Marsh Hawk Review

MARSH HAWK REVIEW SPRING 2011

2011-03-08T01:59:00.000-08:00

EDITOR: EILEEN R. TABIOS

TABLE OF CONTENTS
(You may click on the poets' names to go directly to the poems, or simply scroll down.)

Barry Schwabsky
“Falling Asleep at the Movies” and “Gathering Darkness”

Rebecca Loudon
“The light ate too much of me” and “The Whore ACT 5: SCENE 5”

Michael Leong
“MENU IN CHINGLISH”

Anne Gorrick
“R & F Iridescents”

Guillermo Parra
“Maps”

Susan M. Schultz
from “From 'Memory Cards: Ashbery Series'”

Bruce Covey
“Psalm of Fruit & Echoes” and “Innings”

Lynn Behrendt
“Ezrasure”

Mark Lamoreaux
“I AM THE HALO THAT HOVERS ABOVE THE HEAD OF PAUL DELAROCHE’S 'YOUNG MARTYR' LIKE A FLYING SAUCER”

Sheila Murphy
Two from "American Ghazals"

Jon Curley
“Metafizzles” and “Profiles”

Tamiko Beyer
“Genderland” and “Sirens”

Paul Pines
“WHISTLER’S BLUE/ A NOCTURNE” and “WALKING RAMPART STREET”

Jean Vengua
“KNOWING, EVENTUALLY” and “AT THE BORDER”

Mark Young
“A line from Adrienne Rich” and “A line from Virginia Woolf”

Aileen Ibardaloza
“Tea in the Sahara”

Daniel Morris
“I’m Johnny Cash” and “A Message to S.D. Jones”

Anny Ballardini
“Another 1 For My Father” and “THE ABC OF JOBS: And Their Connections in an Elementary Interwoven Intertextuality”

[All works copyright of authors. The editor thanks the poets for sharing their poems.]

'

BARRY SCHWABSKY

2011-03-07T23:30:00.000-08:00

Falling Asleep at the Movies

Rain filled the 20th century
a piano burning and in the foreground
the radio set, the suicide cart
set some light in tatters

not as much fun for God
but at least can’t you squint at it
the wrecker of cities flew in on waves of pictures
and noticed air molecules wandering

you know how those telephone poets coo
you said their names have no destination
and what is this strange sky
filled with armies of fireflies.

***

Gathering Darkness

Hard to imagine but I never die
punitive starbursts last forever

the inattention of art
pulls mistakes from the depths of the sky

decoys of live birds tethered, blinded, or maimed
“What a dump!” in a voice over my shoulder

time ground down to sand
measure out a line as far

as its fate will go
truthless, tender

what wants to crash in the eyes of others
where otherwise would be nothing

spread the blood over my pulse
in your previously unpublished translation

how shadows flash past divination
if you only knew how haggard I was

a corpse dressed in honey
a corpse backed by birds.

'

REBECCA LOUDON

2011-03-07T23:15:00.000-08:00

The light ate too much of me

I gave smallest permission
ants streamed and valved
set about their destiny
with precision and very little cursing
wanting to make it happen

like in the movies then you catapulted
under what spell
I hung from the dock on orange bungees
counted jellyfish a child in the back seat
on the way to her first drive-in The Ice Queen

waved my hands in phosphor
bright ambulance doors
kelp tangled my ankles
cried a nuisance did you see my did you
an empty syringe refuse the lush grass

reeled undressed gardenias
smashed their mouths against glass
you became a fox alight along the edge
of my animal face sweat on my palms
pooled on my belly your most terrible

tongue in the sugar box slow and quick
I killed my chest’s engine
what I mean is gardenias your mother’s red braid
her foxtail coat your voice
inside the pink clock

November smelled of heartland and prairies
battered in the infantry
let my lippy me be stolen by a witch
nothing was more private than our pink
pink happy your breath pure in half air

***

ACT 5 SCENE 5

The Whore

[an owl shrieks speaks]

All night I painted brain tumors
with Israeli scorpion venom yellow
neurotoxins on the stub-toothed man
during surgery I removed fruit
but failed to remove the cancer
which looked like part of his brain or
a key lime
a meyer lemon
a blood orange
a satsuma
a fortuna

[blueprint of my sexual attractants]

his hand stroked my foot an overturned truck
I feigned sleep an entire year
approached the hole in his scalp
where he broke down
a child’s birthday trick

the pony gave out viscous drops slid off the tip
cream-colored pony kitchen pipes clanked
November in the rills plagued by tangled hair
because that kind of surprise always jumps from an alley
whispering in an attempt to appear normal I made the bed
flung the sheet so hard it snapped the glasses off my face

crocodiles removed their cigars
chyme spread in a heart-shaped puddle
his name was odd the top of his head
flapped like a prop hat
in Waiting for Lefty
I applauded from the audience dressed
in my slip my slippers my
slip slippery slip

'

MICHAEL LEONG

2011-03-07T23:00:00.000-08:00

MENU IN CHINGLISH

for John Yau

monolithic tree mushroom stem squid

braised rainbow mangrove maw

double pronged rhizome berry pig sniper

shepherd’s sponge spigot

beef cheek ricochet

preserved duck eggplant implosion

pungent heliotrope of oyster pouch

salted forehead belly blossom

chicken web monad broth

silver fin swimming membrane flavor

retinal eel matrix

bamboo vertigo

triple tongue cocoon in tube sauce

gluteal libidinal shrimps

A note on the text: this poem was inspired by the phrase “monolithic tree mushroom stem squid” which occurs in the The New York Times article “Shanghai Is Trying to Untangle the Mangled English of Chinglish” (May 2, 2010).

'

ANNE GORRICK

2011-03-07T22:45:00.000-08:00

R&F Iridescents

            Her glance like crushed pearls

            She is mixed into transparency: ultramarine, Pthalos

            Money captures the evasive nature of silverness

            The usual greys in his German aluminum:

            tin bluish darkbrass

            A cool and light yellowish however

            Since copper is the iridescent version of him

            or a bronze that will not survive him

Beads naturally glance and flock around her neck like pearls

The crushed “has”

when transparent is mixed with possible

Money evades capture on his promontories

Very hotly, his deep money = tin

Darkness greys a metal blue

The thin light in however

Copper editions itself

            Grain like pearls, a naturally volatile view of crushed beads

            Transparency colors “such”

            Money’s silver forms imprisoned

            Copper in rainbow expenditure

            runs beautifully away from them

When our volatile views are crushed like pearls, like grain

Money adopts our escape

A silver form imprisons our pessimism

A grey in trouble, thin in many brasses

Copper waits nearby, its expense a darkred Mars

Ancient, ancient bronzes, an uncontinued brown

            Grain and pearl prospect in glass beads, in powder

            When painting is an example of transparency

            When iridescence is an escape from writing:

            volatile, pessimistic, aluminum, prospect

            A tight color troubles them in degree

            The light writes over him in a cold yellow application

            Pitch-stirrers, depth

            She waited very close to him, a copper expenditure

            Her red-dark ran advantageously around him

Her erasable prospects: grain or bead in flanged glass

She was corrected naturally with propellant

Which painting (for example) transparently mixes the rainbow with money?

A low form of captivity, this escaping in order to write

He forms normally an erasable pessimism

Brass is an actual intermediary between them

Clocks mix time up with depth and copper

They waited very closely together like copper plates

or old old bronzes

            Wheat like beads, flanged glass, a naturally corrected painting

            He is a transparent mix of Pthalos used to paint a uranium arc

            Absolutely boiling hot: your deep money

            The constant grey problems of his metals

            A very narrow definition of him

            as a stirrer of bitumens

Wheat and the prospect of pearls = the assumptions in painting

His transparent mixing with uranium in order to look like money

This captivity, this avoiding, this looks like writing

That very narrow him, an expenditure of darkness

He stirs her like bitumen

            Where the spheres attach for example

            Where the glass and flange were supposed to be

            He is as empty as a corrected image

            She decorates with pearls his transparency

            The happy arc of uranium that looks like money

            The body in captivity: written, supposed, avoids that

            He is systematically uninformed

            In brass meditation, the light written in yellowed grammar

            Narrow for the sake of editions

            Pitch stirred, asphalt desirable, without advantage

See where the spheres attach to her

The glass (a vacuum), a corrected image that decorates someone nearby

The body in captivity writes

As for the grey problems in his metals

He agitates in the launching of asphalts

She is stirred like pitch

She is one of the day’s copper favors

'

GUILLERMO PARRA

2011-03-07T22:33:00.000-08:00

Maps

1

Heirs to a secret order
The trajectory from boulevard
to the two towers poised on a hill
over the mall in Los Samanes

The white statue of Teresa de la Parra
in parque Los Caobos has a black
graffiti tag on its neck, tattoo curls

The city is a cubic puzzle
seen from the varying angles
of the imaginary mountain

The words intone or roam
The wind still associates itself
with ancient verbs that sound now

The bus loaded with passengers
slows up the hill in low gears

*

The image of the towers was being drawn on the sea.

