Aberdeen in Winter
The last of my RWP mini-challenge poems… maybe it’s just because I try to write like Neruda anyway, but I can’t tell if this one is actually inspired by him, or just something of mine. He did write about romance a lot, and about specific places once in a while, but one could say the same of almost any poet, really. This one is dedicated to the town in Maryland, which I passed through yesterday (and often do between school and home); really, it was quite beautiful in the snow, though I don’t know how it will be after Snowpocalypse Part 2 tonight/tomorrow.
Must go shopping and stock up on food now, as I’ll probably be trapped inside (again!) for another 36 hours. Then I am catching up on all the comments and blogs that I’ve neglected this weekend! It’s going to be a good afternoon.
Aberdeen in Winter
Last night the friendly edge of the bay turned cold
and ringed itself with shards of ice:
how ungrateful!
You know how it is when February’s out
for blood, chipping away at your grandfather’s
weather-worn rowboat, pitted rust-colored relic,
unsuitable for carving through the freeze
for rockfish and oyster bed.
So instead you strapped on your snowshoes
and we met in the street. My knit-gloved hands
will keep yours warm
when we pass into the secret shade
of late trees, afternoon trees who, old
pessimists, have given up the whiskey sun.
Down by the station, the rails are lacing the top
of the snow, pair of infinite chrome snakes
gleaming with freshwater: touch that electricity,
and you are connected to New York and
Washington and other cities strange on the tongue.
If you were my telegraph, I’d tap out
C Q D and see who’s got their grizzled ear
pressed to our wires.
Someone has been crossing and uncrossing
the tracks, leaving their prints in the depths.
We follow them over the ridge, all the way
to the Falls and the edge of the proving ground,
where we clasp and clutch in the momentary
deafness of gunfire. No rest for them today:
they break off frigid pieces of the air
and save them in metal boxes to study tonight.
I hope they don’t mind if we sit and listen.
They offer another salute, and a rogue oriole
pipes with fear as it vanishes over our knit-capped
heads, nuzzling awkwardly for warmth.
Writ in Water
Totally forgot to mention, I had a small stone up yesterday at a handful of stones, in German… check it out!
Now that the three centi have been written, can I say I have a sense of what makes a Neruda poem a Neruda poem, enough to write one of my own? I don’t think so, really, but I can make the attempt. Using the themes I talked about before (water, discontent, romance) and some others that I’ve noticed (lots of really fanciful adjectives, repetition of nouns, first- and second-person speech), this one (#4 in the RWP challenge) is dedicated to poets growing old. I was thinking about Iris Murdoch’s The Sea, The Sea (which I’ve never read but really really want to), and how she suffered from Alzheimer’s before she died, and I wonder in the end if she could remember the impact she had. So this is dedicated to her, and Neruda (whose voice informed it), and Keats (who informed the title), and Shelley and Plath and Thomas… poets who drowned, this way or that, and thrashed till the end.
Writ in Water
(for Iris Murdoch and the sea-stepping ghosts of other poets)
If you remember nothing else, remember this:
the velveteen twilights of your inescapable enchantment,
all the notes of the restless ocean,
necklace of abalone music shattering glasslike from
your throat: every barnacle tuned to just the right key for
melting the sufferances of sky-shot boys,
bivalves and conches the armonica of your voice
echoing down the sugared canyons of their joy.
If you should wake tomorrow and know no names:
the paper-thin skin of your hands will be paper,
so take a fountain pen and write, record those
geothermal thoughts of yours that
tumble over and over like flotsam in a sedimentary dark:
even the spray of an unknown moon’s tide, heedless,
muddied with alluvium, knows the whorls to follow
for stirring the soft primates gazing from the shore.
If your dreams tonight are unspeakable:
turn those sightless eyes upwards, let in
the unfriendly air where your kind goes to die, for it
will not slay you with oxygenated arrows: come out from
your galactic shell, flatten that smooth consciousness
so it will rise with the wind, your guides, they will
phosphoresce with you, wringing the earthly parts of you
to fall as littoral rainfall on eager upturned tongues.
Four Haiku: Snow Day
So last Sunday I said that I wanted to get done with haiku about snow. But I enjoy tying these in with what’s going on around me in nature, and of course, after I make that comment, what happens? Last Tuesday night and Wednesday morning we had a mini-snowfall that was absolutely beautiful; I nearly skipped class to stay out in it and take pictures. And then I came home this weekend just in time for the “snowpocalypse” to occur. Therefore, had to keep it wintry for at least one more week… this is for the Haiku Bones prompt of “breath”.
Four haiku: snow day
Northwest wind exhales:
maple-wood candelabras
shed their powdered weight.
Winter’s animus
is rasping along sidewalks,
pooling under salt.
Each splintering trunk
puffs a thin interjection
into the deaf air.
I take in the world
through my nose, give back a bit
of my clouded self.
