On my campus walk a spring effusion
of spaghetti straps, and—Madonna’s
legacy—the inside outed, too delicate
for the name of straps, tender, silky
bra linguine, tomato-red, celery-green,
slipping off creamy shoulders, or
tangling fetchingly with those spaghetti
straps my daughter informs me, I,
as an older woman, can not wear.
Once, unwittingly,
I draped my navy blazer on
the chairback in my class; two
pale pink shoulder pads plopped
up like obscene pincushions
from the costumer’s shop, abruptly
spotlit. The student they tickled
apologized, but couldn’t stop laughing
each time he looked. Now
I pull my jacket
around me, though it’s hot,
thinking suddenly
of Madame Goldfarb’s Foundation,
Lingerie and Prosthesis Shoppe,
where my mother bought her ordinary
bras, and how the saleswoman—
discussing shoulder
welts, back strain—lifted
her breast into the cup the way
the technician lifts mine onto the plate
for my mammogram, or the butcher
cups the roast he’s about to weigh,
thinking of how
my mother’s hidden back and breasts
even into her ninth decade—
compared with her wizened arms
and face—were shockingly alluring,
olive smooth, unblemished, as I helped her
into the hospital gown.
Originally published in The Evansville Review, this poem was included in Judy Kronenfeld’s chapbook Ghost Nurseries (Finishing Line Press, 2005) and will appear in her full-length collection Light Lowering in Diminished Sevenths, which won the 2007 Litchfield Review Annual Book Contest and will be published next year.
Category Archives: Great Poems Online
“The Approach” and Other New Poems by “Conway”
My correspondent “Conway” has been very prolific this summer, writing poetry inspired by the books and printouts I’ve sent him: T.S. Eliot, Alexandre Dumas, Stephen Dobyns, and even yours truly. Conway is the pen name of a resident in a maximum-security prison in California, where he’s serving 25-to-life for receiving stolen goods under the state’s draconian three-strikes law. Here’s a selection from his recent work:
The Approach
The Sky offers empty promises
smiling with toothy clouds
blades hiding in the invisible wind
pushing forward an orgasmic rain
wide open mouth, stuttering-n-drooling
over the gloriously ravaged land
polished and preened for the dance
electric frustration crackling
instinctive thunder cackling
destructively loud vibrations cuss
at all of mother nature’s fuss
primping for her approaching sun
another beautiful day begun…
****
Pretender
Smell the dust circulating
rumble of gears, chattering wind
pushing past shadows of patience again
pressed faces on clear glass, melted sand
trapped & strapped as time flails
crouching in concrete jails
tumbling hearts in a coin-op dryer
hoping tears will gratify
those moments that pass them by
seasons march with unseen smoke
dawn breaks down upon the broke
strung up tight in spider spun cords
sung all night by distraught mothers
and those muddy misplaced others
pretending to be alive…
One of their pastimes in prison is the “poetry war”, challenging one another to come up with poems or raps on specific topics, often in response to a previous poem by the challenger. I had sent him this ballade I wrote in college, which was inspired by Richard Wilbur’s Ballade for the Duke of Orleans:
Ballade of the Fogg Art Museum
by Jendi Reiter (1990)
The squat museum’s walls decline in plaster;
black iron gates like screens before it rise,
given by graduates now turned to dust or
some more profitable enterprise.
Inside the vaulted halls, the street noise dies
the way the light too fades, as filtered through
too many windows, till the sight of skies
uncovered seems forever out of view.
Upon the wall the carving of some master
hangs as it did over centuries of cries
seeking the aid of this tired saint whose lost or
disputed name was once a healing prize;
saint of the mute, saint of the paralyzed,
of cures some true and some believed as true,
all that their less than truth and more than lies
uncovered seems forever out of view.
Lone stained-glass windows stand, as if the vaster
church fell away and in the rubble lies,
disordered jewels, displayed as if they last were
no necklace, broken when the wearer dies.
Behind them a lit wall the hue of ice,
unchanging light that cannot prove them true,
the sun’s capricious grace that stupefies
now covered and forever out of view.
