December
2016 EXEMPLARS
Poetry reviewed by Grace Cavalieri
++++++++++++
Professor Harriman’s Steam
Air-Ship
by Terese Svoboda.
Eyewear Publishing, London. 78 pages.
The Crafty Poet ll: A
Portable Workshop,
edited by Diane Lockward.
Terrapin
books. 306 pages
Two
Worlds Exist
by
Yehoshua November.
Orison books. 70 pages.
Companions, Analogies
by Brian Swann.
Sheep Meadow Press. 105 pages.
Loom
by Kevin Gallagher.
MadHat Press 91 pages.
PLAINSPEAK, WY,
by Joanna Doxey.
Platypus Press, England. 60 pages.
Bringing Back the Bones, New and Selected Poems,
by Gary Fincke.
Stephen F. Austin
State University Press. 263 pages.
The Best American Poetry,
2016,
guest editor Edward
Hirsch;
series editor David Lehman.
Scribner Poetry. 202 pages.
A Poet’s Dublin, (Poems and
Photographs by Eavan Boland,)
edited by Paula Meehan and
Jody Allen Randolph. W. W. Norton and Company. 148 pages.
L’HEURE BLEUE
OR THE JUDY POEMS,
by Elisa Gabbert.
Black Ocean. 86 pages.
To Stay Alive
by Skila Brown.
Candlewick Press.
Plus
The Best Literary
Magazine
+++++++++++++++++++++
Professor
Harriman’s Steam Air-Ship
by Terese Svoboda.
Eyewear Publishing, London. 78
pages.
The Professor’s Air-ship (title poem) is an invention of desire and wish – a
description of a relationship – desire and risk – but Svoboda has something no
one else has to add to the book’s adventure – each poem a nasty woman cocktail
that’s the best thing you’ll ever drink. Her multidimensional narrative is
invigorated by lines set on edge, wordplay, carried and mannered, leading to a
textilian space, her space – so
rich with spit and wit and poetic rationale. How does she do it? First,
self-awareness, then throw that away, and follow impulse – then find something
meaningful to share about people versus people; and why it’s suddenly remembered
differently from anything remembered before. You have to know that poetry is the
way we defend ourselves, and Svoboda’s brilliant defenses surprise us as they
become intimate relationships into her poems. She can’t keep us at arms-length
because we breathe with our brains to understand her syntax and tactics. We
don’t believe our eyes. Yes, this is a contraption alright, about
relationships—a flying steam air-ship never seen before, perhaps the first thing
imagined like this, made with the precision of a Bach partita. This thing will
fly.
MOTHER DOESN’T
BITE
I bite instead
and she needs salt,
a little more
time on the grill.
Young men are
coming,
they’ll want
her.
Her head is an
oyster
turned out of a
shell.
She needs her
rocks,
and wave after
wave.
Dumbstruck, I
crest
but her claws
position me,
ready for the
knife. But who
holds the
light?
The young man
laugh.
It’s a game,
it’s fun, it’s every day.
I run across
the beach,
a toll at last
tolling.
Gulls rise with
her eyes,
They shriek,
night
iced under
their wings,
its salt
falling.
++++++++++++++++
The
Crafty Poet ll: A Portable Workshop,
edited by Diane Lockward.
Terrapin books. 306 pages
Editor Lockward is crafty to produce a sequel to the original
(The Crafty Poet: A Portable Workshop.) She knows the score, so we shouldn’t
be surprised that she’s assembled 65 stellar poets to each give a poem – good
move – pick the best. Then each poem contains an explication and a literal level
of the piece, pointing to some particulars, and specific poetic tools; and,
finally, “a prompt” to write a poem of your own. The contents of the book cover:
revising, entryways into poems, choosing the right words, syntax, line spacing,
enhancing sound, etc.— all the necessary stuff— but what interests me most is
the individual way each poet presents his/her poetic instruments, and how
cleverly the writing tips are annexed. Each writer could almost be seen to be
answering the same question: whether the language solves the issue raised by the
poem. Now that the power of poetry is a natural --not only academic --cultural
reference in America, it’s the general public who deserves to have this book.
It’s right on time to win hearts and minds of readers because it’s clear, smart
and damn interesting. Let’s not hide it in the classroom when all literate
readers deserve to see how to change emotional ideas to words.
