#18: mustard yellow daydreams

           for Vincent Van Gogh

yellow unleashed by a powerful sun

baking and frying, it still isn’t done

striking from daisies and daffodils,

quantities glinting from window sills —

pipings by the causeways yellow,

yanking yellow dewdrops off

a flaxen patch of trees.

hands that actually fabricate

dazzling concrete cakes of yellow,

corn unstalked and left askance —

bubbling upward yellow towers,

tufts of lemon wildflowers

passing fast careening car —

a gallery of ineluctable

starry-eyed and whimsical

rhymes engorged with sounds entangled

in a golden spiral — spangled

teensy tiny chickens in

an undiscovered barnyard hatching,

sticks of cream and custard matching

mustard yellow daydreams!                                                                  printable

                                         KC Wilder                                                            another Wilder poem

listen pOET there is a bird at the End of this Table

and he is Young. & his

mouTH is

Like the artist

       when the Artist is

   good:

he is ready; He is up

to sing, O he is

         wonderFul there,

The bird

is wonderful—

I think

, pOET,

we can be This wonderful:

        we can let Air come

like music

amoung our selves;

we can show there is No

piano more louD than

our Lungs—

            ! we can be

this Thing,

Our sONGs:

The reason for an open

window

in the house.                                                                 printable

                                 Steven Roggenbuck

The pOET is amung ships of Night

The pOET is amung ships of Night

with a Pyre glowing

! amung this

rAdio of Treetrunks & warm Leaves

from sKIES Over-top

DReamers

, from sKIES oVER-top

        syntaX of songBIrds!

pOEt ,oH— Freedom the dreamers !

Freedom The

songBIRds LOoming

on Lakes !

on Steeples of crookED Peaks! 

Open Her saiLS,

pOET—

open This rAIN                                                                printable

                     Steven Roggenbuck

East Idioms (continued)

c/

when the lofty fir begins to dwarf

all other trees in the same forest

it will be knocked down flat

by the first storm at night

d/

the moment a bold pupil is dotted

inside each of its handsome eyes

the painted dragon jumps alive

and flies high above the sky

l/

deeply buried under the dirty silt

the lotus root is pure and clean inside

you break it into pieces widely apart

yet they still remain connected by the silk

m/

three days after the nightingale flew away

its calls are still circling around every tree

with its songs squatting at each leaf tip

like a dewdrop refusing to fall onto the ground

s/

on the bare ground, with a broken twig

she drew a picture of the serpent

as lively as her own tongue

except for some feet added, though pretty                                                printable

                                          Changming Yuan

Dancing with Crane

I show her how to move her steps

But she’s much too timid

Worse still, she cannot coordinate with my movements

And

Although she dances with me, to an unheard melody

It’s her own music she’s dancing to

She likes the way I hold her

And

Even lets me kiss her shoulder from time to time

so richly white and velvety

But she always keeps me at bill’s length

Each time I come closer

She backs off with a glaring scream

What have I done so wrong?

What is in her mind?

Jumping off the stage

She shows her best, which is a scarlet crest

Like plum petals blown onto the wall of west

I beg her to return

And

So she did, but only to depart from me again

Outside the spotlight

She begins to beat her wide wings against my blue wishes

Her eyes sparkling, as if saying to me

I have my neck and legs

Both too thin and too long to be your partner here

In this cage-like hall

And

Worse still, she’s much too timid                                                        printable

                                         Changming Yuan

You, Written In Second-Person

You have a lot of explaining to do,

the ripped birds in my mailbox, the

pure freedom and dead eyes.

Each gift is stranger than the next:

a universe of crows braided

into my hair.  A copy of Ulysses,

and each time the word "love"

appeared, you cut it out.

The oddest thing you ever

gave me was a piece of rubble

from a Russian civilization found during

your trip last year.  You handed me

the old stone and looked

me in the face, wild-eyed as

an animal.  You said that

whatever love gives, it will

also take away, you know this

is true.  A tree banged at the window

during a storm and it sounded

like a heartbeat.  You said my eyes

looked prewar.  Today I took

the dead birds you sent me,

stood in my backyard and threw

them up fiercely.  If only we

could put ourselves into the

sky and make it stick, if only

the leaves had grabbed us

with claws and kept us there.

