Marsh Hawk Review, Spring 2009
edited by Thomas Fink
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
William Allegrezza
Tom Beckett
Sigman Byrd
Patricia Carlin
Jennifer Kwon Dobbs
Denise Duhamel
Kristen Gallagher
Noah Eli Gordon
Carlos Hiraldo
Amy King
Basil King
Mary Mackey
Sandy McIntosh
Stephen Paul Miller
Sheila E. Murphy
Tammy Nuzzo-Morgan
Akilah Oliver
Tim Peterson
Sean Singer
Juanita Torrence-Thompson
Geoffrey Young
Mark Young
First Issue: Marsh Hawk Review, Fall 2008
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
William Allegrezza
William Allegrezza
A Field to Rend
the unbecoming words shift
with no new beginning
with no ledges full or smoke blowing
clear skies people walking
with no one speaking our
certain lineage quietly stated
in back corners among the
curious handsomely forgotten
companions of here.
still nomadic then and fighting
the fences the degreed ranks
the unknowing slips through
in a anti all the while this yes
a defensive cover protecting
an infant ideal.
with your arguments i agree
but my place is scuttling
among tables partially hearing
logical conversations under
the mast and wondering
if anyone sees the garlands
spinning in flood waters rising.
to be a poet as the iron eye
one must continue misunderstanding
through song.
*****
Wishes
to be the iron eye
the green mast light
the pestilent vagabond
tumbler horse-groomer
wandering among
the perfumed evenings.
to be the seacoast veil
the raucous choir filled with
fanfare rivers trembling
dizziness and wide blue
mirrors.
to be the gray frenzy
the morning mad pressing electric
on the step covered with
questions stars camisoles
and steam.
to be the spoken sun
the sparkling arcane sphinx
gathering nocturnal silences
as laughter as ambiguity
as astonished altitude.
A Field to Rend
the unbecoming words shift
with no new beginning
with no ledges full or smoke blowing
clear skies people walking
with no one speaking our
certain lineage quietly stated
in back corners among the
curious handsomely forgotten
companions of here.
still nomadic then and fighting
the fences the degreed ranks
the unknowing slips through
in a anti all the while this yes
a defensive cover protecting
an infant ideal.
with your arguments i agree
but my place is scuttling
among tables partially hearing
logical conversations under
the mast and wondering
if anyone sees the garlands
spinning in flood waters rising.
to be a poet as the iron eye
one must continue misunderstanding
through song.
*****
Wishes
to be the iron eye
the green mast light
the pestilent vagabond
tumbler horse-groomer
wandering among
the perfumed evenings.
to be the seacoast veil
the raucous choir filled with
fanfare rivers trembling
dizziness and wide blue
mirrors.
to be the gray frenzy
the morning mad pressing electric
on the step covered with
questions stars camisoles
and steam.
to be the spoken sun
the sparkling arcane sphinx
gathering nocturnal silences
as laughter as ambiguity
as astonished altitude.
Tom Beckett
Tom Beckett
No Remainder
Space into
The effect.
One isn't
A set.
It's sketchier
Than that.
To blank
So much.
The present
Is static.
Withholding oneself
In language.
Whose wall
Of worlds.
Links inside
An outside.
Reality's lack
Of reality.
A not
The word.
No Remainder
Space into
The effect.
One isn't
A set.
It's sketchier
Than that.
To blank
So much.
The present
Is static.
Withholding oneself
In language.
Whose wall
Of worlds.
Links inside
An outside.
Reality's lack
Of reality.
A not
The word.
Sigman Byrd
Sigman Byrd
Diorama Against the End of History
On certain hot summer nights,
you can hear in the simmering
nets of leaves on maple trees
Immanuel Kant wind his pocket watch
or, if you listen carefully,
Charles Darwin tap his cane,
wondering perhaps
if this conspicuous season is
a major or minor outing.
Other nights the wind gets personal.
Branches snap, gusts of black rain pound
like a hurt so old and hallowed
you don’t remember where
it came from. What can you do
but sit on the porch and take
it all in? And what a view:
the scissor-cut of lightning,
a little boy soaked and running
for cover. The shattered twigs
and winged seeds of the past,
everything that mattered once,
that you tried to let go of,
still flying through the dark
forest of your thoughts.