These corridors wish also to sequester
the wanderer in halls as dim and dry as
the echoes of dead theologians’ bluster
of strict dichotomies that like a vise
close round the listener, until he tries
to follow their imagined bird’s-eye view
of black lines, like this map, where all that eyes
uncover is forever out of view.
Like some grim doctor of the church, the plaster
bust of the founder means to supervise,
mute guardian of a world he tries to master
by over-studying what he is not wise
enough to love; a searching hand that pries
out each thread separately to find the true,
happiest when the tapestry they comprise
is covered and forever out of view.
Above this roof, a bird descends no faster
than snow through shining air, like some demise
so graceful that it isn’t a disaster;
to be a fallen angel would be prize
enough if one could but fall through such skies,
past autumn bursts of leaves’ bright mortal hue
which no recording hand can seize, which lies
uncovered now, then ever out of view.
A wasted hand preserves and petrifies
the gilded tree, flat heaven’s lapis blue.
The leaf must fall, the leaf must improvise,
uncovered now, then ever out of view.
****
In response, Conway wrote the poem below. It plays more loosely with the form but has an immediacy and passion that my old poem lacks. Round #1 to him!
Ballade of Arms Justice
by Conway
This prison squall defines disaster
how many doors of life must waste
Through corridors paint, white alabaster
statues risen — fall wine they taste;
dear ground bones have, fed budgets bill.
Minds’-eye blue sky, though still it lingers
upon thy heart and always will
it pays long arms, not sticky fingers…
Now here in thought, recoiled much faster
and left our freedom more in haste
These green suit goons design my master
keys that unlock, chains round my waist
and slop I cannot stomach still
we must digest this smell that lingers
until we’re sure we’ve had our fill
for long arms pay, not sticky fingers…
Those white house pillars, fake alabaster
have kept injustice-jackboots laced
we fear the blue steel beanbag blaster
upon the skin burned sentence placed;
It was against forefathers will
to plant, the prosecutions ringers
on the side that fights to steal
laws long arm pays, not sticky fingers…
Law keep your lies, you’re not my master
I cannot be easily replaced
My family reels from this disaster
your long arms pay not, our sticky fingers…
keys that unlock, chains round my waist
and slop I cannot stomach still
we must digest this smell that lingers
until we’re sure we’ve had our fill
for long arms pay, not sticky fingers…
Those white house pillars, fake alabaster
have kept injustice-jackboots laced
we fear the blue steel beanbag blaster
upon the skin burned sentence placed;
It was against forefathers will
to plant, the prosecutions ringers
on the side that fights to steal
laws long arm pays, not sticky fingers…
Law keep your lies, you’re not my master
I cannot be easily replaced
My family reels from this disaster
your long arms pay not, our sticky fingers…
Ned Condini: “In the Farmer’s Hut”
(after Federico Garcia Lorca)
When I feel lonely
your ten years still remain with me,
the three blind horses,
your countless expressions and the little
frozen fevers under maize leaves.
At midnight cancer strode out into the halls
and spoke with the empty shells of
documents,
live cancer full of clouds and thermometers,
with its chaste desire of an apple
to be pecked by nightingales.
In the house where there’s no cancer
white walls break in the frenzy of
astronomy
and in the smallest stables, in the crosses
of woods,
for many years the fulgor
of the burnings glows.
My sorrow bled in the evenings
when your eyes were two stones,
when your hands were two townships
and my body the whisper of grass.
My agony was looking for its dress.
It was dusty, bitten by bugs,
and you followed it without trembling
to the threshold of dark water.
Silly and handsome
among the gentle creatures,
with your mother fractured by the village
blacksmiths,
with one brother under the arches
and another eaten by anthills,
and cancer beating at the doors!
Some nannies give children
milk of nastiness, and it’s true
that some people will throw doves into
a sewer.
Your ignorance is a river of lions.
