Tag Archives: contemporary poetry

Most Like the Human Voice

books poetry lit December 21, 2013 Leave a comment

the cello. I’ve heard voices, women’s voices,
men’s, deep, almost suntanned, the bow drawn
trembling across the past, finding the line
somebody else drew, before, ago, far, ages,
the long lasting, the note held in glass, the rim
muscled fingers, strong arms, the woman’s shape,
knees grasping, the unaccompanied suite.
Bach, his mind, moral-scaffolded, tune climbing coil,
fakir’s spiral, above, above.  He holds us, bears
us.  Math music.  Twenty something, David,
whatever holds us, holds us aloft, keeps,
hopes.  The woman, the cellist, going to buy the dress,
the black dress, the woman sitting there, spreading
her legs, embracing imagination, sawing the bow
back and forth, saying. “I don’t think this dress,”
and the saleswoman snatching the dress,  “No,
not for what you want a dress for.”

at the funeral, the dead man not religious,
played Bach.  How few nights later, the boy,
boy he was, David, will be, went where he should not,
to what he couldn’t live with, without, white
heat, argument, wanting more, playing less, lead,
the only way to settle fire, habit, what lifted him
when Bach didn’t.  The dropped bow, the voice,
so like ours, if it were reasonable, still, every note
the dead hear, the rest of us twist the knob for,
never completely clearing static about the score.

-Starkey Flythe in Inkwell

Poem for a son going off to college

books poetry lit October 9, 2013 Leave a comment

Looking at photographs of the kids. One of them is going
To college tomorrow. I used to wear that kid like a jacket.
He fell asleep instantly given the slightest chance. School,
The car, even once during a time-out at a basketball game,
Although to be fair he was the point guard and had played
The whole first half and been double-teamed. He could be
Laughing at something and you’d turn away to see a hawk
Or his lissome mom and when you turned back he was out.
But tomorrow he’s in the top bunk in a room far away. We
Will leave the back porch light on for him out of habit and
In the morning we will both notice that it’s still on and one
Of us will cry right into the coffee beans and the other will
Remember that it felt like all the poems we mean when we
Say words like dad and son and love when I slung that boy
Over one shoulder or another or carried him amidships like
A sack of rice or best of all dangling him by his feet so that
All the nickels he put in his pockets for just this eventuality
Poured down like something else we do not have words for.

-Brian Doyle, The Christian Century

Humming

books poetry lit October 1, 2013 Leave a comment

Our father taught us
music too—
Saturday evenings,
the tubes grew hot
as the turn-table
ran across a needle.
Steady low strings
held the cut of high
strings, in the air
around the room.
We listened;
the hiss and hum
of Copland’s
Spring, resonated
the speaker gauze.
We lay with him
on the carpet;
one of our hands
in each of his,
while notes pulled
new meanings
of what it meant
to be a hard-working
man, overcome
with such sound.

-Matthew Haughton, from Hamilton Stone Review

Opera Buffa

books poetry lit September 25, 2013 Comments: 3

At La Dolce Vita, in the village,
the gnocchi lifts itself off the fork,
floats like a cloud in your mouth,
the marinara so fresh,
it ripens the tomatoes, garlic
and basil right on your tongue.

Clemenza’s in the kitchen
stirring the sauce,
telling everyone he really doesn’t eat
that much, it’s the fumes
that have permeated his body,
gotten under his skin
and made him fat.

My date Antonio closes his eyes
after each bite, groans,
Marona, this is as good
as my mother’s.

Satisfied, he lays his folded napkin
on the empty plate and slumps
in the chair while I,
having saved room,
crane my neck looking for the waiter.
What, you want dessert too?
He seems surprised.

I’d like to see what they have,
though I’ve committed it
to memory.
Aren’t you full? he asks.
Am I full? I think to myself.
It’s bad enough that we have to die,
that I’m not taller, that my metabolism
is molto lento, but to dine with someone
who is indifferent

to a chilled plate
of Panna Cotta,
silky, quivering cream
adorned with fresh berries,
or Torta Strega, cake
perfumed with liqueur,
filled with pastry cream
and finished
with hazelnut meringue.

I cannot live on lasagna alone
and the fact that Antonio
doesn’t sense this threatens
our chance for a future.

The waiter smiles as he unravels
the dessert menu, handwritten
on rough brown craft paper.
Tiramisu
Umbrian Apple Tart
Selville Orange Sorbetto …
This is so beautiful, I say,
ordering the Panna Cotta.
May I keep the menu?
Of course Signora, he says.
And you sir?

No. Nothing for me,
just a cup of espresso.

Oh Antonio, Antonio what
are you thinking?
How can I trust a man
who doesn’t like sweets?
At La Dolce Vita
what could have been the start
of a beautiful romance—
snapped like a broken string
on a Stradivarius!

-Diane Shipley DeCillis, Rattle

Olive Oil

books poetry lit May 29, 2013 Leave a comment

The toast would taste better with egg, but there aren’t any,
so I pour a thimble-sized serving of olive oil on, to make it more

flavorful. I like the taste of olive oil. It reminds me of the time
when I was eighteen and jumped clear over the hood of my car

because I could. To be more specific, olive oil is the part where
I leave the ground and I’m in the air, halfway across. Right then,

before landing on the other side. That’s the taste of olive oil.
It also tastes the way Madagascar sounds when you say it

backwards. If there were olive oil cologne, I would wear it and if
there were olive oil goldfish, I would have two in a bowl on the

table. For some reason, it is also a man swallowing lighter
fluid because the pain in his belly is bigger than the Kalahari

Desert. But maybe that’s only when you drink it straight; and
sometimes it tastes like Brigitte Bardot. To be more specific,

in the scene where she is sunning naked in Capri, an impossibly
blue ocean wrestling with the sky in the distance.

-Paul Suntup, Rattle 

Neolithic Burial

books poetry lit May 7, 2013 Leave a comment

When he died they hunched him up
like baby in womb, curled him
into a shallow scoop in the cave-floor,
planted him like a seed as he slowly stiffened,
covering his slumped and earthen limbs
with a layer of red ochre,
sprinkling him with wildflowers—
then turned away.

Moon comes back each month, so bright,
then curls itself into a dying crescent—
baby struggles out of a woman’s darkness—
petals of delicate blue, pale yellow, in the wet woods,
how do they know
when sun is past dying and comes
to life again?

This is older than cities or books,
older than prayers or earnest discussions,
older than farming,
something buried and burst open
long before words, ideas, church or temple or crudest holy place,
older even than itself,

this longing.

-Tim Myers, Rattle