Breathe Poetry

voleuse:

Flying
by Clare McDonnell

I sit in my seat and prepare to die.
My tight-clenched hands squeeze out salty wet fear
as the air-whale monster in which I'm entombed
awesomely roars in my ear and my brain.
The world shrinks as we climb cloudy tresses,
speed to transparent paths paved with sky.
With each choke of the engine, each whim of the wing,
I expect to plummet. Time stalls, flounders on
until gravity seems to be getting its way.
We tilt, slowly sink lower and lower.
The star-stitched runway arches to meet the wheels.
We bump down. My eyes feast on solid ground.
The red rubber band of my fear snaps.


( The Three Bears )

voleuse:

Cliff Edge
by Clare McDonnell

I am up on the cliff
where the breeze is fresh on my cheek
and the sky is seagull-soft.

Below me the grey mist is swirling
hiding and muffling the pounding of waves
that break and shatter on the black rocks.

The rocks and the sea want me.
They would wash me, push me, smash me,
until all the pieces of me were smooth

like the pebbles they worry ceaselessly.
If only I could see the black rocks
and the waves' white bleeding,

their thunder would not frighten me so,
I would not keep dreaming of them
and feeling their spray in my sleep.

I would not have to come each morning
and listen to them, at the edge of the cliff.

voleuse:

Water on Mars
by Clare McDonnell
for Susan

Mars has the memory of water
carved into her parched rock.

Does she remember rivers;
their silkiness, their languid drawl,
their flux and gush, their roar,
clots of frogspawn, green weeds waving?
Did she understand the pebble talk of water,
delight in the twinkle of sun and shade
and the sudden shimmer of fish?

Was there once someone there
who saw a lake as flat as a polished table,
the surface so tense that insects hardly
dented it, darting between lily pads?
Did he notice how wrinkles halo out when
a swallow dips for flies, or how the breeze
strews handfuls of sparkle over the water?

Was there an enormous ocean there
whose curled tongue was shredded on rocks?
Did it suck the sand from beneath a poet's feet
leaving him in unsteady wonder?
Did his child cup handfuls of spilled sun
from its surface, let it seep through her fingers
to become water again, licking her ankles?

In winter, did rain slap him with glass hands?
In summer, did it finger his face softly,
bring back aromas to dryness,
plump up the wall's cushion of moss?
And when it stopped, did each lupin leaf
hold a diamond between its fingers,
was the fissure a stream, did the red rock steam?

voleuse:

Birthday Party
by Clare McDonnell

I spilt my jelly, tripped over grown-ups' feet,
could never think of anything to say,
and the lace on my dress chafed my neck.
I was always polite, tried hard to win
at musical chairs and hunt the thimble.
My party piece was 'The Lamb' by Blake.
With cheeks burning, I stumbled through it
and rushed back to sit on my unruly hands.
When it came to my turn to blow out
the seven coloured candles and make a wish.

I always wished to be back in Ireland
on my Uncle Jerry's farm, with real lambs,
to finger their curly coats and hold bottles
for the orphaned ones who suck so fiercely.
I wanted to hide in the hay barn with Shep,
hunt for turkey eggs under nettles,
follow the bony cows at milking time
and be allowed to carry the candle upstairs
to the big bed with a bolster down the middle.
I just wanted to be at home.


( Nocturne )

voleuse:

Insomnia in a Strange City
by Clare McDonnell

Too hot with the duvet on,
too cold with it off,
I am a corkscrew, twisting
on the edge of wine-dark dreams.
The territory is scented by others,
making an intruder of me.
Tired of watching each red minute pass
I go to the window, look the city in the eye.

A tethered dog barks twice
to ask if he is alone in the world.
There is no reply.

Jaundiced light bleeds over the pavement
and spills into oily puddles
that splash the worn shoes
of a lame night-walker.
Macho youths bluff their way
past shadows in doorways.
A Coke can dances along the gutter
to its own tinny music.

A tethered dog barks twice
to ask if he is alone in the world.
There is no reply.

Lovers, whose fermented hurt explodes
through the black bottle-neck of night,
scream their grief at each other.
A coiled cat unwinds itself
into an arch, then settles again
on yesterday's dead headlines.
An alarmed car, molested by a stranger,
shrieks in panic for its owner.

A tethered dog barks twice
to ask if he is alone in the world.
There is no reply.