*

In the Callejón de la Puñalada in Sabana Grande, there is a mural painted with an image of Víctor Valera Mora, and one with a verse by Ramón Palomares written huge across the wall. Walking in Bellas Artes, the abandoned Viasa skyscraper with its boarded-up doors.

*

Rain open mind this evening of sound
Repetition of noises, taps the leaves

2

How to write a poem
A walk in the old (coastal) city
The sky-blue painted arches
on the tomb partly shaded
by the tree beside it,
dried leaves and flowers

Short bedside verses or maps
the page of clouds the day

'

SUSAN M. SCHULTZ

2011-03-07T22:15:00.000-08:00

From “Memory Cards: Ashbery Series”

Of the goggles of memory. The moment of awakening that is also one of falling into a less than conscious suspension, suspecting a hiatus in the syntax morning brings to bear on evening's more unquiet agitations. The egrets on the fresh-mown lawn look like pieces on a child's chess board, not quite in their place, yet not too far from it. That memory is a binding means either that it covers our wound or that it closes the book on us. My mother cannot remember to hold the phone to her ear, nor to put more than breath in her voice. I speak to a room I remember (television, stock photos, couches) and feel my voice sink in the plush. There must be an antechamber of such. Voice is old woman slumped in a chair, elbow too weak to rest on its arm. Here is mine, through acres of air.
                  --27 December, 2010

Or didja really think I was somebody else? Someone writes he's not real, our president. The glass half-full is empty. It's partly cloudy today, flash flooding expected. The egrets are like clouds with legs on the lawn and you can't get into the Black Caucus unless your skin is. Radhika was Japanese before she was African American, which makes her more like her white mother than you might think. Where late the sweet birds. Mornings bring the true twitter feed. The senator gave him back his ring when he got the right to tell. They seem to fall out of the gray sky's skin against green mountains. Eating bugs is ordinary, but watching it happen is not. Show is for shower, the one you'll share. Verbs are time's skin, its stretch marks indices that something happened; we don't know yet what it was, but if you stick around long enough, we'll be sure to tell ya.
                  --28 December 2010

For it is you I am parodying, though not through simple reversals, like replacing “dying” with “living” or “paradis” with “enfer.” What you infer from my intrusion is your business alone; we are a private people, after all, locked up in our mansions without furniture, gazing out at the next one over, wondering what lawn service the neighbors use. In my dream, the street directions ended with OM, as if home were nothing more than a sound to summon up an empty lot. The next soccer parent over was placing bets on college games, told me last week didn't go so well. Bookies read the leaves, while we are left with the chicken scratch of print. I open you at random, snitch a line, fear an injustice has inevitably been done. She stole money from the school, then walked away with probation. At least she paid them back.
                  --30 December 2010

You private person. You less than public creature of the crowd, isolated speck in being's penumbra, eyeball in a field, you! Listen here, the voice of your audience awakens you to the absence of your mother/lover/pet, where only Echo lasts, having long since divorced Narcissus, who blossoms glumly in the sagebrush behind the stage. Scared of the clock, he spilled the banana. Numbers kept adding up, red dots splashing on the iPod Touch: I gilled him! What is touch, when wound is absence modified, when angry birds come calling, but only from inside a lit box? The island is covered by absences, notes scribbled on light poles, torch ginger tied to bus stops, phantom launching pads, a scar on the concrete barrier. Your multiple-choice test begins now, and your score determines what future resides where the horizon would be were it not for the crenelated mountains, even as you stand locked to a past you cannot see but only dig in, like a politician planting a tree that denotes settlement, not shifts of key. The cello sounded flat, she said with some sharpness in her voice, having attended sarcasm boot camp years ago. But the cello responded: come closer, you ain't heard nothing yet.
                  --31 December 2010

“There are no trade winds. The ocean too / Is someone's idea.” Or we are its, without apostrophe, boogie boarders of no particular lodging except what's swell. And then kaput upon the shore where one who sings is a stilt, and our stilted voices cannot locate their key. Time grows less linear with each day's passing, like a forward to her fullback, fullback to her goal keeper. Return, refrain, repeat. How does he avoid romanticizing it? No one loves nature so much as a man with a gun who rhapsodizes. The white man's blues are something else; in this economy we hire you to invent more categories, then to break them like an ugly mug. The valley was a trough last night, air the excretion of sparkler and popper, firecracker and concussion bomb. We awaken to a new forest of signs, reminding us to turn off the stove, flush the toilet, eat our peas. Suss out the vowels and align them well. There's a form to be filled in, verse to be made while there's sunshine.
                  --1 January 2011

Some say that the measuring of time / Is a recognition of what it is but what it is is in the present tense. Time so often locates itself elsewhere, or we put it somewhere and forget it, as if it were a cell phone. You try calling it, but the battery's dead, or it's in the trunk, or you don't really want to find it anyway, especially not those text messages you never look at because they're not in real English. I call my mother and she says I look forward to it but she won't remember saying that five minutes from now. Have we passed it yet, this trying to make sense of it, an on-ramp closed because the president drives by on the way to a future-directed activity, like golf? A hole in one makes no sense in Fragment Land. It's a planned community, after all, with a lake, several recreation areas, and a row of churches. Rumors of a tragic history seep into the culverts, but the drainage is good, housing prices stable, and tomorrow you'll get the garage door fixed.
                  --2 January 2011

________
Notes:
Each of these memory cards begins from a sentence or a phrase from John Ashbery's collected poetry, Library of America edition.
The memory card form: each prose poem must fit on a card. You can also read Memory Cards & Adoption Papers (Potes & Poets, 2001). The Wolsak Series was published by Ink in Metz, France in 2010.

'

BRUCE COVEY

2011-03-07T22:00:00.000-08:00

Psalm of Fruit & Echoes

What’s delimited or existing in the same plane—an emotion, say, parsed in the physical shape of a stamp or a lottery ticket.

Or sprinkled sand—infinite finite points. Say you’ve pitched a tent for the evening. See the stars, all the sky’s tiny candles.

My ruddy graph. A slide hewn from quartz.

Or belief in everyone’s mirror, re-reflecting its superstring lawn. The assumption that most utterances will go unheard, bouncing about the drop-offs.

Execute pockets & rumple the conforming functions. Relative to Mao, a central banquet, a committed gestation technique, necessary for passage into lacing.

Your own aesthetic nature & its permutations. Play ping pong?

How to be killed in an already occupied area. A wrapped area, crossed & charred as sterilization’s mean. Have you a condom? Or pushing intangibles out of every pore, a lemon’s juicy surface project.

Just beneath the skin. Touching gut’s flora & its unique carbon resources.

Rain, so much tamer to watch on television. Firework’s fewer possibilities—four lenses in the in-between.

Finite pseudo-script. Have you been to an embedded store, human readable, & bought a banana? Its mock degree.

Where movement’s a whore in action watercolors. A quick paper, tendency to swirl or zigzag, anticipating the scheduled emboss.

Its whole series of gestures from vertical’s perspective.

A grave’s handful of orange flowers blown onto the street. The spectacle of the tips of branches, the scream of the tips of leaves.

Hoping this season’s intractable. A permanence strategy, me-specific, piping underneath this hair vessel. For if we start now, won’t we strip the world of its most impractical furniture?

Ceding every other slice to community. Accepting the observed particle’s mine; accepting the other miners. Calcium over the teeth of every lode.

One does make it, her bones radiate what tickles her feet. Standing on it.

