April 2003 | back-issues, Patrick Seth Williams, poetry
[i]for Modern Poetry Fa02[/i]
“Can you imagine
if T.S. Eliot were
to enter the room, right now.”
Beckoning the call,
almost unnoticed, insignificant
dusty silent wings fluttering
in the mid-afternoon,
the karmic incarnate
sailed into the classroom.
We were unmoved
to the unannounced visitor
to the discussion, somehow
always retrospective to certain
expatriate literary geniuses.
How for fifty years (maybe more)
the accomplished poetic deities
lorded over form and words,
commanding
make it new!
let no words not add!
Forgotten now are radio speeches,
recantations, fascist salutes–
men now only in what is left
on signed printed pages.
Cinematographers love
a hero, but the literary world
will always worship a villain.
And now in this place,
if the insect would metamorphose
into human form, who among
the struggling minds striving
to add to a generation would not rise
and proffer a hand
as if to a long gone friend.
Instead, we sit intense–
eyes glazing–bored–
asleep–dreaming of the ability
to say anything worthwhile…
The gray unidentifiable moth
slips through the chalk-scented air
(the rustic classroom befitting
of an appearance)
and does not land,
wary of being crushed
by a student wanting to destroy
history under an ignorant hand.
I wonder if some of us
are dreaming of being human
when we are really moths
set to disrupt the harmonic-
balance of the class.
March 2003 | back-issues, Janet Buck, poetry
The DOW spikes up, banking on
a dwarfish draft of Armageddon gloom.
Our president will speak at five.
No casualty is casual.
It’s hard to match a suit and tie
to splatter of the coming blood.
Ahmed, a driver in Iraq, says:
“This is a miserable life.
We spent it shopping for war
or hiding from bombs.”
He recites his summary
as if his time is finished as a boiled egg.
All eyes red from pressing
night’s extended weight.
Justice spelled so many ways our alphabets
no longer know their proper forms.
Iraqis seal their windows shut as if a roll
of tape will come between the fragile glass
and force of missiles jetting
through the tainted sky.
Stirring the hostile soup.
It seems the only spoon we own,
yet who can watch the broth of freedom
dwindle to a water drop.
Have you ever sat on a fence,
answerless and trembling,
wishing posts were firm mirage?
I swing like heavy pendulums
between the prayer to end this horror
and nightmares of approaching graves.
The writer with no salving words,
no sonnets in a pocketbook.
No talons on the olive branch,
no wings of doves, no angels near
as embassies evacuate, as guns replace
the meetings of our shattered hearts
now beetles under heavy boots.
Philanthropy or wet revenge —
I can’t decide and so I kneel
as quicksand travels to my chin.
*First Published in Ariga
February 2003 | back-issues, John Sweet, poetry
not shadow but
reflection
february rain from
tanguy’s sky until the streets
are all dull grey mirrors
if i keep my distance
i could be anyone
if i get in my car and drive
i could call it escape
could call it running away
which is sometimes an act of
cowardice and sometimes
an act of survival
and i sit in this room of
empty chairs instead
with my thoughts
and my bitter resentments
i believe in gorky at the age of 43
in rothko at the age of 66
but not in my father
not at any age and not in any
of the bars i spent my childhood in
i remember the threats
and all of the dire predictions
i remember fifteen years
spent perfecting the
art of silence
what a sad fucking
victory it’s become
February 2003 | back-issues, John Sweet, poetry
this act of not killing
this place where
nothing is forgiven
where nails are driven through
human flesh
then pulled back out
where your god sings
a beautiful song without
meaning
think about words as
nothing more than noise
look at the men you’ve
elected to power
consider how they
would eat their own shit to
never have to give it up
how they believe in rape
and in the
necessity of poverty
the inevitability of war
the logic of children
butchered for the sake of a
better future
February 2003 | back-issues, John Sweet, poetry
or the names of the children
found starving in the basement
or the name of
the person who finds them
the blood of
whoever left them there
all the pictures of hell
it could be used to paint
January 2003 | back-issues, Janet Buck, poetry
One moment he’s pruning a wayward branch;
garden tools rest happily against
the brick like spoons in soup.
You wonder how it stayed this warm.
An ancient sun is baking leaves, raisins
in a rising dough of seasons on a schedule.
He edges grass the way he’s always
sculpted love — by doing things
in steady gestures like the rain.
A seizure, then a surgery.
Then solitaire so suddenly.
Feet aren’t there to track rich soil;
welcome mats have lost all words.
I bake two pies and take
two pieces down the street.
It’s a short walk and a long hill
up to the crown of thorns.
The first thick snow is blowing
blizzards of his death as if
some crazy heaven dropped a sack of flour
and all the meals I’m handing you
are just reminders of the cold.
I ring the bell, its tired fly
catches in the vivid freeze.
A single placemat at the bar
stares back at us as if
no cards but this exist.
Boots are empty lecture notes
reminding me that luck
is amputated by the hour.
His coat is hanging like a ghost
beside a hat that buckles
in our winded sighs.
A living room of Roman girth —
spotless but for photographs
you finger in the night’s abyss.
*First Published in Black Creek Review
