October Elegy

The following poem is being published in the 2009 edition of Limestone (University of Kentucky).


OCTOBER ELEGY


for Fred Burdette

It started in his lungs, black and tar-spackled.
Spread to his liver, stomach, intestine. Soon his
legs refused to carry him, and when he could
no longer hobble to the toilet on those shriveled
bone-stalks, it was my aunt who came to stay.
She tended him. Sat in the heat of his bedroom.
Tolerated, for hours on end, the scent of urine
and ether. Knew the heaving burn of his chest.
Bathing him, hands pressing against his pallid skin,
she must have noticed the scars: ones from the
war flecking the right flank of his torso, a new one
from the surgery cleaving the column of his ribs.
In the heavy light of those afternoons she read to
him, stories that reminded him of the Belgian winter,
huddled in a foxhole, 1945, burying his body in
the earth to absorb the heat of another’s breathing.
When the pain became too much, it was she who
bore his screams: In his madness he’d wail deep
into the night, cursing her with the low growl of
his voice. Later, as things began to dissipate, he
babbled to her with a lolling cluck of the tongue,
his language, mind, mangled with obscenity.

Literary LEO

The poem, "Dandelion Wine," posted somewhere below, was selected for recognition in the Poetry Division of the Literary LEO Writing Contest.  Look for it in the Jan. 28th issue of the LEO.

New Poem

LIGHT

There are limits to what can be said:
The warm dander of belly-morning skin.
This amuses me: kitchen clatter,
stainless-steel pots and pans,
a kettle on the stove warming water for tea.
I am sitting at the table watching light
filter gray through the East-facing window.
A cardinal perches on the second-
story outer sill – and what of that
brilliant feather-red crown of tuft?
Later tonight I will switch the lamps down low,
and we will burn candles, whisper kisses to 
each other in their dim flame – like last week
when we made love to shingle-patter rain,
finished, and waited on the back porch
for the thick of August heat,
breathed-in wetness from the air.

Pulling a Stump

"Pulling a Stump" was first written in March. The idea, in the beginning, was to capture the perpetual existence of the tree - the stump. Perhaps it remains only in spirit or in memory, but that is enough. The tree persists nonetheless; hence the comparison in the first stanza, "The old stump... stands out/like a scar in the unplowed field." Like a scar, which reminds us of an event in the distant past - a pain, even - the cleft in the dirt left by the uprooted stump reminds the reader of the tree. As the scar continues to remind the bearer of a fleeting moment of the past, allowing that moment to replay over and over in the mind, the fissure reminds us of the tree. In that vein the tree continues to exist, its memory perpetuating in our minds, allowing the tree to transcend its own being - the temporality of the world - and in a sense become eternal.

PULLING A STUMP

The old stump, a black thing
with roots stretching
deep into the earth, stands out
like a scar in the unplowed field.
Today, Father and I go into
the field to pull it.

We carry shovels and pickaxes,
hopes to sever the roots
of the nourishing dirt -
to break the flat top into bits
of dead-gray wood.

My axe breaks it in two,
and with a few more swings,
to pieces of earthy mulch.

Next come the shovels.
We heave them into the dirt,
splitting the roots
near the base.
I push the shovel head
beneath the broken roots,
and we lift the stump
bottom-up from the ground.

We drop it into the bed
of Father's pick-up
and drive it off the field.

All that is left is a fissure
in the earth,
where next year dandelions
will flower out,
reminding us of a tree uprooted.

Faith

Good writing often comes when it is least expected. Over the last several weeks I have found myself mulling over old poems, reading work by new poets, subscribing to new magazines - all in search of inspiration. I wanted to write something fresh. Something new. Ever since I came back from Guatemala in March it seemed I hadn't been able to write anything good. Nothing was coming together - which, at least in my experience, is what a good poem must do on its own. Finally, last week, it hit me. I don't know what it was, but something clicked. I found myself writing out what became a two-page long poem. Then, last night, lying in bed and looking up at the ceiling, contemplating what it means to find peace and where I had seen it most in my life, it came again. The words started turning over in my mind. At first it was just a tone, then an image. Soon it became sounds, which then formed into words. Finally, I had to get up. I had to write this down before I forgot the words so perfectly wrought in my creative conscious. This is what came.


FAITH

Zacapa, where hot
wind whistles
in tamarind trees
and we lay star staring
on the roof at night,
the sing-song sound
carried to our ears,
and through the leaves
we saw it –
a single-room church
with white plastic
chair pews, where dirty,
starving, people still
come to pray.

