
and if, oh, if they dare to climb the stairs
and if the treads would make them holy.
I’d like to tell the baby about this,
but he’s like the fish sometimes,
steering around the chairs like he was
in corkscrew grass. If he could
he’d uproot it all, let it float: tight, white roots
all naked; chairs, rugs, me, lying sidelong
on the ceiling.
He likes the fish; I show them to him
all the time. I show him the lime tree
on the sill. I show him my picture
of the earth,
the lapis-like mix of the world
seen from above,
looking like an ear-jewel, a marble,
another eye, staring placidly back.
He kicks like a turtle at it.
I wanted to have him with me
at the lookout today after work.
There were a lot of picture-takers
there today, all squinting into a lens
for a picture of the seal herd on the rocks,
all shooting right into the sun.
They don’t bother me anymore. I know they come
and go home to long pants
and high position. They only travel
in order to go back and throw whale fins
up onto their walls for whatever neighbors
they have in their high-rises on the Loop.
To me they’re just little figures
against the sunset,
going down to L.A., going up to Eugene.
They never stay away from the motels
so near to dark.
I was thinking about the baby.
The sun turned a lemon color, then
almost colorless; and the cliffs
turned a brass color, the sky a bird-like gray.
The baby is eighteen months old;
he would have liked it.
When I was there alone,
a row of pelicans flew by. Seven of them.
Just above the horizon,
not touching the sun at all,
as if they’d been burnt by it.
And all at once, I just went wild—
a sort of cold wildness I’d never felt before—
that shook me as if I was freezing.
I was standing all alone
on the cliff edge, taking the peaches,
one by one, out of the crate
I had in the bed of the pickup,
and I was throwing them one at a time
at the sun,
cursing nonsense at it and crying
like a baby, the whole while
it sunk down,
down to Japan and China, to Rome
and all those places they take pictures of.
The fog came in.
I needed the headlights
it was so dark when I left,
the empty crate rattling in the truck.
Oh Dori, Dori,
woman, I love you best and forever,
but there’s ambition in me
which we all need to fear.
:: Richard Ronan, Narratives from America (Dragon Gate,1982)
10.01.2009
Rednecks
Gaithersburg, Maryland
At Scot Gas, Darnestown Road,
the high school boys
pumping gas
would snicker at the rednecks.
Every Saturday night there was Earl,
puckering his liquor-smashed face
to announce that he was driving
across the bridge, a bridge spanning
only the whiskey river
that bubbled in his stomach.
Earl's car, one side crumpled like his nose,
would circle closely around the pumps,
turn signal winking relentlessly.
Another pickup truck morning,
and rednecks. Loitering
in our red uniforms, we watched
as a pickup rumbled through.
We expected: "Fill it with no-lead, boy,
and gimme a cash ticket."
We expected the farmer with sideburns
and a pompadour.
We, with new diplomas framed
at home, never expected the woman.
Her face was a purple rubber mask
melting off her head, scars rippling down
where the fire seared her freak face,
leaving her a carnival where high school boys
paid a quarter to look, and look away.
No one took the pump. The farmer saw us standing
in our red uniforms, a regiment of illiterate conscripts.
Still watching us, he leaned across the seat of the truck
and kissed her. He kissed her
all over her happy ruined face, kissed her
as I pumped the gas and scraped the windshield
and measured the oil, he kept kissing her.
Martin Espada, in Ploughshares
At Scot Gas, Darnestown Road,
the high school boys
pumping gas
would snicker at the rednecks.
Every Saturday night there was Earl,
puckering his liquor-smashed face
to announce that he was driving
across the bridge, a bridge spanning
only the whiskey river
that bubbled in his stomach.
Earl's car, one side crumpled like his nose,
would circle closely around the pumps,
turn signal winking relentlessly.
Another pickup truck morning,
and rednecks. Loitering
in our red uniforms, we watched
as a pickup rumbled through.
We expected: "Fill it with no-lead, boy,
and gimme a cash ticket."
We expected the farmer with sideburns
and a pompadour.
We, with new diplomas framed
at home, never expected the woman.
Her face was a purple rubber mask
melting off her head, scars rippling down
where the fire seared her freak face,
leaving her a carnival where high school boys
paid a quarter to look, and look away.
No one took the pump. The farmer saw us standing
in our red uniforms, a regiment of illiterate conscripts.
