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DECEMBER 2015 EXEMPLARS
Reviewed by Grace Cavalieri
It’s About Time
by
Stanley Moss. Hopewell Press.163 pages.
Olympic Butter Gold
by Jonathan Moody.
Northwestern University Press. 90
pages.
FAUXHAWK
by
Ben Doller. Wesleyan Univ. Press. 80 pages,
The Anchor’s Long Chain
by
Yves Bonnefoy. Translated from French by Beverley Bie Brahic.
Seagull Books.112 pages
Beautiful Zero
by
Jennifer Willoughby, winner of the 2015 Lindquist& Vennum
Prize. Milkweed Editions. 5 pages.
In the Flesh
by
Adam O’Riordan. W.W. Norton. 49 pages.
Echo System
by
Julie Agoos. Sheep Meadow Press.77pages.
The Man with Many Pens
by
Jonathan Wells. Four Way
Books. 63 pages.
It’s About Time
by
Stanley Moss. Hopewell Press. 163 pages.
Beautifully
autobiographical, is this new book by
American poet,
publisher, and art dealer, Stanley Moss, now in his 90th
year. You’ll want to read, more than once, these poems culminated from a
life of fine culture/art/philosophy, leaving riches on the page. Moss
has been a steward of poetry for most of his life; and at this time, is
still publishing others.
We take emotional excursions acquainted with a mysterious poet who
remains nameless; a beloved sister, Lilly; a Mother vivid in memory;
gardening and flowers; children; artists; museums; writers. I like very
much the five-page poem “A
History of Color” approaching
death from several angles—It starts with a cheeky lilt and moves
toward elegiac melody.
Moss also writes a letter to a fish; and of course, the fish answers
with a letter. These assembled poems make up an epic life, creatively,
imaginatively managed— luckily—a man getting to do what he loves.
Letter to a Fish
I caught you and
loved you when I was three
before I knew the
word death—
it was a little like
picking an apple off a tree.
At 20, I caught you,
kissed you, and let you go.
You swam off like
quicksilver.
The Greeks thought a
little like that the world began.
You splashed and
smacked your tail, made a rainbow.
Funny what drowns a
man gives you breath.
Where are you, in
ocean, brook, or river?
You suffer danger,
but cannot weep as I can.
They say one God
made the Holy books.
I offer Him my
flies, spinners, feathered hooks—
not prayers.
I swim with you in the great beneath,
to the headwaters of
the unknown, in the hours
before dawn when
fish and men exchange metaphors.
Olympic Butter Gold
by Jonathan Moody.
Northwestern University Press. 90
pages.
Scratching,
(or scrubbing,) is a DJ
technique used to produce new sounds by moving
records back and forth on a
turntable, while sometimes manipulating
a sound mixer at the same time. That’s what Moody does with
words, making the sounds better than they were before. Rap and Hip-Hop
are memorialized as uplifting America’s fraying fiber; and given a fresh
coat of paint by Moody. In the poem”
Hip-Hop” he writes, “Hip-Hop
escaped a Jersey prison/ & received political asylum in Cuba,// is on
hunger strike until Guantanamo/ Bay complies with Geneva Conventions…”
An art form becomes a resilient mantra of resistance and not
only tells what Moody writes; but why.
If Rock and Roll was about sexual and cultural freedom, Hip-Hop
and Rap become its maverick descendants –kicking it up an amp—fanning
the fire of political
meaning.
There’s a terrific poem “Dear
2Pac,” where the speaker is teaching Byron and Tennyson to an
indifferent classroom and suddenly introduces 2Pac. Moody uses this as
an awakening, and a relationship to authenticity for students (He’s
actually a high school teacher, as well as poet.)
He’s sharp, taut and
skillful. In “Chasing the
American Dream:” Every time/ I hold/ my rusty spoon//above the Statue/
of Liberty’s torch, / I struggle to find a vein.”
Moody ups the game of
poetry, constructing a reality different from society’s perception of
reality—a tough transaction—but that’s why we need him. He’s also funny:
“ Choppin’ ” goes
like this, in its entirety:
“Yo Mama/ so dumb when I asked//
her to motorboat/ me she demanded// to see my fishing// license.”
Hip Hop
After Yasiin Bey (FKA Mos Def)
Hip-Hop escaped a Jersey prison
& received political asylum in Cuba,
is on hunger strike until Guantŕnamo
Bay complies with Geneva Conventions.
