Tonight I toast 2015 with my icy cold glass of Cava, and thank the powers that be that I'm here to see a new year come in.
My resolutions are:
That's it. That'll keep me busy.
HAPPY NEW YEAR, DEAR READERS. I LOVE YOU ALL!
(well, almost all.) :) #
In the gloom of a large country kitchen--
think back to Southern plantations,
with sideboards and planked floors,
live oaks silhouetted at the windows,
sunrays dappling a long crooked table
that dominates the center of the room:
Around it, a dozen Aunt Jemimas, black
as cast iron pots, kerchiefs ‘round their hair,
sit on wooden chairs- animated, laughing,
softly gossip, rolling eyes. Palmetto hand
fans push back against the ovens’ heat.
This reoccurring reverie is more obsession
than daydream, might once have been REM
slumber, but now it’s daily haunting
that opens me to the wall where reality
and illusion intersect; a tomb of secrets,
hiding places for all those images
that are not understood. The Cake Makers
escaped one night and won’t return,
their voices like syrup on a summer wind.
My mind wants to know why I dream
of slaves. Downton Abbey of the Civil War.
Look for yourself in dreams, a therapist said.
The cliché is always just a shortcut to yourself.
But wait! It is what the cooks do that matters.
Newly-baked cakes sit before them, aromas
of lemon and coconut, vanilla and chocolate
doesy-doe in the air. Mounds of pastel frostings
gleam in bowls: soft peach, butter-yellow, and pink.
The colors leap in contrast to the black hands,
the white aprons, the sepia stain of the old walls.
The Cake Makers beckon me. Come ice the cakes,
they call. I don’t want to move. I don’t know how.
Come, they titter, come. It’s time.
not in water—
not whale or porpoise
seeking sonar depths,
tiles of sun trapped
in surface glint—
but the wet ooze,
the slackjawed, spooky renegade
of slosh and wave, tidal flood,
blind mammoth rolled in slumber,
sexed up with trailed sperm, seaweed,
over sands awhorl in fierce unrest,
tails of skates whipping the floors.
or water in a tossed pail beside a barn
—a two-galloner poured over splayed fingers,
a rush of splash, uncaught and running free
across scuffed shoes, soaked into earth,
a muddy disappearing act, a moist shadow
finale without rot, or slow decay of bone.
or a rivulet of sweat on the flank of a mare
or the spit under the tongue of a liar,
or a final drop gliding on sclera
as yet unshed.
* * *KEEPING THINGS WHOLE
Mark Strand
In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.
When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body's been.
We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.
##I wake up thinking of Casanova
He’s a hormone-hound, he is.
Doc says he goes for ladies
with big breasts, but in my case,
I fought to keep the girls and won.
He tried to get a grip last year
on my uterus, which used to teem
with estrogen, but he was shocked
to find no goodies there. I thought
our affair had ended benignly, but no.
Hello, he’s back, all smarmy
and grinning, with kisses along
my throat this time. Casanova
can’t seem to leave me alone. Be
careful when you pray for love
as you can be wooed right out
of the world by my guy, the big C.
I hear he’s fickle but never leaves
my side or alas, my nightly dreams.
from THE IDAHO REVIEW
2005 Pushcart Prize XXIX Best of the Small Presses
After the horse went down
.....the heat came up
and later that week
.....the smell of its fester yawed,
an open mouth of had-been air
.....our local world was licked inside of, and I,
the boy who'd volunteered at twilight--
.....shunts of chawed cardboard
wadded up my nostrils
.....and a dampened bandana
over my nose and mouth--
.....I strode then
into the ever-purpler sink
.....of rankness and smut,
a sloshful five-gallon bucket of kerosene
.....in my right hand,
a smoking railroad fusee
.....in my left,
and it came over me like water then,
into my head-gaps and gum
.....rinds, into the tear ducts
and taste buds and even
.....into the last dark tendrils
of my howling, agonized hair
.....that through the windless half-light
hoped to fly from my very head,
an would have, I have no doubt, had not
.....the first splash of kerosene
launched a seething skin
.....of flies into the air
and onto me, the cloud of them
.....so dense and dark my mother in the distance
saw smoke and believed as she had feared
I would, that I had set my own
.....fool and staggering self aflame,
and therefore she fainted and did not see
.....how the fire kicked
the other billion flies airborne
.....exactly in the shape
of the horse itself,
which rose for a brief quivering
.....instant under me, and which for a pulse thump
at least, I rode--in a livery of iridescence,
.....in a mail of exoskeletal facets,
wielding a lance of swimming lace--
.....just as night rode the light, and the bones,
and a sweet, cleansing smoke to ground.
We drifted down the Colorado River;
the water moved in frothy brown
currents of monotonous music
that would linger forever in my head,
the heartbeat of a living
entity, that song, singing in my bloodstream.