***

Innings

Its own missing, detached, form a farm. Hoods of pitchforks & goats, first generation, for picks, top of the line hot dogs. Nine per play, but a missing ace. Teen, a teepee, to the west of scarlet’s crayon. Running away, she turned her suitcase sideways in order to fit it through the door. The flight for which tickets had been forgotten to be booked—no one’s fault, I mean. The silver in her mouth sets off a chain of events, igniting with a buzzer & guns drawn & aimed. Across the hair, accosting lacrosse’s skin-tight team, a catapult to her happens timely. Pretty red hair. Clean. All of the airport’s water points: fountain, bathroom sink, dew sliding down the miscaulked window, paintbrush’s dilution, a hose to wash the wings. As if the lay of the land weren’t orderly enough, the run elicits pastoral’s way, with an occasional coke can or crumpled box of wheaties. Thinking of staying with her & looking out the window, thinking of the salt & chalk.

'

LYNN BEHRENDT

2011-03-07T21:50:00.000-08:00

Ezrasure

I

We bore our bodies also
heavy with Circe’s craft

                         “I return through
            dark seas”

And he sailed
away

II

All in the spray-white eyes of Picasso
under black Ocean
the murmur of old men’s voices:
twisted lithe sinews

            spring-water
            rock-pool
            again,
                         lifeless air
                         green altars

I have what I have:

Hesperus’ grey pulp
smoke of grey shadows
a face in the smooth sea

III

back before
the first
fallen apple

heart
on a spike

no hawks

IV

The valley is thick with water

and air, air

white petals
in the spring’s mouth

            in an open field,
St. Jacques

would speak

V

Old men

          souls ascend
            like
a vision

                   then
fall

VI

What have you done
what have you
done

in my hand
my death

                        free in the air
                                    to rise
                       in my absence

VII

rattle of old voices
too thick, the

passion
scarlet shadow

dank room

life goes on

            make sound
the sound
                                    of flames

VIII

These fragments
Equivalent to:
            nothing

          no question
both he and I shall
come to
the forked road

I will try
to tell how
he stood

IX

One year
one year
down here
they trapped him
one year
and he stood in the water up to his neck

he floundered about
and that was nearly the end of him

X

he said “Caro mio, I can not”

                                    For all the good that did

And said:

I also have suffered

And they said he said:
All I want you to do is to follow

but

XI

They

            was            wrong

XII

“Damn Fool!”

They sent him to hospital.
They said: “Here. This is what we took out of you!”

He looked at it,
and said: “Boy, I’m sorry
But don’t talk about me
it’s you,
            you said it.

You called me your father, and I ain’t.”

XIII

said

If a man have not
within him
his family
will not

                        It’s hard to hide
                                               in prison

XIV

Politicians
Profiteers
betrayers of language
hell-rot arse-belching fungus foetid monopolist
obstructors of knowledge

XV

evil, the unsinkable shield
oblivion:

how long

XVI & XVII

In the turn of steel
            Blake
Howling against evil

And Augustine
in flux

trout
under saplings

and I through this, and into the earth

Je luis ai dit:
Aint yuh herd

that was the revolution….
                     Nobody knew
                              it was over

XVIII

I already told you
the son-of-a-bitch
never could
get it
to work
and so
sent
down
an army

XIX

            the big fat one
with the diamonds, he said

XX

two almond trees flowering
olive trees and ivory Kings
amaranth, acorns,
the bloody
autumn
calyx

neither pain nor beauty

then between ungilded
columns:

Peace!

XXI

war without glory                       peace without quiet

                                    in the
                                    valley
                                    an old
                                    man
                                    beats
                                    a mule

XXII

everything in its place,
and nothing left over

paradiso terrestre

La Dona
in a red fez

XXIII

after the end of all things
they
            howl

XXIV

& after him
           the cake-eaters

XXV

the same
penthouse
or cage

appears in the air
without image
the sculptor sees form
in the facets of
and the mind
there

terra carta

XXVI

Tomorrow I will lie in the thorns
with the Emperor
the Archbishops
the holy ghost

please send 1000 ducats
I want to take myself
out of here
send the cash
by mouth or letter
To Jerusalem

there’s not time

XXVII

I lay
in the earth

the earth
that made me

I sleep
I rot

and I
build

no wall.

'

MARK LAMOREAUX

2011-03-07T21:30:00.000-08:00

I AM THE HALO THAT HOVERS ABOVE THE HEAD OF PAUL DELAROCHE’S “YOUNG MARTYR” LIKE A FLYING SAUCER

She, a pool of milk lapped
by God. I hover above her, a hole
through which same regards
the still milky face, unaligned
with its tilt where water has
offered her bright neck to the air,
the hand of that same invisible.
What cradles also fills lungs &
the caverns of the ears, a silence
that has spoken a few sibilant
syllables to her floating just
like a bather or a dream of travel
under bridges that join those
two lands, where we are going
& from whence we came. Those 2
lands which echo each other;
the spanner is the loop
of me, joined end to end. I am
the map of the only route, the only
available road.

I light the water like the sheen
of a little yellow moon, the arc
of a hot point traced on the eyelid,
shimmering there among the
popping cells, an orifice through
which those last breaths alight,
an invisible tunnel to the foyer under
the river. I am the clasp of alpha
& omega, a sacred last letter. O
undulant breast of fluid, O pale
diaphanous shroud as though formed
of the curled ripped canvas
of the bulbs of lilies in the river.
The last hat, I prefigure wings.
The sign of the death of
the good or merely innocent,
I am the crown of what is called &
what calls. What calls to the air,
I am the open mouth of.

Opponent of the bound X of wrists,
I float at the behest of the spread arms
in the shadows, unperturbed by
wind or shadow, I hang like the weather
over or upon her, waiting to be breathed
in by the unquickened. The second course
of the repast of rivers, through the deeps &
the shallows, shooting toward that
delta & that deeper, greener sea where I
will remain, never touching, never lifting,
never parting as the cage of flesh
begins to dance, so slowly among the slower
ocean plants, a glimmer of what we reckon
may be, but will never see except among
the wraith-glow of the strange fishes
who populate that tunnel of our last
submergence, that circular gate & the
brilliance beyond that seeps through
the hinge & forms the hoop of me.

'

SHEILA E. MURPHY

2011-03-07T21:15:00.000-08:00

Two
from American Ghazals

I used to see the future as homemade.
Now I am sure of it; there is no recipe.

Soldiers balance immediacies and delays
along the field, a foreign language to its occupants.

Bass tones equate to an immovable
frame: the sutures destined to remain unseen.

Punctuation mostly hovers where it is required,
apart from people claiming just to do their jobs.

A material witness overtakes attention
grown expensive in the mind’s unfinished repertoire.

+++++

If a flute fills the interior velvet
flute case, colored aqua, and if no one sees it . . .

A voice temperature warmer than
98.6 degrees needs no sweetening.

Tertiary tributaries make me want
to shuck the whole thing for a fishing trip.

Digression fills the psyche with abandonment
as someone interrupts thought with the name “ma’am.”

She weighs the same as her inferiority
she hears confirmed at night in country western tunes.

'

JON CURLEY

2011-03-07T21:00:00.000-08:00

Metafizzles

corona
seeks immensity
of peace’s pleroma

gnostic
nostrums of
illuminated manuscripts ripped

heretics
have heritage
in heart’s healing

codex
composed discomposed
written rewritten revised

two
martyrs turned
on burning wheels

if
one should
stay soul, shade

imprimatur
your flesh
penned rosy filigrees

whether
fathom beyond
still defy gravity

cannot
see so
mind wears visions

next
place new
grace for All

Weil
wore woe
weal like wheel

lustrations
pour rain
onto mire (mine)

afresh
flowers bloom
from thorn crowns

meaning
no matter
in the hereafter

sightings
of no
saints just selves

rainbow-
beaked revenants
inscribed beside text

from
cloister to
coracle, sail on

summons
where you
seek new thoughts

fructify
benevolence growing
misshapen in present

end
no end
bend in path

***

Profiles

how
Howe’s words
whir into souls

when
Samuel Menashe
lost for afternoon

Heaney
hastened poetic
practice in me

Medbh
at NYU
a randy lass

Nuala
saved me
from my selves

Kimmelman’s
mother poem
on Garrison Keillor!

Welshman
R.S. Thomas
at final reading

Heller
my mentor
means much more

Augustine
not saint
but poet Jane

Otoliths
inner ear
definitely Mark Young

Silliman
no silly
man, a thunderstorm

Talisman
Ed fosters
no frivolous work

speaking
tongues with
her hands: Lauterbach

scribe
describes Finkelstein’s
sacred text, vocation

saw
Tabios at
Poets House: wow!

jazzman
Paul Pines
actually sonic poet

Austin’s
Gg Re
a mischief monument

missed
the “the”—
Les Murray’s poem!