Hip-Hop’s survived codeine
overdoses but be strung out on Oxy.
Hip-Hop’s a firefighter rescuing
gospel rap from burning black churches.
Hip-Hop’s turning blood money
into flood disaster relief,
seeks sole custody
of all stars & spacecrafts
chasing comets composed
of ready rock.
Hip-Hop’s dropped from planetary
status to dwarf planet madness:
too small to clear Cristal
bottles out of its path.
Hip-Hop’s
the first female to make the FBI’s
Most Wanted Terrorists List.
++++++++++++++++
FAUXHAWK
by
Ben Doller. Wesleyan Univ. Press. 80 pages,
If you can put a fox and a
hawk together—or a fake hawk—you can do anything.
Doller’s work is complicated and fascinating; and what internal
force it comes from, I do not know. Instead of story, he gives us clues
for our own insight, and in this way we get to define the poem instead
of having the poet do it for us. It’s not calculus and it’s not
narrative but something in between. “Hello”
is a 2 ˝ page poem with 5 ˝ pages of footnotes. And each line has a
footnote; and each stanza is made of two word lines. (46 notations
altogether.) Did you get that? Let’s try again. Two words make up one
line. Two lines make up a
stanza.
Okay Stanza 3:
“is, garage,
door lurch”
“is, garage”
= footnote # 5.
“door, lurch”
= footnote #6.
Footnote #5 reads,”
The mouth is a garage for storing
one’s body.”
Footnote # 6 reads,
“Our personal physiologies may
well relate to the types of diction we are drawn to as individuals,
especially in the case of verbs…” (It goes for 6 lines.)
I think this is a lot of
fun to write and to read. Nothing actually fits together but nothing
actually does not fit, either.
The metadata is from
linguistic exploration. The poetic belief is Dylan’s “…we may not get
what we want; but we may just get what we need…” (sic).
Doller’s comments on language are intelligent, funny and true.
But it’s up to us to find the truth for ourselves.
This is writing from that
rocky landscape where the forest meets the sea. That strip of land right
there, a rare and exceptional place to visit. That’s what I’m talking
about.
The noon
just made it today
As the drone
guy gets reamed
By the
Republicans
Perfect
weather pierces the universe
In the city
that disproves the climate plot
If I stop
working, I’ll sleep better
Since the
work I click to the cloud
Like being
dead but circulating
Noonlight on
Bruce Nauman
Finished
middleclass and no neon sins
Til the
sundowns
But
repetition makes another an other
You whose
last customer collages her evals
I’m
rewriting Fanny’s book probably a gift for a friend
Or from her
file I stole it from the faculty lounge
My office is
her office, maybe,
No one had
opened it yet
On Google
Drive, the eucalyptus trees
sing Philip
Levine
behind the
Korean
bakesales.
And I’m paid
to complain
I don’t like
the way this kid is arranged
on the page.
The Anchor’s Long Chain
by
Yves Bonnefoy. Translated from French by Beverley Bie Brahic.
Seagull Books.
Bonnefoy was important to
French Literature since the 1940’s. He’s poet, essayist and translator,
(notably of Shakespeare.) I believe he’s still alive at 92 years of age.
In “Disorder” he starts his poem with stage directions with 15 on stage,
each moving forward to speak and then stepping back. The poetic
monologues are of agony and love, leaving and storytelling. No voices
are connected in meaning and the speech fragments depict the puzzle with
pieces that cannot fit, however, eloquent.
There is a folkloric feel
to this writing, As if life is a fairytale. The tone is theistic, and
there’s always a narrative within the surreal. Yes, all this is
Bonnefoy. His prose pieces
are sharp and clear while there are transgressions folding dreams within
reality. In the prose piece
“America,” he’s taking notes while walking down the California road
watching children with balloons. When back in France, he sees his yellow
lined papers hold no such words, so he must recreate.
His fascination with children is everywhere in his work.
Nineteen sonnets
memorialize Alberti, Baudelaire, Ceres, Leopardi, Verlaine, Wordsworth,
Mahler, Mallarme, Ulysses, A Poet, a Stone. A God; plus more . Who does
not love the French
—especially a poet who expands all capabilities in poetry.
Tomb of
Stčphane Mallarmč
Let his sail
be his tomb, since no
Earthly
breath could persuade the skiff
Of his voice
to refuse
The river,
summoning him to its light.
