[ Moto Moon ; Diane Birch ]

 

Dragons

--Devin Johnston

We gathered in a field southwest of town,

several hundred hauling coolers

and folding chairs along a gravel road

dry in August, two ruts of soft dust

that soaked into our clothes

and rose in plumes behind us.

By noon we could discern their massive coils

emerging from a bale of cloud,

scales scattering crescent dapples

through walnut fronds,

the light polarized, each leaf tip in focus.

As their bodies blotted out the sun,

the forest faded to silverpoint.

A current of cool air

extended from the bottomlands

an intimation of October,

and the bowl of sky deepened

its celestial archaeology.

Their tails, like banners of a vast army,

swept past Orion and his retinue

to sighs and scattered applause,

the faint wail of a child crying.

In half an hour they had passed on

in search of deep waters.

Before our company dispersed,

dust whirling in the wind,

we planned to meet again in seven years

for the next known migration.

Sunlight flashed on windshields

and caught along the riverbank

a cloudy, keeled scale

about the size of a dinner plate,

cool as blanc de Chine

in the heat of the afternoon.

 

Cold Trail

--Devin Johnston

The feeling of time derives from heat,

an agitation of molecules,

oracles from the friction of air

through fissures and the leaves of oaks.

A few gnats stitch the lake’s edge

where a fox turns off the gravel road

to nose through rhododendron

as children crawl through winter coats

to reach a closet’s dark recess.

Dawdling at the edge of sleep

you work through problems already past

though unresolved, a notional path,

a crease through heads of wild blue phlox

that waking, you can’t follow.

 

Telephone

--Devin Johnston

A mockingbird

perched on the hood

of a pay phone

half-buried in a hedge

of wild rose

and heard it ring

The clapper ball

trilled between

brass gongs

for two seconds

then wind

and then again

With head cocked

the bird took note

absorbed the ringing

deep in its throat

and frothed

an ebullient song

The leitmotif

of bright alarm

recurred in a run

from hawk

to meadowlark

from May to early June

The ringing spread

from syrinx to syrinx

from Kiowa

to Comanche to Clark

till someone

finally picked up

and heard a voice

on the other end

say Konza

or Consez or Kansa

which the French trappers

heard as Kaw

which is only the sound

of a word for wind

then only the sound of wind

 

[ Sundown ; Laura Knight (1947) ]

 

 

By the Time You Read This

--Paul Muldoon

By the time you read this I’ll be gone

for a newspaper and quart of milk

never to return, a half-mowed lawn

leading to me as a scroll of silk

once led to the mulberry silkworm.

By the time you read this I’ll be gone

AWOL in spite of the fact, in terms

of domesticity, I’ve outshone

even the heedful trumpeter swan

that spends five weeks constructing a nest.

By the time you read this I’ll be gone

less because of some profound unrest

than my fascination with the Cree

and the sandhills of Saskatchewan

into which windswept immensity,

by the time you read this, I’ll be long gone.

 

Hedgehog

--Paul Muldoon

The snail moves like a

Hovercraft, held up by a

Rubber cushion of itself,

Sharing its secret

With the hedgehog. The hedgehog

Shares its secret with no one.

We say, Hedgehog, come out

Of yourself and we will love you.

We mean no harm. We want

Only to listen to what

You have to say. We want

Your answers to our questions.

The hedgehog gives nothing

Away, keeping itself to itself.

We wonder what a hedgehog

Has to hide, why it so distrusts.

We forget the god

Under this crown of thorns.

We forget that never again

Will a god trust in the world.

 

The Glow-Worm to the Mower

--Paul Muldoon

Since you’re unlikely to astound

yourself by having more to save

than hay, small wonder you’ve not found

why wave upon successive wave

would summon, far inland, sea-sounds

from a dull scythe or sickle.

When Juliana and you downed

tools to lunch on cheese and pickles

atop the triangular mound

with its outcrop of hairy vetch

for which your meadow is renowned

it must have felt like the home stretch

to a safe harbour. Black horehound

in the sheugh … The sun a sea-gong …

All afternoon you would expound

on how a mower must be strong

while Juliana, tightly wound

as ever, slowly went off-script,

the vetch-garland with which she’s crowned

having by dusk completely slipped,

the ties by which lovers are bound

also substantially weakened.

