Poemunity — your poem community

Poverty is black ice. — Naomi Ayala You leave me sleeping in the dark. You kiss me and I stir, fingers in your hair, eyes open, unseeing. You leave me asleep every morning, commuting to the school in the city at sunrise. The landlord’s driveway, a muddy creek, ices over hard after the freezing rain clatters all night. Your feet fly up, your head slamming the ground, an eclipse of the sun flooding your eyes. You sleep under the car. No one knows how long you sleep. You awake with a hundred ice picks stabbing your eardrums. You awake, coat and hair soaked, and somehow drive to school. You remember to turn left at the Smith & Wesson factory. The other teachers lead you by the elbow to Mercy Hospital, where you pause when the nurse asks your name, where you claim your pain level is a four, and they slide you into the white coffin of an MRI machine. You hold your breath. They film your brain. Concussion: the word we use for the boxer plunging face-first to the canvas after the uppercut blindsided him, not the teacher commuting to school at sunrise in a Subaru Crosstrek. Yet, you would drive, ears hammering as they hammer in the purgatory of the MRI. A week before, Isabela came to you in the classroom and said: Miss, I cannot sleep. Three days, I cannot sleep. Her boyfriend called at 2 am , and she did not pick up. At 3 am , a single shot to the head put him to sleep, and he will sleep forever, his body hidden beneath a car in a parking lot on Maple Street, the cops, the television cameras, the neighbors all gathering at the yellow-tape carnival of his corpse. You said to Isabela:Take this journal. Write it down. You don’t have to show me. You don’t have to show anyone. On the cover of the journal you bought at the drugstore was the word:Dream. Isabela sat there in your classroom, at your desk, pencil waving in furious circles. By lunchtime, as her friends slapped each other, Isabela slept, head on the desk, face pressed against the pages of the journal. This is why I watch you sleep at 3 am , when the sleeping pills fail to quell the strike meeting in my brain. This is why I say to you, when you kiss me in my sleep:Don’t go. Don’t go. You have to go.

one sketch of the stormy petrel one set of clothes not to be worn during the voyage one log of the harm that came you miss a man so much music for Haul On the Bowline slop chest small stuff prayer book Green- lander with a stitch through his nose coin in his mouth his custody broken holy stone at feet sailmaker stitches you inside a sail last to touch your craft slipped starboard pig on foot does no good to stay afloat to assure identity one pot of ink one paragraph on a miscellaneous custom quit the American shore quit the shore of Green- land miss a man pot of wood ash box of blank cards beef bone sculpture deducted form wages what you bid seldom mentioned in leisure his form forecastle slip cliché poor guy . . . the oath and the laugh boom skylark flicks a card in another’s face

I One among friends who stood above your grave I cast a clod of earth from those heaped there Down on the great brass-handled coffin lid. It rattled on the oak like a door knocker And at that sound I saw your face beneath Wedged in an oblong shadow under ground. Flesh creased, eyes shut, jaw jutting And on the mouth a grin: triumph of one Who has escaped from life-long colleagues roaring For him to join their throng. He's still half with us Conniving slyly, yet he knows he's gone Into that cellar where they'll never find him, Happy to be alone, his last work done, Word freed from world, into a different wood. II But we, with feet on grass, feeling the wind Whip blood up in our cheeks, walk back along The hillside road we earlier climbed today Following the hearse and tinkling village band. The white October sun circles Kirchstetten With colours of chrysanthemums in gardens, And bronze and golden under wiry boughs, A few last apples gleam like jewels. Back in the village inn, we sit on benches For the last toast to you, the honoured ghost Whose absence now becomes incarnate in us. Tasting the meats, we imitate your voice Speaking in flat benign objective tones The night before you died. In the packed hall You are your words. Your listeners see Written on your face the poems they hear Like letters carved in a tree's bark The sight and sound of solitudes endured. And looking down on them, you see Your image echoed in their eyes Enchanted by your language to be theirs. And then, your last word said, halloing hands Hold up above their heads your farewell bow. Then many stomp the platform, entreating Each for his horde, your still warm signing hand. But you have hidden away in your hotel And locked the door and lain down on the bed And fallen from their praise, dead on the floor. III (Ghost of a ghost, of you when young, you waken In me my ghost when young, us both at Oxford. You, the tow-haired undergraduate With jaunty liftings of the head. Angular forward stride, cross-questioning glance, A Buster Keaton-faced pale gravitas. Saying aloud your poems whose letters bit Ink-deep into my fingers when I set Them up upon my five-pound printing press: 'An evening like a coloured photograph A music stultified across the water The heel upon the finishing blade of grass.')