Dandelion Wine

A poem written in early spring, on a line from Thomas Pynchon's 'The Crying of Lot 49.'

DANDELION WINE

In April, you gathered weeds
from the field,
made dandelion wine -
blithe-picked flowers
for drink,
and the old ones, white windborne seeds,
to blow into the air.

Crushed yellow on the pestle,
you bled the juice
into bottles, added yeast,
let it sit, fermenting over months.

The next year, when we opened it,
you poured the wine,
gold into my glass.
We drank -
nourishing ghosts of dandelions,
the dead persisting in a bottle of wine.

Steer

The following poem, "Steer," is one I began working on in mid-December. I can hardly remember working for so long on a single poem, writing and rewriting, filling my journal with revisions. I cut, then expanded, then cut some more. Finally I was able to come up with a draft that I liked. It's been sitting for some time.

Now that it is finished (or at least as close to finished as I can make it), there are a number of things I admire about it - the description of the Texas landscape, the steer wandering off from the ranch, the quick process of dying, and the slow process of decay. The last lines beg the reader to ask the question: what does this all mean? Where is the purpose behind the process of decay; breaking life into dirt? And, of course, what follows: what is the reason for living, if only to return to dust?


STEER

Death is a way of speaking,
breaking bits of life into dirt.
In August, the raw mountains
of Mexico shade the plain,
which stretches out across the
border into the Texas sun.
Thickets of brush grow where
the river dries up, its many
estuaries reduced to small
pools, stagnant water in
channels of red-dry rock.
A little way out from the stream,
a steer wanders off from Laughlin Ranch,
grunting with each step, hooves
catching on cracks in the soil.
Stumbling into the red rock-bed,
his joints go limp, body collapses.
In silence, he stares toward
the mountain shade.
Within the hour the steer’s
eyes tire and go dry – he dies.
Over days, weeks, his eyes
come to harbor shadows,
empty to the open air.
His teeth become exposed.
His chest, a bare cage of bone.
A cloud of orange dust rises
in the desert breeze, fades
to gold as it reaches eye level.

Metroversity Writing Contest

A poem of mine, "Hart County," was recently named honorable mention in this year's Metroversity Writing Contest. The poem was posted in this blog in November, I believe, and is being published in this year's volume of Ariel Magazine. Will post more writing soon!

Stick Elegy

Unfortunately, I haven't had much time to write recently. What I have written has been more and more difficult to complete, and I have had little time to do any free reading. What reading I have done has mostly been out of journals and magazines. I came across this poem a few weeks ago, and thought I'd share it. It is titled "Stick Elegy," and is by Terrance Hayes, a teacher and writer at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. The poem was recently published in the March 2008 edition of Poetry magazine.

STICK ELEGY

The dead were still singing "Turn the lights down low"
Beneath Yellow Bridge where years before, clowning
And ass out, Stick jumped with nothing but the State
Championship trophy in his righteous clutch. The water
Was supposed to be deepest there, and for three seasons
Straight MVPS: Charlie "Fly" Kennison, Long Timmy Long,
And Rocket Jefferson, those are the names I knew, jumped

Free. But Stick's ankle broke. I fished him out, crumpled
And bawling like the day he was born, like an object of
Baptism, and a life of bad luck followed in the shape of
Floods and fractured lightning, and then, numb, tooth-
Less, and changed, the dead refused burial, striking out, 2
By 2, 4 by 4, from the morgue house to raise trouble at
The bridge. I started hearing birds everywhere after that.

Morning

The following is a poem I began toward the end of the Fall semester. As always, I drafted it in my notebook, and the proceeded to type it up on my computer. I thought it was finished, and let it sit for a number of weeks. I came back to it recently, and realized a number of mistakes, as well as a few areas of improvement. After making the necessary changes, I believe it is close to being finished.

MORNING

Condensation gathers on the window.
I lean toward you, half-dreaming,
and nuzzle the depth of your shoulders.
Your neck, long and slender,
glows white in the cool light of morning.
The skin of your thigh is calm.
Outside, the jingle of car keys carries
to our room on the third story,
engine groan sputtering in the February cold.
6 AM, not yet time to wake.
I close my eyes and imagine the day
to come - clatter of dishes, knife on fork,
to plate, and wash. Black leather boots
on hardwood floor, beating from table to table -
and all through the day I know I'll be
thinking of this - bed, light, calm -
longing to nestle in the warm blue of blankets,
musing of the day to come.

Untitled Poem

Lately, I feel that I haven't been able to really finish any work. Over the last month or so I've written a great number of short, sort of fragmentary pieces, but only one that has been relatively conclusive. What I am posting here is another of these fragments. Maybe someone can give me insight as to what I should do with it.