We mourn all those poor souls who’ve drowned

because our own inconstant beacons

have led to their running aground;

bear in mind it’s by, and from, you

(and not the other way around)

we glow-worms steer and take our cue.

 

[ Butterfly Frog ; Robert Zakanitch (2001) ]

 

Let's Voyage Into The New American House

--Richard Brautigan

There are doors

that want to be free

from their hinges to

fly with perfect clouds.

There are windows

that want to be

released from their

frames to run with

the deer through

back country meadows.

There are walls

that want to prowl

with the mountains

through the early

morning dusk.

There are floors

that want to digest

their furniture into

flowers and trees.

There are roofs

that want to travel

gracefully with

the stars through

circles of darkness.

 

All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace

--Richard Brautigan

I like to think (and

the sooner the better!)

of a cybernetic meadow

where mammals and computers

live together in mutually

programming harmony

like pure water

touching clear sky.

I like to think

(right now, please!)

of a cybernetic forest

filled with pines and electronics

where deer stroll peacefully

past computers

as if they were flowers

with spinning blossoms.

I like to think

(it has to be!)

of a cybernetic ecology

where we are free of our labors

and joined back to nature,

returned to our mammal

brothers and sisters,

and all watched over

by machines of loving grace.

 

A Boat

--Richard Brautigan

O beautiful

was the werewolf

in his evil forest.

We took him

to the carnival

and he started

     crying

when he saw

the Ferris wheel.

Electric

green and red tears

flowed down

his furry cheeks.

He looked

like a boat

out on the dark

water.

 

[ Zonnegloed ; Emile Claus (1905) ]

 

 

The Name of that Silence is These Grasses in the Wind

-- JJJJJerome Ellis

The name of that silence is these grasses in this wind, and the name of these grasses in this wind is that other place on the other side of this instant. This instant is divided by curtains of water and the sound of shuddering time. A sunflower reeling with sun, six hands stretched in offering. This unsearchable, uncancellable instant wraps the shoulders of the grasses like a shawl stilled by the stoppage. White pines whistle skyward. “With our beings shaped to songs of praise,” writes the fifth-century theologian Pseudo-Dionysius. “What the scripture writers have to say regarding the divine names refers, in revealing praises, to the beneficent processions of God.” What processes from the instant? Find the ceremony in every instant. “Every condition, movement, life, imagination, conjecture, name, discourse, thought, inception, being, rest, dwelling, unity, limit, infinity, the totality of existence.” What is the name of this instant? Where is the name of this instant? Swimming in the Rappahannock, clinging to the swollen belly of that ruby-throated hummingbird. 

“Bring anonymity,” writes poet Tim Lilburn.

This morning come shyly or boldly into the fertile field, however you are, come, come and stay in the rearrangement, the pressure of thumb on fescue blade, a year wheeling within a day, two round moments of warm mouth, finally at peace. The psalm is a key if only we can find the door. Do not swallow your dysfluent voice. Let it erupt in its volcanic flowering. Stoppage thence passage, aporia, poppy bursting with fragrant seed. 

 

Summer

--Conrad Aiken

Absolute zero: the locust sings:

summer’s caught in eternity’s rings:

the rock explodes, the planet dies,

we shovel up our verities.

The razor rasps across the face

and in the glass our fleeting race

lit by infinity’s lightning wink

under the thunder tries to think.

In this frail gourd the granite pours

the timeless howls like all outdoors

the sensuous moment builds a wall

open as wind, no wall at all:

while still obedient to valves and knobs

the vascular jukebox throbs and sobs

expounding hope propounding yearning

proposing love, but never learning

or only learning at zero’s gate

like summer’s locust the final hate

formless ice on a formless plain

that was and is and comes again.

 

If you smell iodine, the captain is nearby.

The pines support heaven upon their needles.

An aquamarine July strolls along the seashore,

Its ever-returning feet massaged by pebbles.

You dilute the climate with tears. Carving melons

Smells of vacation ... just as the inevitable captain.

Hello! I know this well: summer has come. Henceforth,

It will knock at my threshold. I will prepare. I change

Unnecessarily so many times each day. The soul

Immaculate gasps when you bring her to the glassy sea.