I need them true to life and so I shoot them, as many as fill the field at dawn, and then fix wires to prop them as if feeding their young or bending to the river. Why make a little book when they exist life-sized, can be etched to stand high as my hip? Often have I wished I had eight pairs of hands to hold them, and another body for the gun.

The Audubon warblers keep the time of their coming, Arriving on stillness of a storm, Their breast and backs as dark as low bruised banks of cloud, Rumps and throats as yellow as blooms of buckwheat. They throng this evening in the newly-leaved Tender-tipped canopies nervously weaving Through the catkins like frantic prophets Bearing some divine prophecy of the coming spring. I wait, hoping for nothing too grave: News of ruinous lands, of cutting and swarming locusts, Of withering vines and empty granaries, Of fasting, weeping, and rending of garments. No, I wait for lighter fare: Perhaps a promise that the green heron will nest On the west end of the slough and that the ironweed And wood lily will once again together bloom. This would be an ample prophecy for another year— This and a promise to keep the time of their coming.

to enter the sky with our bodies the principal concern for inventing airplanes no one taught me this any more than they taught me to say good morning to my hippocampus but I do because I love my hippocampus I was in a band one summer we never could harmonize we smiled and kept playing we loved our united disunity a wild stubborn focus chewing its way out how awkward the archer after shooting his arrow remembering first time getting into bed just for sex they say I’m old now ask my advice all I have to offer is make as many mistakes as you can handle but make them as soon as possible oh and don’t waste time following each other from opposite sides of the river when storm blows wig off my head it simply means it is time to let the storm take its share

To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour A Robin Red breast in a Cage Puts all Heaven in a Rage A Dove house filld with Doves & Pigeons Shudders Hell thr' all its regions A dog starvd at his Masters Gate Predicts the ruin of the State A Horse misusd upon the Road Calls to Heaven for Human blood Each outcry of the hunted Hare A fibre from the Brain does tear A Skylark wounded in the wing A Cherubim does cease to sing The Game Cock clipd & armd for fight Does the Rising Sun affright Every Wolfs & Lions howl Raises from Hell a Human Soul The wild deer, wandring here & there Keeps the Human Soul from Care The Lamb misusd breeds Public Strife And yet forgives the Butchers knife The Bat that flits at close of Eve Has left the Brain that wont Believe The Owl that calls upon the Night Speaks the Unbelievers fright He who shall hurt the little Wren Shall never be belovd by Men He who the Ox to wrath has movd Shall never be by Woman lovd The wanton Boy that kills the Fly Shall feel the Spiders enmity He who torments the Chafers Sprite Weaves a Bower in endless Night The Catterpiller on the Leaf Repeats to thee thy Mothers grief Kill not the Moth nor Butterfly For the Last Judgment draweth nigh He who shall train the Horse to War Shall never pass the Polar Bar The Beggars Dog & Widows Cat Feed them & thou wilt grow fat The Gnat that sings his Summers Song Poison gets from Slanders tongue The poison of the Snake & Newt Is the sweat of Envys Foot The poison of the Honey Bee Is the Artists Jealousy The Princes Robes & Beggars Rags Are Toadstools on the Misers Bags A Truth thats told with bad intent Beats all the Lies you can invent It is right it should be so Man was made for Joy & Woe And when this we rightly know Thro the World we safely go Joy & Woe are woven fine A Clothing for the soul divine Under every grief & pine Runs a joy with silken twine The Babe is more than swadling Bands Throughout all these Human Lands Tools were made & Born were hands Every Farmer Understands Every Tear from Every Eye Becomes a Babe in Eternity This is caught by Females bright And returnd to its own delight The Bleat the Bark Bellow & Roar Are Waves that Beat on Heavens Shore The Babe that weeps the Rod beneath Writes Revenge in realms of Death The Beggars Rags fluttering in Air Does to Rags the Heavens tear The Soldier armd with Sword & Gun Palsied strikes the Summers Sun The poor Mans Farthing is worth more Than all the Gold on Africs Shore One Mite wrung from the Labrers hands Shall buy & sell the Misers Lands Or if protected from on high Does that whole Nation sell & buy He who mocks the Infants Faith Shall be mockd in Age & Death He who shall teach the Child to Doubt The rotting Grave shall neer get out He who respects the Infants faith Triumphs over Hell & Death The Childs Toys & the Old Mans Reasons Are the Fruits of the Two seasons The Questioner who sits so sly Shall never know how to Reply He who replies to words of Doubt Doth put the Light of Knowledge out The Strongest Poison ever known Came from Caesars Laurel Crown Nought can Deform the Human Race Like to the Armours iron brace When Gold & Gems adorn the Plow To peaceful Arts shall Envy Bow A Riddle or the Crickets Cry Is to Doubt a fit Reply The Emmets Inch & Eagles Mile Make Lame Philosophy to smile He who Doubts from what he sees Will neer Believe do what you Please If the Sun & Moon should Doubt Theyd immediately Go out To be in a Passion you Good may Do But no Good if a Passion is in you The Whore & Gambler by the State Licencd build that Nations Fate The Harlots cry from Street to Street Shall weave Old Englands winding Sheet The Winners Shout the Losers Curse Dance before dead Englands Hearse Every Night & every Morn Some to Misery are Born Every Morn and every Night Some are Born to sweet delight Some are Born to sweet delight Some are Born to Endless Night We are led to Believe a Lie When we see not Thro the Eye Which was Born in a Night to perish in a Night When the Soul Slept in Beams of Light God Appears & God is Light To those poor Souls who dwell in Night But does a Human Form Display To those who Dwell in Realms of day

