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Finalists
Congratulations! The following poems were finalists in the Aquillrelle Contest 1:
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A Disappearance
The peacocks have all died.
No one knows why. I imagine
their raucous cries growing more and more muted
as the light goes out of their shimmering feathers,
their costumes from a summer pageant, a festive touch
along the walks and over the lawns of the Zoological Gardens
where they have been allowed to roam freely
parading their arrogant plumage and jeweled eyes
past the torpor of caged animals, until,
like a race of trans-dimensional beings,
they all dissolve at once.
I’ve always thought them exorbitant creatures, grotesque
illustrations of natural extravagance, but there are those
who say what little magic the post-modern world
still holds has begun to desert us. Others hope
this erasure augurs a more equitable distribution
of glory throughout the lower realms. We look for signs:
curtailed flamboyance among the flamingos, toucans, macaws,
or streaks of increased vividness
in the subdued, the endangered,
but nothing seems to have changed.
Perhaps the peacocks were
intrinsically transitory, like the leaves
that turn crimson, saffron, old gold, and fly
off in the wind. When they’re gone, the sky
fills the trees with uncluttered light. Still,
we’re not entirely cheered by their evanescence,
or by the news that they’ll be replaced come Spring.
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All in the Way of Advertising
I fell upon the thorns of poetry
and bled because my poems,
though barbed,
were seldom bought and seldom read.
Then I posted to a website:
From my blood, a full, fell narrative
of The Fall (mine).
From my head — full-blown,
a disquisition upon the Ouse.
From one arm — the right one —
a novel after Austen.
From the one left, a litany for
Crashaw and Saint Teresa.
From my heart, half-Petrarchan,
half-Shakespearean, a sonnet.
From my navel, a meditation upon
John Donne (with which he’ll soon be done,
but I’ll have more). From my left leg,
a legend of Dean Swift. From my right —
well, that’s not where I was.
From each toe, a pun and Bunyan.
I’ll let you guess from whence scatology —
and visions à la Kublai Khan.
When those last lines were read,
the hits upon the site were legion,
though the money was fool’s gold!
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Anima within the Nixon Library or Vietnam Revisited
Liszt is played by her old soul
The power of masculine
The beauty of feminine
Surrounded by Nixon’s tricks and crimes
Agent Orange kisses villages
Rain forests old men old women young
Men young women children babies
Enemies friends
An American soldier murders a grandmother
Enemy friend?
Nightly news explains her death
Again and again like the death of a whom
The hell cares about this rock star’s death
Or a beloved leader of one’s country
Or...
Young people pray for peace
Aging people beg for peace
Sing for peace
Imagine peace
Breathe peace
Make love not war
We shall overcome
Hell no we won’t go
Death makes love with memory
Makes the forgotten metamorphose
Like a magic trick
Where colored scarves flow from a silken
Top hat that tease the eye
The nod of the head the coming and going
Of make-believe of reality
Of...
He lectures her America could have won the war
She smiles knowingly knowing the terror
The destruction the death of enemies
The death of friends
Death of comrades
Death of soul after soul after soul
Her music plays on and on
Peace stays silently between piano notes
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Birth Days
You know, daughter, there’s only one
for each of us, and I missed yours.
I was in Paris, drinking Pernod and arguing
the politics of art with expatriate poets.
Now it’s already June and I’ve missed
the forty-second echo of your first
breath by a mile. Still, I remember
more than one day on which you were born
all over again as you stepped up
and out of yourself into someone
I never knew was there.
It was late,
past your bedtime and I was tripping
on mescaline, missing a friend
who’d said, “Come to New York
for the Summer, we’ll write a book”
then killed himself the day before
I arrived. I rocked back and forth
in the Lotus asana, having forgotten
entirely the promise I made
to tell you a story and tuck you in.
You planted yourself in the doorway,
arms folded, legs wide for balance.
After a while you said, “Whatever
it is that’s eating you, don’t
dwell on it.”
A morning in Summer.
You’re playing with your sister
at a table on the sunlit porch. I watch
for a while then ask, “Can you
make something out of that?”
You look up, surprised. And curious.
You laugh, “I don’t know.”
Then you pick it up and your small hands
are like a blur of birds, teasing
a woman’s face out of the clay.