Gizzi
almost taught
me, the Unteachable

Thom
Gunn never
responded: no postage?

'

TAMIKO BEYER

2011-03-07T20:30:00.000-08:00

Genderland

The boy keeps showing up to the garden. An artist, he sketches the sex lives of plants, shows how they drink with the temperament of animals. We discuss the pH in the soil and his desire hums under hummus and gravel. As a rule, I don’t like beards or cocks, so I show him my platonic palms. Besides, he wouldn’t know what to do with a body as queerly pliant as mine and I wouldn’t know what to do with a body as crumbly as his. He tells me he dreams pistil-and-stamen tremors. I say, when you dig your fingers into dirt, I know your mouth fills with sand and wires. I’ve had quite enough of exploded earth; I’m waiting for the right rain.

***

Sirens

1.
riptide
dear tongued horizon
lipped sail
curve cup
flame’s teeth
star shaft
mouth’s dust
fierce wilding
fleet

2.
car an aftermath
not sleeping             gears an intricate
tangle             a fist overturns

suspended face             night
avenues to street grid
where you step sidewalk

stains             a body leaks
oxygen-dazzled beads
then gush             throat’s aftermath

3.
their mouths lands on mine
they take my hand they
take your elbow
they have missed
us and we are
glad glad glad
to have docked

in their drowsy living
room our tea grows
cold they are so soft
bullets or fireworks crack i stand
up too quickly my knee joints
pop they pretend
not to notice bring in drenched
cake until we have quite
lost the way out
walls echo back our grimaces
we stumble through an archway

caught i see their teeth quite lovely
their voices so smooth
on this moonlit mezzanine tonight

4.
fleet
wilding fierce
dust mouth
shaft star
teeth flame
cup curve
sail lipped
horizon tongued
dear
riptide

'

PAUL PINES

2011-03-07T20:15:00.000-08:00

WHISTLER’S BLUE/ A NOCTURNE

If a man appears alone
on a bridge

on a snowy evening
walking towards

a series of lights
in a row of windows

he doesn’t necessarily
have a future

or a past he is simply
a point on a grid

part of a composition
that tells us

what it is
while implying it is

more than it says
we follow him

into the night
because of the blue

we want to know
from whence

he’s come and where
he’s going

because the blue
envelops

everything but is
thin as air because

it’s everywhere
like the nerves

of an acrobat
in pain

and we can hear it
asking us

to shed our skins
and follow

***

WALKING RAMPART STREET

Degas the perfect gentilhomme
equally at home in Montparnasse

and Creole streets of New Orleans
an anti-Semite whose best friend

is named Halevi describes woman
as the curse of wise men

but hangs out in brothels sketching
the hilarity and sadness of whores

sprawled on a couch in the salon
waiting for patrons in bowler hats

with trim mustaches like his own
or celebrating the Madame's birthday

all this loose flesh in long stockings
around the seated figure of

a tonsured woman in a black dress
who most closely resembles

the prioress of a nunnery
flanked by the image of a poule

scratching her ass another one
sinking into a mattress

as though she were melting
—it is a peculiar nakedness

makes us feel something soft
but inviolable in their rawness

--------
(Poems are from New Orleans Variations & Alchemy)

'

JEAN VENGUA

2011-03-07T20:00:00.000-08:00

KNOWING, EVENTUALLY

i really don’t want
everyone to know

you know?

so many things.

tears.

always an end.

whatever closeness. . .
eventually.

things unsaid. . .
but then.

let’s not be clever.

his photo of the Salt Canyon,
now i remember.

out of nowhere.

what do you think,
it just rattles on.

inside thinking (wings, desire)

talking to no one.
talking to you.

Whalen. Have to get that.

I should sleep. Could
watch that movie.

cricket. fruitfly.
Big one. little one.

Olson. Creeley.

get through the screen.
in this heat, laying
in bed. shut windows,
throw covers off.

eventually.

***

AT THE BORDER

His eyes are mesmerizing and that makes her suspicious. There is very little to go by, no instruction, no manifesto. Want is the negative part of claim in this naked attempt to win territory.

Make yourself presentable. He sees the rug between her thighs, and the outline around a red “flower,” a green “leaf.” Rocking back and forth like a blind singer. Cued by an emptiness, she makes an O with her mouth, opens like a young bird.

'

MARK YOUNG

2011-03-07T19:40:00.000-08:00

A line from Adrienne Rich

A rift, a peculiar lapse,
death on the stage—all
are ontologically identical
with a certain type of

musical thought. Rhythm
functions as the vehicle,
the numbers of bees are
declining rapidly, large-

area spatial data sets
test the accuracies (&
inaccuracies) of gardens.
The latest breaking news

from Gainesville is that the
use of refined speakers
for heavy metal can be
engineered to target tumors.

***

A line from Virginia Woolf

On the outskirts
of every agony is
the ecstasy of Phil
Spector. He talks

little, focusing on
the weather, the
workability of fresh
concrete, the use

of nanoparticles as
destructive beacons
for Gated suburbs.
The tactics are quite

simple: possessed
verbal abstracts,
even those still
in their original

wrapping paper &
found in a Singapore
stock image library,
are infinitely more

poetic & interesting
gifts than Pregnancy
Test Strips from a
State-run pawnshop.

'

AILEEN IBARDALOZA

2011-03-07T19:30:00.000-08:00

Tea in the Sahara

Dear Aunt Therese who does not pour tea
nevertheless disconcerts—

            Her cup full of sand,
            she follows the Caravan Trail of Dates,
            where, at a watering stop,
            women with many colored wraps invite her to tea.

            They steep the leaves and pour her a glass.
            She tastes sweetness thrice infused with mint.
            She offers them her cheek to kiss,

she sips again, then dips her scone.

Dear Aunt Therese, in twenty years, has not poured tea.
She pretends not to care, even as the other
guests pretend she isn't there.

'

DANIEL MORRIS

2011-03-07T17:44:00.000-08:00

I’m Johnny Cash

Listen only to “Hurt.” Nothing
since Folsom Prison.

In ’64 Kristofferson buzzed me into
believing Bobbie McGee was a conservative
needing protection. Only, my back hurt.

‘73 we picked Grammy’s.
Week Janis kicked. Coward.

Reel Nirvana, Social D,
Nine Inch Nails. I’m the wig
without the teeth.

Seems just last week
I was a national treasure.

***

A Message to S.D. Jones

Thud the trampoline to signal innocence.
PRETEND to wonder who hid their contraband?
Secrete the secret pellets in your scar. (Champions
Like Samartino and Dusty
Skin salt in fists when the hapless ref
Is busy somewhere else.) Adjust
The blood flow to the brain.

Categorize yourself
As one who takes losing well,
Or badly, depending if you wake
With a throbbing solar plexus
From the Great Mephisto’s folding chair.

Freddie Blassie shall escort The Wolfman to the ring
On a plastic chain sprayed silver. Together,
Bounce multiple belt buckles, perform “illegal”
Holds, recall the degrading final
Scene of Requiem for a Heavyweight. After,
Wrestle scientific like the first Jews before
They knew their names meant Jewish.

Freddie Blassie shall apply the sleeper.
Let go and the set will blink.

'

ANNY BALLARDINI

2011-03-07T00:01:00.000-08:00

Another 1 For My Father

*****

THE ABC OF JOBS:

And Their Connections in an Elementary Interwoven Intertextuality

DOCTOR

§ 1

The physician's high and only mission is to restore the sick to health, to cure, as it is termed.1

1 His mission is not, however, to construct so-called systems, by interweaving empty speculations and hypotheses concerning the internal essential nature of the vital processes and the mode in which diseases originate in the interior of the organism, (whereon so many physicians have hitherto ambitiously wasted their talents and their time); nor is it to attempt to give countless explanations regarding the phenomena in diseases and their proximate cause (which must ever remain concealed), wrapped in unintelligible words and an inflated abstract mode of expression, which should sound very learned in order to astonish the ignorant - whilst sick humanity sighs in vain for aid. Of such learned reveries (to which the name of theoretic medicine is given, and for which special professorships are instituted) we have had quite enough, and it is now high time that all who call themselves physicians should at length cease to deceive suffering mankind with mere talk, and begin now, instead, for once to act, that is, really to help and to cure.