The day malaria clobbered you
and spat you in the dorm
where the guests of the epidemic died,
you looked for my agony in the grass,
my agony with flowers of terror,
while the voiceless fierce cancer
that wants to sleep with you
pulverized red landscapes in the sheets
of bitterness
and put inside hearses
tiny frozen trees of boric acid.
With your jew’s harps,
go to the wood to learn antennae words
that sleep in tree trunks, in clouds,
in turtles,
in the wind, in lilies, in deep waters,
so that your learn what your country
forgets.
When the roar of war begins
I will leave a juicy bone for your dog
at the factory. Your ten years will be
the leaves that fly in the clothes of
the dead,
ten roses of frail sulfur
on the shoulder of the dawn.
Forgotten, your wilted face
pressed to my mouth, my son,
I will be alone and enter,
screaming, the green statues of cancer.
This poem is reprinted by permission from Wordgathering, an online journal of disability poetry. Ned Condini is a translator and a poetry and fiction writer. Chelsea Editions will soon publish his translation of Carlo Betocchi’s selected works, Awakenings. Among his other awards, he won first prize in the inaugural Winning Writers War Poetry Contest in 2002. His publications include The Earth’s Wall: Selected Poems by Giorgio Caproni, available from Chelsea Editions, P.O. Box 773, Cooper Station, NYC, NY 10276.
Poems for September 11
Today is the sixth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Rather than add my own words to a subject that is nearly beyond words, I share below a winning poem from the Winning Writers War Poetry Contest that I judge every year.
SUMMER RAIN
by Atar Hadari
This is the season people die here,
she said, Death comes for them now.
Sometime between the end of winter
and the rains, the rains of summer.
And the funerals followed that summer
like social engagements, a ball, then another ball
one by one, like debutantes
uncles and cousins were presented to the great hall
and bowed and went up to tender
their family credentials to the monarch
who smiled and opened the great doors
and threw their engraved invitations onto the ice
and dancing they threw their grey cufflinks
across each others’ shoulders, they crossed the floor
and circles on circles of Horas
filled the sky silently with clouds, that chilled the flowers.
And funeral trains got much shorter
and people chose to which they went
and into the earth the flowers
went and no one remembered their names
only that they died that summer
when rains came late and the streets emptied
and flags flying on car roof tops
waved like women welcoming the army
into a small, abandoned city.
This poem won an Honorable Mention in our 2003 contest. I also invite you to read these poems that won awards in past years:
Melody Davis, The View from the Tower (2005 HM)
Stacey Fruits, The Choreography of Four Hands Descending (2003 HM)
Raphael Dagold, In Manhattan, After (2002 HM)
Robert Bly Interviewed on PBS
Last week the venerable poet Robert Bly was interviewed on Bill Moyers’ Journal on PBS. Some highlights from their witty, uplifting conversation are below. I recommend watching the video online rather than simply reading the transcript, as Bly’s joie de vivre is an essential part of the experience.
BILL MOYERS: You know, when I first met you, you were just barely 50. And you read this little poem. You remember this one?
ROBERT BLY: “I lived my life enjoying orbits. Which move out over the things of the world. I have wandered into space for hours, passing through dark fires. And I have gone to the deserts of the hottest places, to the landscape of zeroes. And I can’t tell if this joy is from the body or the soul or a third place.”
Well, that’s very good you find that because when you say, “What is the divine,” it’s much simpler to say there is the body, then there’s the soul and then there’s a third place.
BILL MOYERS: Have you figured out what that third place is 30 years later?
ROBERT BLY: It’s a place where all of the geniuses and lovely people and the brilliant women in the– they all go there. And they watch over us a little bit. Once in awhile, they’ll say, “Drop that line. It’s no good.”
Sometimes when you do poetry, especially if you do translate people like Hafez and Rumi, you go almost immediately to this third world. But we don’t go there very often.
BILL MOYERS: Why?
ROBERT BLY: Well I suppose it’s because we think too much about our houses and our places. Maybe I should read a Kabir poem here.
BILL MOYERS: And Kabir?