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Brick
Same and not the same, all these
frail-edged inhabitants of sledge
loads, ready to stay where a slick
parge keeps them, tight within
a topple-proof wall or stout
fence, ready forever to be
what they are and nothing
else, though they have become
a metaphor for attributes
we admire: He, and more
rarely, she, is a brick, we say, a
reliable, mute cog that keeps
the team keen, and locked
on target. A long time
ago, it was the unit-shape
of clay we could multiply
and inhabit. So many
tiny, nearly invisible
pockets of air kept it
breakable anywhere
and ready to suck up
whitewash, rain. Whole
cities, whole civilizations:
nothing left but ruins we pay
to see centuries later. Standing
before the walls of Hadrian
or Diocletian, we are struck
speechless by fortress power
stripped of its marble, revealed
as raw clay dried in the sun,
drab, colossal, the work of so many
dead hands without names.
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Dark matter, dark energy
How many ways
to count the stars
in their galaxies
flung across
eighteen billion light-years
since it all began?
Just when
were the Laws of Physics
first posted?
who read them then
to stir the brew primordial?
O grant us
a sable understanding
the missing nine tenths
of what we were given
when all was energy
before the comets spun off
their silken trails
and suns swept up their planets
and the green grass grew not
anywhere in a billion galaxies
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Don We Now
Billy Carl, my second grade love and rival, died today.
We’d compete over everything, like when the teacher
had two kids come to the front with pointers
and race to show what letter a word starts with:
usually we got there at the same time but the day
she said “giraffe,” I pointed to G and you to J:
you said “OK, you were right, you win.”
Later behind the fence, the day’s loser gave the first kiss.
So when Miss Koe said “today let’s do inequalities”
and put greater than/less than homework on the board,
I raced to finish first. But you zipped through them,
none of us even came close. The teacher laughed
“Billy’s learned the secret!” “What is it? Tell us, Billy!”
“You don’t have to figure every problem out;
the arrow always points to the littlest number.”
“Not always,” I yelled, burning. “Yes always,
and there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it.”
Then you teased me at recess, singing
Greater than less than, greater than less... .
“Shut up—anyway, I’m taller than you!”
Nextdoor sweethearts, we made up Martian languages,
planned sea voyages, shared kazoos, defended snowforts.
Then boys started asking, “why does Billy only play with girls?”
One day on the fourth grade playground you whispered
“I have something to tell you, come with me.”
My heart raced, then you said it: “I hate you.”
“Is that all? I hate you too.” then went home and sobbed
“He shouldn’t have told me during Brotherhood Week!”
Not even a trip to McDonald’s could heal my heart.
But boys said now Billy’s a man and not a girl, and it was over.
So in seventh grade I pretended not to care when we sang
solo lines in the Christmas play and they made you sing
Don we now our gay apparel while everyone sniggered,
tried to ignore it in tenth grade when jocks beat you up in gym.
When they hounded you from your frat at Yale where we’d
always planned to go together, I was still Midwest bound.
Since we lost touch I didn’t even know you were ill, so when
I heard the smalltown gossip that you’d died of AIDS pneumonia
at the ripe-old age of 28, I said OK Billy, I guess it’s true:
the arrow does always point to the littlest number,
greater than less than greater than less,
and there’s absolutely nothing we can do about it.
You were right.
You win.
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evening streets
inside
where water dreams
the echoes
of concrete
evening streets
chance
a young girl
walks her beauty
in dance,
and
all the young men
were lost...
time is a circle
where in moonlight
shadows walk free.
a beautiful woman
holds her youth,
in the fingers
of her dreams
where still
all the young men
go missing.
inside
where water dreams
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Galilee Spring
Storks circling
rising with the thermals
on a blue sky
wings outstretched
spanning
the seasons
as this Spring
fades
into Summer
wild oats wave
between purple thistles,
poppies nod and shed
red petals
lupines glow sapphire
beyond the lawn
kibbutz dogs run
scenting a dry season
behind the bushes
green fades to brown
imperceptibly spreading
over the hollyhock hills
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Hearsay
There are stories
that come to us wrapped
in the mist of rivers, rumours
of lost cities, valleys
teeming with gold
birds, or deep in the rain
forest a tribe that can read
the minds of animals.