Elegy for my
husband
Bruce Derricotte, June 22, 1928—June 21, 2011
What was there
is no longer there:
Not the blood
running its wires of flame through the whole length
Not the
memories, the texts written in the language of the flat hills
No, not the
memories, the porch swing and the father crying
The genteel and
elegant aunt bleeding out on the highway
(Too black for
the white ambulance to pick up)
Who had sent
back lacquered plates from China
Who had given
away her best ivory comb that one time she was angry
Not the
muscles, the ones the white girls longed to touch
But must not
(for your mother warned
You would be
lynched in that all-white town you grew up in)
Not the same
town where you were the only, the only good black boy
All that is
gone
Not the muscles
running, the baseball flying into your mitt
Not the hand
that laid itself over my heart and saved me
Not the eyes
that held the long gold tunnel I believed in
Not the
restrained hand in love and in anger
Not the holding
back
Not the taut
holding
+++++++++++++++++
Two Worlds Exist
by
Yehoshua November.
Orison books. 70 pages.
Not since Leffler’s Dryad Press editions have I seen such a significant
Jewish-themed book that becomes universal with its reverent specificity. There’s
down to earth wisdom and sweet homilies at the center. This is how November sees
the world with beautiful references to his faith, family, children. He keeps the
fire burning in us when the world news seems brutally cold. The power of story
is nothing if not combined with an understanding of what is unknown, and then
the wish to make that an essential experience unveiled, for the reader. November
holds his own voice with simplicity and melody – he’s not professing – he’s not
persuading – he uses his Theistic beliefs to capture the spirit of the spirit,
and he makes the difficult sound easy. Poets who begin with vital convictions
make important verbal commitments; and to that, add the warmth of this poet’s
voice.
Falling From
the Sky
When we found
out our daughter had gone deaf,
I did not
question God’s fairness—
not out of
faith
but because
my whole life
it had always
seemed
that at the
next moment
terrible news
would fall from the sky—
as punishment,
perhaps, for a particular transgression
but more likely
because
whatever you
think could never happen—
must happen.
And in this
way,
you know
clearly
there is a
world you do not see.
+++++++++++
Companions, Analogies
by Brian Swann.
Sheep Meadow Press. 105 pages.
We can almost hear the images in
Swann’s work – visuals so perfectly wed to sound. He’s a sensualist made all the
better with his perfectly choreographed stanzas – couplets, tercets, narratives.
This is the hand of a poet that lines reality with experience, because highly
textured writing is a dynamic accomplishment, not for the “Sunday painter.”
Swann telescopes life, whether cleaning out his mother-in-law’s kitchen,
or brushing the suede of an inherited coat. Especially moving is the long poem
“She Lies beside Me” about the impermanence, and mysteries, of relationships.
Swann can do anything: take us traveling to countries in a brand new register;
he can retool the past to the movement of a Sonata. Each poem is an emotional
response made better by the range and scale of his expertise. These responses to
life are impeccably written.
Limoni
In the fjord
town, bells from the wooden church
strike
sometimes before, sometimes after,
sometimes even
on the hour.
A few days ago
I found a
beat-up alarm clock on the street and stuck it
in my sock
drawer where it erupts at random.
Now I watch
drops gather
along the lintel, plump up, fall and shatter at
an even pace.
Through the cold mist I can just make out
the statue that
has never been identified satisfactorily,
feet and hands
gone. Pigeons fly on and off, on
and off.
I call him
Olaf.
Sometimes, writing at my desk, the room
fills with
scent out of nowhere, rich as a Gobelin tapestry,
a Tallis motet.
The place lightens like the time I stood
in Sicily,
midwinter, alone above a nameless empty valley,
thinking
summer, trees, and “limoni” I said.
Slowly the word
suffused the
air saffron as the sun that broke through, spilled
out, filling the
valley, everything, with no time.
+++++++++++++++
Loom
by Kevin Gallagher.
MadHat Press 91 pages.
Slavery and the US economy are not an expected combination of terms. This book
shows how New England exploited cotton as a central character with the “lords of
the lash”(slavery) and “lords of
the loom”(mercantilism) These
narratives by white Americans focus on New England and especially the Boston
area. In 1854, new states were
allowed to vote pro-slavery. Immediately, there was a riot in Boston Harbor with
abolitionists trying to rescue an escaped slave. The book’s preface states this
was “pivotal to the course of American history.” Gallagher is a political
economist and a professor of Global Studies at Boston University; yet this book
was written by a poet gifted also as historian.