I Am That Net
There’s two feet and then some of snow lying outside, and therefore I’ve been goofing off all day. I figured, why not give Sr. Neruda one more shot, resulting in a third and final cento for the RWP mini-challenge. This one is doing double duty for the OSI challenge of “single” as well (thanks to Leo!)… I figure it sounds sort of like something Neruda might write after a one-night stand, and I certainly wasn’t going to write anything mopey when it’s so pretty out. The next step for the challenge is to write two poems in Nerudish style; I’m not sure which elements to pluck out, though. All of the ones I chose have this elementalism, water flooding the land, resisting and accepting and becoming water, et cetera. All of them show discontent. I suppose that will be the thread I follow…?
|
Yo No Soy Sino La Red
Nadie me preguntó quién era, Vienes volando, solo, solitario: Sí, yo sabía que tus manos eran Allí le dejé andando y su sonrisa me sirvió de pan |
I Am That Net
No one asked who I was, You come flying, alone, in your solitude: Yes, I knew that your hands were I left him there His smile was my bread |
Lines drawn from Pablo Neruda’s poems “Los Engimas” (Title), “Sonata con Algunos Pinos” (1), “Explico Algunas Cosas” (2), “Oda a Pies de Fuego” (3), “Apogeo del Apio” (4, 14), “Alberto Rojas Jimenez Vienes Volando” (5), “Leviathan” (6), “Oda al Doble Otoño” (7), “Oda a la Jardinera” (8), “Ritual de mis Piernas” (9), “Oda al Aceite” (10), “Hacia los Minerales” (11), “Las Furias y Las Penas” (12), “Oda al Olor de la Leña” (13), “Oda al Viejo Poeta” (15), “Duerme un Soldado” (16), “Colección Nocturna” (17), “Oda con un Lamento” (18), “V.” (19)
Toward the Cold Archipelago
This is the second of my poems for the RWP mini-challenge… sat here picking away at it while the snow piles up outside. I like how this one sort of turned out to be a resigned counterpart to the rebellious one I wrote first. It just kind of ended up that way; happy accidents are the best accidents, after all.
This post is my 200th post on the blog… how ridiculous is that? Here’s hoping for 200 more!
| Hacia el Archipiélago Frío
Yo trabajo de noche, rodeado de ciudad, Recuerdo aquella extática apostura Colmas la curvatura del silencio. |
Toward the Cold Archipelago
I work nights, in the ring of the city, I remember some ravished serenity, The crescent of silence is brimmed. |
Lines drawn from Pablo Neruda’s poems, “Estación Inmóvil” (Title), “Entierro en el Este” (1), “Walking Around” (2)”, “Alberto Rojas Jimenez Viene Volando” (3), “El Corazón Magellánico (1519)” (4), “La United Fruit Co.” (5), “Cristóbal Miranda” (6), “Algunas Bestias” (7, 13), “Las Furias y Las Penas” (8), “Las Viejas de Océano” (9), “Oda a los Cosas Rotas” (10), “El Gran Océano” (11), “Sonata con Algunos Pinos” (12), “Caballo de los Sueños” (14), “Pastoral” (15)
On the Margins of Morning
Yesterday and this morning were spent working on two difficult poems: one for Poetic Asides (which I’ll post here later) and this one, the first for the RWP mini-challenge. This month, it’s to put together some centos (centi?) of a favored poet; since seeing this form in Sarah J. Sloat’s chapbook, I’ve been dying to try it. Following her lead in picking a non-English poet, I’m going with Pablo Neruda, as I love his stuff and happen to have a bilingual edition of his works lying around. So, on the left we have an assortment of Spanish lines from his poems, on the right the translations (by Ben Belitt), and underneath the poems they’re drawn from. Totally a pain in the ass and so much fun to do!
| En las Riberas de la Aurora
Cómo surges de antaño, llegando, y lo vespertino llega llorando No quiero para mí tantas desgracias. he aquí violetas, golondrinas, Os voy a contar todo lo que me pasa. |
On the Margins of Morning
How you rise from the past to me here, and twilight comes weeping I’ve had all I’ll take from catastrophe. here are violets, swallows, I’ll tell you how matters stand with me. |
Lines drawn from Pablo Neruda’s poems, “Algunas Bestias” (Title), “Fantasma” (1, 5), “Duerme un Soldado” (2), “Explico Algunas Cosas” (3, 14), “No Hay Olivdo: Sonata” (4, 10), “El Corazón Magellánico (1519)” (6), “Walking Around” (7), “Caballo de los Sueños” (8), “Ritual de mis Piernas” (9, 12), “Oda al Limón” (11), “Colección Nocturna” (13), “Los Mendigos” (15), “Sabor” (16)
Corruptibility
Alas, I did not win the Poetic Asides chapbook challenge, but I was in the top five finalists, which was a very great honor. So now… I’m going to do it. I’m going to put together el manuscrito de chapbook, and work on submitting it… if anyone has recommendations for this process, do let me know!