Is there really a creature
known only because we have seen
its long shadow, who swims
without stopping, for hundreds of years,
all the way to the sea, through the sea
and back, its movement remote
controlled by the spin of invisible
stars?
Someone
who ought to know tells me
this river I can see
from my back yard meanders
North, away from the cities,
for hundreds of miles and empties
into an Ocean that is mostly
ice, where the Earth’s magnetic
field guides the spirits
of water as they rise, weaving
sails of light in the midnight sky.
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Hronov Homecoming, 1994
It's not really a homecoming
Sent to an unknown safety,
I have not lived in this house
for more than half a century
This should be a visit
of coming to terms
with a latent past
black and white photos
of my relatives
on the back verandah
in the summer sunshine
my mother seated in an armchair
looking out of the French windows
to an unimaginable future
But there is no coming to terms,
emotion runs below the surface,
black, deep, cold river
in a black, cold cave
moonlight in my parents’ room
waiting for ghosts to come
faint, fading images
on a traumatized memory
and the curling black and white snaps
of years ago
the river runs
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I'm the Top (A Home-Brewed, Porter-Styled Canto)
Please allow me to introduce myself
I'm the undertaker of the family institution
I'm the oldest generation's baddest news
Usually loud and obnoxious
I rather stir up trouble than keep quiet
Cole Albert Porter might have put it this way:
I'm facetious,
I'm post-modernist,
I'm misplaced novation,
In Dante's Hell, I'm a crater
In politics, I dissent, and gladly submit to pressure
In philosophy, I'm truth mitigated
In physics, I'm definitely a black hole
In fashion, I'm a commie red beret
In chemistry, I'm any cheap poison spray (e.g. salsoda & lime)
I'm the ashes from an Havana smoked by El Coma Andante
I'm a fake Basho haiku
I'm the National Gallery without Pei's aluminum tubes
I'm an intolerable rap out of M V Bill' lousiest hit on a DJ mix
At the ballroom, I'm the funk-loving punk, not the blind woman-scenting tango dancer
In a pasta parlor, I'm sour dough used for pizza base
In France, I'm rather a mere Douvre cliff than the Louvre
In the Third World, I'm a ruler who perpetrates horrendous abuses
I'm impunity, contempt, and disrespect for common sense
In penal law, I restrict ample rights, and spare juvenile offenders
In morals, I touch misanthropy
In ethics, I'm foul-smelling businesses, and dirty tricks
In didactics, I'm definitely neglected apprenticeship
In a turmoiled globe, I'm aptitude mocked and belittled
I ride blitzkriegs, and gleefully watch stinking bodies
I encourage anti-citizenship plots
I represent the false merit of the abhorred
I justify unpunished loot, and the omnipotent state
I fight the very notion of property
I indulge in influence trafficking
I base my decisions on hearsay opportunism and biased councils
I'm definitely not the bane of anyone's existence
I've swept many a bribe and a payroll kickback underneath my carpet
I've stolen many a lad's faith
I've absolutely denied meritocracy
In short, I'm simply everybody's longest-standing bête noire,
The one who brought dejection to subservient mankind
And, by the way, I favor thongs over wooden clogs
So, when you meet me ('cause I'm in need of no restraint)
Please concur with gentle politesse
And tell me where's civilization heading towards
The bottom line, baby, is
aren't we all equal after all?
(Some more equal than others!)
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is a woman
sweet song jazz
sing her eyes
deep
late night
when the moon sighs
beauty is a woman
echoes lie
silent
who tries
to believe
as she bleeds
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just the earth
i walk my dreams
i dance the sky
with no reason to believe
with no reason to try
deep
where butterflies whisper
long
within the shadows
of tomorrow
of color
i watch
as the children pass
i bleed
as the children die,
cold african winds
they burn my soul.
oh where
do the dying children go
no heaven, no hell
just the earth
on which we all dwell.
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Kiss in a whisper
A warm breeze in spring
Tears from a loss
A mother’s embrace gone
But never forgotten
A warm touch to my neck
A kiss from mother
I’m here, not really gone
Mostly always near
The comfort given
As all mother’s do
No matter where they are
Even from the heavens.