Enhanced by original posters, portraits and illustrations, history is
spoken in plain voices with poetic hypertension making larger points,
correlating human tragedy and economic interests in New England.
Incidents, factually reported, could be as boring as dirt, but
Gallagher’s unblinking recitations are something we can’t turn from. A poem is
usually a text with a meaning to be discerned; a poem can also be a central
factor in delivering emotional information with accuracy and excitement. And
although the acquisition of power will always be a source of drama, Gallagher
manages poems with apparent simplicity. JFK was quoted as saying,”…
When power corrupts, poetry cleans…”
This seems especially appropriate for this high-voltage history written
in the natural tones of human speech. The skill-set of an economist, poet, and
humanist cannot be understated. Here’s the soul of our country in the 19th
century and the heart of its citizens brought together in an important historic
epic.
Thomas Sims
to the Boston Committee for Vigilance and Safety, 1851
As I was
stabbing everyone I could
I screamed ‘I’m
in the hands of kidnappers!’
Slave hunters
snuck up behind my back.
I had no time
to even think to run.
I will not be
allowed to speak in court.
I go back if
they prove I was a slave!
Edward Barnette
said he saw me when I
dressed as a
sailor at a blow-out ball,
and that is all
it takes to send me South.
Southern
planters possess some wizard art
unknown to the
demons of former times.
You ask me to
jump out of my window
and join the
airy whirl of the free world.
Let the heavens
weep and hell be merry!
++++++++++++++++
PLAINSPEAK, WY,
by Joanna Doxey.
Platypus Press, England. 60 pages.
This is an exquisite book – eco-conscious, heart-conscious, page-conscious; an
elegance of thought, art, distributed on the page. Is it magic or real life,
this love of ice and land? But no – it’s about loneliness and change –
(: A forgetting)
“We are all misremembrance…”
That poem’s about forgetting orange juice at the supermarket, but it’s
really about the “… grey
through
birch/ and
sky—...” Doxey writes
the verbiage of echoes and memory: “…I
am really into the word sorrow. /So I
have lost sight of it…” (The
Etymology of Sorr(y)now.) I
misread “sorrow” at first and thought she wrote “snow” not sorrow – and maybe
she meant that, after all, because it’s all the same to her— the wind and forest
are within her, forms of being. Her words are carried like the first and last
flowers of the season to some dream of a grave that turns into a sky.
I fracture again.
Words are sacred to
me and you take love away, leaving a
husk of a
word.
Within three weeks of depositing you in flat land and you fall
in love with a much
younger woman. I tell you, as you
leave me
between states—your
voice so distant and close like sleep—that I
had never used the
word “love” before. I wonder if,
like the name
Glacier National
Park, love would always stand for
something that
had moved through
it and disappeared. Would
love always erode
into empty?
+++++++++++
Ah, Men: New and Selected
Poems
by Nancy Scott.
Aldrich Press. 106 pages
Nancy Scott is a favorite of mine, maybe it’s because she comes from my era –
fringe bags, Al Hirt, Korean War, Vietnam War, Trenton High (my old alma mater).
But I think it’s more than that: she’s funny and sad, and as the hip-hoppers say
she keeps it real. That means, in any
language, making art about your own (emotional) neighborhood.
This book is a parade of the males from her life—the entanglements— father,
professors, husbands, sailors, lovers, sons, acquaintances; a journey perhaps
fictionalized by poetry but one you won’t leave. You don’t have to read far to
see Scott’s speaker is an adventurer who trusted man to be heroes and then
puzzled it out from there. Also she liked men. What a concept! And she broadens
their appeal with bold rumped up stories that add up to a novella. This book is
an epic-scale-boyfriend-history with language of energy; and each poem arched
into a tiny drama. Some poets write beyond themselves, attributing their
inspiration to the stars. Scott raises the standard by truth telling, making
each poem a defining experience with her male mega-matter. Every page turned, I
promise, you can expect good things to happen, even when memory rotates
otherwise.
Ah, Men. (AMEN SISTER!)
