I
The East End
Bonesy never seemed to mind
his old man staggering home
careening from post to car to door
zigzag cadence, leading downhill
from Happy Grill.
II
Happy Grill
Its beery smell
settles out of a dark doorway
where sticky wooden floors hold them.
Them—
the ones always there;
men – only men
unimportant outside
but with a place here
a welcome.
Time suspends
as they step in
familiar
and watch their glasses
slowing sips as a whole day waits
with too much time.
FLOW POETRY IN HUE, VIETNAM
for Adam
You speak to your ancestors
lying in shallow graves
mulched over by jungle.
You speak to alligators
and elephants, creatures
life spans longer than yours.
You speak to huddled mothers,
black-eyed babies who utter
never a word or cry.
You speak to bamboo winds,
hollow temples, dynasties fallen
and long forgotten.
You speak to fog-shrouded mountains,
roiling muddy Mekong River,
a black market dog tag.
You speak to rows of mildewed books
in a dozen languages, histories
yearning to be heard.
The raucous birds speak to you:
Go back home or we will use your dreads
to feather our lonely nests.
AND IF PAIN BECOMES A POEM . . .
I am full of poetry.
Poetry screams from every pore of my body.
My right ankle cracks poems so loudly
a microphone twenty feet away picks up the sound.
My left elbow tightens hard enough
I cannot bend it to write a poem without a rough
shake. Electric pings course through my chest,
irregular rhythms, like free verse, thrum inside a fat breast.
(man tits . . . the worst kind of poetic pain!)
Clumsy fingers struggle to write a refrain.
Dimming eyes spill tears, these inky words,
bright flashes of images vanish, go unheard.
Yes, I could continue this medical literary litany
and if pain becomes a true poem, I will die saintly.
COWARDS
I see them on the news.
The scary people.
The scared people.
The people who think of nothing
but themselves.
Who watch as the chaos mounts.
The people who have built
their survival tombs,
stocked with enough food and ammunition
to last as long as necessary . . . until
the last not-one-of-us has fallen
and they can come out again.
These are the cowards.
The true cowards,
for they have the means to change
the situation,
to take charge
and avert the damnation.
But they won’t.
Because they are hollow.
They are too selfish.
They are too scared.
It is their own fear
that will doom them.
They will become nothing
but shadows
wandering
a destroyed land.
Park View Drive rests at an early hour,
without tell-tale traffic
and before the sun better reveals
more recent influences.
Its stick built homes, in an older style,
date between the great wars
and upon brief observation
offer the appearance of days gone by.
Any original owners have long since departed.
The cedar roofs are also gone,
as are their more modern replacements
and even the replacements of those as well.
Near one end of the avenue
a figure steps from a clapboard colonial
and into the half-lit calm
of an emergent morning.
Though once considered a newcomer,
the Professor, as he is called,
and his equally credentialed spouse
have been in residence for many years.
In the past it was his practice
to enjoy long, vigorous walks
out through the neighborhood,
up the steep climb to the Reservoir, and around.
These days, he does not get far,
shuffling but a few doors from his own
before slowly coming about
and retracing his tentative steps.
The professor is a genial fellow,
viewed as neighborly and polite,
but in his current condition
he walks early and sometimes unnoticed,
thus avoiding inquiries as to his health
as he ponders his weakened state,
his hapless knees, eroding joints
and feet unwilling to convey their exact location
Which is of course a metaphor pointing out
disparities in function and form, and the dangers
inherent in assumption: despite its cute appearance,
the male platypus delivers venom through an ankle
spur on a hind limb; samba with one at your own
peril. My friend wanted to build a catapult, but I
convinced him that trebuchets more efficiently
demolish walls. Instead, he experimented with atlatls,
before reverting to his favorite compound bow. The
fly swatter remains my weapon of choice, followed
closely by steel toe boots. I have yet to meet a scorpion
whose armor could withstand them, but I would never
stomp a platypus without first determining its intentions
and seeking mediation, perhaps through handwritten
correspondence. Pencils owe their origin to the lead
stylus, which eventually morphed into the wood-cased
graphite tool we now use. In his day, Thoreau was better
known for pencil-making than cabin-building. Arthritic
joints prevent me from writing by hand, but I saw lumber
when necessary. According to Ovid, Talos, nephew of
Daedalus, invented the saw, using either a fish jaw or spine
as the model. I look at my food before eating, but the
platypus dives with closed eyes, and locates meals by
detecting electric currents through its bill. In considering
form, I assume function. But we know what that means.
Read more "ROBERT OKAJI – I DANCED WITH A PLATYPUS TWENTY YEARS BACK"You rolled and roiled like a deep thing,
a miniature whale or submarine,
a shark with ten thousand teeth,
the lighted jelly, pearl jammed
beneath, and spray and sway, disattached
like kelp wreaths. The tune you leak
swashes across your siren sigh
then grunts like the rock topped seal.
I cast out, but the pole don’t dip
then the oars can’t beat. The bilge
slime shines a blinding beam
so even the gull won’t come to eat.
The dinghy swirls and bangs the alarm
bell, mad to be further lost at sea.
Read more "JARED PEARCE – MY RESPONSE TO WHEN YOU ASKED HOW I SLEPT LAST NIGHT"I knew a woman in a wheelchair,
lived in a clapboard house,
with a lawn she somehow trimmed.
and a garden she kept well-tended.
And another had breast cancer.
She wrote letters to all her friends
in the brief nauseous pauses
between radiation treatments.
Another had five kids
and a husband who walked out
but somehow put food on their table
and a roof over their head.
Another got a degree in some branch of science
and the consensus of her male friends was that
“I didn’t know women went in for
that sort of thing.”
Of course, there was the one
who was forever trying to hide
the bruises on her face with makeup,
stayed with her abuser.
And another who hated herself so much
she sat around the house all day,
getting fatter and fatter
so she could hate herself the more.
From the start, there was need for women.
And a physiology to go with it.
Life was incomplete. There was a vacuum.
And then all kinds started filling it.
Read more "JOHN GRAY – I KNEW A WOMAN"Word up. Yo.
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Sewanee Review refused.
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“Doody” someplace in stanza 3.
Send us your poem nobody
understands but it’s got sexy.
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and that’s the longest
any poetry journal has ever lasted
in the history of poetry journals.
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