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Milton Advises...
I had trouble discerning,
about age twenty-three,
what I should be,
knew I could not permit or
praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue.
I went in comic sock
to “trip the light fantastic”;
wrote prose with this left hand,
punning the while on sinister;
could “kiss the clink,” though blind;
heard the music of the spheres,
only standing, waiting, “all ear,”
to leach meaning
from every word and world.
I served my country.
If among the regicides,
I also wrote, helped make its history,
served as Secretary for Foreign Tongues.
I argued for divorce.
Was ever man more beset by Eve’s kind?
(Was ever man more fair for seeing
how we failed Eve’s kind,
as Adam, Eve; Samson, Dalila?)
I justified the ways of God to men.
So fair I was to evil,
more than Blake
were beguiled by my Satan,
the brightest angel, once,
in all Heaven.
Was not my Comus, too,
the prettiest creature?
I admit to
“that last infirmity of noble mind,”
but I still, will always teach —
“Tomorrow to fresh woods and pastures new.”
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Miss Jones Plays Bingo
I watch her curled arthritic hands
push red poker chips about the table,
cover numbers for her since she
can no longer see them, find three cards
with lucky fives in the upper left corner
as the caller at the Carousel Nursing Home
sings out “B4, N32, that’s Bingo, next game!”
A weekend volunteer, I’ve brought Miss Jones
from her room to the Saturday Bingo Bash.
Miss Jones laughs as she plays, says
“We’ll beat Table Six today, you’ll see!”
“New game: Letter H, Letter T, Crossover,
twos are wild, cover the Free Space.”
And the spinning of the wheel, blend
of small letters and numbers and lines,
flat circles and squares, all delight:
Miss Jones is in her element.
I wrap her afghan closer round her shoulders
as she shivers: “My daughter made me this,
sent it all the way from California,” so I
yank the local Sears tag and say “Yes Ma’am,
your third card center row’s almost filled.”
But then some newbie at Table Six calls Bingo.
Miss Jones shouts “No!” scatters cards and chips
To the floor. The aide whispers “she’s getting scatty
and she smells, it’s time to stop bringing her.”
Since she’s now fallen asleep and the doctors
rulers of this world demand her back in her room
for med check 3pm sharp, I start to wheel her out
as the caller cries “Blackout—cover every space!”
Miss Jones wakes, starts crying: “No, don’t take me out,
let me stay and play, I’m not ready to go!”
I say “Miss Jones they’re almost done, the last game
called is always Blackout,” and she sobs
“Child, Child—you think I don’t know that?”
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Mother Egypt
I feel the wind as it blows in my face, the hot desert air, here on the plateau
Driving a chariot, right beside my husband, this is the way we rule this land, together, side by side
We are equal, my husband, Akhenaten and I, ruling the greatest empire on Earth,
together, a new religion, we would eventually reap what we sowed
Akhenaten, the love of my life, in my mind I would always be supreme, being his number one royal bride.
Forever in the Egyptian way, there seemed to be a different God, for each and everything
My husband and I introduced just one God, Aten, God of the sun disk
We dedicate our lives and that of our children to this God, our hearts are happy as of this God, they sing
We rule equally, hand in hand, like a breath of fresh air, we worship a different God,
and it is worth taking the risk.
Unlike other pharaohs, using their wife, kind of like a trophy, we rule equally, I am my Pharaoh's co-regent
Yes, I am female, but I have as much power as my husband, Akhenaten, my husband, my friend, my equal
I gave my husband, six children, all daughters, no son, no heir, but Akhenaten loved them so,
they were all special, and from the God they were sent
All our children, the heart of Akhenaten they did steal.
So on this plateau that the ancient royals walked, Akhenaten and I race chariots,
something unheard of from ancient Egyptian queens from the past
We bring new hope to an ancient land, at the time the most powerful country on Earth
We so love Mother Egypt, but what we tried to bring to her unfortunately wouldn't last
Our religion would eventually die, we really tried to introduce it to an ancient land, something new,
something we tried to give birth to.
Our family, the royal family of the God, Aten, we would always have love,
each of us special in our own way
Our family life, the love we felt for each other, would forever be depicted in stone
I would always be there for my husband, Akhenaten right beside him each and every day
One day my Pharaoh would cross over into the land of the dead, leaving me to rule all alone.