*****
Here, Now
It happens
at the dim sum restaurant.
A waitress pulls up
with her cart of steaming
pork dumplings.
Char siu bao, my wife tells me.
Fluffy, snowy white buns
filled with Cantonese
barbeque. Mmm, I say,
nodding, as if all circuitous
paths led to this moment.
Thoughts drop away,
stillness
floods the synapses.
One could say,
I pay attention.
But those are just words.
Here, now, there is no I.
A plate of aromatic full moons
slides on the table.
Diorama Against the End of History
On certain hot summer nights,
you can hear in the simmering
nets of leaves on maple trees
Immanuel Kant wind his pocket watch
or, if you listen carefully,
Charles Darwin tap his cane,
wondering perhaps
if this conspicuous season is
a major or minor outing.
Other nights the wind gets personal.
Branches snap, gusts of black rain pound
like a hurt so old and hallowed
you don’t remember where
it came from. What can you do
but sit on the porch and take
it all in? And what a view:
the scissor-cut of lightning,
a little boy soaked and running
for cover. The shattered twigs
and winged seeds of the past,
everything that mattered once,
that you tried to let go of,
still flying through the dark
forest of your thoughts.
*****
Here, Now
It happens
at the dim sum restaurant.
A waitress pulls up
with her cart of steaming
pork dumplings.
Char siu bao, my wife tells me.
Fluffy, snowy white buns
filled with Cantonese
barbeque. Mmm, I say,
nodding, as if all circuitous
paths led to this moment.
Thoughts drop away,
stillness
floods the synapses.
One could say,
I pay attention.
But those are just words.
Here, now, there is no I.
A plate of aromatic full moons
slides on the table.
Patricia Carlin
Patricia Carlin
Mechanics
He had a turn for mechanics
(air / around him)
Tell me
hard, fortunate man:
How many miles on how many gallons?
*****
Mrs. Dalloway
1.
Like an illness withdrawing, or a candle exploring a bed, she went upstairs, paused at the side, came to the side. There was the green band and a sheet dripping. There was the pincushion bed; an attic apparel. Women must put off their rich attic room. At life they must disrobe. She pierced the heart, and laid her feathered yellow emptiness on the tap. The linoleum was clean, tight stretched in a broad white virginity from window to tower. Narrower and narrower would her child be. The nun was half burnt down, and she had read deep in Baron Marbot’s Memoirs.
2.
Only for a candle; but it was enough. It was a sudden hinge, a scissors like a woman which one tried to check, and then, as it spread, one yielded to its moments and rushed to the farthest moment and there quivered and felt the hard come closer, swollen with some astonishing close, some meaning of crocus, which split its thin match and gushed and poured with an extraordinary illumination over the moment and sores. Then for that crack, she had seen an alleviation, a skin burning in a rapture; an inner pressure almost expressed. But the significance withdrew; the world softened. It was over – the verge. Against such expansion (with blush, too) there contrasted (as she laid her significance down) the world and Baron Marbot and the verge half-burnt.
[This poem is made of two permutated and otherwise altered passages from Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway. ]
*****
Is It A Generation?
Is it a generation?
Will masterpiece after reverence
turn with generation to the birdseye scholar?
Page of the frozen leap –
Fish of the leap that has disappeared –
They also swerve
Who serve
A dish
Of standard pinkness of plank in the river
[Permutated and otherwise altered version of Archibald MacLeish, “The Snowflake Which is Now and Hence Forever.”]
Mechanics
He had a turn for mechanics
(air / around him)
Tell me
hard, fortunate man:
How many miles on how many gallons?
*****
Mrs. Dalloway
1.
Like an illness withdrawing, or a candle exploring a bed, she went upstairs, paused at the side, came to the side. There was the green band and a sheet dripping. There was the pincushion bed; an attic apparel. Women must put off their rich attic room. At life they must disrobe. She pierced the heart, and laid her feathered yellow emptiness on the tap. The linoleum was clean, tight stretched in a broad white virginity from window to tower. Narrower and narrower would her child be. The nun was half burnt down, and she had read deep in Baron Marbot’s Memoirs.
