Gorgeous. Gorgeous gorgeous spoken word poem from Alex Henery.
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Tag Archives: poetry
Canticle of Waitresses, Waiting
This is how we herded by the waitress station,
waiting, as the town, turned down to one by snow,
settled like a gown that smothered all that ailed us.
.
How we first heard about the hostages
on Facebook, and then the town knelt down to zero,
still as snow once it resolves itself to ground.
.
How the sidewalk still needed seeding with rock salt.
How even when a person stands still, they can slip.
.
How we counted the seeds of our blessings.
How our blessings rebounded off the booths like buckshot.
.
How we each sometimes rebound into being
a country of one self.
How we other times are one self of a city.
.
How only below zero can we remember
September as that country where we save daylight
like fat over our muscles.
.
How a woman ran at the chained gym doors
to save her daughter.
How she dropped on the unseeded walk.
How we’ll remember her legs as
a fleet of hummingbirds skidding through snow.
.
How sometimes, to give something a shot means kill it.
How other times it means just close your eyes.
–Saara Myrene Raappana, via Augury Books
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Ode to Orange
“It is not, in my view, a very good
novel,” asserted Anthony Burgess, ink-
slinger of A Clockwork Orange, whose pages
pontificate our need for the freedom to choose
evil. Is there any doubt Tony chose
the wrong wavelength, the wrong
produce? And besides, who wouldn’t,
given a choice, rather read about
Protestantism sewing itself into
Irish flags, an itty-bitty ant trudging around
the rind of a certain citrus to demonstrate
the universe is finite and forever, cheddar
manufacturing, or the manic Orange Bowl
helping to end the Depression? Oh, I sing paeans
for marigolds, Titan’s clouds, 10,000 male
Julias released, the insides of mangos, hummocks
covered in daylilies, apricot sherbet
on a Thursday, leaves on their last legs, Kenya—
where they call the color chungwa—on the globe
my Grandpa Guido gave me. Give me
sea pens, zest, cock-of-the-rocks, jack-
o’-lanterns with blazing eyes. Last October, Lisa,
the sarcastic love-of-my-life, got goldfish
and conferred the monikers
“Lime” and “Plum”; the innocent things
were belly-up and toilet-bowl
bound the next week. Don’t we give
our precious attentions to stuff bending us
blue? And don’t we slump on the sofa, waiting out
our little lives in a world as jaded and bruised
as we can stand it? Well, let my sunrays mix
with sanguine, let ten times more life taste
like peach meat, let mirrors reflect and release
that nanometer tint to things holding in
that hue like a breath, because the Lord, bored
with creation, bellowed “Let there be
orange!” and then there was—filling the sky
that first night, dotting trees the third day—
and it was good, so damn good
it could never, thank Heaven, be damned.
-Matt Zambito, Birmingham Poetry Review
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Where Love Resides
They fall into exhaustion rather than into gentle sleep,
each limb heavy with the ash of its bonfires burned completely down,
not curled but sprawled, claiming all the space of their bed,
two bodies that attempted fusion, both straining to push into
what is impenetrable in the other, wanting the only way they know
to try, to perhaps break through the inherent loneliness of skin.
Now, very late, leg over leg, arm across chest, they breathe deep as newborns,
as if drawing from the stuffy air replenishment after their struggle. No dreams
tonight. Instead, only thick flesh, cooling back into their separate selves.
What will they say when they stir back into the world,
conscious, suddenly, of their edges as morning sun floods their sheets?
What will their first words be upon waking?
They each will arrive in the new day alone, surprised, as they were at their own births,
and at death, and as after each sleep, utterly bound in the locked rooms
of their bodies. Will they recognize their loneliness? Will they speak of it?
For this is the most fragile moment, with mussed hair and sour breath,
when wild abandon has dispersed and the habitual seeing returns
in the glaring light of every day. Who can they tell?
If love resides anywhere, it is here: in the waking face, the tender hand that reaches
to touch that face. It is in the gestures they choose to give, and in their decision,
whether or not they will speak, one to the other, of their true need.