The summer sun poured down a stream
of golden spangles, toe-danced on the river
waves, painted canyon walls with living
art -- red-rock abstracts aflame above brown
sandy banks on the shore. Far ahead
of our gliding J-Rig, we heard white-water music.
The rapids in the distance made loud music
against the quiet rhythms of the steady stream.
I conducted Prokofiev in my dozing head
as I listened to the swelling symphony of the river.
We floated until dusk, then camped above Brown
Betty, first rapid of the morrow, waiting to greet the living.
An owl hooted at sunset; a family of ravens living
in Cataract Canyon provided our dinner music
as we sat around a fire grilling brown
Idahos and cowboy steaks. Stories tumbled in streams
from the old-timers who had long known the river.
I crawled into my tent with ancient tales in my head.
As I fell asleep, stars in a black sky over my head
gleamed diamond blue. I dreamed I was living
with the Anasazi Indians beside a younger, bluer river.
Wild horses thundered across high mesas making music
with their hooves. Down the cliffs, in single files, streams
of Big Horn Sheep descended, fleece of desert brown.
We awoke to the wafting smell of hot, brown
coffee. Hearts high, we loaded the rig, nosed ahead
into the high water. It swelled over rocks in streams
of foam in icy riot. We skittered like dice, living
proof of Nature’s indifference. Towering waves made music
of wildness in our throbbing hearts, rushed us down the river.
Today I feel forever wedded to the river -- my skin no longer brown
from the hot Utah sun, but the sacred music of motion in my head
keeps Promise living in the tumult of Life’s everyday stream.
Laughter booms in the heavens
where God lolls on Her settee,
head thrown back, mouth open,
needle plunged into the sacred
vein of Her perfect arm,
a Junkie hooked on Endings.
Like an assembly of crystals
in the casket of a teaspoon,
my end will come,
melt in the heat of a fickle moon,
without a glint of gold on the curled
finger of my clenched fist,
without a freckle scattered
across the nose of a child.
Let the storm clouds rumble
in caravans across the vista,
like Arab caftans billow black
on a Saharan horizon.
No gentle partings,
let the aspens twist on the mountain,
and shudder like dervishes.
When I die, let hail slap
against rock, icy hands beating
on stony hearts in applause.
My tears can't rust rock. I’ll dissolve
like snow in an eternal rush;
I’ll disappear in an avalanche
of searing relief.
Under a midnight double moon
along a xyst overgrown with wisteria,
the ancients stroll in linen robes
mocking me with their song.
I have drunk deep of pain
thinking the seraphs would slide
out of the heavens on mercury rain
to save me. But the poison sits,
on my tongue like a wafer.
O those who professed love!
I cherish you, they said . Hallaluijia!
I will never leave you, they said. Hosanna!
I will stand by you, they said while
holding the chalice, tipping out
betrayals, anger and scorn. Amen!
All my years of seeking love
with fire ants at my ankles, while God
kills me with Sacraments.
I love America! It's the only way to go!
Barbie trades in
Cultured Ken
for combat's G.I. Joe.
I love America! Praise be for the N.R.A!
My militia
Wants to kiss ya'
Lift those Arms to pray!
I love America! High school's such a hoot
If they tease ya'
and don't please ya'
load your gun and shoot!
I love America! Unibombing bliss!
Mailmen tarry
when they carry
packages that hiss.
I love America! Bring the masses on!
If they huddle
in a muddle
Ship them back at dawn.
I love America! Politicians tower!
England's reign
was just the same
As rich men's total power.
I love America. America loves me.
My vote's ignored,
my last reward--
anti-social security.
I do love America. Someday we'll marry her.
But she'll be old
and very cold
to hearts that once were pure.
A woman, once my childhood friend,
is living in my home—
a red plastic bucket
on the beach of my solitude—
at a time in life
when women over 50
flounder in salty, hot seas,
widowed, nests-emptied
of disinterested children
careers tapped out, beauty
fading under the yellow froth
of middle age
Some women have men
in their homes.
I question
the tradeoff of serenity for
the carnal, mortal man—
I catch myself fingering
old beads better buried—
infidelities sewn into sachets
at the bottom of the bureau
under folded silk nightgowns
while I, in flannel pajamas, get
my own milk at bedtime.
In the darkness of my kitchen,
Buddha stares back at me in the glow
of the refrigerator light.
I try to find the cadence
of co-habitation, the exact measure
of compassion, and patience -
a mini-rehearsal for soloist
to sing duet, but I am flat.
There is no music here.
In silence, bent over
the dark path to my kitchen,
I cling to a notion that if I
can share this house,
then, I will find my voice and sing.
Then, maybe she will leave.