When summer ends, I will spill iodine. Let it smell,

To make the captain believe his sea is my flat.

--Lyudmyla Diadchenko (trans. Padma Thornlyre)

 

[ Landscape with a Red House ; Aristarkh Lentulov (1917) ]

 

Giving Up Reason

--Pam Rehm

It happens like this:

Majestically,

the pigeons spill down

a few steps away

on a hot summer’s day

on Broadway

jostling one another

All the dust and the mess

I’ve become

overtaken

by unevenness

Within the days

Between the hours

I’m bewildered by

all the dollars I’ve spent

on a life out of balance

when there’s all this

cosmic consciousness

within a kiss

and the 1 AM

that haunts the hand

in my pocket

searching for the key

hole

All those mistakes ago

Like everyone else,

I feed them

A few cents of bread

But it’s the thirst

no one thinks about

When I look out

YOU are

always

The landscape within

 

Acts of Love

--Pam Rehm

If endear is earned

and is meant to identify   

two halves

then it composes   

one meaning

which means   

a token

a knot   

a note

a noting in the head   

of how it feels

to have your heart   

be the dear one

 

Acts of Vexation

--Pam Rehm

The only thing under the sun

I can run to

is Ecclesiastes

for there is nothing gathered into one self

that can be kept

Want is humbled by death

as every purpose manifests it

Feeling this all my life

a piercing fright

gathers in the stomach's pit

This is it and this is not the end

of the road

for even despair is a kind of goad

to wisdom

The beauty of the world

over one's own anguish

The day that I lost all feeling

I was both a Fool and a Goddess

 

[ Butterflies ; Piroska Szanto ]

 

 

The Three Trees at Hudimesnil

--Nathan Spoon

I shouldn’t be doing this the room said. I didn’t

know rooms could do anything much less

talk about it I said. Well that’s on you the room

said but at least you know better now. A person

wearing a pink shirt gray jacket and beige pants

was stroking their chin. Another one was wearing

a mask. A big part of living is matching what

you do or say to what else is being done or said

by others. The difficulty is in knowing where to

draw the line. For example the philosophical and

conceptual mind desires to be included with its

casual counterparts such as the need for rest and

idleness. We are living through imperfect times

and clearly deserve all the shit we’ll give ourselves.

 

Envy Seas

--Nathan Spoon

Stemming brightly from a small jar : four flowers. It is like 

the ontology of being unaware of how many selves 

can be contained within a single individual. Be brief 

and then forget what happens next given the theory of 

the lyric driving sheep along in their natural orders. 

That character Parmenides started it sliding to plain 

after plain of natural versus dominator hierarchies like

these. Next came all the rest. Some days it is difficult 

to remember how much a stranger might remember.

Now the hero is gone. They were so great all four flowering

selves are still learning from them. Water is a yarn so hard 

that magic infuses even the corners and crevices of

every sticky law. People are always conflating love 

with new skies and new skies with cunning harmonies.

 

Cuddly in Camo

--Nathan Spoon 

Here comes rain on our roof!

It stays just long enough

to tickle me into writing this.

It stays just long enough

for everybody to get into

a pair of PJs (silk-cotton blend)

and then goes poof! At our best

we exude awesomeness. At our best

we are destined to turn pale

with the rest of humanity.

We are awesome and quick as

decomposing sticks at a trail’s

end. We bend dreams into circles

of green zone satire. We have

mahogany stuffed in our mahogany

ears. To all who are not us

we are sorry to say You’re welcome!

Nature thankfully adores a rumor!

A sunset! A glacier! Clouds

glimmer and cast inevitable

shadows off the groundswell

footrest. I remember you from

that time before we first met

when our eyes were wet

like summertime coasters

as we Ubered noiselessly

between pews. The aristocrats

are failing to panhandle via email.

One aristocrat is sleepily winding

through the face of another.

 

[ Summer Sky ; David Hockney (2008) ]

 

 

Giggle

--Shuntaro Tanikawa

“I gave birth to a fish”

says the woman

“I freed it in the sea right away”

 

Giggling under the breath

I am downtown

people are sick of other people

 

What shall we do now?