Hugo’s most
beautiful line, he would say:
‘The sun set
this evening in the clouds’;
Add nothing,
subtract nothing from water—
It turns to
fire, and to that fire he is yoked.
We see him
over there, a blur at the prow
As his boat
fades from sight, waving
Something
our eyes here can’t make out.
Is this how
one dies? Who is he speaking
to?
And what
will be left of him once night falls?
That dent in
the river, his two-coloured scarf.
Beautiful Zero
by
Jennifer Willoughby, winner of the 2015 Lindquist& Vennum
Prize. Milkweed Editions. 5 pages.
I read this for the first
time with dilated eyes in the ophthalmologist’s office. Then I read it
again with my new normal vision. Both times I could not believe my good
luck—on a chilly grey day—to find such a reckless gem of a writer. It
was more than I deserved. But I’ll take it. I’ll take the sideways entry
into meaning; the ability to say “so sue me;” the demonstration that we
have nothing to lose. She writes like that. She feels the “house is
anxious” so she gives it a pill (The Universe Contracting and Expanding). She wishes she were “…a
famous writer high on ketamine and Clairol…” (Losing The Plot); she is philosophical and in “Do Not Be Broken By The Day,” counsels,
“Take it from me, Caroline, a crisis of faith/ is not as interesting as
a dead pigeon/ in the cistern after a long winter, / The world doesn’t
want to see you/ on your knees for one more minute/ when it could be
inspecting a music/ box that knew how to fly…”
Wouldn’t you feel better if
you were Caroline?
Best of all, are a group of
10 prose-like sonnets about/to/or inspired by/ Kaiser Permanente. Why
hasn’t anyone realized this was needed—making the humanities and medical
worlds to intersect? Willoughby gets out in front of language catching
it off guard, creating striking thought systems under the skin. These
poems are effortless formations of spontaneity— isn’t poetry’s true
identity “originality?” This first collection of poems is a
show-stopper.
Kaiser Variations 10
I’ve spent a lifetime avoiding Tolstoy’s
heroine, exalted first then broken by a
moment of happiness.
Marriage is waxed
with accident, contingency and birds that
seem to mean more than what we are.
I had just lost my hand building a
makeshift
village for ideological people; you
opened
your arms like a wound.
Easily triaged at
Kaiser Permanente, from my room we could
hear patients cheering the new
president’s
motorcade on its way to the beach.
The night
surgeon placed a takeout order for some
kung
pao shrimp and another prosthetic.
Hey kids,
he said, you want see some magic?
There’s
nothing we can’t replace with something
else.
In the Flesh
by
Adam O’Riordan. W.W. Norton. 49 pages.
A debut collection and one
with staying power. There’s something distinctive about this English
poet; every once in a while there are word combinations that remind us
of Dylan Thomas—not so ornate to be sure—but a backlight—something about
the rich texture of multiple
sounds that the English,
Welsh and Irish writers do,
in a way that cannot be copied.
O’Riordan is a lyric poet;
In “MANCHESTER:”
“Queen of the cotton cities, / nightly I piece you back into
existence: // the frayed bridal train your chimneys lay/ and the warped
applause-track of Victorian rain.//You’re the blackened lung whose
depths I plumb, / the million windows and the smoke-occluded sun…”
And hear this in,
“THE LEVERETS:”
“That first winter, cooing around your pink face/ at the cradle,
the purr of the wood-burner/ flicking its long tail out into the night
sky, /
I was sent to the car for nappies and formula/ but
froze when I saw it laid on the porch: /
The heavens condensed in its brown eye, / a frail
bag of fur spilt a fine rope of gut…”
And in
“CULL:” “ He hangs in the quiet of the cool stone room,/the pendulum in
a stopped clock./ His antlers are diviner’s rods,/their hazel sways
above the pooling blood./ Upwind snows melt, streams quicken,/ birds
flicker from bough to branch…”
You could read these poems
aloud to lull your child. O’Riordan makes us believe in the safety of
the hearth; the powerful bonds of family in different dimensions; and
acquired knowledge of the world made beautiful to hear.
The Edges of
Love
I
A College Window, Cambridge
The
conference took you to Cambridge.
An hour
to kill you prowled your allotted room,
spare,
perfunctory, like a cat dropped in a cattery,
letting your tired mind tick over aimlessly;
imagining
your mother’s bicycle as she freewheeled
home down a nearby lane, head full of algebra,
how you
might have spent your own years here.