Homage to Morton Feldman “Before the oracle, with the flowers” —1 Kings 7:49 1 Here in the gloaming, a wormwood haze — the “m” on its head, a “w,” amazed at what the drink itself does: Vermouth, god bless you — th. 2 What really matters now is begonia, he thought, distracted while reading — their amber anther and bone-white petals missing from a jade pot by the door — not a theory of metaphor. 3 In this corner, sweet alyssum. And beside it fragrant jessamine. Almost rhyming scents in the air — a syntax weaving their there, there. 4 Erodium holds an eye in the pink looping the white of its tendering cup. 5 The blue moon opens all too quickly and floats its head- y fragrance over the path before us: And so we slit its throat, like a florist. 6 These hearts-on-strings of the tenderest green things that rise from dirt, then fall toward the floor, hang in the air like — hearts- on-strings of the tenderest green things — they rise from dirt then fall toward the floor, hanging in the air like — these hearts-on-strings of the tenderest green things, rising from dirt then falling toward the floor, hanging in the air like 7 Moss-rose, purslane, portulaca petals feeling for the sun’s light or is it only warmth or both (they need to open) an amethyst almost see-through shift 8 Bou- gainvillea lifts the sinking spirit back up and nearly into a buoyancy — its papery pink bracts proving with their tease of a rustle and glow through the window — there is a breeze. 9 Epistle-like chicory blue beyond the bars of these beds suspended in air, (what doesn’t dangle?) elsewhere, gives way to plugged in, pez- purply thyme, against a golden (halo’s) thistle. 10 What’s a wandering Jew to you two, who often do wonder about that moving about? Its purple stalk torn-off and stuck elsewhere in the ground takes root and soon shoots forth a bluish star with powder on its pistil. Such is the power of that Jew, wherever it goes (unlike the rose), to make itself new.

In the middle of rolling grasslands, away from lights, a moonless night untethers its wild polka-dots, the formations we can name competing for attention in a twinkling and crowded sky-bowl. Out from the corners, our eyes detect a maverick meteor, a transient streak, and lying back toward midnight on the heft of car hood, all conversation blunted, we are at once unnerved and somehow restored. Out here, a furrow of spring-fed river threads through ranches in the tens of thousands of acres. Like cattle, we are powerless, by instinct can see why early people trembled and deliberated the heavens. Off in the distance those cattle make themselves known, a bird song moves singular across the horizon. Not yet 2:00, and bits of comet dust, the Perseids, startle and skim the atmosphere like skipping stones. In the leaden dark, we are utterly alone. As I rub the ridges on the back of your hand, our love for all things warm and pulsing crescendos toward dawn: this timeless awe, your breath floating with mine upward into the stars.

What in our lives is burnt In the fire of this? The heart's dear granary? The much we shall miss? Three lives hath one life— Iron, honey, gold. The gold, the honey gone— Left is the hard and cold. Iron are our lives Molten right through our youth. A burnt space through ripe fields, A fair mouth's broken tooth.