From Organon of Medicine by Samuel Hahnemann, 5^th translated by Dudgeon; 6^th Edition translated by Boericke. Online : http://www.homeoint.org/books/hahorgan/organ001.htm#P1

doctor (n.)

c.1300, "Church father," from O.Fr. doctour, from M.L. doctor "religious teacher, adviser, scholar," in classical L. "teacher," agent noun from docere "to show, teach, cause to know," originally "make to appear right," causative of decere "be seemly, fitting" (see decent). Meaning "holder of highest degree in university" is first found late 14c.; as is that of "medical professional" (replacing native leech (2)), though this was not common till late 16c. The transitional stage is exemplified in Chaucer’s Doctor of phesike (Latin physica came to be used extensively in M.L. for medicina). Similar usage of the equivalent of doctor is colloquial in most European languages: cf. It. dottore, Fr. docteur, Ger. doktor, Lith. daktaras, though these are typically not the main word in those languages for a medical healer. For similar evolution, cf. Skt. vaidya- “medical doctor,” lit. “one versed in science.” Ger. Arzt, Du. arts are from L.L. archiater, from Gk. arkhiatros “chief healer,” hence “court physician.” Fr. médecien is a back formation from médicine, replacing O.Fr. miege, from L. medicus.

doctor (v.)

1590s, "to confer a degree on," from doctor (n.). Meaning "to treat medically" is from 1712; sense of "alter, disguise, falsify" is from 1774. Related: Doctored; doctoring.

From the Online Etymology Dictionary

doctors must heal

poets must write poetry

writers must write stories

teachers must teach

carpenters must work wood

embroiders must embroider

politicians must do politics

salesmen must sell

models must exhibit fashion

whores must sell their bodies

pimps must market prostitutes

doctors must heal

plumbers must fix pipes

construction workers must work with bricks

priests must preach

drivers must drive

sailors must sail

rapists must rape

doctors must heal

liars must tell fibs to save themselves

fishermen must fish

hunters must hunt

farmers must grow vegetables

breeders must breed animals

typists must type

freight movers must move freight

machine operators must operate machines

skiers must ski

boxers must box

doctors must heal

fuckers must fuck

guards must guard

journalists must report

mathematicians must do mathematics

translators must translate

musicians must play music

critics must review

flimmakers must make films

playwrights must write plays

actors must act

wankers must wank

doctors must heal

killers must kill

thieves must steal

watchmen must watch

policemen must prevent & detect crimes

god must be

lawyers must know the law

doctors must heal

cotton pickers must pick cotton

soldiers must fight

cooks must cook

waiters must wait on tables

cleaners must clean

secretaries must do secretarial jobs

insurers must insure

knitters must knit

saints must do miracles

walkers must walk

electricians must work with electricity

physicists must know physics

painters must paint

wine producers must produce wine

iron workers must work with iron

miners must mine

murderers must murder

doctors must heal

torturers must torture

spies must spy

detectives must detect

investigators must investigate

mothers must make children

fathers must father

factory workers must work in a factory

generals must lead an army

angels must protect

shepherds must pasture sheep

informers must denounce those

doctors who do not heal

doctors must heal

beasts must be beasts

weight lifters must lift weights

book-binders must bind books

snowmen must freeze & then melt

butchers must kill animals and cut up meat

doctors must heal

witches must do evil deeds

devils must rule those who must suffer in eternity

the present poem is dedicated to several of the doctors I have unluckily and recently met following my father’s ischemic stroke that seized him on July 16, 2010. He was first taken to the Ospedale di Santa Chiara in Trento, department of Medicina 1, doctors Susanna Cozzio and Doctor Dimitri Peterlana, Head of Ward Dr. Paolo Dalrì from July 16 to August 4; then to Villa Rosa, Pergine Valsugana (TN) under Dr. Marco Degasperi, Head Dr. Nunzia Mazzini, from August 4 to September 27; and finally back to the previous hospital again: Ospedale di Santa Chiara in Trento, department of Medicina 1, doctors Susanna Cozzio and Doctor Dimitri Peterlana, Head of Ward Dr. Paolo Dalrì. On October 13, 2010 he was sent back home to rot in a bed and to date he has been rotting for exactly two months and twelve days.

p.s.: Doctor Susanna Cozzio is the sister-in-law of my sister.

Saturday, December 25, 2010

Christmas Day

Bolzano, Italy

2010-09-07T13:52:00.000-07:00

Marsh Hawk Review Fall 2010

Editor: Mary Mackey

Table of Contents

Al Young

Dennis Schmitz

Corinne Robins

Paul Pines

Marge Piercy

Dennis Nurkse

Rusty Morrison

Stephen Paul Miller

Joshua McKinney

Burt Kimmelman

Jane Hirshfield

Neil de La Flor

Norman Finkelstein

Claudia Carlson

Brad Buchanan

Willis Barnstone

Susan Terris

2010-09-07T13:43:00.000-07:00

AL YOUNG

AWAY, AWAY, AWAY — WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

in memory of Andrea Lewis, 1957-2009

With no away, you can’t get lost or drown.

You can’t just disappear; you’re trapped right here.

This sticky, spidery web still holds its own.

What does it mean when we think far or near?

What do we do when we throw stuff away?

What happens when we flush? What follows what?

The other ends of dreams unfold. You stay

in place, right where you are, yes, you stay put --

or so you think. Imagine how the sun

felt back in feudal days, when we assumed

our earth was flat. Imagine everyone

asleep in such belief. What insight bloomed,

what twilight rose to open people’s eyes?

“I’m up here moving, folks,” the sun might feel.

“How long before you Christians realize

there’s more than gold that shines? Light shines for real.”

And where does sunlight go? What does it do?

Light feeds each breath we take, light circulates

and in its round-and-round produces you

and me and everything that jumps or waits.

Away, away, away — what does it mean?

To fly away means sailing out of sight,

but who or what is racing from whose scene?

Perspective reigns. Day never knows it’s night.

KILLER DRONE

Rhymes with phone or moan and

means: I’ve grown so dense and lazy

I can’t even be bothered to bomb you

personally, so I dispatch a robot to rob you,

relieve you of everything you thought

rightful or yours. Rhymes with snores.

2010-09-07T13:40:00.000-07:00

DENNIS SCHMITZ

NEW YORK

is the muggers who won’t unionize

& so work, 4 AM, the Park’s Great Lawn

in rain’s insistent April spritz.

New York is Manganaro’s improbable

but right balsamic fighting the eggplant

for the glory of both—transaction

& quid pro quo & every illusion a forfeit—

it’s the way you are passed from glance

to glance the crosstown blocks to Zabar’s.

It’s New York—how can you die alone

after so much handling? But in the subway,

the Times Sq shuttle I always took to the movies,

I had to hug my self to myself because the you

had so many mutations, all of us rocking, body

to body, my short ride to a two-feature heaven.

In one seedy theater, I saw an off-screen knife-fight—

maybe about a Coke—two guys at it, cut for cut.

But the audience—daylong dwellers, teens & drunks—

New Yorkers, urbane, eyes always on the movie

choosing Art—just shifted a few seats away.

ARTISTIC INTEGRITY

Mailer thanked me when I returned THE NAKED

AND THE DEAD a hundred pages shorter—for years

integrity meant postponing some else’s fame.

It meant at writers’ retreats that I’d steal back

the Promethean words wrongly used—

often I took discs of whole novels,

but usually word by word I reclaimed integrity

for someone else, if only erasing a few poem-lines

from a shared computer. Use Van gogh’s ear

as a love-token (he did), not in a quarrel

about integrity. I’m not Hitler’s Eichmann, confessing

somebody else did it—I stole TYPHOON’S MISTRESS

from your agent’s mail-drop; I made it confetti.

Why did you let the rebels ravage Evita, & overplaying

the metaphor, make the typhoon re-define the slave

quarters as it wiped away the island’s beauty?

Roderick’s revenge too was sexually suggestive & part

of the poor taste that I’ve enjoyed erasing.

2010-09-07T13:36:00.000-07:00

CORINNE ROBINS

A Poem for An Artist

Talking about a painting, we say--

discipline decides taking on the bright square canvas

Look at it in the silence --

Talking about painting,

looking, following footsteps in blank space,

more necromancy than religion in the bright square.

Rows of colored marks, but does color equal commitment?

The Lake District could dictate the color blue.

