Writing Under the Influence

Summer/Autumn 2009

AND ONE

Somewhere in Kansas, western Kansas,

half way to Winnebago I found a spot

while driving all night toward La Pléiade.

I broke a piano where trucks crossed trains.

The keys and hammers pounded down the tracks.

Ajar, Kansas. Maybe someone forgot to cross

an x.  Sidewalk board claps the head

and silent horses rattle tack, thinking sleigh.

The floor above rattles with walking talk.

There is no speech today without rhythm.

The stomach rocks with a music it knows

so well that it has forgotten the scale.

Tilting the platter of the land

to roll into the sockets of the eyes,

lowering the mouth till crickets kiss it

I counter an unhappy rap with cheers.

With so much grass to cut who can think of plowing?

No storefront seems to grieve of its blighted street,

fluent cheese, salutary detours, dogged

looks at architecture, these are our products now.

A man works, knowing legacy. The work of nature

is so wise she doesn't need eyes . Our nakedness

finds its clothes. Nothing else requires

such small work for immortality. It's a pleasant apparatus;

from one end it kills you, from the other

it makes you uninterested in anything else in the world.

Egg timer talk frees us from logical thought and

the harvest flew to the table as a meal.

author retains all rights

© 2009

next writer

Lawrence Bridges lives Los Angeles, California. His book of poems, Horses of Drums was published by Red Hen Press in 2006.  Flip Days will be published  this Fall, also with Red Hen. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, and most recently, The Tampa Review. Bridges founded the acclaimed design film and design studio, Red Car, and has directed several hundred commercials and music videos, features and documentaries.  Stanley Kubrick has called his work in film "visual poetry.” More recently, he directed a series of six documentaries on prominent American authors for the NEA's “Big Read” initiative, which include Ray Bradbury, Amy Tan, Rudolfo Anaya, Ernest J. Gaines, Tobias Wolff, and Cynthia Ozick.

LAWRENCE BRIDGES