That Other One
after Borges
Oh, days spent at the computer, typing emails
and reading incoming text that test the patience
of a single woman from the suburbs of Chicago
to whom time and lack of exercise have given
a body heft no man will find seductive
and a bad back and bad feet which limit mobility
and advancing age, a step closer to indignity
and love of young children and Afghan rugs
and practice of weaving long narratives
and Victoria silver with mother-of-pearl handles
and a lifelong nostalgia for England and Wales
and loss of memory for where things are stashed
and serendipity of finding old draft
and embracing the fiction as if it just happened
and white pear blossoms which flutter like snow
and cynicism for those clinging to God who has
never shown much heart for the poor
and politics of others who could care but don’t
and every year that catches us by surprise
and that worst of all habits—New Jersey
and heat of
tandoori masala and habaneros
and homemade apple strudel so delectable
and a baby’s curl and an old wedding photo
and that an evening where the temperature
dips to zero be given over to such as this.
+++++++++++++++
Bringing
Back the Bones, New and Selected Poems,
by Gary
Fincke.
Stephen F. Austin State University Press.
263 pages.
I’ve been following Gary Fincke’s
work for years, and now we have much of it all in one place, from 1998 to
present day— poetry, that is, because Fincke is, elsewhere, a distinguished
writer of fiction and nonfiction. Fincke’s personal concerns are human concerns.
His creative practice, from “real life”— plus acts of his imagination— is the
very bloodstream of America —from Civil War memorabilia to a strip club called
“Climax” in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. We get to know the Speaker’s children as
poetry’s desire to explain our intricacies; and the personal nature of momentary
realizations. Minor anecdotes, in his hand, become theoretical and cultural
narratives with unexpected refinements and exactitude. It’s not easy to describe
Fincke’s unique qualities, but let me try by saying that he can
crystallize the moment and expand its
focus both at once. Also
apparent, his sensibilities are visibly shown and viscerally felt, explaining
where he’s been and where he’s going. There are always two things going on with
Fincke: an undercurrent of a sorrow /joy mix; and then,
on-the-ground-evidence/details: life crucially lived. These poems are
impressive, because there has to be at least one topic of interest for any
reader of poetry; it’s all from our own flesh and blood. This book is a
milestone in poetry and in a writer’s practice.
The Fathers I
Could See from my Room
The father who
lifted sample cases from his car,
The father who
carried a briefcase full of grief,
The father who
tallied the pros and cons of spending—
What did they
do in those offices where nothing
Was built, no
customers to please? What changed
By their
leaving early, by their sickness, retirement,
Or death?
We had move to where one father mowed
His lawn in
white shirt and tie; we’d left behind
The street of
fathers who entered factories
And mills at
seven or three or eleven.
I knew what
they did because they detailed it drunk
On weekends
when the world could wait for the things
It wanted.
When Sputnik circled the planet,
When the
Communists made something we couldn’t buy,
We watched, on
the news, the melancholy arc
Of America’s
latest failed rocket. The fathers
Who wore suits
kept doing the work that makes nothing,
And one of
them, while I slept over with his son,
Brought
betrayal home at midnight, what we shouldn’t hear
About
faithlessness. Below us, in the
driveway,
His Lincoln
looked like it spent all day in an office,
Like a woman
had starched and ironed it. That
father
Let his wife
talk herself into leaving. My
friend
Propped himself
so long on his elbows I wanted
Something like
mumbles to squeeze under the door,
Sounds so
simple they could turn into regret.
++++
The Best American Poetry,
2016,
guest editor Edward
Hirsch;
series editor David Lehman.
Scribner Poetry. 202 pages.
Edward Hirsch is the guest editor of these 75 poets, I think 75, I kept counting
differently each time –Hirsch is a premier American poet, much loved; the series
editor, David Lehman, is also a popular poet, as well as an esteemed social
critic. So we’re off to a good start.
Each editor wrote substantial remarks that are worthy essays. Lehman
writes “…We who work on The Best American
Poetry mean to honor the great poems of the past even as we celebrate the
vitality of verse in our time…” Hirsch writes “…the commitment to the individual
voice, an unauthorized testimony, an eccentric viewpoint, is still one of the
things I value most about American poetry…”
Usually in any single author’s book of poems, I can count about eight poems I’d
read again and again. Now I have the “best” culled for me. We can open to any
page, and get a good poem. Start in
the middle of the book, and see how a poem is entered, beautifully, in Thomas
Lux‘s (“Ode While Awaiting Execution”).
