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