Smuggled human hair from Mexico
Falls radiant upon the waxy O
Of her scream. Shades on, leather coat and pants—Yoko
On her knees—like the famous Kent State photo
Where the girl can’t shriek her boyfriend alive, her arms
Windmilling Ohio sky.
A pump in John’s chest heaves
To mimic death-throes. The blood is made of latex.
His glasses: broken on the plastic sidewalk.
A scowling David Chapman, his arms outstretched,
His pistol barrel spiraling fake smoke
In a siren’s red wash, completes the composition,
And somewhere background music plays "Imagine"
Before the tableau darkens. We push a button
To renew the scream.
The chest starts up again.
20 Dec: "When the Devil Leads Us Home and Yells Surprise" By Nikki Wallschlaeger
Is that your house he asked
This used to be my house I said
But those are not your people
So that can’t be your house
But it is my house I said
I had some people maybe a few
Even though those are not your people
Even though they don’t look like you
I had to live somewhere I said
This is the house where I lived
But where are your people he said
My people live in a different house
They don’t care to know about me
If you’re the devil
Why are you asking me questions
The devil said since the house
You had to live in is gone
I thought you’d be happy
It sure is a hot day I said
Of course it is said the devil
Why do you think I work in town
19 Dec: "Tenor" By Luther Hughes
Luther Hughes talked about how the painter Jeam-Michel Basquiat was a muse for him in this poem "Tenor" on The Poetry Magazine Podcast. Below is the painting that inspired the poem.
After Jean-Michel Basquiat
After Jean-Michel Basquiat
Crows
and more crows.
One crow
with a rat
hanging
from its beak,
sloppy
and beautiful.
Another crow
with its wings
plucked
empty.
I wanted
so much of today
to be peaceful
but the empty crow
untethers
something in me: a feral
yearning for love
or a love that is so full
of power,
of tenderness,
the words
fall to their knees
begging for mercy
like tulips
in wind.
I don’t wear the crown
for the times power
has tainted
my body,
but I can tell the difference
between giving up
and giving in.
If you can’t, ask the crow
that watches me
through the window,
laughing as I drink
my third bottle of wine.
Ask the sound
the tree makes
when the crow has grown
disgusted
with my whining.
After years of repression,
I can come clean.
I was a boy
with a hole
other boys
stuffed themselves into.
I have wanted
nothing to do with blackness
or laughter
or my life.
But about love,
who owns the right,
really? Who owns
the crow
who loves fresh meat
or the crow who loves
the vibration
of its own throat?
Everything around me
is black for its own good,
I suppose.
The widow,
the picture of the boy
crying on the wall,
the mirror
with its taunting,
the crows
that belong
to their scripture.
Can you imagine
being so tied to blackness
that even your wings
cannot help you escape?
About my life,
every needle,
a small prayer.
Every pill, a funeral
hymn.
I wanted the end
several times
but thought,
Who owns this body, really?
God?
Dirt?
The silly insects
that will feast
on my decay?
Is it the boy
who entered first
or the boy
who wanted everything
to last?
18 Dec: "Reflection" by Ezra Pound
I know that what Nietzsche said is true,
And yet
I saw the face of a little child in the street,
And it was beautiful.
16 Dec: "Kubla Khan" By Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Or, a vision in a dream. A Fragment.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round;
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail:
And mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean;
And ’mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!
A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight ’twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
3 Dec 2018: "Numbers" by Mary Cornish
I like the generosity of numbers. The way, for example, they are willing to count anything or anyone: two pickles, one door to the room, eight dancers dressed as swans. I like the domesticity of addition-- add two cups of milk and stir-- the sense of plenty: six plums on the ground, three more falling from the tree. And multiplication's school of fish times fish, whose silver bodies breed beneath the shadow of a boat. Even subtraction is never loss, just addition somewhere else: five sparrows take away two, the two in someone else's garden now. There's an amplitude to long division, as it opens Chinese take-out box by paper box, inside every folded cookie a new fortune. And I never fail to be surprised by the gift of an odd remainder, footloose at the end: forty-seven divided by eleven equals four, with three remaining. Three boys beyond their mothers' call, two Italians off to the sea, one sock that isn't anywhere you look.
2 Dec 2018: "Bringing My Son to the Police Station to be Fingerprinted" by Shoshauna Shy
My lemon-colored whisper-weight blouse with keyhole closure and sweetheart neckline is tucked into a pastel silhouette skirt with side-slit vents and triplicate pleats when I realize in the sunlight through the windshield that the cool yellow of this blouse clashes with the buttermilk heather in my skirt which makes me slightly queasy however the periwinkle in the pattern on the sash is sufficiently echoed by the twill uppers of my buckle-snug sandals while the accents on my purse pick up the pink in the button stitches and then as we pass through Weapons Check it's reassuring to note how the yellows momentarily mesh and make an overall pleasing composite
1 Dec 2018: "The Cord" by Leanne O’Sullivan
I used to lie on the floor for hours after
school with the phone cradled between
my shoulder and my ear, a plate of cold
rice to my left, my school books to my right.
Twirling the cord between my fingers
I spoke to friends who recognized the
language of our realm. Throats and lungs
swollen, we talked into the heart of the night,
toying with the idea of hair dye and suicide,
about the boys who didn’t love us,
who we loved too much, the pang
of the nights. Each sentence was
new territory, like a door someone was
rushing into, the glass shattering
with delirium, with knowledge and fear.
My Mother never complained about the phone bill,
what it cost for her daughter to disappear
behind a door, watching the cord
stretching its muscle away from her.
Perhaps she thought it was the only way
she could reach me, sending me away
to speak in the underworld.
As long as I was speaking
she could put my ear to the tenuous earth
and allow me to listen, to decipher.
And these were the elements of my Mother,
the earthed wire, the burning cable,
as if she flowed into the room with
me to somehow say, Stay where I can reach you,
the dim room, the dark earth. Speak of this
and when you feel removed from it
I will pull the cord and take you
back towards me.