I stop at an invisible barrier and turn around because
at that point there is nothing, no reason for being there.
But before going, grim-eyed I cast a final look back
at the open way which soon will be behind me
and curse the infernal glass through which I am shown
all i can never have, but could have had [...]
Monthly Archives: July 2009
The Promise of Progress
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Beethoven
The ineffable forces that seethe and stew in the primeval
regions of becoming, manifest in striking movements
immitigable and sudden as brilliant bolts of lightning that
leave ineradicable scars on the deaf and senseless
who cry shrilly until their throats tire to know they are heard,
that one mortal being in this oblivious throng can hear,
by being grabbed and held [...]
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Red Purple
the red purple of an under-lip
glossed with saliva, sheened
in the light when the lip was
pinched and folded down.
the gruesome faced dilated stare
was blind in the eyes’ blaring
myopic vision of shimmering rainbows
in the capacious bellies of wineglasses
standing on their round mouths on
a white table cloth. the face blanched
suddenly worried that those seated
around were watching, judging
and the [...]
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Black Flakes (from the German of Celan)
Lightless snow is fallen. A moon
or two has revolved since autumn, cloaked like a monk
brought scrawled a message on a leaf from the piles of Ukraine:
“Understand that the land is under winter
for the thousandth time here, where the widest river flows:
The saintly blood of Jakob, given the axes’ benediction…
Ice of unearthly reds – their assassin [...]
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“Right, uhuh, sure grandma”
On the shelf next to porcelain figurines
is grandma’s collection of bottles of sand
labeled with the names of beaches far away from
her rustic New England house in the room
that she named after the region where
the family would go on trips each summer
when all the kids were still more or less pre-adolescents,
and going the whole year unsaid, [...]
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The thin branched sparsely leaved tree’s shadow cast
through streaked glass in the moony light of a patio lamp
quivers like whispers heard from down a hall,
trembles like gabbled loud-voiced murmurings
melded together in an expansive dining room,
and goes still the way someone, having made her point
leaning back and listening for the reply, goes silent.
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neither happy nor sad
the laundry hung over the line to dry
on the roof of a building blows slowly
with the wind insouciant, picked up and carried
the single strand of a pending silk worm
swings in space in a trunk-crowded wood
if there were eyes they would see it glint
and disappear at varying angles to the sun
neither happy [...]
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scene
the trees besetting the blurry magazine stand
whose racks of attractive purples and cerulean hues
frame it so starkly against the back-
ground – a gray wire-mesh fence -
seem to grow deader the longer their branches reach,
the less green their seasonal leaves hang.
the vendor sitting on bundled stacks
of unread papers destined for
the hollow delivery truck
chews gum obliviously.
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the purdahs
by noon all the purdahs in the swank part of town
have been drawn down and pinned against the off chance
some impertinent wind having transgressed the laws
of physical possibility by blowing through solid walls
might part drapes enough to allow the men sitting
on floored persian rugs on their sides of the partitions
their eyes agog and their tongues [...]
Little Sisyphus on an Outing with Cousins
When the door slammed he realized he’d not
been expecting this moment to come so soon.
It seemed when he saw them awhile ago
that the cousins he was going on the outing with
would take much longer to get ready
and that he would have much more time
to sit alone and indulge in feeling
that he didn’t want to go; [...]
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