Talking about a painting. Taking a chance,

traveling and reading long hours

and always looking beyond.

Looking inside, painting a first thought,

color mapping direction as summer effects abstract patterns.

Summer, hot sweat, needing more than the trees.

Summer, the mountain roads dictates memories shaping time.

Remember our histories, and paintings still with us.

A class that stated with learning languages,

ways of thinking.

Starts with, and never stays with only blue.

Life of bends and creases. Chances.

Talking about painting, every color a road,

a direction filling the sky.

CITY NIGHT

Electric blue of the city night,

walk silently away from winking lights.

Not the stars, but the evening sky

witnessing the changing weather

while I walk empty streets

past lonely passers-by carrying unreflected thoughts,

blue, blue across solemn blocks,

blue, blue in the middle of the week,

the city moving on while machines go up, up, up,

invade the sky, staring down on the white lines,

the blue night finding our way.

Annual

My birthday day,

sitting beside a blue vase crowned with curving

yellow and red gladiolas pointing upward,

trying to review backward loves,

the words a blue book of answers,

records of decades, collections of fading photographs,

childhood, the melody of language breathing in your ear,

silence looking for a way in.

Resonant echoes passing though

reach out and across, doubting what is lost,

the shadow of a step

echoing silences lined up,

gathering memories willing to be overheard.

2010-09-07T13:29:00.000-07:00

PAUL PINES

ANDREW WYETH ENTERS HEAVEN, PART II

Let there be light

not for the sake

of light itself

earth and stone

as light catchers

dissolving flesh

melting landscapes

oxidized in blood

but for those light

has ceased to touch

the sun adrift

in a fever dream

a battlefield

seen through

a gray window

by a bald man

with yellow eyes—

Let there be light

not for the sake

of light itself

the created world

as light-catcher

Let light call forth

the dead

as stones

in our orchards

breakers

along our shore

as waves

breaking against

our nakedness

on a summer day

what commands

light because

it wounds us

with its brilliance

TWO POEMS FOR DOUGLAS

Rosh Hoshana

You ask me if I think

The tree says Kaddish

For each falling leaf?

This is what I think:

You and I know

the shedding of days

in time is

as a single day,

buried

in all the meaningful

moments that go

to seed except

in the perishable

memory of

a few

The Folded Triangle

Holding on to something

Past but still alive inside

One forgets and then

When one remembers

It seems so important

Not to forget again

I want to say that

Forgetting is a merciful act

But when what is recalled

Feels essential to being

who one is in the present

I am not sure.

We all live through what

we see and don’t see

And it becomes

the story of our lives

THE DEATH OF POSTERITY

getting ready for my journey—

trying to clear a space in my head

a/head of time

the snail skin of now

leaves a barely

perceptible

trail of

slime

within the arc

of unanswerable

questions

so many angry angels

watching over it

so many sad

angels too

I am writing a poem

on the death

of posterity

a dead letter to

a virtual you

to say that within the arc

of unanswerable

questions

I have always arrived

and departed

on time

2010-09-07T13:25:00.000-07:00

MARGE PIERCY

Attention please

In the parking lot below my hotel

a ludicrously purple sedan displays

itself loud as if it strobed. I imagine

a guy in a roaring plaid jacket special

ordering that plastic-looking shout.

Attention: eyes confirm that we exist

as if we woke each dawn doubting it.

We feel ourselves melting into fog:

we feel ourselves stared straight through

like a glass table with someone playing

footsies underneath. We do not live

to serve but be observed. Our single

voice is lost like one lone treefrog

in the spring chorus of mating peepers

unless someone answers our cries.

Words hard as stones

All the words I never spoke in time

in the flashing moments when they

could have, might have but didn’t –

they follow me like vultures circling

so that I know something rotten

lies in the field. The apologies

never delivered age in the dead

letter office of the brain, yellowing.

But the promises’ broken shards

have worked their way into

the mattress and poke my sleep,

words I should never have said.

Gossip, curses, whispers behind

closed doors, in bed; words

hurled in argument, justification,

the stinging gnats of lies:

sticky words, overpoweringly

fragrant like lilies in a closed room,

rancid, spiky. Such are words made

flesh, made bread, made dagger.

Well met by evening

He went down to the ocean at Newcomb Beach

in the cool of twilight, the waves just ruffling

their edges. Two fires below the parking lot.

He walked north. A couple under a moving

blanket. Then no one. The empty beach

marked with those antic sculptures

of jetsam people pile up here.

As he walked on, he felt eyes on him.

Looked up at the dunes. Looked behind.

Then he glanced at the sea and a grey

seal was watching him. As he strode

north, his seal swam beside him.

Ducked under. Its sleek head rose

every twenty feet and it looked again.

Companions, they walked and swam on

side by side in two mediums

as the twilight thickened like pudding

and a tanker cruised the horizon.

When he turned to walk back,

the seal surfaced once more, stared

then turned and swam out to sea.

A bit bereft but mostly blessed

it was his turn to watch it travel.

How seldom do creatures of earth

and water meet peacefully without

damage to either, accept each other’s

company, then go their separate

secret ways each a little richer.

2010-09-07T13:23:00.000-07:00

DENNIS NURKSE

Engagement In Sunset Park

Our grief came from wanting to be whole.

We heard a bird, we became the bird--

angry wren, insidious thrush, gauche starling,

or just the whoosh of wings.

We thought ‘we became the bird’

and became that thought.

Not that we disappeared

into the city like mercury--

we were more like iron filings

drawn by an unknown magnet

always in the same lines of force.

We took off our clothes.

We became linen and corduroy.

We became the naked lover,

that sorrow, that delight--

We were the little pull

of the zipper, the resistance

of a snug button.

We tugged at the snap

and it was open--the gesture had no memory--

but we wanted to be single-pointed,

man or woman, infidel or worshiper. ,

temporary or eternal.

We wanted to be saints or traitors.

There were a million miracles, but what counted

was which wish was granted last.

So the great war began.

We woke after midnight,

it was snowing, we were almost married,

a car was passing with a loose muffler

dragging on the asphalt--we imagined

a little vine of sparks--

we thought ‘vanishing’--

a tongue of pale light licked the ceiling

and we dreamt we could feel the bombing.

Towards day we thought we heard the birds

crying for the cold.

We washed ourselves and became the lapping, the sheen,

the porous musty washcloth, minute clockwise whirlpool,

and whatever the water was missing.

Music was playing in another room,

unearthly music, and we assumed

we would become that loneliness.

And slowly we dressed, we sipped coffee,

we became the past, so did daylight,

the radio doled out news of massacres,

victory, surrender, truce,

a revolt crushed, breaking out again,

then that voice faded in the dim streets

where the steel-gated factory windows

blaze long after dawn.

Ivrea

We could freeze and thaw and melt each other,

petrify each other, make ourselves invisible,

inflate each other and retreat to the mind,

but we could not shrug, we could not amble

hand in hand down that path which slipped

through rye fields hemmed in by massive pines,

we could not warm a chestnut in our palms

to admire its flashing darkness, we could not

knock moss from stiles with a knobby stick

or enter the marriage house or read Genesis

under the shirred lampshade until the twilight

around us was impenetrable: we were absolute

and could not bargain, anymore than the thrush

singing its heart out in a sleeper’s mind.

2010-09-07T13:20:00.000-07:00

RUSTY MORRISON

Inventions

I hear the vigor and turn, in time, to see moonrise.

Recognition cinders so quickly into semblance.

Blackens into a blind-spot.

Flit of white-throated sparrow in the bottle-brush shrubs,

a spark my eyes involuntarily shy from.

How long to let perception fledge?

Walking home, I hear the ardor

as gravel perfects its shape under my feet.

Sudden, between two pines, a red flourish—

a fox’s tail, a first language.

Necessities

In through our bedroom window comes a disruptive dawn.

So difficult to sustain night’s wordless equilibrium.
Naming anything, like stepping barefoot in wet sand up to my ankles.

Name after name, sinking me farther beneath quiet’s buoyancy.

House, this morning, is pale with the rush of what night siphoned off.

Objects, still emptied of resemblance, hum their chord-less cantos.

Bloodless, my knuckles knock on walls without echo, testing singularities.

Sun on the cutlery offers an ageless sheen.

Though it ages the silver relentlessly.

New, but still rudimentary tools to be gleaned from my over-used weaponry.