I could have written you letters,

but didn't.  My muscles loosen,

I fall at the same time the birds

fall and we land together.                                                                printable

                                Heather Bell

The Dead Body on the Highway

It was the second one we saw within a week,

covered with plastic like spring plants at night.

Covered like a canary cage to allow us to sleep.

It looked the same as the other one.  Stoic.

Cruelly indifferent.

Dead stalks of corn yet to be burned into the earth

collected the frozen breath.  Barns held up by crutches.

The body might as well have been a moth fluttering

by our eyes on our way to somewhere else.  Do you remember

where we were going?  I do.  It was dark.  We were early

with another hundred miles to go.

I brought no change of clothes.  You brought

a book, a thick Russian novel you’ve been wanting

to read for years.  Your belly stuffed with typed words.

The lights spun off behind us like tracer bullets.

You said twice in one week didn’t bother you.

You could have been speaking about a childhood pet.

Did this make you cold?  No.

It was a world you could no longer walk through,

but around.  Even snow gets weary of being snow.

We measured our loneliness by mile markers.

Both of us gifts we wanted

To return for the money.                                                                  printable

                               Dustin Nightingale

Watching the Old Man Clean the Pike

His knife slits the fish like a tough loaf.

Silver teeth slipping to the divots of knuckles,

scales catching in the creased brown skin.

Blood trails the altar of the cutting board,

sluiced to the squealing planks of the deck,

the tufts of moss, the rusting canoe on the rocks.

Its stomach rolls out like a slick satin bag.

Inside, a second fish,

swallowed whole, salt-white, color boiled away

 

in the deep black of the belly. With the knife’s tip

he slides it aside, its eye gazing up

like a small, stunned soul.                                                                        printable

                         Jacqueline West

Heiligeberge

    “Holy Mountain,” Heidelberg, Germany

At the top of the berg we come upon it.

Between the flat husks of two monasteries

racing to settle their skulls in the grass

a navel caves the green hilltop

where the Nazi arena stands

bare of any distinguishing symbols,

any sharp mark from Goebbel’s heel.

The low stone steps sloped from the stage

are gently blurring their hard bevels.

Grass juts from the joint of stairs,

clings in the mortar, sprouts from the gaps,

its green furls insistent as birth.

It has pushed the dust from its roots,

claimed the empty troughs of torches.

The only recent traces here

are scattered glinting bottle caps,

the dead pit of a small bonfire,

a few corks pulled and dropped on the rock.

These are the things they will unearth

an era or two removed from ours.

Moss relics of the Celts’ ringwall,

the lumpish nubs of Roman pillars,

rock roots of a nave, the grass-buried stairs,

these bottle caps thrown like wasted coins.                                                printable

                                Jacqueline West

Jesus Christ, Your Uterus

 

feels like the entire Chinese diving team

             forced to triple pike again & again

                        but the dives have such skittering

                                    panic, one assumes the team's

 

being threatened at gunpoint

          by the Red Army's best henchmen

                   who, for sadistic satisfaction, start

                             blindfolding the athletes who

 

look nothing like athletes

          rather, like malnourished swallows

                   wings clipped, feather plucked

                             all the while outside clouds

 

start to hemorrhage question

          marks, & on the lake, the ducks

                   tuck their faces beneath

                               an obsidian-hued surface,

 

that, beyond comprehension,

          turns blacker the further it goes

                   until the water hits a wall

                             & on the wall's other side

 

is a bigger, thicker wall

          & all around, the muffled laughs

                   of people, the clickety-clack

                             of shoes, & there you are,

 

in a space you never dreamed, hanging.                                     printable

                    Joseph P Wood

Dreaming of a Dead Uncle

A butterfly hedgehog swam over

to where I was dangling my feet

in the cold sluice by Chimney Flats.

We spoke Esperanto, alternating

with French until the sun died.

"Do you think the dead rise again?"

I didn't know what to say to him.

But I did suddenly remember:

I don't speak French at all.

It was more of a parlor accent

given to words we knew as children

only to forget them in later strides.

He didn't pay me much mind,

turning in circles around my toes

going blue in the flowing bridgewater.

I reached down touching wings

of dust and coarse roses vanishing.

We hooted a bit as the moon jumped

up high, huge with the smell of varmints.