Then suddenly dawn sighs
and a blackbird sings of home.
I crawl under the alien duvet
and crush the poking fingers of insomnia
that teased my tired mind.
In splintered dreams of dark streets,
I run to comfort the tethered dog.
We lie together in our chains.

mythomanic:

The Layers

I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray.
When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned camp-sites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.
Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.
In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
"Live in the layers,
not on the litter."
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.

-- Stanley Kunitz

mythomanic:

The Mulch

A man with a leaf in his head
watches an indefatigable gull
dropping a piss-clam on the rocks
to break it open.
Repeat. Repeat.
He is an inlander
who loves the margins of the sea,
and everywhere he goes he carries
a bag of earth on his back.
Why is he down in the tide marsh?
Why is he gathering salt hay
in bushel baskets crammed to his chin?
"It is a blue and northern air,"
he says, as if the shiftings of the sky
had taught him husbandry.
Birthdays for him are when he wakes
and falls into the news of weather.
"Try! Try!" clicks the beetle in his wrist,
his heart is an educated swamp,
and he is mindful of his garden,
which prepares to die.

-- Stanley Kunitz, from The Testing-Tree (1971)

mythomanic:

The Scene
-- after Alexander Blok

Night. Street. Lamp. Drugstore.
A world of dim and sleazy light.
You may live twenty-five years more.
Nothing will change. No way out.

You die. You're born again and all
Will be repeated as before:
The cold ripple of a canal.
Night. Street. Lamp. Drugstore.

-- Stanley Kunitz, from Next-to-Last-Things (1985)

mythomanic:

The Abduction

Some things I do not profess
to understand, perhaps
not wanting to, including
whatever it was they did
with you or you with them
that timeless summer day
when you stumbled out of the wood,
distracted, with your white blouse torn
and a bloodstain on your skirt.
"Do you believe?" you asked.
Between us, through the years,
we pieced enough together
to make the story real:
how you encountered on the path
a pack of sleek, grey hounds,
trailed by a dumbshow retinue
in leather shrouds; and how
you were led, through leafy ways,
into the presence of a royal stag,
flaming in his chestnut coat,
who kneeled on a swale of moss
before you; and how you were borne
aloft in triumph through the green,
stretched on his rack of budding horn,
till suddenly you found yourself alone
in a trampled clearing.

That was a long time ago,
almost another age, but even now,
when I hold you in my arms,
I wonder where you are.
Sometimes I wake to hear
the engines of the night thrumming
outside the east bay window
on the lawn spreading to the rose garden.
You lie beside me in elegant repose,
a hint of transport hovering on your lips,
indifferent to the harsh green flares
that swivel through the room,
searchlights controlled by unseen hands.
Out there is a childhood country,
bleached faces peering in
with coals for eyes.
Our lives are spinning out
from world to world;
the shapes of things
are shifting in the wind.
What do we know
beyond the rapture and the dread?

-- Stanley Kunitz, from Next-to-Last-Things (1985)

mosca:

Art Objets
Rebecca Cross

1)           a small cabinet, glass-fronted, in which are twigs, like branches, like thickets, 
and beyond them are stars in a night sky, vaguely discernable. the cabinet is locked, 
the key on the table in front of it. this is given a name that evokes childhood dreams, 
long forgotten.

2)           another cabinet, this bigger, solid-doored, though open. inside, a dummy. in 
his trousers a hard-on, in his head another cabinet. title: solipsism.

3)           a third cabinet, pane of glass in the door. inside, twigs, like braches, like 
thickets. on the floor of the cabinet, visible behind the twigs, are doll-sized shoes. 
the key is in the lock, the cabinet door is ajar. this one needs no name.

4)           a mannequin’s head, male, sectioned. inside, a screen on which is projected 
a blinking eye. across from him, a female dummy, naked, empty-headed. on her body 
is projected the same eye. note how distorted the eye appears on her curves. this is 
love, dummy.

5)           stretch of black-blue velvet dotted with milk-teeth purchased for a quarter 
each. it will reveal to each person either melancholy beauty or menace. a person 
viewing it will either feel nostalgia or deep foreboding. title will be a more or less 
obscure literary reference, though one that sounds familiar to everybody: once more 
the stars.

6)           a great sheet of formica, eight feet by eight feet, raised on a pedestal 
roughly hip-level, white. in the center, a miniscule house. if one can get an eye to it, 
past the formica, she will see, in a mirror, her own eye gleaming back. this one will be 
called grief.

