ISSN 1542-3123 Jun '03 [Home] Poetry Between Strands of the Hammock — Editors' Preface |
. | . | . | A Apostle ~ Madeline Artenberg | Empty Music ~ Marisabel Bonet | The Magic of Cinema ~ surely this must be ~ Denver Butson | Corner the Dakota ~ Tobias Deehan | 'The Moon Lies Fair Upon the Straits' ~ Robert Klein Engler | Plot ~ Reprieve ~ Behind the Window ~ Joan Fiset | Foul Thunder of Moments ~ David Geer | My Longshore Captain ~ Patrick Henry | Blacksmith ~ This Close to Earth ~ Maureen Holm | Back Home ~ Nicholas Johnson | My Heart Disappears Among the Trees ~ Dave King | Tally My Life Against the Backdrop; Make Its Speaker Unknown for the Assembly ~ Bobbi Lurie Photo: Jacob Holdt B Memorial Day, Hull Village ~ Brant Lyon | Neither Sad Nor Joyous ~ Paul McGlynn | Her Young Death, Loose in You ~ Amy Meckler | Nuzzling Wind ~ Baruch November | A Radio Caller Praising the Revival of Drive-In Theaters ~ Ron Price | Waking to a Dream of Thunderstorm I Write to a Poet a Long Time Dead ~ Sam Rasnake | Souvenir of a Closed Rite ~ Houses Without Gardens Without Stone Walls ~ Laura Sherwood Rudish | This Season of Moths ~ Denise Rue | To a Canvas Painter: If It Fits ~ Henry Louis Shifrin | The Poet Whom Language Abandoned ~ Zach Sussman | never read alone by the sea ~ George Wallace | Post-Nuptial Syndrome ~ Confirmed Bachelor ~ Jim Whelden ~ . ~ . ~ Apostle Madeline Artenberg Bless me, Mother, for you are gone and I still sin in the hallowed halls of cinema; nay, I am wiped clean after each showing. Like an apostle, I followed you, Mother, followed you, queen of the double feature, followed you into forgetting, forgetting myself, forgetting you, forgetting hard edges. You taught me to bless the moving image: sweet and tart fruits doled out in two-hour portions; you taught me to slip into other skins as easily as we slipped daily into disappearing. There was no need for the talk that remained a promise— the cinema sirens showed me the game. Natalie, Doris, Elizabeth, wiggly Marilyn, bad girls and good, seduced by rock-hard jaws. There was no need for your seesaw rules— I learned the commandments from jewel thieves, double agents, pregnant nuns; rule number one—never get caught. When the show was over, we'd walk the two miles home, pink slowly fading from your flushed face, puffy mouth and eyes receding into rigid lines; your love for cinema tucked back inside a place I could no longer find. When the show was over, I returned to wanting what you could not reach. I returned to the waiting, waiting to live, waiting to sin, waiting to be cleansed in the hallowed cinema of beginnings, middles, ends. ~ . ~ Empty Music Marisabel Bonet That your hands collapsed upon the piano, so white— your nails moons of platinum a breath away from full, so empty. That your nails, if peeled and lifted from skin, would hurt— the blood coagulated circles of the roundels you and I danced in your patio where weeds suffocated even damp water. That those circles return to tint the piano and the music you taught me— How it flees to avoid the hollow circumference of eyelids and swaying, of overstated emotion from half-closed lips as your grasp my shoulder just as I sway upon the door after the wake, left full, yet empty: the keys, the white, the blood and the music, as coffins filled with water. ~ . ~ The Magic of Cinema Denver Butson the projectionist put the second reel on backwards and then fell asleep and now birds are flying upside down and backwards across what must have once been the white sky it all makes sense though somehow at midnight in this abandoned movie house with the projectionist sure that his life is falling apart and nobody except the homely ticket girl out there in the dark weeping in the last row. ~ . surely this must be Denver Butson a bicycle through rain is a silent movie called thursday is what I think I will call you if I can call you anything but bicycle through rain is a difficult name so perhaps I'll simply call you thursday a silent movie of a bicycle through rain its spray of tires over wet road suggested by the projector's breath ~ . ~ Corner the Dakota 72nd & Central Park West Tobias Deehan Some men's singing time is when they are gashing themselves, some when they are gashing others. —John Marin in a letter to Stieglitz And the singer was talking something about heaven and no one was listening. Get it right, Jesus didn't live in this time. Subway prophets holding paperback bibles. Has every generation, a messiah keep, pushing persona, turning over, under gears, sliding clouds through fishing net? Less and less, it is us, talking to ourselves. So helpless a return reply. It's not happiness I can give you. If John Lennon, you heard