ROBERT BLY: Kabir is a poet from India. Fourteenth century.
“Friend, hope for the guest while you are alive.
Jump into experience while you’re alive. Think… and think… while you’re alive.
What you call salvation, belongs to the time before death.
If you don’t break your ropes while you’re alive,
you think that ghosts will do it after?
The idea that the soul will join with the ecstatic
just because the body’s rotten–
that’s all fantasy.
What is found now is found then.
And if you find nothing now,
you will simply end up with an apartment in the City of Death.”
I was going through Chicago one time with a young poet and we were rewriting this. And he said, “If you find nothing now, you will seemly end up with a suite in the Ramada Inn of death.” That’s very interesting to see how that thing really comes alive when you bring in terms of your own country. You’ll end up with a suite in the Ramada Inn of death. If you make love with the divine now, in the next life, you will have the face of satisfied desire.
So plunge into the truth, find out who the teacher is, believe in the great sound. Kabir says this, when the guest is being searched for – see they don’t use the word “God”. Capital G, “Guest”. When the Guest is being searched for, it’s the intensity of the longing for the Guest that does all the work. Then he says, “Look at me and you’ll see a slave of that intensity.”
********
BILL MOYERS: You’ve been talking and writing a lot lately about the greedy soul.
ROBERT BLY: I’m glad you caught that. Read this.
ROBERT BLY: “More and more I’ve learned to respect the power of the phrase, the greedy soul. We all understand what is hinted after that phrase. It’s the purpose of the United Nations is to check the greedy soul in nations. It’s the purpose of police to check the greedy soul in people. We know our soul has enormous abilities in worship, in intuition, coming to us from a very ancient past. But the greedy part of the soul, what the Muslims call the “nafs,” also receives its energy from a very ancient past. The “nafs” is the covetous, desirous, shameless energy that steals food from neighboring tribes, wants what it wants and is willing to destroy to anyone who receives more good things than itself. In the writer, it wants praise.”
I wrote these three lines. “I live very close to my greedy soul. When I see a book published 2000 years ago, I check to see if my name is mentioned.” This is really true. I’ve really done that. Yes, I’ve said that. So, in writers, the “nafs” often enter in the issue of how much– do people love me? How much people are reading my books? Do people write about me? Do you understand that? It probably affects you too in that way.
BILL MOYERS: Us journalists? Never.
ROBERT BLY: Never. Okay. “If the covetous soul feels that its national sphere of influence is being threatened by another country, it will kill recklessly and brutally, impoverish millions, order thousands of young men in its own country to be killed only to find out 30 years later that the whole thing was a mistake. In politics the fog of war could be called the fog of the greedy soul.”
********
BILL MOYERS: Are you happy at 80?
ROBERT BLY: Yeah, I’m happy. I’m happy at 80. And– I can’t stand so much happiness as I used to.
BILL MOYERS: You’re Lutheran.
“Art That Dares” to Comfort and Discomfort
Images of Jesus are such common currency in our popular culture that we scarcely notice them, save to afford them a sentimental smile or an eye-roll of aesthetic disdain. From rappers in crucifixion poses on their album covers, to kitsch statues for your little softball player, Jesus is like Mrs. Dash, tossed in to spice up the processed images served up to our jaded palates.
On the one hand, the Incarnation means that Jesus really is standing behind us in the batter’s box (though he didn’t help the Red Sox much this week). We mustn’t get so churchy that we wall off certain areas of life as too mundane for his attention. He still knows when we’re stealing from the cookie jar.
On the other hand, casual handling of Jesus’ image domesticates it, robbing it of its power, as least as often as Jesus-ification elevates the subject matter in question. For me, kitsch images of Jesus can clutter up my mind and block my ability to visualize him as a real, individual, living person.
Kittredge Cherry at Jesusinlove.org has compiled a book of contemporary GLBT and feminist Christian art entitled Art That Dares: Gay Jesus, Woman Christ and More. Samples can be viewed on the gallery page.