Then you see a figure crossing the field by your window;
from two
decades away you recognize her, a palpitation
shoots from heart to scrotum.
You want to call her name.
The sun is
setting. Back home in a
bright room
your children are being kissed and tucked into their sheets.
After a
pause that lasts your adult life, you turn from her
draw the curtain, dim the lamp, walk down to supper.
Echo System
by
Julie Agoos. Sheep Meadow Press.77pages.
Julie Agoos is that lucky
combination of free-spirited writing and reader-comprehensibility.
She enters the scene like a
suffragette releasing the craft from its time honored cage; and her
phrases can hardly contain her thoughts. Yet she’s perfectly
understandable. This proves one can be experimental and still offer
words of public service. That’s a good way to summarize her themes:
She’s political and has strong feelings about falsity and social values;
yet, others have tried with big ideas and failed. Agoos frolics through
the landscape of quiet cars on trains, flu shots, cash for
clunkers—she’s very much of this world but turns it into Julie in
wonderland, looking at our human limitations as if we are a different
species only made possible when rendered into poems. She knows what the
debate is every minute and that makes her writing relevant as well as
pleasurable. Articulate, with clear messages, believe it or not, she
unhinges language every chance she gets. Agoos is a witty and delightful
iconoclast, and while turning over new earth, there’s no dissonance to
be found. It’s tough to be a graceful language poet or a linguistic
graceful poet but Agoos manages.
Reading of Lebanon
The street now no entry
And tapered by rubble.
A sidewalk unpacked.
The schoolyard all inventory.
500 chairs in the sun
And miles of linoleum flooring
Flecked by mortar; 500
Polished desks in open air.
3 o’clock: eclipse
Of bells, a glitter of prayer
Through the hi-tech network
Of shells (wherever
Legible), of windows
And doors still chalked
On the skeletal abstract
Of classrooms and halls.
Oh Strict and Familiar Mother
Of Seasons such light
Scores the boards
With the ropes to be learned in the ceasefire there
Between three and dinner!
The Man with Many Pens
by
Jonathan Wells. Four Way
Books. 63 pages.
After I finish a book of
poems, I have a sense of the overall tone of a writer and the shape of
the person’s voice. With Wells I get a Solitary Singer, poetry not
cluttered with multiple points of view, but a clear ocular look outward.
Everything seen, heard, and tasted is from one personal source.
(Love’s Body) “A crow is squawking at the sun/ and the screech itself is
dawn./ Let me hear every perfect note./ How I loved that jasper
morning.”
Each poem carries its own
loss without melancholy. (Good
Night) ”…My metal fingers/ drifted toward her who’d slept/ beside me
until the final frame.”
And there’s a poem of sharp brilliance not equaled since Stanley Kunitz
wrote of his father’s picture in “Self-Portrait”
“…She ripped it into shreds without a single word and slapped me hard.
I/ in my sixty-fourth year can feel my cheek still burning.”
Wells writes in “The Forgiveness Orchard” “Concentrate on…the apple scented fingers/
summoning back the slap that spread across/ your cheek, gathering it in
their seams of heat.// …Let the hand that stung restore you/ to the
maiden grass you started from, a believer/ again in the eidetic apple
beyond your reach…”
These poems are about the
impermanence of romantic love, however much the world wishes it
otherwise. Instead, Wells identifies love with awareness and
rejuvenation. (Tinker)
“…Seamstress of the fine nerves of the morning,/ suture them with your
needle and vanishing thread./ Isolate the wound…Let the stitches melt
into their magnificent cool skin.”
Wells knows that beauty
comes from disruption, and no sense holding back the sweet part of the
heart. It’s a pathway. In “The
Forgiveness Orchard” he puts the apple back on the tree. And in “The Future Is your Friend” he ends,
“We owe everything we have/ to those who can make us happy.”
Four Shoes
in One
The shoes of
struggle and resignation.
The shoes of
oblivion.
The shoes of
sleep.
These are
the ones I was wearing
when I was
lifted to the loft
of chanting
doves and these are
the shoes
that walked me home,
eroded soles
dying of friction,
the scuffed
up leather toes.
The shoes of
rescue.
The shoes of
mourning.
Here are the
great gestures
And the
hidden moments
Lost within
themselves.
Those are
the great gestures
and the
hidden moments
lost within
themselves.
Those are
the soft shoes
I wore when
I tiptoed away
from the
wading pools of silence,
the laces
tied so quietly.