POEM

The cove-thicket water is frozen a foot deep.
Deer prints mark a path in the snow.
I step onto the lake, let my
rubber boot-soles clop on the surface,
listen for silence.

Beneath my feet flit the backs
of death-cold salmon,
in the light of a white-wall sky...

Music

This poem, "Music," is inspired by a Frank O'Hara poem of the same title. It is one I worked on over Christmas break, and I am posting it here tentatively. I'll probably make some changes to the post sometime soon.

MUSIC

Fifth and Maine, by the Belvedere, Louisville, downtown,
I watch as a horse pulls a small carriage, man and woman
side by side, a heavy blanket on their lap,
the horse's iron shoes clopping on the cold cement.
A woman in a red scarf and purple tweed coat
paces the corner, pressing the silver button,
ready to cross the street. I listen to the hum of engines,
sputtering, impatient, waiting for the light to change green.
A group of Somalian bongoists are drumming
near the doorway to the Bank of America Building;
navy blue cardigan sweaters, capped in black and gray.
Warm mist rises from their mouths in musical exhale.

Covered Porch, Downtown

This poem, "Covered Porch, Downtown," is one that in some ways eludes me. I'm not necessarily sure what I was trying to get at when I wrote it. What I did know was that I liked the details, and I liked the sort of hopefulness of the woman, smiling as she pushes her shopping cart down the sidewalk, despite the odds against her - her age (and the weakness that would probably come with that), the rain, the cracks in the sidewalk. I would imagine that the cart wheels do not roll especially smoothly. Despite all of this she still manages to carry out her quotidian routine. The stoicism of the woman conveys to the narrator a sense of hope. This hopefulness inspires the narrator with a similar hope, even a stoicism towards his own surroundings, and brings him to the James Wright-ish statement, "I am making peace with God." Through this the rain in a way becomes a baptism, the speaker being washed cleaned in this moment of renewal.

COVERED PORCH, DOWNTOWN

Sitting on the covered porch downtown
in the summer, afternoon,
I listen to the husky whisper
of rain padding on the shingles
and aluminum drainpipes,
gathering in puddles on the concrete.

A woman, likely in her eighties,
pushes a cart over the cracks
in the sidewalk, through the enveloping fog.
Her face is withered, sad.
She flashes me a smile as her
left-front wheel catches on the pavement.

I am making peace with God.

Meditation on Calligraphy

This next poem, "Meditation on Calligraphy," is one inspired by a class I took over the summer on Zen Bhuddism and its relation to poetry. One of the things we covered in that class was the art of Zen calligraphy. The beauty of this form is its existential nature. The calligrapher focuses only on the present, planning out his movements with precision, blocking out all else - other thoughts, worries, obligations, etc. It is through this process of meditation that he prepares his action, and then, in one solitary movement he puts the brush to the page. He performs the action on which he has meditated, and then he is finished, left alone to comtemplate his actions. The last line of the poem is borrowed from another poem by a friend of mine. It happened to fit quite well with the poem I was writing, and as T. S. Eliot said, great poets do not borrow, but steal. Thanks, Corey.

MEDITATION ON CALLIGRAPHY

The hand meditates
over canvas,
contemplating the brush,
the page, nothingness -
every flicker of
the horsehair tip,
before setting ink
to paper.

In suddenness,
the moment,
aware,
the hand strikes -
one quick motion -
thoughtless and full
of thought.

Finished - the line,
thick, and black
on the page.
Brush at his side,
he is still, content.
Sitting just to sit.

II.

This is another piece of the larger, narrative work I am putting together. There is, of course, much more work to be done. This piece alone is a work in progress, but I figure I'd post some here and see what people think. Originally, I played around with the structure of words on the page a bit. I don't know how to do that with this blog, so the poem is just flushed left.

II.

By the sea we ran in circles,
two boys in the California sun,
our shoulders browned from the heat
and our eyes stinging at the corners
from wiped away ocean water
and the backs of sand-stuck hands.

In the water I let my body go,
subject to ebb and tide,
constancy of Pacific pull,
before wading back to
the coast.

I wrote his name,
Michael,
Brother,
on the shore –
entry to ephemeral castles,
marking kingdoms
of a world moved west.

Just For Fun...

A bit of E. E. Cummings inspired poetry (we are reading a book of his as we wrap up my American Modernism class).

CITY FROM ACROSS THE RIVER, DECEMBER

s(wh
ite w
intr
y dus
t set
tling
on bu
ildi
ng to
ps)n
ow.