I wanted to recommend this project wholeheartedly, but my reaction to the sample works was more complicated. The artworks are presumably meant to be affirming to one group of viewers, and disturbing to others. Jesus, I think, should be experienced as both affirming and disturbing to everyone. Mainstream sentimental Christian art is hampered by its clear-cut message, a trait that this project doesn’t fully escape.
Should the goal of this work be conceived as political rather than devotional, it’s easier for me to overlook the lack of nuance in some of the pieces I saw. It was similarly scandalous to some white Western Christians when people of color tossed out the blonde, blue-eyed image of Jesus in favor of a more African appearance. In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female. Most people today would add “black nor white”, but “gay nor straight” (though arguably contained in “male nor female”) is a tougher sell. Paintings like Becki Jayne Harrelson’s The Crucifixion of Christ deliver a shock that can’t be ignored.
My favorite among the sample pictures was Elisabeth Ohlson Wallin’s posed photo Sermon on the Mount. There’s a humor, absurdity and tenderness in the image of leather daddies hugging Christ’s knees, which lends a complexity not found in a lot of popular Christian art, gay or straight. This picture was also great because the men, though clearly sexual beings, were not relating to Christ or one another in merely a sexual way. Images of love between men always delight me, but the angel’s hand on Christ’s butt in F. Douglas Blanchard’s Jesus Returns to God was a bit much. Love, even between sexual partners (and they do make a cute couple), isn’t always expressed by groping, especially at a moment like this. Was the artist afraid we wouldn’t see them as gay otherwise? It’s a reductive visual trope that erases the non-sexual dimensions of a gay person’s life.
Christians who think Cherry’s project is scandalous should go back and read some classic Christian poems, with their ideological blinders off. Start with St. John of the Cross:
On a dark night,
Kindled in love with yearnings
–oh, happy chance!–
I went forth without being observed,
My house being now at rest.
In darkness and secure,
By the secret ladder, disguised
–oh, happy chance!–
In darkness and in concealment,
My house being now at rest.
In the happy night,
In secret, when none saw me,
Nor I beheld aught,
Without light or guide,
save that which burned in my heart.
This light guided me
More surely than the light of noonday
To the place where he
(well I knew who!) was awaiting me
— A place where none appeared.
Oh, night that guided me,
Oh, night more lovely than the dawn,
Oh, night that joined
Beloved with lover,
Lover transformed in the Beloved!
Upon my flowery breast,
Kept wholly for himself alone,
There he stayed sleeping,
and I caressed him,
And the fanning of the cedars made a breeze.
The breeze blew from the turret
As I parted his locks;
With his gentle hand
He wounded my neck
And caused all my senses to be suspended.
I remained, lost in oblivion;
My face I reclined on the Beloved.
All ceased and I abandoned myself,
Leaving my cares
forgotten among the lilies.
(translation courtesy of this website)
And how about this poem by the 17th-century metaphysical poet George Herbert:
Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-ey’d Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lack’d anything.
“A guest,” I answer’d, “worthy to be here”;
Love said, “You shall be he.”
“I, the unkind, the ungrateful? ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee.”
Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
“Who made the eyes but I?”
“Truth, Lord, but I have marr’d them; let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.”
“And know you not,” says Love, “who bore the blame?”
“My dear, then I will serve.”
“You must sit down,” says Love, “and taste my meat.”
So I did sit and eat.
“Love”, in this poem, is another name for Christ. Who is male. From the first stanza, we can see that the speaker is obviously male too. Something to think about.
Christians who think Cherry’s project is scandalous should go back and read some classic Christian poems, with their ideological blinders off. Start with St. John of the Cross:
On a dark night,
Kindled in love with yearnings
–oh, happy chance!–
I went forth without being observed,
My house being now at rest.
In darkness and secure,
By the secret ladder, disguised
–oh, happy chance!–
In darkness and in concealment,
My house being now at rest.
In the happy night,
In secret, when none saw me,
Nor I beheld aught,
Without light or guide,
save that which burned in my heart.