2.
Only for a candle; but it was enough. It was a sudden hinge, a scissors like a woman which one tried to check, and then, as it spread, one yielded to its moments and rushed to the farthest moment and there quivered and felt the hard come closer, swollen with some astonishing close, some meaning of crocus, which split its thin match and gushed and poured with an extraordinary illumination over the moment and sores. Then for that crack, she had seen an alleviation, a skin burning in a rapture; an inner pressure almost expressed. But the significance withdrew; the world softened. It was over – the verge. Against such expansion (with blush, too) there contrasted (as she laid her significance down) the world and Baron Marbot and the verge half-burnt.
[This poem is made of two permutated and otherwise altered passages from Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway. ]
*****
Is It A Generation?
Is it a generation?
Will masterpiece after reverence
turn with generation to the birdseye scholar?
Page of the frozen leap –
Fish of the leap that has disappeared –
They also swerve
Who serve
A dish
Of standard pinkness of plank in the river
[Permutated and otherwise altered version of Archibald MacLeish, “The Snowflake Which is Now and Hence Forever.”]
Jennifer Kwon Dobbs
Jennifer Kwon Dobbs
Punk Rock Despot
for Iro
Sartorial decree requires a punk rock despot to retire
To red rooms bedecked with Turkish lamps and stardust retinue.
His jaunty chin poised Merovingian and taste for velour attire
Dismisses parties in the hills. He asks, "How to make it new?"
To red rooms bedecked with Turkish lamps and stardust retinue.
Draped in satins per their station, they sip and sparkle
Dismissing parties in the hills. He sighs, "How to make it new?"
When no one writes an honest review. Candor, that's a debacle,
A drapery of satins airing on a public station to sip and sparkle
With talk of who knows whom. He wants to be a maker of rules
That one must write an honest review. Candor, no longer a debacle,
Could reinvent a love song, save FM radio from industry fools
Talking about who knows them. He wants to rescind their rule.
His jaunty chin poised Merovingian and taste for velour attire
Could reinvent a love song, save FM radio from industry tools
Like sartorial decrees requiring a punk rock despot to retire.
*****
Cote d’Âzur
(Postcard: 2 January 1915)
We stand on the pier watching the sea’s threats
Shatter like chandeliers against the shore.
Indifferent to love’s stratagems, it stores
All the gifts of glass and shell endearments
In a drawer of dunes to forget June fetes
Of parasols, rusted crab pails and more
Coral hauled up from the sea’s showroom floor.
The sea vows pearls if the shore will relent.
Ann, tides are rushing to take us again
Into the flux on which the ships depend
To carry their cargo of hope and grief.
At the water’s edge, we’re not new to gain
Or time’s ledger of loss. We can’t pretend
Anymore. I ship out tonight. Kiss me.
Punk Rock Despot
for Iro
Sartorial decree requires a punk rock despot to retire
To red rooms bedecked with Turkish lamps and stardust retinue.
His jaunty chin poised Merovingian and taste for velour attire
Dismisses parties in the hills. He asks, "How to make it new?"
To red rooms bedecked with Turkish lamps and stardust retinue.
Draped in satins per their station, they sip and sparkle
Dismissing parties in the hills. He sighs, "How to make it new?"
When no one writes an honest review. Candor, that's a debacle,
A drapery of satins airing on a public station to sip and sparkle
With talk of who knows whom. He wants to be a maker of rules
That one must write an honest review. Candor, no longer a debacle,
Could reinvent a love song, save FM radio from industry fools
Talking about who knows them. He wants to rescind their rule.
His jaunty chin poised Merovingian and taste for velour attire
Could reinvent a love song, save FM radio from industry tools
Like sartorial decrees requiring a punk rock despot to retire.
*****
Cote d’Âzur
(Postcard: 2 January 1915)
We stand on the pier watching the sea’s threats
Shatter like chandeliers against the shore.
Indifferent to love’s stratagems, it stores
All the gifts of glass and shell endearments
In a drawer of dunes to forget June fetes
Of parasols, rusted crab pails and more
Coral hauled up from the sea’s showroom floor.
The sea vows pearls if the shore will relent.