Tony Crunk, poems

Recently, I checked several books out of the Bellarmine University library, mostly contemporary poetry. Among these included workks by Galway Kinnell, Donald Hall, and Joseph Brodsky, but more importantly, the book 'Living in the Resurrection' by Kentucky poet, Tony Crunk. The book won the Yale Younger Poets Prize in 1994, and most certainly deserves the title. I've been reading through it slowly all week, and continue, over and over again, from poem to poem, to be enchanted and impressed. This poem, "February," is among my favorites, though not necessarily the best one in the collection. I suggest that anyone who bothers to read this post - better yet, anyone who can read, period - go out and find a copy of Crunk's book. You can thank me later.

FEBRUARY

The copperhead and moccasin
are sleeping
vein deep in the blood of winter.

Magnolias
rub their swelling hands together
attempting to discover fire.

Blue shirts
my traveling clothes
once so carefully mended

now shredding
on scarecrows we forgot to bring in
in November.

I walk among them
now, in the dusting snow and moonlight
my arms stretched out -

my shadow
the cross
that one day will bear me away.

T. Crunk

Fields of Blue-tipped Grass

Growing up, most of the land around where my family lived was farm land. Few neighborhoods existed in that area, and the ones that did were small to medium in size. More recently a lot of development has been going on in this part of town. It has become much more industrialized. One afternoon this past summer, visiting my mother's home in one of these neighborhoods, my brother and I walked beyond the boundary of this subdivision to find, just past a wooded area, a great field that stretched almost as far as the eye could see. There was an old barn, withered, and falling apart from years of neglect, and a creek, quiet in this forest sanctuary; grass almost two feet high. This area used to be nothing but acres upon acres of open land, just like this. With the development that has taken place lately, it was strange that we had come across an area that remained untouched. We spent several hours walking, just walking through this field and these woods, talking of this recent industrialization; of how rare this piece of land now was, and how soon even it would be developed. This poem was written after that walk.

FIELDS OF BLUE-TIPPED GRASS
for Michael James

Step away from the blacktop, Michael,
we are not far away. Just over the
barbed wire fence, crimson and rusted,
is a field with blue-tipped grass
and rolling hills; where the only boundary
to be seen runs along the creek-side.

Angels

Every once and a while I'll come across a poem that allows my mind to wander; my imagination run free. Billy Collins writes a lot of these types of poems. He will often begin with a very ordinary moment in time, and let his mind wander - let the speaker take the reader to an imaginary world - and often end up in a very meditative state, always leaving the reader with a point to consider. It is always fun for a poet to take a line from one of his poems and let his or her own mind wander (or maybe just let the pen wander on the page), and see what happens. This poem is a result of one of those wanderings, maybe a little too much wandering, but nonetheless ended in a short poem of imaginitive and even fantastic nature.

ANGELS

I sometimes wonder how many angels
can dance on the head of a pin. Three,
maybe four at most, their feet moving
with divine precision, contemplating
each step before it falls. The answer,
I think, is closer to one - balanced dip,
arms outspread, she would have only
enough room to bend with the altering
rhythm of an antique gramophone.

Moving to Kentucky

It's always nice when, flipping through the poems you've set aside for a rainy day, you come across one that when written you didn't quite care for, but upon rereading, find that you actually like. Such is the case with this poem. I wrote it several weeks ago, and it is a piece of a series of semi-autobiographical poems (hence the title "IV"). It is about moving to Kentucky from California, and consists mainly of fragmentary memories of visiting with my grandparents before and after the actual move. It is subtitled "Moving to Kentucky."

IV.

Our first taste of snow came in April.
We'd never seen snow like this before,
and I gazed at the cover of white
wondering how it fell
to lie about, settled just so
on the Kentucky plain.
My cousin, Scott, rolled a ball
from the flakes that had gathered
on the windshield
of Grandma's Chevrolet.

The cows with their bells
grazed about the pasture,
chiming along the fence
and chewing dried grass
near the barbed-wire posts.

That summer, with the snow cleared,
we tied a rope to hang above the river
down the road, and swung from a rock
into the water. Fishing from beneath
the bridge, we drank Coca-cola and root
beer, catching rainbow trout,
and saving them for dinner.

As we wound back up the street,
we passed the Amish goat farm,
commenting on the way it smelled
and the lack of electricity.

In Grandma's kitchen we drank lemonade,
waiting for cartoons to come on the television.
Outside, we dug our feet into the sandbox,
and built an Indian fortress of dirt-red clay.