Bugs came out like freed prisoners.

A heron walked upside down

on the darkened felt of falling sky.

Someone's sister skipped by us,

grinning like a fish on a plate.

She had the gold eyes like a goat.

What else could have I said

in that moment of death

to my furry flittering companion?

Later, under a fumey lamp

I realized that it was something

about old grocery tills overflowing

with shotgun shells and candied bones.                                                           printable

                                  Rick Crelia

Show Biz

In my mind a good poem

Stands up against a Broadway musical

Because the mechanical set is revolving

In the flow of the words, the scene

Changes in

The breaks of the lines,

The costumes the shapes of their letters,

The actors in the bouncing of

One word against each other

In such divisive combinations of

Rhythm and sound

And the unfolding of the plot

Occurs in every phrase with

Suspense or emotional burst

Hidden an then revealed

By the punctuation.

The overall rush of the evening’s extravaganza, event

In the inevitable forward motion of all

These embroidered manufactured

Acted, breathed, donned, sung

Elements, flown from the ceiling

Leapt in from the wings

Stormed forward toward the audience

This even takes place on one page

Over an over again

Encore after encore

Between you and me

Only you and me.

Standing ovation.                                                 printable

                     Elizabeth Swados

Left Hand

It reaches out to shake

but retreats, shyly,

good for little more

than keeping writing paper still

when someone throws open a window

or balancing a ladder

or pivoting a gravedigger’s shovel,

acts of supporting inertia,

fending off wind and gravity.

 

Since birth, a series of retreats,

little hopes ground to pulp,

until like a marionette only half-stringed

you finally meet a beautiful woman

who extends her left hand

and you smirk disdainfully

and offer your right.                                                                     printable

                    John Sibley Williams

For Federico García Lorca

 

I found death happily

spinning old cloth

in my father’s basement.

 

I sat beside him

to embroider the plain vestments

but each stitch

blackened to ash

between my fingers.

 

His fat, nimble hands

just kept churning

fabric yards over the cold tiles,

though I asked him

to slow.

 

I was alone in the house.

I had a key.

My father had left

the procession.

Silence.

 

When the sun finally broke in,

it strengthened my thread

and in the light the garment

was black too, ashen,

my thread yellow.  

Death just kept sewing

and in the silence

I began working hard

to catch up.                                                                                        printable

                         John Sibley Williams

On the Corner of Junipero, Learning Not to Hold the Chili Powder

 

They hear the honk from the corn man’s cart-

plastic and blue, stolen from someone who stole

it from somewhere on El Segundo where rappers rap

about lost wallets and forgotten jimmy cappers.

 

Stitched into this Pacific hem, he is a land-man

to his water-woman with her mermaid way

of flicking water over pain. They form an island

each time she visits him from her mountain shore

 

wild with snap peas and hollyhocks bending- earthy

and green, tossed and trusted to gain root as silent

sentries waiting for her return.  He weaves his way back

to her, through skaters and sidewalk trash- with one cob

 

con todo.  Mayonnaise, chili powder, parmesean and butter. 

They share the ear of corn, juicy- yet explosive. Living

here, he says, I’ve learned to trust the cook has a reason

for his combinations. Eat, just the way it’s served.                               printable

                       Sherry O’Keefe

 

Waiting at the Luncheon Counter for My Tuna Melt

 

This is - remember -
this is not the way your life will turn
out as you listen to, as you overhear two old
men talk about Walter Benyen. One knew him well
the other was his nephew. He died

(didn't he?) they ask each other,
reaching for a bit of dry toast, a sip of bitter
coffee with that same abandoned air you saw
in a man walking through North Park
holding an empty leash, and in the pages

of the hardbound book you saw fluttering
after each passing car, staying where it landed
in the crosswalk down the street. But you wonder
why a book gets tossed, if a dog is ever found.
You thought to stop to read the title, to search

for the dog, but you didn’t. And you don’t
ask now which one is Joe when you stand
at the jukebox, studying the note taped
to the glass: Don’t play G7 if Joe is here.
It brings him bad memories.                                                                    printable

                        Sherry O’Keefe

How to Potty Train Boys

First and foremost,

do it at night and outside,

a backyard is best,

don’t fuss around with

miniature toilet seats

or aiming for cheerios,

introduce him to the night

where we’re free to take

the form we’ve always wanted.