This light guided me
More surely than the light of noonday
To the place where he
(well I knew who!) was awaiting me
— A place where none appeared.
Oh, night that guided me,
Oh, night more lovely than the dawn,
Oh, night that joined
Beloved with lover,
Lover transformed in the Beloved!
Upon my flowery breast,
Kept wholly for himself alone,
There he stayed sleeping,
and I caressed him,
And the fanning of the cedars made a breeze.
The breeze blew from the turret
As I parted his locks;
With his gentle hand
He wounded my neck
And caused all my senses to be suspended.
I remained, lost in oblivion;
My face I reclined on the Beloved.
All ceased and I abandoned myself,
Leaving my cares
forgotten among the lilies.
(translation courtesy of this website)
And how about this poem by the 17th-century metaphysical poet George Herbert:
Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-ey’d Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lack’d anything.
“A guest,” I answer’d, “worthy to be here”;
Love said, “You shall be he.”
“I, the unkind, the ungrateful? ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee.”
Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
“Who made the eyes but I?”
“Truth, Lord, but I have marr’d them; let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.”
“And know you not,” says Love, “who bore the blame?”
“My dear, then I will serve.”
“You must sit down,” says Love, “and taste my meat.”
So I did sit and eat.
“Love”, in this poem, is another name for Christ. Who is male. From the first stanza, we can see that the speaker is obviously male too. Something to think about.
Judith & Gerson Goldhaber: “Noah and the Flood” (excerpt)
Award-winning poet Judith Goldhaber and her husband, the artist and physicist Gerson Goldhaber, have just released a sequel to their well-received collaboration, the illustrated poetry book Sonnets from Aesop. Their new collection, Sarah Laughed: Sonnets from Genesis, embellishes familiar Bible stories with humorous and mystical elements from midrash and folklore. Willis Barnstone writes, “Sarah Laughed is utterly charming, poem and icon…In the best tradition of imitation it illumines the Abrahamic religions.” The Goldhabers have kindly permitted me to reproduce the following excerpt from their “Noah and the Flood” sonnet sequence:
ii. The Time is Coming
God spoke to Noah when he became a man
and said, “The time is coming — build an Ark;
storm clouds are gathering; soon you will embark
upon the seas, as outlined in My plan.
Make the Ark as sturdy as you can —
line it with pitch, strip gopher trees of bark
to shape the hull, and lest it be too dark
cut windows, and a doorway.” Noah began
to do what God commanded, but worked slowly,
hoping in time the Lord might change His mind
regarding the destruction of mankind.
He begged the wicked to return to holy
customs, but they answered him with jeers.
And thus went by one hundred twenty years. 
iii. The Laughing Stock
At last the Ark was finished, and it stood
three hundred cubits long, and fifty wide,
three stories — thirty cubits — high inside
constructed out of seasoned gopher wood,
the laughing stock of Noah’s neighborhood.
“A flood?” the people mocked, “I’m terrified!
Look! Over there! Is that a rising tide
I see? Boo-hoo, I promise to be good!!”
But then Methuselah died, and a malaise
descended on the people, for they knew
that God had stayed His hand until the few
good men still living reached their final days.
A dark cloud veiled the sun; the sky was bleak,
and Noah sniffed the wind and said, “A week.”
iv. Bird to Bird
Compared to getting humankind to heed
the urgent warnings, putting out the word
to animals was easy. Bird to bird
the news was spread at supersonic speed.
By nightfall all the beasts of earth had heard
the message, and they readily agreed
to group themselves according to their breed
(scaly, hairy, hard-shelled, feathered, furred)
and line up in a queue beside the Ark.
Birds sang and cattle mooed and lions roared
as Noah gently welcomed them aboard
and sealed the door against the growing dark.
At last, on bended knee, nose to the ground,
he gathered up the ants, lest they be drowned. 
v. A Mighty Cry
The sun turned black, and lightning streaked the sky,
somewhere behind the clouds a strange light bloomed
and faded, and at last the thunder boomed,
bringing the first drops. Then a mighty cry
arose from those who’d chosen to defy
the warning signs, and callously resumed
their sinful ways. “Even now you are not doomed,”
despairing, Noah cried, “repent or die!”
