19 posts tagged “poetry”
Soft Spots
They're worse than weak links
in chains, which we can blame
on blacksmiths' fire, and chinks
in armor, made by rain
of arrows. Soft spots,
those parts of us that bruise,
prove we're fruit that rots
as hourglasses ooze.
But I've a spot spot for,
a phrase we tend to whisper,
is what we say before
we name our guilty pleasure--
the damper pedal that pounds
sonatas into mush
the critic Ezra Pound
would call, with a shudder, slush.
Jason Guriel
To view more of Michael's poetry and essays, please visit http://mkitchin.vox.com/
Silly Sisters
Winter has smoky hair, shy of black
Michael Kitchin
a dream of making love
you cry at me sharply like a peacock
stripped of plumage your fecund greens,
your violent blues your crazy eyes
all gone from you
we have never I am dreaming
moonlight spills so many pearls
from hidden oysters
Lucy Simpson
Seattle, 1/14/2009
The Myrmidons Journey to Troy
Worship warship!
Worshipful the vessel!
Give unto him the bright red
poppies of opium
to brighten his vesicles
His mother Thetis down below
riding the rudder
How now mother?
How goes it?
Hera straddles the prow
in her vermilion cape
in her longing to be most
desired
of only one god
one husband
No means to sound the depths
no necessity
but they will be sounded for
thousands years hence
Only Patroclus may know
second sight
but keeps it hidden
even from his lover
When the ship is settled in the water
at night
he looks out at the blackness
and counts the dead
L. Simpson, Seattle, 5/3/2008
The Fatal Shore
The horseshoe crab in frail armor-plate,
broken open as if by a javelin throw,
lay in the sand like a cracked jam-jar,
the son of some Trojan.
Achilles, too, arrived in medias res
at his mortal scene.
The booming foghorn, the groaning buoy,
tide by tide by tide
kept their mockeries to themselves.
Was there no end to them?
Lost Renaissance studies with a sepia cast,
the dunes receded in perspective.
Fog lounged in the marsh shallows.
A soda-colored dawn again and again
rubbed salt into the clapboards,
collapsing upon a radiant wild-eyed dailiness.
Dullness, too, was my god.
Tangled knobs of seaweed
drifted up the beach on the curt tide,
like Myrmidons out of work.
William Logan
Mermaids
Oil on canvas, 1942
Lisel Mueller
Who is that man in black, walking
away from us into the distance?
The painter, they say, took a long time
finding his vision of the world.
The mermaids, if that is what they are
under their full-length skirts,
sit facing each other
all down the street, more of an alley,
in front of their gray row houses.
They all look the same, like a fair-haired
order of nuns, or like prostitutes
with chaste, identical faces.
How calm they are, with their vacant
eyes,
their hands in laps that betray nothing.
Only one has scales on her dusky dress.
It is 1942; it is Europe,
and nothing fits. the one familiar figure
is the man in black approaching the sea,
and he is small and walking away from
us.
Lisel Mueller
Dear Friends and Neighbors,
Please visit http://www.harlotssauce.com/ to view my most recent publication. Thanks Patricia and fellow editors. I have enjoyed reading the entire magazine.
I am currently taking classes in nursing at night and studying during the day, so this cuts down drastically on the time I have for writing. I will try to post something weekly and read blogs too. I will be a less frequent Vox presence, but will drop in when I am able.
Lucy in her cups of wine on a Saturday night, wishing you all sweet dreams and if you reside in the lower hemisphere, sweet awakenings.
Friends, Neighbors, Country Men, Country Women and People in Foreign Lands, Lend Me Your Electronic Ears!
The book is almost complete. I am not using my own photography, since I find it technically lacking and too "light-filled" for the dark surreal tone of the fairytale poems. Good news, is I have been quietly working with an artist on the farther shore of my nation, Katherine Anderson. Her photographic art is richly layered and reminiscent of Rene Magritte, the painter and Man Ray, the photographer. Her work is often witty, sometimes sad, but never dull.
Here is an example of one of Katherine's thought-provoking, surreal works paired with a poem for the book. Please let us know what you think. We are both hard at work pairing poems with art. The title of the book is Into These Woods. Stay tuned for updates and thanks for encouraging me on the road.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/klsanderson/2444668446/in/set-72157594191446671/
Great Aunt Wicked
every family claims one, in their lore, in their book of books
a spinster aunt, a crazy derelict crone in a decrepit brownstone
with screeching paint and a hundred cats or more
creaking the floorboards cut from ancient forest.
piles of newspapers are her informative courtesans
the royal jewels are chicken bones and her nectar is golden gut-rot
Jim Beam, whatever.
she can’t stand a pretty girl, an Alice, if you please
fresh as morning, fresh as daisies, a button sort of girl
a reflection of herself self sixty years ago
it is back to her whiskey as if it were mama milk
from an ice teat, a solace, a darkness, a falling and falling
past emptiness into Oz again, green again
green as a grass blade, singing with crickets
and the creatures that crawl up from the earth's guts
say “howdy do.”
Lucy Simpson
Seattle
12/2008
Here are two poems by one of my favorite fellow Vox poets. To view more of his work, please visit http://erc675.vox.com/.
Orientations
There was no clasp
at the hasp of us.
The mechanics of thresholds
jarred.
You said, "let's go."
I stood there-
a swing door
you had just walked through-
a key turning slowly
in one shoulder blade.
Eric Ashford, March, 2009
A Market In Northern Thailand
They are not from Chiang Mai
they are a tribal people
who speak a hill language.
They ride through the night
on bicycles.
to settle at dawn
beside the Ping River.
Girls' unroll rattan mats
then squat beside straw hats
brimful with the tang
of burgundy chilies.
They have vegetables
grown in lime green waters,
parched salty anchovies
and plump spearheads
of opalescent fish-
all these are bargained for
bundled in newspaper
then tied with pink raffia.
Where our lives intersect
we communicate
like birds between far shores,
we write In the sky.
We exchange a few smiles
a mutual recognition
of the distance
that can
and cannot be bridged
by coins crossing over
open palms.
Eric Ashford, March 2009
The Toilet Bowl Man Wants To Sleep
(based on the Ti-D-Bol Man)
The bowl of his smooth white world
is a round-lipped bell krater
The sea is azure, cerulean
with hints of andradite garnet
The water is sometimes blue as a dead-man's eyes
His boat rushes round in spirals
but never goes down
to the place of shades and ferment
He fell in love with the moon
round as fresh figs
tan and glowing with a fragrance of olives
He desired to sleep
He hoped she would
scoop him into her palm
rescue him from the bowl
“My world is too small
too clean
too blue
to hold my ragged red
thoughts”
he cried
Lucy Simpson, Seattle, 2/18/2009
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