He begins, “Into
the mute and blue –/green marble mailbox my dust deserves to go, /though not for
that which I’m going.…”
Toward the front of the book, take comfort in Emily Fragos’ writing,
(“The Sadness of Clothes”)
“When someone dies, the clothes are so
sad. They have outlived/their usefulness and cannot get warm and full. /You talk
to the clothes and explain that he is not coming back// as when he showed up
immaculately dressed in slacks and plaid jacket…”
Joseph Chapman and
Laura Eve Engel make a poem by listing (“32
fantasy Football Teams”) 1.The
Grackles/2.the Receivers Not Taken/3.A Season in Hell/… 26. First and Tender
Buttons/27. The White Chickens/ … “
Major Jackson’s lyrical traditional (“Aubade”)
ends
“… then let drop your sarong,/the wind
high on your skin,/so we can test all day long/the notion of original sin.”
Suji Kwock Kim writes a poem epigraphed
for Kang, /born in North Korea.
(“Return of the Native”)
“Better not to have
been born/ than to survive everyone you loved //there’s no one left of those who
lived once here, /no one to accuse you, no one to forgive you –…
And then he ends, “…
We hate
you//because you survived. No. We hate you/ because you escaped.”
Anya Silver knits a fairy tale and a female hero to a cautionary tale:
(“Maid Maleen”)
“After seven years of damp walls, entombed, no more food,/ she and her servant
knife their way through the stone tower./…”Eventually, the tale will be made
right again…” “Rip out the last pages…” “…Once the smoke’s in one’s lungs, / it
remains forever. The charred trees. The murdered bodies.”
A terrific feature
of the book is that each contributor comments on his/her piece, with the bio.
This annual collection has been produced since 1988.
Four poets who’ve recently died are memorialized in this year’s edition: Claudia
Emerson, C.K. Williams, Philip Levine, James Tate.
It’s a perfect text
to teach the breadth of the art at this time.
Here’s a poem by Michael Collier:
Last Morning
with Steve Orlen
“Last night I
wrote a Russian novel or maybe it was English.
Either way, it
was long and boring. My wife’s
laughter
might tell you
which it was, and when she stops,
when she’s not
laughing, let’s talk about the plot,
and its many
colors. The blue that hovered in
the door
where the
lovers held each other but didn’t kiss.
The red that by
mistake rose in the sky with the moon,
and the
moon-colored sun that wouldn’t leave the sky.
All night I
kept writing it down, each word arranged
in my mouth,
but now, as you see, I’m flirting
with my wife.
I’m making her laugh. She’s
twenty.
I’m
twenty-five, just as we were when we might, just
as we have
always been, except for last night’s novel,
Russian or
English, with its shimmering curtain of color,
an unfading
show of Northern Lights, what you, you asshole,
might call
Aurora Borealis.
So sit down on
the bed with my wife and me.
Faithful
amanuensis, you can write down my last words,
not that
they’re great but maybe they are.
You wouldn’t
know. You’re
Aurora Borealis.
But my wife is
laughing and you’re laughing too.
Just as we were
at the beginning, just as we are at the end.”
+++++++
A Poet’s
Dublin, (Poems and Photographs by Eavan Boland,)
edited by Paula Meehan and
Jody Allen Randolph. W. W. Norton and Company. 148 pages.
One of Ireland’s premier poets defines the city of Dublin in duo: Boland’s own
poetry, with photographs by Boland’s own camera. It’s a documentary in black and
white, capped by an interpersonal dialogue between poet (co-editor) Paula Meehan
and Eavan Boland. Their conversation prosecutes the city’s past: its class
system; political and cultural history; “the shifting ground” of women poets; a
look at the 1960’s and “countercultural energies.” Always, we have the ongoing
struggles with poets and artists attempting to show and tell their stories,
connecting the tissue between cities and suburbs. The women share memories of
literary legends: James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Louis MacNeice, etc. but; more
than anything, the interchange at the book’s conclusion is about
human-expression and the expression of monuments—the communion of literature and
place. Dublin is restored by these poetry-plotters with their imagistic comments
and personal discourse. No college lectern could offer as equal a tone of
clarity and credibility as their shared history. The Boland poems and her city
photography invest in what advances us as people. Poetry, like a city, is not
transformed by trends. With a proportion of poetry to picture, history is
interpreted through Bolan’s words, but walking it is her ground game.
The Long
Evenings of Their Leave-Takings
My mother was
married by the water.
She wore a grey
coat and a winter rose.
She said her
vows beside a cold seam of the Irish coast.
She said her
vows near the shore where
the emigrants
set down their consonantal n:
on afternoon,
on the end of everything, at the
start of ever.
Yellow
vestments took in light
a chalice hid
underneath its veil.