7)           a seated female mannequin. on her lap, obscuring her torso and head, a large 
painting of the torso and head of a woman. the face has been rubbed out. moving 
around the object, one will see that the mannequin’s face is joined to the back of the 
painting, all features buried in the backing. the viewer may wonder if the face has 
been melted off or cut. the object will whisper a word no one can hear.

From apocryphaltext.

mosca:

For Astrophil

When Love is finished riding you like a horse,
Pen me. That Stella’s one ferocious Cupid
But you, you Petrarch, mirror me. Endorse
Your signature, your black-faced woe. I’m stupid

But at your feet. Monotonous but rooted,
I, with a stallion’s stride, will follow. Force
My dactyl, Love. Allow the heavens looted
Of sun and moon to curl without their course;

Then, please, my sugar-sweet iconoclast,
When I am wearing moons as my round face,
Crack them in half and let my arrow chase
Each piece and crack them, speared, until I cast

A billion shadows—subject, object, trace—
Like dark erasure marks that won’t erase.

From Alehouse.

mosca:

Two today, because I missed yesterday, and because I couldn't decide between them. Both are from Albatross.

In the Time of Temperatures
W. Dale Nelson

Yesterday’s actual
exceeded today’s average,
the Weather Channel reports.

More than we ever knew
at this time of year
is plaguing us. The warmth

is global, but comes
in pieces, some moving
faster than others.
Ice is unstable
in areas of low pressure.
Storms disturb
the insulated earth,
an unintended consequence
of light from the staggering sun.

In Hell
Lyn Stefenhagens

When I reach Hell

I will build my house
of finches and mice and foxes.

I will structure the frame
with wasps and dogs and squirrels.
Turtles and ants and speckled trout.

I will measure that house daily,
cupboard to floor to attic

so when they come,
those neighbors bearing casseroles,

I will tell them
I am damned to eat
only what my hands have killed;
only what my house provides.

mosca:

Puke

John Law is eating hot purple beets
in the poor house
in a dark corner of Alsace-Lorraine
where the lamps weaken
while he suffers a vision of complexity,
of paper money falling
upon rats
swimming in the long canal
of next winter’s early rains.

John Law is a membrane
of least fact—the idea of paper money
is Chinese, just
as animal crackers are Sumerian and puke
to most dogs
is a late least fact of appetite
all over again—

it is strange
that the financing of the American Revolution
and John Law’s printing machines
led to the bankruptcy
of the entire French nation
and hundreds, perhaps thousands,
of headless aristocrats
as if money were a kind of contingency
like rain.

From Burnside Review.

o_glorianna:

Nerve Speech and Song Lines
Brian Henderson

                    (for Gwendolyn MacEwen)

Along this river, shore birds cut
hieroglyphs in failing light

Dusk moves with the sweep of a hand

From the mouth of the moon
your shadow glides out,

Egyptian
among discarded languages,
broken tongues, ruins,
robbed tombs, codes of stars,
a shiver over the landscape
that once thought itself green
or perhaps human

Nerve speech spilt out of you
its pleasure sparked along
your limbs, hot tongues, burned
you up like furniture
calls you back to itself
crackling through the night unnoticed
forking out in new directions

and along your body strips of gold unfold



                    (for Eli Mandel)

You say the cow is smoking a pipe, and I
believe you. You wave to the stranger
on the other side, and row across
the river to reach her, though there is
no river, no boat. You are
doing all this with words, undressing
the night from her blouse of blazing
stars...
          But I can only imagine
what this world is for: it burns
memories like a wick. They flare up
gutter out. Heat lightening. Words &emdash;
you make me say — enact
what they do not mean. Or mean
what they do not signify. Oar.
That river again

The sky has fallen into the arms of the
river, like a lover, but remains still
over head,
          striking a burst of heat
lightening from her own darkness,
all distance
                collapsed in the expanding
space between

o_glorianna:

Shadow Lake
Brian Henderson

Darkness. The lake
with its language of swallowed things

Sick with distance, they
circle back
as if following a shoreline

They rise from the centre

The air is rich with unfinishedness

Things want to be free
impossibly
without having to be lost




In the Old Garden
Brian Henderson

I might say I recognize this voice
but I do not; it comes as if
from under the earth,
encrusted with a frangrance too heavy to bear

It curls up, a nautilus
of cloud in the south west —
a book of backward spiralling
mother-of-pearl blackened light

You have hardly begun the poem
the voice says, and yet
many people have already died

We open even a word like a book
I try to say, but how does this help,
when in the living
every lit vein runs to the golden stigmas of the heart

Perhaps the only real word is
the one the body speaks
as a whole life

the only with our whole lives
can we read it

voleuse:

Desperation
by Leona Florentino

What joy and satisfaction must be
experienced by those who have lovers
who listen to and feel their laments.