his God, know this, it is only peace. Your son Julian has seen it, the neglect, the nightingale down and down away. Which one wasn't given seed to plant, tree to take root? Flowers grow to surround, to shattered fish, where mothers pile outright off aluminum rails, brush color strokes left from open hands. We grow deaf, smashing the mallet of apple headlines, full of gun fire, producing, crippling and mutilating the children. We are nothing miraculous. Too short our souls open when one side a fool, the other a criminal, become is cut down. Take you down, if you can hear any god, know that all is, only peace and the difference it makes. ~ . ~ 'The Moon Lies Fair Upon the Straits' Robert Klein Engler When asked what lies beyond the hills, the guide replied, "Just more hills." So like the young to proffer wisdom and yet not know. Now, alone, he sees the sun's last fire above the line that sea and sky define to make a subtle bow of pastel blue. Later, comes the fog, then to the bar for drinks. The classic elements of fire, earth, water and air assemble here, along with echoes of the ancient arts. Ahead, are footprints of some couple, let's suppose, then froth from off the waves glides up to smooth the sand that is the tan of adolescent flesh, oiled and waiting for a hand to knead it into sleep. He has a room alone. The windows face the sea. The sound of gulls and the rush of waves issues through the curtains that stumble in the breeze. They set a bowl of fruit on the table by the balcony— grapes, a pineapple, bananas, just this reminds him of a name and the daring words of his desire. He wonders at those hours recalled, as melodies drift up from dancers by the pool, and laughing children with wet feet skip down the tiled hall. After roasted duck with demi glace, merlot as red as blood, and the aura of a vision beyond their scope, he writes, "The rarest love is empty of all hope." ~ . ~ Plot Joan Fiset White paint. Stepladder on the floor and the brush slaps back and forth. This is a house where the story begins; how smooth the curving banister, and tip toe down the stairs. Lace informs the whispers here, intricate as the shadows cast: hand held over her mouth. She is the one who promised, golden locket on a chain where boats parade in silence. Early morning's waning moon a backward crescent through the trees. Trace of breath the sun devoured waits beside the door. ~ . Reprieve Joan Fiset Alert to nuances of summer: shade and lingering, fragrant trees. Unless the wind arrives, this stillness will surround her for hours like the measured rhythms of clocks, their echo in a hallway's shadowed light. Interference passes through her mind, bubbles wafting. She will ignore them, focus on the patterned grass. Behind her eyes their turning sings, Here are rooms, they breathe, open doorways into dark. ~ . Behind the Window Joan Fiset What she lost was years ago in a territory without the sound of rivers. There are stones arranged on the windowsill, their edges smooth and undefined. This stillness remains like dust on a shelf, undisturbed and sifting in light antique as old photographs: a woman in long skirts squinting at the sun wears a flowered hat. Even now she thinks how long it's been since she felt collected and tries to let you know this, her hand on the hat, white glove holding the brim. ~ . ~ Foul Thunder of Moments David Geer Time rains droplets of emotion on our hearts Wets the appetites of our lusts Then dissipates Before we drink their fill. The downpour of a hundred pertinent feelings Pools in our midst We reach to taste them all Despite the base pollution of earth encasing. We miss the pool for a puddle The puddle for a sip The sip for a drop The drop to catch our breath. When we are unprepared Life penetrates us with a thousand laughs and heartaches In a foul thunder of moments Of power and significance. Too many to absorb Filling us, drowning us Until we want less of life. Our hearts open Bleed off excess In tears that we rain back. ~ . ~ My Longshore Captain Patrick Henry My longshore captain moves in a great circle Through northern waters to the tropic East; A course of events set by the roads he travelled, Drawn by trade or conflicts opening worlds to his gaze, Still seen in that hard light and heard in lilted tones Hauled from the Tyne out of coal-pits and iron-working yards. Before then being raised on the coast of Donegal Where peat-smoke smarted wide eyes lulled by Celt dreams Rubbed back open now to dispel disbelief That real lands could prove so vivid as imagined If discovered by a mind fresh as a straight dawn channel Down shafts of light that clearly value every man. Though keen alerts never sent me to those fated shores Where dragoons, gunners, trawlships had brought him, Still I saw through his early eyes the worth of lands Where other lives are reached to treat just as our own. Seeing him nights on the Amazon matched to this helmsman's care Or steaming by the Bombay coast, or Arctic fjords where ink even froze Cold as Villon's well, I stored hot words underway to tell My longshore captain moves in a great circle. [Poet François Villon was stuck in describing the great freeze of 1461 because his inkwell had frozen, in Le Grand Testament.