Where apple blossoms shoulder

up to sycamores and with help

from shadows and tiptoes

can almost see eye to eye,

fireflies, holding their green

breath so long they nearly burst,

do their best to imitate the stars,

and he, pouring rainbow

curves over the easy grass,

realizes you’re not that

much taller.

If you’ve timed things

right, it’s fall and the tiny

lakes you fill rise up

like silver smoke or ghosts,

this will lead you into

a discussion on tradition.

Keep it brief, leave the talking

to crickets and the locusts

who can’t let go.

The moon, a pure white blaze,

will shower you with something

majestic: be prepared for this.

And later, when an old

midnight whisper pulls him

out of bed, bones snapping inside

legs the stuff of corn dust, and on

the slow trail of a willow leaf

or the crown of a ginger-smell breeze

you hear his sigh churn

through the darkness like a prayer,

you know you’ve done the job.                                                       printable

               Rick Marlatt

Thin-particle snow for a few hours

then moratory moments of sun-fat.

                                      Twixt                              

                                                                                       printable

Helen on Sleeping Pills

            ...a drug that stilled all pain...

            and brought forgetfulness of every ill

                             -Homer, Odyssey

All the song's fires have died

For good along the sea's far edge

She walks against like sunlight

Dazzles the wave tops

Of her tired eyes.

All her days have been swept aside

To little sandboxes where Love

A little boy tears down

Fragile castles with his wings.

About Paris, those afternoons

She can't say anything for sure

Except the Sirens by the swings.

Broken hearts cast jagged shadows.

But then the cool wind sometimes

Blew not quite continuously

Through the trees and through

Her hair. But not quite dis-

Continuously either.                                                                      printable

                                                 Brian Walters

Old Heraclitus

          Finally he became a misanthrope, withdrew from the world,

          and lived in the mountains feeding on grass and plants

                                                               - Diogenes Laertius 9.3

We live the death of the Gods and they live ours

As in and out of tune some cosmic radio blares

From fiery bowls turning in the sky. Moon.

Sun. Our days are nights like life is music

Then suddenly noise you can never dance to.

So what if there's mold on the cheese. The cheese

Is mold. And vinegar and wine are the same

As lightning-bolts and war. In all the more scattered

Things I see these days I can't help but notice

Hints of unity in their contradictions. Put out a man's

Eyes at night and he lights lamps.  I wrote one night

By lamplight when men walk with the dead

Hand in hand, fires burning in their eyes. I said

So many things I wish didn't make sense to me

Anymore. Waking was really dreaming and

Sleeping and fire—fire was everything until it changed

And changing was everything instead. Who cares

Whatever river you step in next is never the same

River, or that it's not really you at all who's done

The stepping—I'm not now the man I was

Before either. (I just don't know who else to be.)

All things change except Old Heraclitus.

Every day the sun's fire is rekindled by mist

From the sea, but no-one ever listens to me any more

When I warn them they're the fertilizer and the grass.

I laugh and tell them they're all full of shit.

I eat their families by the handful. Tomorrow

I'll bury myself inside them and wait to die.                                    printable

                              Brian Walters

New Hampshire

wild cat in the

wood pile, deer

you can’t see.

I drift with

the poem you

sent into an

underground

river where

Indians eat

fish so old

they have no

eyes.  If I

shut my eyes

I hear the

water that

flows under

the columbine.

When I touch

the chair I hear

bluebirds that

were wild in its

leaves when there

were red flowers

in its branches                                                                   printable

                        Lyn Lifshin

Champlain, Branbury, the Lakes at Night

always women in the

dark on porches talking

as if in blackness their

secrets would be safe.

Cigarettes glowed like

Indian paintbrush.

Water slapped the

deck.  Night flowers

full of things with wings

something you almost

feel like the fingers

of a boy moving, as if

by accident, under

sheer nylon and felt

in the dark movie house

as the chase gets louder,

there and not there,

something miscarried

that maybe never was.

The mothers whispered

about a knife, blood.

Then, they were laughing

the way you sail out of

a dark movie theater

into wild light as if no

thing that happened

happened                                          printable

                       Lyn Lifshin