Still watching us, he leaned across the seat of the truck
and kissed her. He kissed her
all over her happy ruined face, kissed her
as I pumped the gas and scraped the windshield
and measured the oil, he kept kissing her.
Martin Espada, in Ploughshares
9.30.2009
Driving to Work
Six of you cram into Hopko’s Mustang every Tuesday
into Hrishin’s Nova Thursday, into Bevsky’s Duster
Wednesday. Monday you ride a Pontiac
and Friday you drive the Olds, room
for all and lunch pails, three stacked in back
sleeping the hour drive 5:45 for the 7 a.m. shift
sleeping stacked that way the hour drive home at 3,
and every day you go the same route through Chunk
the edge of Dutch country on down the Lehigh River
through the gap until you reach the city on the other side
and see the smoke rise from your stacks, see the orange light
riding up the towers of your stacks, and every day you look behind
at 3:15 to see the smoke a little darker where you have stacked the coals.
:: Bim Angst, in Beloit Poetry Journal (No. 30, Summer 1980)
into Hrishin’s Nova Thursday, into Bevsky’s Duster
Wednesday. Monday you ride a Pontiac
and Friday you drive the Olds, room
for all and lunch pails, three stacked in back
sleeping the hour drive 5:45 for the 7 a.m. shift
sleeping stacked that way the hour drive home at 3,
and every day you go the same route through Chunk
the edge of Dutch country on down the Lehigh River
through the gap until you reach the city on the other side
and see the smoke rise from your stacks, see the orange light
riding up the towers of your stacks, and every day you look behind
at 3:15 to see the smoke a little darker where you have stacked the coals.
:: Bim Angst, in Beloit Poetry Journal (No. 30, Summer 1980)
9.29.2009
I Wake with the Taste of What You Tasted: Agnes Smedley, 1892-1950
The night before the operation you said
“I don’t expect to die . . . but in case I do . . .” And then you did.
I was tightly coiled, held safe when you came apart
of a piece in Oxford, 1950.
I want to say we are sisters. Yes.
I want to share a present tense with you. A name.
I want to say we are sisters as temperature and wind, loneliness
among friends. The lines of a poem that do not come.
Learning to survive. Staying or returning
to survive.
Your political predictions went on without you,
your stone letters in the hand of a Chinese peasant general.
Pushing yourself back into memory,
you stared us down by the power of your Colorado earth.
Now I wake with the taste of what you tasted
in my mouth.
Misery when the call comes in to join, mesh,
submerge and reemerge in groups of men. The flowers of defeat.
Need, your circular letters open doors
to those who put them, unopened, on the “maybe” pile.
I wonder about my journals, Agnes,
who will take my salted tongue.
What time is it, please? Will the new encyclopedia
hold the necessary entry?
Deep in pockets I shove my fisted hands,
clenched images. Yan’an or Esteli.
People who did not look darker or smaller to us.
People. Their eyes open.
The lie comes home to sleep. No one forgets.
It happened on the first day of all our dreams.
:: Margaret Randall, in Calling Home: Working Class Women’s Writings (1990)
“I don’t expect to die . . . but in case I do . . .” And then you did.
I was tightly coiled, held safe when you came apart
of a piece in Oxford, 1950.
I want to say we are sisters. Yes.
I want to share a present tense with you. A name.
I want to say we are sisters as temperature and wind, loneliness
among friends. The lines of a poem that do not come.
Learning to survive. Staying or returning
to survive.
Your political predictions went on without you,
your stone letters in the hand of a Chinese peasant general.
Pushing yourself back into memory,
you stared us down by the power of your Colorado earth.
Now I wake with the taste of what you tasted
in my mouth.
Misery when the call comes in to join, mesh,
submerge and reemerge in groups of men. The flowers of defeat.
Need, your circular letters open doors
to those who put them, unopened, on the “maybe” pile.
I wonder about my journals, Agnes,
who will take my salted tongue.
What time is it, please? Will the new encyclopedia
hold the necessary entry?
Deep in pockets I shove my fisted hands,
clenched images. Yan’an or Esteli.
People who did not look darker or smaller to us.
People. Their eyes open.
The lie comes home to sleep. No one forgets.
It happened on the first day of all our dreams.
:: Margaret Randall, in Calling Home: Working Class Women’s Writings (1990)
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