I can feel the sun on my face, as I drive my chariot across the ancient Egyptian sand
Driving, I feel so free, feeling as if nothing can hold me back, feeling this is the way it was meant to be
I love Mother Egypt, everything here in this powerful ancient land
Remember me, as the wind blows over this land that I loved so, or see I am Queen Nefertiti.
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Prophet Not Without Honor Except in Her Own Head
She invited us for “tea,”
quite quaint enough,
but the “Sun Room” where she “painted”
was a-teem with canvases of “tree stumps,”
as she pronounced them,
though she would not permit us
to pass the threshold.
As well as I could see, some reached
higher than what-to-me-are-stumps
but not far enough for branches, leaves.
Two “stumps” of a height
stood each as if the other’s branches
were its limbs akimbo,
but the twain never touched.
When I probed,
she said she did not know
why she “fixated upon tree stumps,”
for she had no cause to find them special.
When I asked if her stumps were “drawn”
from reality or its photographs, she smiled —
“I cut pictures from magazines to use.”
“Shades of Plato,” I thought,
“with artist at a remove from Stumpness.”
I did not mention Plato.
Nor did I divagate of Dagon,
fallen, time and time,
face upon the threshold,
palms cut off, only stump left.
But the back story raised some hope.
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Regret
I saw you first among the greening corn,
your eyes full of summer’s promise,
forgetful of the winter’s cold.
Long we tended vegetable and herb,
their fragrance and succulence
promising full winter’s store.
I left you there in the garden
among the dried rose mallow stalks,
your eyes still questioning mine.
The leaves then were burnished autumn-gold,
and hope was but a whispered memory
on the corn’s riffling blade.
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Scar
A white cross
in the muscle below his thumb.
It was nearly dusk.
When the muskie saw the boat,
turned in a white rush and began to run,
the line thrummed like the string on a bow,
the bent rod whipped up straight
and the big spoon shot back, slapped
with a dull clink and stuck
as the hand came up to shield his face.
Lake Sasaginigak. No phone,
no radio and the plane
that dropped them wouldn’t be back
for a week. Even in shadowy kerosene
light they could see the hook, clearly
buried way past the barb, the skin
already swollen tight, hot
to the touch and bruised blue.
They knew what to do but there wasn’t a lot
to work with – a nearly empty first aid kit
with a roll of tape and a bandage,
a safety razor’s double edged blade,
a bottle of Spanish brandy.
They never talk about this
when they describe their wilderness
adventure, the lost fish,
the slickered afternoons in grey rain,
but the one they chose for the stillness
they saw in his eyes remembers
how the first flush of adrenaline drained
from the clenched face and left it pale
as he clipped the steel eye-end
with pliers, cut quick
twice and pushed it through, but also
his friend’s muscled silence,
how it saved them both
from a wound that might not heal.
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Snow cave
When hikers lost in mountains wander
aimless through the forest dark
and search teams find their clothing
scattered gaily cross the ice-worn paths:
jacket hanging from a bush,
scarf twisted round a frozen tree
shirts and slacks and argyle socks
abandoned at the snow-cave’s mouth
the word goes forth that they’re
trapped in the desperate illusion
known as paradoxical undressing —
feeling warmth when in fact freezing
fooled by the fatal warming
of the dangerous exposure
into thinking though they’re dying
that they’re safe and finding shelter
That’s why I perform for you
my paradoxical undressing
stripping down the layers bare
when most I should be bundling up
against the fatal warming of your
infinite persuasion, that warms my
heart and fools my soul when most
you’re wandering cold into the wild
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Soft Sensual Mountains
Soft Sensual
Mountains surround
Us this rainy
Snug afternoon
A small white tailed
Rabbit tweaked its
Curious nose
Showing No Fear
What I would give
To freeze this brief
Moment in a
Showcase of time
The director
Yells cut and print
That’s what I mean
Suspend the scene.
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Storks
Dusk
a stork speckled sky
storks are flying
to the northlands
as their generations
have taught them
they are flying
to the northlands
where hope
and old nests await
light fades
as silk
to evening
smooth sleek gliders
homing to the darkling woods
where secrets sleep
with the storks.