Ann, tides are rushing to take us again
Into the flux on which the ships depend
To carry their cargo of hope and grief.
At the water’s edge, we’re not new to gain
Or time’s ledger of loss. We can’t pretend
Anymore. I ship out tonight. Kiss me.
Denise Duhamel
Denise Duhamel
Violenza Sessuale
There is a man with a purple beard—
a viola (in Italian) beard. A viola (in English)
under his chin. He is playing a song
full of violence, his head bobbing,
his purple whiskers tangled in the strings.
He whispers, “violenza sessuale,”
a sensual violence, an Italian euphemism for rape.
He is Bluebird, but purple. He is purple prose
with a Purple Heart even though his bow
saws away at the viola’s strings,
saws away at his own wounds and hers,
until there isn’t music anymore.
*****
Dear Enemy
We’re in the heartland, eating huevos con chorizo in Tacos El Pueblito, at one of the three tables with wicker chairs. The day laborers crowd onto a few stools at the counter ordering iced tea, waiting for their takeout. I contemplate a forkful of the best refried beans I’ve ever had. Nick is extolling the virtues of the homemade chips when Lou Dobbs comes on CNN. The salmonella outbreak has finally been linked to jalapenos grown in Mexico, and Dobbs is fit to be tied. The daughter of the restaurant’s owner stands on a stepladder in front of the cash register and scribbles on a pad. Baby brother kicks his bare feet in a car seat behind her. I look around to see no one is listening to the TV but Nick and me. The men at the counter are laughing about something, the owner sponging down the checkered tablecloth beside us. On the wall is a bas-relief of a Mexican village. The owners have painted “Nebraska City” over the door of what looks like a restaurant. First cantaloupe from Honduras, then the tomato scare, says Lou. The grandmother, the cook, comes out of the kitchen fanning herself. Though she doesn’t speak English, when she sees Dobb’s face, she grabs the remote. Before we can say, Please, Lou, shut up, you’re embarrassing us, abuelita clicks to the telenovella, Querida Enemiga. The little girl stops doodling and looks to the screen. The main character Lorena has fled the rural orphanage for Mexico City where she becomes a famous chef—and, unbeknownst to her, winds up working for her millionaire grandmother who abandoned her all those years ago.
Violenza Sessuale
There is a man with a purple beard—
a viola (in Italian) beard. A viola (in English)
under his chin. He is playing a song
full of violence, his head bobbing,
his purple whiskers tangled in the strings.
He whispers, “violenza sessuale,”
a sensual violence, an Italian euphemism for rape.
He is Bluebird, but purple. He is purple prose
with a Purple Heart even though his bow
saws away at the viola’s strings,
saws away at his own wounds and hers,
until there isn’t music anymore.
*****
Dear Enemy
We’re in the heartland, eating huevos con chorizo in Tacos El Pueblito, at one of the three tables with wicker chairs. The day laborers crowd onto a few stools at the counter ordering iced tea, waiting for their takeout. I contemplate a forkful of the best refried beans I’ve ever had. Nick is extolling the virtues of the homemade chips when Lou Dobbs comes on CNN. The salmonella outbreak has finally been linked to jalapenos grown in Mexico, and Dobbs is fit to be tied. The daughter of the restaurant’s owner stands on a stepladder in front of the cash register and scribbles on a pad. Baby brother kicks his bare feet in a car seat behind her. I look around to see no one is listening to the TV but Nick and me. The men at the counter are laughing about something, the owner sponging down the checkered tablecloth beside us. On the wall is a bas-relief of a Mexican village. The owners have painted “Nebraska City” over the door of what looks like a restaurant. First cantaloupe from Honduras, then the tomato scare, says Lou. The grandmother, the cook, comes out of the kitchen fanning herself. Though she doesn’t speak English, when she sees Dobb’s face, she grabs the remote. Before we can say, Please, Lou, shut up, you’re embarrassing us, abuelita clicks to the telenovella, Querida Enemiga. The little girl stops doodling and looks to the screen. The main character Lorena has fled the rural orphanage for Mexico City where she becomes a famous chef—and, unbeknownst to her, winds up working for her millionaire grandmother who abandoned her all those years ago.
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