The Read Write Poem prompt was on “narrative wallpaper”, so I took it a mix of literally and figuratively. Often it seems like the more times we decorate memories and remember them, paradoxically, the more unreal and false they become. Truth is a tricky thing to hold in the brain. And the wallpaper notion of DIY home repair really does apply inside your own skull.
Corruptibility
As I would tell it, the walls were tapestry
and carpet-cross, knotted thick with blue and burgundy:
the river, and blood.
Everything was velvet to the touch, the ventficats out front
perspired in the sun, ornamental bricks wore
lizard earrings, and we nibbled mango sherbet
till the sky went dark as thunderclaps;
you took me then, half-on, half-off the couch.
I cannot say it was unpleasant, knowing how
such things can go,
though every now and then I suspect
miscalculation in the mathematics of the memory:
a one un-carried, an equation cracking open
and spilling its operations on the sidewalk,
paper wasps in the system.
Blue and burgundy are easily removed to expose
the sallow paint underneath. How quickly
sunburnt illusions peel to show what they’re hiding:
poor plastering and cracks in the masonry
that let the truthful past ooze through,
and maybe you were not so gentle, and maybe
the sun had long since set.
It worries me, to explore the chapels of experience
and see what’s died there: I’d rather
hang new curtains to cover up what we did
in this corner or that, and tell our story again;
we are dampened by leaks that swell with the iterations,
we are desperate to stuff our happening with chewed
cherry sawdust, for a mantelpiece.
If I can remember my falsehoods well enough,
then no one will know the difference.
Four Haiku: Wolf Moon
It has got to stop being so wintry around here on haiku days, because I’m running out of variations on the theme here. The Haiku Bones prompt today is mine, “uncanny”, and I feel like I’m not doing it justice with these four; but after all, it did snow all day yesterday, and the full moon was out and beautiful. I interposed some of my home images with that, but it’s hard to get them to really come through with such a short space. Ah well… January is at an end. We’ll see if I can keep this breakneck poetry pace (I probably won’t).
Four Haiku: wolf moon
Just past the bare hill
it howls mournfully, chilling
what’s left of our blood.
Treeshadows on snow
writhe in moonlight, changing shape
and secret meaning.
The roadside ditch froze,
trapping reeds and shopping carts
halfway to drowning.
Even the graveyard
glistens tonight, wind rousing
ghosts from narrow drifts.
A Mitzvah
The prompt for One Single Impression was “blowing the curve”, by Mojo, but I have to admit, I never use that expression and wasn’t even really sure what it meant. (My understanding is that it refers to a grade curve, and that one ruins it by scoring really high or low in relation to everyone else?) Instead, I decided to take it in a more literal (but no less obfuscated!) direction, in honor of Tu Bishvat. One of the most touching religious experiences of my life was a Tu Bishvat seder in college; I had not before, and have not since, eaten a persimmon, meaning that the two are inextricably entwined in my memory.
In other news: my chapbook submission has been shortlisted for the contest at Poetic Asides! This is a big honor… there’s only 21 people on the list out of 150+. The final results are on Tuesday, but you know what, if I don’t receive it, I have a clear sense now that the collection was good. So if it’s not taken on by Poetic Asides, I’ll be putting it together myself. :)
A Mitzvah
Not that I was a faithful child,
but it was always important to try:
and when they carried out the shofar
golden-white with age, whorled and grooved,
a twist of fate involving its center,
we squeezed each other’s coatsleeved hands
(and the sound of it is not heard,
it is felt)
recheat of the memory, loosening of
bolts in the soul, one piercing blast that says
so much at once: this is
the sound of sacrifice and this is divinity, harmonized
the right to hear it granted only now and then
for so much meaning can be summed up
in that astonished note: such notes
brought down Jericho
(such notes will wake your dead coatsleeved hand
return it to me)
so I will continue
to pause with respect for your synonym,
even if I’m pressing my ear to the outside wall
even if I don’t feel the magnificent vibration
Love Sex Devotion
Busy day, so this one is just a cute little snippet that I had bouncing around my head; the “acid for breakfast” line is where this came from. Let alone the fact that the subject matter begged a lack of form, I have a small stone up today at a handful of stones, which always puts me in an imagist state of mind. It’s a day for noticing the little things.
Also, yesterday was the single highest-traffic day I’ve yet had on this blog… it continually befuddles me that people enjoy coming here and reading my work, but it always leaves me feeling good inside. Good enough to bundle up and brave this ridiculously cold weather we’re having today in order to get things done in the world! (When I moved south of the Mason-Dixon line, I thought my worries about single digit wind chills would be over… apparently not. My heart and thoughts to those in Canada.)
Love Sex Devotion
for breakfast i made you french toast
and acid
i cracked moons into a bowl and licked
their lymph from my fingerstalks
you pointed out the melting chandeliers
and the slowly unraveling staircases
as you spiraled syrup
on my hand
and carved a bite
we had glasses full of orange tears
that sang purple as they trickled
sourly
down the superhighways of our spines
scribbling protests as they went
if you want for lunch we can have
mushroom salad
but first you must excuse me while
i go change my eyes
