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POEMS FOR FURTHER DISCUSSION The Boarding —Denis Johnson One of these days under the white clouds onto the white lines of the goddamn PED X- and I shall spill my bag of discount medicines upon the avenue, and an abruptly materializing bouquet of bums, retirees, and Mexican street-gangers will see all what kinds of diseases are enjoying me and what kind of underwear and my little old lady’s legs spidery with veins. So Mr. Young and Lovely Negro Bus Driver I care exactly this: zero, that you see these things now as I fling my shopping up by your seat, putting this left-hand foot way up on the step so this dress rides up, a beam of silver falling down from Heaven to my aid, thank-you, hollering, “Watch det my medicine one second for me will you dolling, I’m four feet and det’s a tall bus you got and it’s hot and I got every disease they are making these days, my God, Jesus Christ, I’m telling you out of my soul.” Texaco —Tony Hoagland The nozzle of the gas pump plunged into the flank of the car like the curved beak of a predatory bird looks like it is drinking or maybe I'm light-headed from the fumes or from the slanted light of Thursday afternoon. —Still, it is a powerful moment when I squeeze the trigger of the handle and feel, beneath the stained cement, the deep shudder and convulsion of the gasoline begin its plunging rush in my direction. Out of the guts of the earth, filtered through sand and blood down the long hose of history towards the very nipple of this moment: —the mechanical ticking of the pump, the sound of my car drinking— filling my tank with a necessary story about the road, how we have to have it to go down; the whole world construed around this singular, solitary act as if I myself had conjured it from some strange thirst. First Death in — In the cold, cold parlor my mother laid out Arthur beneath the chromographs: Edward, Prince of Wales, with Princess Alexandra, and King George with Queen Mary. Below them on the table stood a stuffed loon shot and stuffed by Uncle Arthur, Arthur's father. Since Uncle Arthur fired a bullet into him, he hadn't said a word. He kept his own counsel on his white, frozen lake, the marble-topped table. His breast was deep and white, cold and caressable; his eyes were red glass, much to be desired. "Come," said my mother, "Come and say good-bye to your little cousin Arthur." I was lifted up and given one lily of the valley to put in Arthur's hand. Arthur's coffin was a little frosted cake, and the red-eyed loon eyed it from his white, frozen lake. Arthur was very small. He was all white, like a doll that hadn't been painted yet. Jack Frost had started to paint him the way he always painted the Maple Leaf (Forever). He had just begun on his hair, a few red strokes, and then Jack Frost had dropped the brush and left him white, forever. The gracious royal couples were warm in red and ermine; their feet were well wrapped up in the ladies' ermine trains. They invited Arthur to be the smallest page at court. But how could Arthur go, clutching his tiny lily, with his eyes shut up so tight and the roads deep in snow? Death of a Naturalist —Four poems by Seamus Heaney All year the flax-dam festered in the heart Of the townland; green and heavy headed Flax had rotted there, weighted down by huge sods. Daily it sweltered in the punishing sun. Bubbles gargled delicately, bluebottles Wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell. There were dragon-flies, spotted butterflies, But best of all was the warm thick slobber Of frogspawn that grew like clotted water In the shade of the banks. Here, every spring I would fill jampotfuls of the jellied Specks to range on window-sills at home, On shelves at school, and wait and watch until The fattening dots burst into nimble- Swimming tadpoles. Miss Walls would tell us how The daddy frog was called a bullfrog And how he croaked and how the mammy frog Laid hundreds of little eggs and this was Frogspawn. You could tell the weather by frogs too For they were yellow in the sun and brown In rain. Then one hot day when fields were rank With cowdung in the grass the angry frogs Invaded the flax-dam; I ducked through hedges To a coarse croaking that I had not heard Before. The air was thick with a bass chorus. Right down the dam gross-bellied frogs were cocked On sods; their loose necks pulsed like sails. Some hopped: The slap and plop were obscene threats. Some sat Poised like mud grenades, their blunt heads farting. I sickened, turned, and ran. The great slime kings Were gathered there for vengeance and I knew That if I dipped my hand the spawn would clutch it. Digging Between my finger and my thumb The squat pen rests; as snug as a gun. Under my window a clean rasping sound When the spade sinks into gravelly ground: My father, digging. I look down Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds Bends low, comes up twenty years away Stooping in rhythm through potato drills Where he was digging. The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft Against the inside knee was levered firmly. He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep To scatter new potatoes that we picked Loving their cool hardness in our hands. By God, the old man could handle a spade, Just like his old man. My grandfather could cut more turf in a day Than any other man on Toner's bog. Once I carried him milk in a bottle Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up To drink it, then fell to right away Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods Over his shoulder, digging down and down For the good turf. Digging. The cold smell of potato mold, the squelch and slap Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge Through living roots awaken in my head. But