—PH] ~ . ~ Blacksmith Maureen Holm The young one drove the nail so deep he lamed me for a summer. The old one knelt to trim, knew quick from cuticle chip from bone roughshod from hobbled. The girl held the pail, spilling tears on withers, longing on curry comb. ~ . This Close to Earth Maureen Holm (for Sumner Bates, May 2001) Take me to his hayfield; I want to see it for myself, want to squint in the patches where July shone hottest on his back, walk the rows that parted at the turning of his wheel. Love felt this close to earth is animal. Though finished weeping for this afternoon, contained, I paw and whinny, toss my head and balk at the turning of the wheel. Love lost this close to earth is bestial. Insistent to be fed and watered on it, come darkness, I will kick down my stall. ~ . ~ Back Home Nicholas Johnson nothing much has changed. The insects ping against the bellied screen that then stayed open more than closed, swung creaking and snapped back like those doors will do that belong mostly to the poor. Swung by children and the ones who'd rather not porch it, yet know of the attendant charm, rocker and swing, watching the light settle down into another evening as the guns of Aberdeen boom out to remind us— this is still the 20th Century. The acres of corn look more under water every day, and August is souring the hay with unexpected rain. The one you'd like to talk to is sitting with the rest and there are two lanterns on the table and the folks sit around hunching and sprawled in a turn that suits them. You might have considered it a triumph on another day to fall asleep with your face in your plate, with all the heat bugs whining tomorrow's weather. About the time someone takes out their teeth to get comfortable, the lights are going out. Up in that damp bed, you are lying there as if you knew there is no good reason to go back where you came from, or to go on, and no possibility of doing either, but still not wanting to close your eyes, to bed down in that perpetual, for-the-night way, which is what you ought to be doing if you ever want to look at the morning like it was going to be morning, and not the beginning of the same old day. (Prior publ.: Confrontation) ~ . ~ My Heart Disappears Among the Trees Dave King I was in the shower when I saw my heart Crossing the yard in a fluorescent vest. I wiped away a swathe of condensation and tapped The glass, and my heart waved back. Where are you going, Heart? To check The hunting/fishing signs along the creek? Are you walking the old railroad track Where there's a new house now, with a corral For ponies? Are you gathering wood? I can dry myself and shave without my heart. Check my profile in the mirror, suck in my gut, Stick out my ass. Make coffee, dress—it's pleasant Here with no one but the cats, and I can get Some reading done before my heart bursts in again, And stamps the mud from the treads of its heavy-soled shoes. ~ . ~ Tally My Life against the Backdrop; Make Its Speaker Unknown for the Assembly Bobbi Lurie Hope is a subtle glutton.—Emily Dickinson To be invisible and forgotten To be scurried along the waterways Of conversation pressed into walls Like paper was why she lived in the cabin Stopped answering the phone Silence made the blue noon hard Silence and the view of the trees The yearning made her Want to step into the glare The deer outside her window stopped to drink She watched them from the sink where she prepared Elixirs of juices (beta carotene from the carrots Calcium from the kale) Went to her table to write Words unspeakable in other people's rooms Though she imagined someone listening She could not see his face But imagined him inside her cabin standing in the room Without photographs or plants a room Blank as the page before her Sometimes the words wouldn't come And it hurt she needed a mirror The deer could not reflect her Not even in the curve of their backs Or the way their eyes stared back without derision Not even in their musk smell But she wrote her words for them On paper scraps like crumbs And left them near the pond in a deep white dish Stood watching for when the slanted script would be nibbled at ~ . ~ . ~ B |