Shall we go see

our dead friends?

 

Here I am, not understanding anything

not knowing anything

I open a pocket paperback for now, but

 

All that comes to

my mind is:

It’s a fine day

 

The River

--Shuntaro Tanikawa

Earth-colored water hesitates, flows

I realize it is a river

The descendant of formless underground dwellers,

the water is heading toward the sea, that much I know

but I don’t know when and how it welled up

As the train crosses the river a young woman next to me yawns

There is something welling up, too, from the shadowy depth of her mouth

Suddenly I realize my brain is more dull-witted than my flesh

Feeling uneasy that I, the flesh, riding a train,

am made mostly of water

I, the brain, prop myself up with words

Sometime in a distant past, somewhere in a distant place

words were much less voluminous, but

their ties to the nether world were perhaps much stronger

Water remains on this planet

morphing into seas, clouds, rains and ice

Words, too, cling to this planet

morphing into speeches, poems, contracts and treaties

I, too, cling to this planet

 

from 62 Sonnets (excerpt)

--Shuntaro Tanikawa (t. by Martin Rock)

1 Shade Tree

In any case, joy lives inside this day

as in the heart of the new sun—

and in dining tables, and in guns,

and even in gods, though they remain oblivious.

In the tree’s shade, human hearts return

to embrace the day’s humility.

Freely, in this place,

one stands for a moment

to read the sky,

to sing the clouds’ song,

to pray, simply because it is time to summon pleasure.

I must forget

that which is beyond forgetting.

The sun glares. The trees glare back.

2 Yearning

In the shadow of the June sun, I accept my fate.

I’ve become alienated even from my own desires.

My yearning dashes about

vainly, with no time to look back.

I’ve made the mistake of loving without conviction.

All the while, just this charming exterior—

flattery without the knowledge of who flatters.

Fields and clouds are such simple things.

Soon, around my small grave,

only people, rocks, and sky will remain. And yet—

what immortal soul remembers tomorrow?

I’ve made the mistake of forgetting the gods.

Without life, how on earth can anything happen?

In the obscure early summer sun, my fate casts a shadow.

3 Homecoming

This was an alien land.

Through the side entrance of this miserable planet,

I was drawn to the darkness of its innermost part

by the profound, mysterious shapes of its rooms.

Who am I?

I have no means to return,

and will continue writing these dispatches

as long as I am here.

I have ceased yearning for other planets.

There is more amusement here than in eternity,

and yet someday, as a postscript, I’ll return.

Most likely, I’ll be called back unexpectedly

from this intimate, foreign land —

My own homecoming, and yet I will not be there.

10 Unknown Person

The car spoke.

The pencil spoke.

Chemistry, itself, spoke.

“You have made us,” they said. “You human.”

I wonder, what would Tanuki think of this?

What would the stars think?

What might the gods think

of this overflowing of passion, this foolish arrogance?

We move toward death, all in a line,

beginning with he who has forgotten how to be alone,

until the unknown person, here, is erased.

The wind blows over the earth at dusk and again over an unknown star.

The gods walk the earth at dusk, the earth which belongs to dusk.

Even over the unknown stars, they walk.

[ The Blue Chairs II ; Panayiotis Tetsis (1976) ]

 

 

To Assemble This Poem Properly

--Derek Mong

        begin from above. The first line wrote itself

in eraser. Your entrance refills with its cloud.

Can you feel now a dull tug on your pant leg?

You have shadows within shadows.

The poem strips them off like spare parachutes.

Watch their dark mouths briefly glisten

like guardrail reflectors. Leave silence

between them like warm loaves of bread.

Whatever small truth the poem hurtles toward

is already in your pockets. Release it here

and stop breathing. Watch it rain down

like disco ball light. If a story comes in, cold

from the margins, you alone can warm

its feet. To do so you must hold it

beneath the voice that trails you.

You offer the one it becomes on the ground.

The seamless transfer of two people

humming is one scenario in which the poem

successfully ends. In another these couplets empty

and you are a diver climbing their cool tubes

back up to the start. From there you see its finale

clearly, but do nothing to alter its course.

You'll soon crash through a tenth story window.

Do not worry. The poem's safe.

See its thousand shards glint at your feet.