Her hands were
full of calla and cold weathers lilies.
The mail packet
dropped anchor.
A black-headed
gull swerved across the harbour.
Icy promises
rose beside a cross-hatch of ocean and horizon.
I am waiting
for the words of the service. I am
waiting for
keep thee only and
all my earthly.
All I hear is
an afternoon’s worth of never.
++++++++++++++
L’HEURE BLEUE
OR THE JUDY POEMS,
by Elisa Gabbert.Black
Ocean. 86 pages.
This is a pretty book. That’s not to trivialize. There’s something to be said
about a beautifully designed cover and nice paper in your hands. The history of
these poems is fascinating: A group of friends gather to read and discuss an
original play, once every year; a “play” that finds it wants to be a book of
poems. Why not? The characters are already there—the relationships—the
struggles—the wanting. Let’s put them on the page and let them slug it out.
There’s nothing wrong with simplicity and wisdom. Modesty too, in these aching
and mystified thoughts.
I knew he would
go.
And then, one
day, he went.
In a way,
nothing’s changed.
There is no
risk now
of repeating
myself.
In fact I
prefer it.
My friends keep
talking about
some celebrity
death,
a controversial
writer.
I can’t hide my
jealousy.
All my life
I’ve had this perverse
desire for what
I don’t want—
I think of the
worst alternative
and then wish
for it.
Things have to
pass through
the present to
get to the past,
where they can
be cherished.
++++++++++
To Stay Alive
by Skila Brown.
Candlewick Press. 275 pages.
Brown is best known for her Latino literature; and now comes this
novella-in-verse designed for the young reader, but satisfying, as well, for any
other. “Mary Ann Graves And The Tragic
Journey of The Donner Family” is part of its title, a book based on fact: the
story of Mary Ann and her family of 12 others, leaving their Illinois home in
1846, traveling 1,700 miles in hopes of reaching California. In November, a
snowstorm assails the travelers, lasting for days, far from the destination. Our
hero sets out with others in snow shoes going or help. Thirty two days later one
party member is found. But that’s not the story’s end, and it’s not the depth of
it. Girl heroes were not the substance of our country’s history books when I was
young, and yet there were many. Physical endurance and acts of bravery were
attributed, idealistically, to young men who were, we thought, put on earth to
save us. This is a gorgeously told story with character, plot, cadence and
intelligence. In the comfort of our homes, the hardship of dreams and death is
chillingly real. But before that, there is humor, detail, humanity and warmth.
Cough
Baby Harriet
has
a cough—small,
constant. She sleeps more than
she should.
Amanda asks
Mother what to do,
Mother says,
“Vinegar
would be good,”
but it’s all gone,
no one has any
at all.
So they get
some snow, boil it
all day, boil
it down until it’s just a bit of water,
hoping it will
become stronger, powerful,
so they can
make her drink some once it cools.
We all spend
the day
watching
the water
boil away.
+++++++++++++
Best Literary
Magazine
The Bitter Oleander,
edited by Paul B Roth.
The Bitter Oleander Press. 125 pages.
Always a pleasure to see this magazine with its repeat standard-bearers like
Alan Britt, Rob Cook, Ray Gonzales, et al. Katherine Sáchez Espano is the
centerpiece this time, with an in-depth interview and 18 startling poems – a
mini chapbook – where we get a totality, not a hint, of her talent. 31 poets
featured – a month’s worth – one day at a time just for the invigoration of it.
The Fiancée
In tuxedos,
roaches sort through my closet,
tossing
sweaters with tags still attached
in the Goodwill
bag.
A roach tries
on
my wedding
gown, fabric
billowing like
rain clouds, informs me
I’m fat.
I see
my pant seams
divorcing.
All night the
roaches have gathered in my living room, dancing
with scissors.
My long hair
plummets.
The roaches collect it
in a photograph
album,
then dye my
scalp black.
We celebrate
the purity of my uncut toenails.
Drinking
champagne, the roaches
promise to
marry me
to myself.
I admire the muscles I build
holding the
trash can. The roaches vomit
my hopes, each
one a preserved rose.
-
Katherine Sáchez
Espano
______________________
Grace Cavalieri founded and produces “The Poet and the Poem” for public radio, celebrating 39 years on-air, now recorded at The Library of Congress. Her latest book of poems is “With” (Somondoco Press, 2016.)
All reprinted from the Washington Independent Review of Books.