Inventions

I attend closely to wildflowers to gain their confidence.

Such intimacies in the arrival of spring,

as though pollen were a form of telepathy.

Interpreting the interaction

between distance and shadow relentlessly.

Each thought, busy with the lie of its inevitability.

Astringent afternoon wind on the lake

my adequate face wiped raw.

Heron’s sudden dive, reddening the element.

To elemental.

2010-09-07T13:15:00.000-07:00

STEPHEN PAUL MILLER

MILKING HONEY

What is it? Manna it is

for general readers,

the Lord with them

more than anti-Moses-

Aaron factions.

Refreshed by the shower in Psycho,

a third category of reader poises

in Zen wonder at flummoxed

sand-flies sensing bottomless

air from Transjordan

to the Negev buckle.

California nights rub an

apotheosis of Hitchcock’s

birds from their eyes.

McGuffins (sometimes MacGuffins),

what spies, not audience, desire,

the birds in The Birds

just shorthand for the

edge like everything

in this poem anything

crucial for milking honey.

DO YOU MIND IF I SKETCH YOU WHILE WE TALK?

Let’s call the 51^st state Destruction.

If Republicans take Congress

the tribe of Gad and Reuben may

lose their foothold on Jordan

and then will follow a very long passage in Numbers

on Balaam and one big talking ass

who seems to have inserted

this passage in the original itinerary.

The wilderness swirls counter-clockwise,

a glitch allowing Moses to see the

Beverley Hillbillies at Midian and

first learn of great Yahweh.

Clouds over the mound of Arad

thrill the strings of my heart.

Everything coming

to us gets there.

ADDITIONAL SOUL

Thanks so for inhabiting

my frame for the duration

of this Sabbath.

As a rabbi, I’m aware

your awesome presence

raises the specter of polytheism….

My missing Miriam,

link to the bottom of things.

My point has always been

my dad Yahweh’s “people”

drove my mom Asherah

under the ground and

way above it where you live

in a world before

Oedipus and Hamlet—

monotheism broadened

married to itself deeply alone

perhaps but not lonely.

2010-09-07T13:11:00.000-07:00

JOSHUA McKINNEY

Listening Wind

“Any characteristic act [. . .] is an act of reciprocal invocation. It activates a world in which the act makes sense. It invents.” –Lyn Hejinian

“We were talking about crêpes.” —Road rage victim’s wife

a context in which the happening

happens : a world : the labor and endurance of

this season summons others :

this metaphor should be used

with caution : any map of which changes

its intention elsewhere :

whose invention is plastic flowers

a ring of gathering stones

at an exit : so near : that daily

from my air-conditioned car

I see : each blossom red by the road

before the green light lures me on :

past capacity to understand

a community becomes :

its code of nerves : its torque

of days : and words whose weight is less

than (you dumb : you blind : you

crazy motherfucker) act :

the local paper lists the facts :

one man “cut another off”

and when the light turned red

they stopped their cars and

both got out and one man shot

the other dead : and two

weeks later on that spot

he put a new gun to his head

and killed himself : the report’s echo

activates a world : a familiar

terrain : unfamiliar suddenly :

all too familiar : “And

as I have received from my father

I will give away . . .” : fear

of a ready silence : in context

a dialect of violence

we do not know

we speak : until the act :

each day I take the exit anxious to be

home : at the side of the road

make-shift memorials sprout

a family’s words I cannot read :

too familiar : they fade in the heat of this

world : whose rage is plastic

flowers : whose act

is a justice informed by agony :

whose season summons

this invention : less than a world

where the wind listens for a word

which in this heat has passed away

Grave

The mortal body is like

this: fragile, and at times

indecipherable. Nothing

insures against death.

One attends with respect

and by waiting. Meanwhile,

observe the crocuses’

brilliant awakening

before the other flowers;

they will be done

when the next season arrives.

And if it comes, what save

their promise will remain?

No dolmen to raise questions,

no words. I am missing

them already, which fails.

Gratia Artis

Like its counterpart,

true poetry cannot be

conveyed through words.

Even to say this fails.

In an instant, the accomplished

man kills, and quickly

by the sword he lets men live.

It is said this is the way

of heaven, that life

and death are one. Likewise,

making no distinction well

a poem is unaffected,

knows both joy and pain,

moves freely, is fixed

but will not stay. Here,

then, you see the problem:

one cannot spell the rain.

2010-09-07T13:06:00.000-07:00

BURT KIMMELMAN

Cicadas, Mid July

How odd the occasion, the whirring

of the cicadas, surprising once

we start to hear their secret business,

unseen no matter where we look – we

pause in our morning talk, wondering

when they arrived and why the summer’s

unforgiving heat begins with their

advent and later the cool early

evenings settle in with their silence.

Spring, in its false starts with the pushing

through soil and snow of its first flowers,

their small shocks of color, held us in

blossoms and leaves so we finally

let go of the thought that the light and

warmth would ever come to an end, but

the cicadas do their work – no more

twitters of birds, our sadness spun in

the din and the waning of the light.

2010-09-07T13:05:00.000-07:00

JANE HIRSHFIELD

Come, Thief

The mandarin silence of windows before their view,

like guards who nod to every visitor,

“Pass.”

“Come, thief,”

the path to the doorway agrees..

A fire requires its own conflagration.

As birth does. As love does.

Saying to time to the end, “Dear one, enter.”

2010-09-07T13:04:00.000-07:00

NEIL DE LA FLOR

Symplectic Geometry

What are blear-eyed-less monsters like? What are attractive

daughters for? When sailing sleep, she fed him arsenic to

save his life. The boy flew westward through womb & world,

beyond the northern lights, into bliss. He was a sign of grace

and a warning of being born without it

Riemannian Manifold

He wore a dark cloud across his lip. His mouth had crossed

the sun or consumed it. Outside the hotel room the waves

slated against his shins. He thought of sea anemones

instead of clowns. He figured out the exquisite theory of

spatial geometry in a movable tent. The tide had come to

swallow his tiny toes.

M-theory

She wore sandstone for a woman whose breasts sung

whispers. She had not grown for years. Unable to fetch

Frisbees in winter cast upon a cloud, she got fed up with

seahorses. Her manuscript uttered not a word about white

busses with red crosses. She found miracles in minor

miracles, acted like a magician without a hat. If my head had

been cut off, she said, I would've been dead.

2010-09-07T13:01:00.000-07:00

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN

Days of War, Nights of Love

They could be the same, if by war we mean

confronting those powers, and by love

we mean embracing them. Those powers.

Some found aloft, some in the depths.

They could be the same, and may well be

nowhere at all. So this may be another

imaginary elegy, and it is time to change

direction. Not so easy as it may

appear. Not so easy as things begin to

disappear. Once he asked how I stopped.

I didn’t know the famous story, but surely

he did. You take the horn out of your mouth.

But in case of emergency, you take

the horn with you, leave everything else

behind. But he had stopped listening,

was into something else. As was I.

So. So easy. Not. In the wood. Lost

and found again. After a long night,

alone and scared. It’s these trans-

formations, long slides down the

throat. Longingly, we have come

by night and day. As a kid, I thought

it was a pillow of cloud, a pillow

of fire. As a kid, I thought I would

grow up to sacrificed.

_____________________________________________

Little does he know.

Freighter

Now it is time to speak with the master

seated in his little boat, on his throne of

skulls, in his chariot of rhyme. This with

harmonium. This with mellotron. This

with brass choir. Christmas angels, but

this is not Christmas. Christmas is

over. No solos, but this is a solo, for such

is the nature of the beast, making his

cold, his windswept sounds. Now it is

time to bring those sounds into every

home, every house on the block. There

among the big wheels, the pierced dolls,

yard sales, yard signs, signs seen,

marks seen in each street. Now

the wanderer speaks, London is

calling again but from elsewhere, from

otherwhere, and here, and here, and

here. Too much light, say some of the

ghosts. Not enough, say others. Too

many voices, too much information, the

system is overloading, but it’s about

damn time. Time damns me, dollars

damn me, there are ships sinking in the

harbor and the harbormaster, addressed again,

is nowhere to be found. Is he below the line,

has he crossed the line, are there revels,

streamers, exotic drinks, moonlight

on tropical seas? No we are

past that, we will not meet him face

to face. Perhaps it is time to rest,

perhaps it is time to go below.

____________________________________________________

All hands on deck. This is an

example of synecdoche.

