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POEM: DIRECTION

You'll only arrive at this house through
the woods we grew with purpose
Those birches dance
in costumes curled & fringed
Lights wink between the two
still flirting with the handsome oak next door
While below graped canopy
four chairs collect deep shade
emptied now of long-awaited guests
Sensitive ferns beside smooth purple stones
focused on this visitation
Heavy, cool air, fuels the spreading greenness
embedded in every surface, as if footsteps
you might fit your sole into each morning
and trace, still sleepy, a path older than ants.

eaf

POEM: Prospero's Prospect, Jay Johnson

This I abjure:
rough young magicians with red hair
and freckles and the memories
of them which have dissolved me in tears.
Full fathom five
my father lies and my beloved
and my beloved and
the ones I thought, however briefly
beloved
and of their bones is coral made
and of my heart
is hope squeezed not quite dry.
Even as the leaves cover paths
and grasses parch, there is nothing
but expectation
of the island, the prospect
of the buoys tolling in the sea
the cloudless sky
the spells
for which no longer have I breath,
of the final nothing at all.

                               JAY JOHNSON
                               as featured in the Gay & Lesbian Review

ANTIPODES

"Yonder in Ethiopia are the Antipodes, men that have their feet against our feet." ~ Bartholemus Anglicus

Even the bereft take advantage of a window's uncostly function -
But no transparent choice guarantees an apparent outcome.
Through crust & core, shovels hammer in hopes of riches and great escapes -
Those wounds never heal. When a women's mantle is disturbed - she'll leak her innermost secrets - so don't be too hasty.
Bide your time, taking away slowly spoonfuls of dirt.
If you leave your perceived Siberia in haste just to pop up in Antarctica,
You deserve a penguin's sour upbraiding. To not be kitted for the occasion -
Is to be vestigial, tuxless & fucked.

10.14.09

Assorted Finds...

This Is Just To Say
by William Carlos Williams

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

Copyright © 1962 by William Carlos Williams

***************************************

The Hunch
by Kevin Young

She wore red like a razor — cut quite a figure

standing there, her slender danger

dividing day from night, there

from here. Where I hoped to be is near

her & her fragrant, flammable hair —

words like always entering my mouth

that once only gargled doubt.

You see, I been used before like a car…

Between us, this sweating, a grandfather clock's steady tick, soundtrack of saxophones sighing.

It's been too long — a whole week

since love burned me like rye. I had begun

to see the glass as never empty

& that scared me.

She fills me like the lake

fills a canoe — no rescue — & to swim

I never learned how.

From BLACK MARIA by Kevin Young. Copyright © 2005 by Kevin Young.

***************************************

Which the Chicken, Which the Egg
by Ogden Nash

He drinks because she scolds, he thinks;
She thinks she scolds because he drinks;
And neither will admit what's true,
That he's a sot and she's a shrew.

From Nash's The Old Dog Barks Backwards , published in 1972.

The Ancient Chinese poets often parted on Mules

The Ancient Chinese poets often parted on Mules

Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide, The, July-August, 2009 by David Masello

When you are far away like this,
I replace my time with yours,
the one you are occupying.
You arise when I do not,
take meals before I have an appetite,
love, perhaps, someone who is not me.
You have led an accelerated life, yet
your flight tonight follows the horizon.
As you speed westward, you slow.
It will be dark when you land.
We will both tire as the moon rises.
We will sleep together.

Morning, the sun will heat
us to the same temperature.

(c) 2009 Gay & Lesbian Review, Inc.
(c) 2009 Gale, Cengage Learning

Canopy Tour

If it could be written
in words, all of it -
the clearing of the woods
down the gorge
wouldn't provide enough paper -
but there are so many things worth writing:

The woven nest whose tendrils
snake the rafters
that fat-bottomed bee
she bores the beams and rails

Sun and shadow mutate from
mid-day dapples
to six o'clock streaks and stripes
Regularly, the blue-jays terrorize
the robins, "Cheer, cheer!"
A cardinal, to spite its weaker song
fans the braver fire of its plumage
against which the robin's pale orange blush is shamed.

Will there be a roast tonight?
Will those broken cords be put to use -
cut loose into a crackling moonlight sonata
while we are still able to hear it
and while the woods around are still audience?

Beech twigs at daybreak
clears the palate - coffee pulls the shades open
Spatters of separating forms
evolve in God's country
the oddly mittened sassafras,
orange & ribboned mushrooms -
the companions of coal.
Animated wood smoke
tests memory's rafters -
recalls California or Maine?
Suddenly, I am ten,
with Betty on a stone beach.

Or that visit with Ben Franklin which yielded little,
But called to mind:
"If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead and rotten,
either write something worth reading or do things worth the writing."
I have done so little of either lately, I reflect -
I've missed you, my friend, and it's my fault, really.

What becomes of the world
emptied of the wild and woolly?
The incorrigible flirt of birds -
their inexhaustible metallic twitters;
What song accompanied Adam's expulsion
from that first forest?
The retreating and silenced hemlocks, their crushed needles
evoke poisons and potions.
The dimming of the lanterns, the wetting of the coals...
What soft smell will be registered
by our human exit?