-Joanne Esser, The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review
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Beyond Translation
There was no blue in ancient Greece
Homer’s skies were iron and bronze
hung above a wine-dark sea
Likewise, Chloros
seemed to be the word for green
but in literature of the time
honey was chloros
dew was chloros
even tears and blood
Leaving the impression that nothing
was seen in terms of color
that cursory observations were secondary
to intrinsic distinctions that mark
the essence of existence
So the blood’s red hue was less
important than whether it was fresh
as morning dew, moist as honeyed tears
or still as an afternoon
-Shawnte Orion, Sakura Review
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Seen from Above
Steady the freight trains
like daily missives
from other-where—
our stop on the map,
the dislocation of winter’s
bandwidth.
Steady now the icicles
freezing in their gravity,
last leaves winnowing
off the tree
and steady the people
with their clocksongs
and filled-up lives
while a few of us are dropping
away like chaff from a scythe.
Emptiness.
Pour the water.
Keep the fire lit.
Things are not as they seem.
To ring the bell
you must give your whole self
over to the bell-rope.
You must lift both feet
off the ground.
-Jennifer K Sweeney, Cave Wall
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Snow on the Desert
“Each ray of sunshine is eight minutes old,”
Serge told me in New York one December
night. “So when one looks at the sky, one sees
the past?” “Yes, Yes,” he said, “especially
on a clear day.” On January 19,
1987, as I very
early in the morning drove my sister
to Tucson International, suddenly
on Alvernon and 22nd Street
the sliding doors of the fog were opened,
and the snow, which had fallen all night, now
sun-dazzled, blinded us, the earth whitened
out, as if by cocaine, the desert’s plants,
its mineral-hard colors extinguished,
wine frozen in the veins of the cactus.
* * *
The Desert Smells Like Rain: in it I read:
The syrup from which sacred wine is made
is extracted from the saguaros each
summer. The Papagos place it in jars,
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Intentions (1)
In the beginning was the hand, and the hand was good
Celan says there’s no difference between a handshake and a poem
The hand has a tendency to close around the palm,
flatbread and goat cheese, prayer beads extracted at the checkpoint
The mouth may say, What am 1 doing here what am I doing here
but the hand is curious, it learns with the fingertips
My hand remembers fingering the rosary, frisson of apostasy,
enchanted circuit of witless penance
At this moment, everywhere, the hand is touching the forbidden
The head shies off but five witnesses compel the hand to tell
-Lee Sharkey, The Seattle Review
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Cascade the Generations
Water is always with you. You undulate upon its lap until it breaks and you drop into waiting arms and hands. From baths to strides you swim, nourished by the sustenance water gives, just as one day
you may be drawn to its rhythmic code:
despite gravity, water ascends like faith, on bridges of fog and mist, bringing full ladles to rumbling skies that cascade in torrents down mountains and hills, filling the reservoirs of roots in fields and forests and streams, restoring over and over the oceans and seas.
Every moment, water moves forward even as it wills itself back to the clouds— much as one growing progeny within may absorb the ways of water and innately sense that she owns not the child, but rather the charge passing through her,
and the lives to whom this charge is given are renewed once again when this child reaches back and up to the parents of the parents
whose currents brought them here.
-John Middlebrook, Wilderness House Literary Review
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Answering Machine
“Pat hi, it’s me, pick up. I thought you were
there, guess not. Where are you? Where could
you be, my dearest? See you tonight then,
8 o’clock at our normal place, bye my love.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing on my
wife’s business answering machine. I came
home early from work to mow the grass. Who
was this man’s voice on my wife’s answering
machine? I played it again, “it’s me … see you
tonight … our normal place … bye my love.”
My heart, like a racing steam engine, truly
nearly pounded right out of my chest. Where
was she going tonight and to meet whom? How
could I find out? I couldn’t ask her, she’d have a
lie ready. Somehow I needed to follow her, but
then again maybe not. Do I really want to know
the details of the ruin of my life? I’ll kill this guy,
is all I can think, I will. I’ll have to kill this guy
for taking my wife from me. The courts will
understand. Adultery is truly a disgusting,
cowardly crime. I could never hurt her of
course, but him, well I’ll simply have to kill him,
soon as I find out who he is. Then I woke up
shaking and spent the whole day wondering if I
am a good husband, even bought her flowers on
my way home. (And checked her answering
machine when she wasn’t looking.)
-Michael Estabrook, Rattle
Coffee and Irony 