I've no spade to follow men like them. Between my finger and my thumb The squat pen rests. I'll dig with it. The Guitar —Frederico Lorca The weeping of the guitar begins. The goblets of dawn are smashed. The weeping of the guitar begins. Useless to silence it. Impossible to silence it. It weeps monotonously as water weeps as the wind weeps over snowfields. Impossible to silence it. It weeps for distant things. Hot southern sands yearning for white camellias. Weeps arrow without target evening without morning and the first dead bird on the branch. Oh, guitar! Heart mortally wounded by five swords. The Wounded Breakfast —Eight poems by Russell Edson A huge shoe mounts up from the horizon, squealing and grinding forward on small wheels, even as a man sitting to breakfast on his veranda is suddenly engulfed in a great shadow almost the size of the night. He looks up and sees a huge shoe ponderously mounting out of the earth. Up in the unlaced ankle-part an old woman stands at a helm behind the great tongue curled forward; the thick laces dragging like ships' rope on the ground as the huge thing squeals and grinds forward; children everywhere, they look from the shoelace holes, they crowd about the old woman, even as she pilots this huge shoe over the earth. . . Soon the huge shoe is descending the opposite horizon, a monstrous snail squealing and grinding into the earth. . . The man turns to his breakfast again, but sees it's been wounded, the yolk of one of his eggs is bleeding. . . A Cottage in the Wood He has built himself a cottage in a wood, near where the insect rubs its wings in song. Yet, without measure, or proper sense of scale, he has made the cottage too small. He realizes this when only his hand will fit through the door. He tries the stairs to the second floor with his fingers, but his arm wedges in the entrance. He wonders how he will cook his dinner. He might get his hands through the kitchen window. But even so, he will not be able to cook enough on such a tiny stove. He shall also lie unsheltered in the night, even though a bed with its covers turned down waits for him in the cottage. He lies down and curls himself around the cottage, listening to the insect that rubs its wings in song. The Fall There was a man who found two leaves and came indoors holding them out saying to his parents that he was a tree. To which they said then go into the yard and do not grow in the living-room as your roots may ruin the carpet. He said I was fooling I am not a tree and he dropped his leaves. But his parents said look it is fall. The Automobile A man had just married an automobile. But I mean to say, said his father, that the automobile is not a person because it is something different. For instance, compare it to your mother. Do you see how it is different from your mother? Somehow it seems wider, doesn't it? And besides, your mother wears her hair differently. You ought to try to find something in the world that looks like mother. I have mother, isn't that enough that looks like mother? Do I have to gather more mothers? They are all old ladies who do not in the least excite any wish to procreate, said the son. But you cannot procreate with an automobile, said father. The son shows father an ignition key. See, here is a special penis which does with the automobile as the man with the woman; and the automobile gives birth to a place far from this place, dropping its puppy miles as it goes. Does that make me a grandfather? said father. That makes you where you are when I am far away, said the son. Father and mother watch an automobile with a just married sign on it growing smaller in a road. The Broken Daughter His daughter had broken. He took her to be repaired. . .If you'll just pump-up her backside, and rewire her hair. . . This girl needs a whole new set of valves, and look at all those collision marks around her face, said the mechanic. I just want her fixed-up enough to use around the house; for longer trips I have my wife. Cinderella's Life at the Castle After Cinderella married the prince she turned her attention to minutiae, using her glass slipper as a magnifying lens. When at court she would wear orange peels and fish tins, and other decorous rubbish as found in back of the castle. You are making me very nervous, said the prince. But Cinderella continued to look at something through her glass slipper. Did you hear me? said the prince. Cinderella's mouth hung open as she continued to look at something through her glass slipper. Did you hear me, did you hear me, did you hear me? screamed the prince. A Journey Through the Moonlight In sleep when an old man's body is no longer aware of its boundaries, and lies flattened by gravity like a mere of wax in its bed. . .It drips down to the floor and moves there like a tear down a cheek. . .Under the back door into the silver meadow, like a pool of sperm, frosty under the moon, as if in his first nature, boneless and absurd. The moon lifts him up into its white field, a cloud shaped like an old man, porous with stars. He floats through high dark branches, a corpse tangled in a tree on a river. Summer, Forty Years Later He struggles out of a closet where his mother had hung him forty years ago. She didn't understand children; she probably thought he was something made of cloth. He thinks he as waited long enough for her to understand children, even though he is no longer a child. After forty years a man has a right to seek the hallway; after all, he might even hope for the front door--and who knows, perhaps even a Nobel Prize for patience! From the front porch he sees that the This is not the same summer, the color is gone. . . . . . That little boy who is always passing the house with his wagon has turned into a little old man collecting garbage. . . |