Tag, You’re It

for Peter O’Leary

Work backwards. The things above

are as the things below, and the things

below are as those above. What matter?

Books were made for secrets they cannot

keep: this is what it means to be

read. Such spaces, such expectations.

I used to think in numbers, adding

and subtracting. Now I think of zeroes

multiplied by threes. Like this, and

then you figure the tip. How was

the service? Good, but the bread

kept turning into meat. I don’t

think I’ll eat here again. I don’t

pretend to know much about it, but this

I know: you have to stop preparing us

for these appearances. It’s better

to run with it, the way he did after

the disaster, without a song. The tenor

sax haunts me, but then, so does the

accordion. Fold after fold, as he said.

He? That was you, meaning me.

Music isn’t in the air, it is the air,

at least on good days. Is this a good day?

I don’t know, it’s awfully cloudy.

Awfully—meaning full of awe.

_________________________________________________

Is it the King?

No, just another ghost of answering questions.

2010-09-07T12:59:00.000-07:00

CLAUDIA CARLSON

Reveal Emily

Reveal the real

Emily Dickinson!

Forget the pressed

blossoms shy

White dresses

Ardent baker

Welcome the sly

Autodidact

With an ocean of ink

Despite her fathers

Rule that girls only

Read scripture and

Never publish

Private views

Her terse verse

Speaks now—

His long public career

Forgotten

Marriage (in 9 haiku)

Two people shouting

into an empty bed room

as a cat glides by

Man finds the woman

won't talk physics or Ripley's

Believe it or Not!

Lust shakes them like wind

shakes the boughs of buds, too bad

their lips are shut tight

Today they walk close

to their dreams but only talk

of stones in their shoes

She humors her ghosts,

he shouts at the news, this serves

as their evening song

Woman finds the mate

won't ever read Jane Austen

or Virginia Woolf

Despite the snoring

and dreams that puncture the dark

they wake holding hands

He makes her a meal

she folds his socks and t-shirts

it is this simple

The sun draws them out

of dull rooms cold thighs stale cues

eros walks back in

Woman Speaks After 34 Years in Mp3

My grandmother Rose serves tea, click, clack, ting,

with some astringent memories

to the grand nephew

with his tape recorder, whirr, click, hiss,

He wants to turn his great grandfather

into a Murder, Inc. screenplay, bang, bang, bling

with ACTION GANGSTERS CHASES

when all her father did, she insists,

is carry bottles to speakeasies, clink, clink, clink,

so he could make the rent, sniff, sniff, sniff,

take his family to the Catskills

for hay rides, clip, clip, clop.

2010-09-07T12:58:00.000-07:00

BRAD BUCHANAN

Dealer

Not pushy, he knew that he could afford

a guarded magnanimity.

Because of his sociable stare,

I saw I would need to smoke him up

from out of the weed I wanted to buy.

The guitar solo from “Whipping Post”

was our common language—we retraced

our kinship back through acid rock

but his greatest hits were stashed in his shoe

and not for sale—our small talk fooled

itself into thinking that we could be friends

if only our chemical circumstances

were evenly distributed.

With that compliment, we parted,

pleased with what we’d negotiated

but more than ready to resume

the self-possession of being stoned

alone and wordless, buzzing with silent

possibilities nobody owned.

directive

first

make a list of all

the things you’ll miss

call home to confirm

that they are still

as you remember them

observe some

unaccountable change

and imagine its causes

your absence

has led

your loved ones

to their strange

new lives

you have abolished

all misfortune

now there is only

the blame you court

and avoid

the nightlong interview

with your restless

suspicious mind

you have become

the all-purpose villain

who needs to die

at each story’s end

2010-09-07T12:55:00.000-07:00

WILLIS BARNSTONE

HOPE IS NOT FAITH BUT ASPARAGUS

Most beautiful of things I leave is sunlight.

Then comes glazing stars and the moon’s face,

then ripe cucumbers and apples and pears

--Praxila (c. 450 B.C. E.)

Hope is asparagus and mango on

wild salmon; sex in a Lapland fjord.

Summer floats us childlike from reindeer dawn

into white nights. The free blue mountains, bored

with solitude and snow, take off their mist

and dance for huge-eyed fish. Ignorant faith

smells good with cheese. The Lhasa vultures hissed

circling the bloody stone, their joyous wrath

set to be fed on an old chopped-up corpse.

I lacked the eyes to feast on nature’s mad

crude sky-burial holiness and stayed

back in my room to swish sad-

ness down the sink. Asparagus and lox

bloat me. Hope is Sicilian marmalade.

2010-09-07T12:20:00.000-07:00

SUSAN TERRIS

Tasseling

In the garden by the pond, outlines. Daughters and

mothers, the old woman says. Mothers and daughters.

Think of the crackle before a light bulb blows,

the darkened glass, afterimage of a girl,

pyrotechnics with cymbals of

light wheeling outwards.

Yet she'd been so unmarked,

the beauty, the desired. Her glitter-paint

pictures. Beans grown in a window box

then left to purple in western light.

The corn, the old woman says, looking past daughter

and mothering, is beginning to tassel.

The radishes pinked and swelled to the size of onions.

Overhead, grumble of a summer storm:

a hint of thunder as heat lightning

fingers the sky,

as the girl savors rumors of boys and of cars.

Before, she was always her mother's brimming

image. But how fragile glass can be.

Think seven years bad luck.

Now crazed. The sharp-edged reflections, ripped

and rippled. I hate you, love you,

hate you, won't invite you to my party,

and all the old nursery lines thrown into

this garden. But which? The one with silver

bells or with the lost lamb?

I didn't know it was going to be this hard,

the mother sighs. Warp and bubble.

How does a child become not image but vessel—

her two dimensions rounded to

an empty bottle afloat on a mirrored pond?

No message. A girl without context.

And when did she surge into not-mother?

So what now? Sort her as trash and try

to recycle?

Or seek a kind of rebirth

to a fresh, unblemished model?

And what is the model? Not bottle but stalk.

She's tall and still green with corn-tassel hair

and feet rooted in earth.

You give your boys wings, the old woman says.

But where have you hidden hers?

The boys, the cars, the rumors, the light....

O why other in place of mother?

Draw a magic circle. Color it with purple, and

keep her planted here. The corn may be

tasseling but it's not yet ripe.

Kernels swell as sky flashes. Wind twists

cornstalks. The girl is not

Dorothy, the tornado not headed for Oz.

In children's books, the old woman says, first kill

the mother. Mother-words: the tornado,

a spiraling I-told-you-so of noise.

So daughter must kill

or, at least, sting and stun, shake

roots and tear away. Still,

there's a brief letgodontletgo glance

from her clouded face as

she flees mother-censor, mother-law,

hateyouloveyouhateyou—green, yellow, fuchsia

circles—loveyou—pinwheeling through the dark.

So hate me, the daughter cries. Can't stay....

Storm-cracked images: the cars,

the boys, the rumors of light. Camera

obscura shows girl and earth turning.

Lightning and thunder shingle. The pond undams.

Furrows flood. Then girl, a mud-dark

silhouette against the sky, inhales and exhales.

Mother-voice deadened. Daughter-girl

aloft, as her soft silken hair flags out behind.

Marsh Hawk Review, Spring 2010

2010-04-18T21:48:00.000-07:00

Marsh Hawk Review, Spring, 2010

edited by Sandy McIntosh and Thomas Fink

Crossover Poems: Lozada, Mackey, Matz, McIntosh, Moseley, Tabios

Edwin Agustin Lozada

Mary Mackey

Charles Matz

Sandy McIntosh

Annabelle Moseley

Eileen R. Tabios

Jane Augustine

Terry J. Cole

Thomas Fink

Edward Foster

John Harkey

Basil King

Sueyeun Juliette Lee

Peter Nickowitz

Geoffrey Olsen

Crossover Poems: Lozada, Mackey, Matz, McIntosh, Moseley, and Tabios

2010-04-18T21:40:00.000-07:00

A long-emerging internationalism in poetic language and style affects these poems, which include other languages than English in their construction. While incorporating foreign words and structures in poetry is not new, sources of this modern internationalism are not limited to immediate geographies--such as the European languages and forms adopted into English poetry during the Renaissance. Here are examples of poems incorporating traditional and far-flung language incorporations: Anglo Saxon, Spanish, Philippine Tagalog, and Portuguese.

-- Sandy McIntosh