The shoes of
patience.
The shoes
that spoke.
Here are the
pilgrim’s sandals
copped by
roots and chiseled
by blades of
stone along
the path of
memorial
benches and
crosses.
Here are the
pilgrim’s feet.
+++++++++++++++
Extraordinary Offerings
World class poet/scholar
Bidney brings East and West together in a lifetime of books, most
recently, in 2015, two named below. Author of ten books and countless
articles, essays, and translations— from Goethe to Hafiz, Bidney proves
poetry is the best diplomacy in braiding cultures. Previous works focus
on Dante, Pushkin and other literary icons, but Bidney is at his best
when he turns his passion and focus to help us understand Muslim and
Christian theology through poetry. With unity, symmetry and beauty,
Bidney creates his own poetry to awaken us from our illusions of
separateness.
A Unifying Light: Lyrical Responses To
The Qur’an
by Martin Bidney.
Illustrations by Shahid Alam.) Dialogic Poetry Press.167 pages.
Lyrical
Response to a Verse in Sura 2 “The Cow”
25.
And give glad tidings (O
Muhammad) unto those who believe and do
good works; that theirs are Gardens underneath which rivers flow; as
often as
they are regaled with food of the fruit thereof, they say:
This is what was given
us aforetime; and it is given to them in resemblance. . . .
What’s granted us in heaven but a kind resemblance
Of what we loved on earth and held in prized remembrance,
Continued in imagination unabating?
I’m feeling more than thinking, playing more than stating. . .
By this I mean: from deepest
ground to highest heaven
I levitated seem when lent
melodic leaven—
By music overswept with purifying breeze—
Within the holy moment, the beholder sees.
Who heard the chanting of the Allah Scripture first,
Entranced in raptured gladness, were trans-universed.
To laud the living-gift, elating one who praised,
Will make him feel on earth to higher light upraised.
And:
Shakespair: Sonnet Replies to the 154
Sonnets of William Shakespeare
by Martin Bidney. Dialogic
Poetry Press. 165 pages.
Final Thoughts:
On Proofing Shakespair
A pile of a paper lies upon the desk
And cannot let me sit, but bids me move.
To miss an error? Possibly
grotesque
Effects of inadvertency might prove.
The ‘prentice poet care may well behoove.
For who’s the perfect master of the craft?
Our thinking likes to travel in a groove…
But can’t perfectionism drive you daft?
My manuscript I never can revisit
Without encountering corrections needed.
That isn’t really too obsessive, is it?
The call of caution can’t remain unheeded.
I’ve got to
check the rhythms and the rhymes
Or William
will object a million times.
Rest of the Best
Best Bilingual Poems:
CON
FETTI—
ASH
Selected Poems of Salvador
Novo translated
from Spanish by Anthony Seidman and David Shook.
Introduction by Jorge Ortega. The
Bitter Oleander Press. 99 pages.
Salvador Novo (1904-1974)
was a leader in Mexico’s modernist poetry movement. Along with complete
knowledge of classical forms, he embraced western poetic idioms and was
liberated by Pound and other early 20th century examples. He
also translated, into Spanish, Robert Frost; Amy Lowell; Edna St.
Vincent Millay; and other poets, both lyrical and experimental. He’s
known for his humor, satire, as well as a flamboyant lifestyle and
personality.
Not of little significance
was his defiant life as a homosexual, in a monolithic country, at a time
when this was an unwelcome presence. Novo overcame alienation and
avoided persecution from the Mexican Government because of his literary
gifts which received recognition and respect.
First
Communion
I had
committed so few sins,
I didn’t
believe I deserved communion.
The Ten
Commandments were too numerous
for a boy
barely ten to break.
Evenings the
girls would walk out to the balcony,
seeking to
greet their boyfriends;
and they
would let me finish their art assignments,
so they
could meet two obligations at once.
This was
both a favor
on my part,
as well as a lie.
But I never
confessed to it.
ALIANZA: 5 U.S. Poets in Ecuador.
International Cultural Exchange. Cypress Books. 95 pages.
Alan Britt and Steve
Barfield are from Maryland; Silvia Scheibi from Arizona; Lilvia Soto,
originally from New York, join forces with Alex Lima (Ecuador) to cross
countries with bilingual poems. English/Spanish.
En El Dia de
los Muertos-
Nogales, Sonora, Mexico
Death
Sat on a
chair
At Pancho
Villa’s Bar,
Sipping
Cappuccino kisses.