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The Foreclosure
The day they sold our red brick home at auction
on the courthouse steps, I could hear it from the porch:
the bidders’ cries, the auctioneer’s drone, the final
sudden bang of gavel and exultant buyer’s “Hah!”
The week it appeared in the paper two women climbed
right up on the lawn; when they saw me through
the window they demanded to come in, stormed through
the rooms, asked is the fireplace stonework original?
Yes. My great-grandfather laid it himself. They
opened drawers, banged on walls, the vultures
circled through the house and out again; I asked
wouldn’t you like to measure the bed curtains?
But the irony was lost on them. They glanced
at each other knowingly at the grey stain where
the rain came through the ceiling: “She can’t
maintain it, the cheap deadbeat,” their looks say.
The next day I ran into Rachel and Lizzy in
The produce aisle of Safeway. “Hi Ladies!,”
I smile but they roll their carts on quickly.
The Macon County Garden Club calls to say
they won’t need my help this year after all.
It’s my dad, I try to explain at the mandatory
credit counselor’s meeting. It’s Alzheimer’s.
I couldn’t keep up with the staggering bills.
He nods, yawns, shoves endless papers at me:
here, sign these. And it’s over. That night
I go see my dad in the new wing where they
moved him after his second dizzying fall.
He’s sleeping at first, then wakes and calls
me Dorothy. No Dad, Mom’s gone, it’s me,
Anne. He falls asleep again, but as I leave
he calls out: Anne, don’t ever sell the land!
“I won’t,” I tell him. And I never would,
given any choice: the rolling fields, the
lush magnolias, flowering pecan trees.
So as I drag the last cardboard box from
the hall I remember when as a girl my mother
saw a foreclosed neighbor sitting stunned
on the curb surrounded by all she owned: that’s
not right! My mother said. Not in this country.
Now the same sheriff who served the papers
lumbers up the steps to make sure I really leave,
and as I close the screen door the new owner
waits below, bronzed face beaming with joy.
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The Leather Suitcase
They don’t
make suitcases
like that
any more
Time was,
when voyage meant
train, steamship
distances unbridgeable
waiting for a thinning mail
weeks, then months,
then nothing
Time was,
when this case
was made
solid, leather,
heavy stitching
with protective edges
at the corners.
Children’s train,
across the Reich
stops
and starts again...
Holland
a lighted gangplank,
night ferry to gray-misted
sea-gulled Harwich
again the rails
reaching flat across
East Anglia,
to London
in my bedroom
the suitcase,
a silent witness
with two labels
“Wilson Station, Praha”
“Royal Scot, London-Glasgow”
Leather suitcase
from a far-off country,
Czechoslovakia,
containing all the love
parents could pack
for a five year old
off on a journey
for life.
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You and I
You have let me be the hero.
I have cried in anger when you would not.
I have let you save my face.
You have wept for me when I could not.
You have breathed the warm air from the cleft of my spine.
I have cupped the rise of your smooth, fine breast.
I know the shadowed tang of your upper lip.
You know the precise pitch of my quickened breath.
We are like sea glass
In the urgent rhythm of our wanting,
Tumbling over and over
Through the rolling years,
We smooth our jagged edges
Against each other’s skins.
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Your Face Is a Cathedral
Your face is a cathedral
of light flowing golden from
creases at your
smile your
eyes your
chin your
jaw as more light
flows and shines
from chinks here and
there in
Your face is a cathedral
of rock chiseled
not by accident or whim,
but a slow deliberation
carves stone into
intricate patterns of grace,
where nature’s acid lashings
cannot alter stones
deeply embedded with kindness.
Your face is a cathedral
of hidden soaring arches and
distant vaulted chambers:
side altars full of forgotten prayer;
pillars that hold and hold and hold,
whose organ muffles growls and
trembles stones, where
stairways twist into solitary darkness.
Are great moans hidden in your walls?
Do tears course slowly within?
Do the walls weep?
Your face is a cathedral
where the lame rest,
the blind stretch their hands
and steady themselves against you,
ready to walk through your threshold.
My ears hear distant music.
The holy of holies beckons.
Let me rest more deeply in you.
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