But sad is my fate; it will not have an equal,
and I say so because of the torments
that I am suffering.

Because although I adore a beautiful
someone, I find no indication that I could
be worthy of her.

I curse the hour I was born, and I would
have preferred to have died
at that same moment.

I try to express my passion, but I am tongue-tied,
for I foresee clearly that I would
only merit bitter disdain.

But it will be enough consolation for me
that you are aware of my passion, and I swear
to you, not anyone else, will I die of love.

voleuse:

Radiant Moon
by Luisa A. Igloria

Radiant
moon,
dark
path

This is the world
that holds us

I will embrace
the radiance
and the darkness,
the dreaming
and waking

What was hidden,
forgotten, or
lost—
all that was sweet,
bitter,
burdensome—

they return like the wind,
like whispers passing
through the leaves,
the wild grass that has grown
over the desirous
heart

o_glorianna:

Untying the Tongue
Gregory M. Cook

One of the brothers I might have had
was born with cleft palate, tongue-tied.
In surgery on his fourth day
a brother I might have known bled to death.
Whose loss was the greater is not a question
neither does the equation include a when.
The problem is how to untie the tongue.

He and a still-born sibling are buried
at home under foot stone memorials.
Granite stands for our father buried abroad.
Where is to explain World War II
why mother's father burned her letters
from our father when he was a soldier
how later she fired her own writings.

Why I continue untying the tongue
is to ask, why develop the film
after the shutter is actually closed on
the irresistible radiance of what
is beyond control, yet is here
to be released, at least in words
on a palate as full as, yes.

o_glorianna:

The Knot
Gregory M. Cook

My stepfather
accepted me as I was —
left-handed, swimming
under water and backwards.
He never asked me to change
unless in a message
from my mother, although
I drove him to punish me,
as though to prove his love.
Except for his carrying me asleep
or lifting me from danger
he had to learn to touch.

In the circular hall mirror
I can feel his arms come over each
of my shoulders, showing
how a man knots his tie
and I can see his tongue
pointing, guiding his fingers
burred by lumber and stone
workman's hands, nettling
the silk threads, realizing
I am supposed to be watching
the image of his hands reversed
so that he is the left-handed one
in the mirror with its engraved
full moon behind an evergreen
on the side of a slope I imagine
as the sled run on his far, the same one
I can see with my eyes closed
even now, as I eventually shut them
when I used to wear a tie
and I will close them again
if I ever tie another noose
around my own neck, and hear
him tell his sons "Never
put on a pair of coveralls."
It wasn't the work he minded,
it was the way other people
looked at him, spoke or didn't.
I can see him extending his arm
to shake hands whenever
after the first time
I left from visits home.

Ever so imperceptibly
over the years that arm
grew shorter as we drew
each other close enough and insured
the second hand was empty
to clasp each other at our forearms
a kind of hug, I suppose.
At farewells as well as greetings
the clasp of arms
lingered longer each moment
until, one day, we were close
enough to get the second arm
around each other
the embrace that became a bear hug
even in public.
Then, before he died, we learned
to kiss on the mouth
as if we always had —
his beard sharp, me an infant.

voleuse:

Ochre Tones
by Marjorie Evasco

The benediction in the air—
A lizard, translucent and newly-broken
From its shell, kisses the earth
At sundown, repeating the ritual dance
Of marsh and cloud dragons.

My best friend Grace says baby lizards
Are messengers, presaging heat or rain
She believes in omens: earth calling
The littlest creatures to drink
THe first mists of evening.

Who is to say it is instinct, merely,
Or moisture-need, that makes us
Crawl or bend our lizard lips
Unto the ground? Dusk cools our fevers
And there is joy in this surrender

Even now, the tips of bamboo leaves
Hold watergems. In the early evening air
I remember Grace, and somewhere,
An old gecko clicks its rhythmic
Yes       yes       yes.