Guests
nodded
In her
direction, as
Passers-by
quickened
Their steps.
En el Dia de
los Muertos
In a low-cut
gown
Death
Was content
At Pancho’s.
--Silvia Scheibi
Violin Smoke,
by
Alan Britt,
translated to Hungarian by Sohar
Pal. I J Kiadja Media. 77 pages.
Alan Britt has a
foot in every country and he takes poetry with him.
September, 2001
September has thick, emerald hair,
a thin waist of traffic,
and a distant white dog
gnawing the first hour of late afternoon.
September has seen buildings crumble,
grief worn like scarves.
The large body of October
already rises up
through yellow leaves
with tiny capillaries
slowed to a crawl
by a sudden Canadian chill.
September leans on a split-rail fence
and watches yellow leaves
sail by in a swirling gust of ashes.
--Alan Britt
Best Chapbook:
When I Loved You
by
Judith R. Robinson.
Finishing Line Press. 27 pages.
Poetry will never turn its
back on domesticity and a woman’s experience, often seen in deflected
light from the motions of our neon world. There will always be a metric
system for this poetic source, consolidating
timeless themes of loss, children, friendship, and art. Robinson
shows some leg tackling the classic reasons for why we write;
becoming a better poet in the process.
another
thing
opening a
new white page
the machine
says CREATE
& something
in a back corner
of the brain
shlepps
its weary
self up
and
announces: this feels
a little
like buying
a lottery
ticket!
yes for a
few moments
there is
this bright
red thing
that jiggles
and giggles
but then of
course
it winks &
slinks back
under the
old couch
with the
stained upholstery
which is
where it
often goes
to sleep.
Best Anthology:
My Cruel Invention,
edited by Bernadette Geyer. Meerkat Press.105 pages.
50 poets interpret what
“invention” means to them, Editor Geyer compares the word to the notion
of great possibilities—with language this time. This is a wonderful
array of imaginers telling their wild secrets and what they believe
possible. There’s “The Happy Marriage Machine” by Gwen Hart; and Joan
Bonin’s “Inventing the Clock;” Jo Angela Edwin’s “The Inventors of
Pantyhose; “A Physics Haiku” by Keith Stevenson; a magical piece by
Laura Shovan: “Eyes on the Back of My Head;” and so much more, telling
you what you could not possibly know, or have invented yourself.
Frankensteining
I forced a
form of fears,
sewed seams
from shame,
a Phillips
to tighten terror,
molded my
madness,
brushed it
with blame.
Not content
with this golem,
spaded into
my chest of clay,
digging
deeply I discovered
something
give, a softer side of me.
Frankensteining my obsession,
piecing a
monster from rancid parts,
I left out
the beauty,
what is life
without the heart?
HM Jones
Best
What Will They Think Of
Next Anthology:
It’s All About Shoes,
edited by Pamela L. Laskin with Lyn Di Iorio
and Karen Clark. Plain
View Press. 178 pages.
Good writing though.
“A Collection of Essays, Poems and Stories About Women and Their Unusual
Relationships to Shoes.”
Shoes
1966-2007
Later, I
remembered shoes.
“Shoes?” my
aunt questioned
as I
rummaged through my mother’s closet.
We had
chosen a coffin with silver etchings,
then moved
along the rack of chiffon dresses,
some
garnished with pearls at the neckline
and cuff.
I thought of the wedding
my mother
hadn’t lived to see
before
buying a tea-length dress
in
cornflower blue. The rosary
I brought to
her from Rome
would fall
gracefully on the lace
gloves
covering the incisions
made by the
intravenous lines. As I
examined
patent
leather pumps, my aunt insisted,
“Haitians do
not put shoes on the dead.”
It makes it
easier for wandering spirits
to step over
the offerings, the candles,
dried thorns
and retrace their steps
to find the
living. I buy
silk
slippers with a satin bow,
spray the
white undergarments
with my
mother’s favorite perfume.
Each time I
visit her grave, I clear
sharp rocks
on the path leading home.
Sometimes I
crumble
pieces of
the rum cake she enjoyed along the road,
sit under
the calabash and wait to be found.
-
Phebus Etienne
______________________________
Grace Cavalieri is producer of “The Poet and the Poem from the Library
of Congress.” Author of several books and plays, her newest publication
is a Memoir: “Life upon the Wicked Stage” (New Academia/ Scarith, 2015.)
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