On board the Ark, through unbelieving eyes
the animals beheld the death of man.
Sworn adversaries since the world began
wept freely as they said their last goodbyes.
Even man’s ancient enemy the snake
shed bitter tears that day for mankind’s sake.
“Pocket Full of Violet” and Other New Poems by “Conway”
My prison pen pal “Conway” continues to make great strides in his poetry and artwork. As I mentioned in last month’s post, conditions have improved at his new location, where he has a job in the library and access to colored pencils and a typewriter. I hope to reproduce some of his drawings here soon. He often picks up themes from the classics he has been reading and reworks them in a voice that’s all his own. He sent me these poems after reading T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land”. I heard some echoes of Eliot’s closing section (“What the thunder said”) in the first poem below.
In his July 17 letter, Conway writes,
“…The other day while going through work change (strip search) the lady (if you wanna call her that!) searched my lunch (state issue baloney, apple, bread & mustard) well I had put a scooter pie inside the bag, I had purchased from canteen — she said I was not allowed to have it, who knows what (security risk) this would present, ‘the great marshmallow pie war’ so I ate it, you know, destroyed the evidence, literally….
“OK now on to bad news, they shot me down Calif Supreme Court on my writ of Habeas Corpus. So now I must file in Federal court. The basis for the appeal is #1 violation of contract (plea agreement) being as there was no mention of 3 strikes law in original plea bargain in 1987 that if I was arrested for non serious crime I would receive life in prison. I have good federal case law that confirms my argument plus the due process doctrines. It’s hard to get anyone’s ear on this stuff, though. Everyone is so caught up in their own drama they could care less about all the people stuck in here on an illegal law, as long as they have their big screen TV and what-nots….”
From July 26:
“I’ve been going to work almost every day since I got assigned to Vocational Education Clerk. So not much to blabber about, except last Saturday we had a yard down incident (upper yard) I’m lower yard, but they make us all prone out on our belly when they answer an alarm. Any rage, it was 109 degrees and I had my shirt off yard shorts on and was walking the concrete track with a buddy, so we belly crawl off the blazin hot concrete (stayin low) over to the grass field in the center of yard and, were obviously lookin to see who got got, so to speak, and I noticed that the grass was itching real bad, and thinkin it had just been a long time since I laid in the grass, I commented to my buddy “man this grass itches” about that time he looks over at me and says “Dude you got Ants all over you” Sure as heck I’d laid myself smack dab on an ant hole, so we slow crawled sideways and I brushed the critters off me, feelin like the interloper. Crazy huh? I know an Ant can’t move a rubber tree plant, but they sure moved me 🙂 “
Pocket Full of Violet
What love can clutch me
will remain forever, sheltered inside
the refuge of this stone heart
among a lazy river of stars
rising to meet my eyes awake
searching this endless silence
waiting for a break, carefully.
Chances & chains connect our soul
with so many sighs undone, reflecting
glittering like glass marbles
framed in stone and drowned by tears
shuffled savagely by foul years.
Broken fingers of the wind
departed softly unheard, and wept
swept through a lost window
behind another dull evening moon
bringing the bright kite
with a pocket full of violet
waiting beyon this wall
heavy on my heart
promising a new start
in an empty chapel
built by the lean,
mean and broken, spider’ web.
I sat alone in the pew
behind myself, daring my heart
to turn the key and cope
pierce this fierce dark with hope…
********
Spider
A spider hurls his rope up high
into an invisible windless sky.
His silk flag floats down
spinning a sticky town.
He laced up a Butterfly begging to be free
he swallowed her, but won’t feast on me
I wave my middle finger, curse & mock
he smiles and points at his key to my lock.
Someday, he motions, but not just yet
I wonder, do spiders ever regret
forget the paralyzed pleas of their prey
cursing the web, his bite, this Day…
********
Little Brick
This little brick went to prison
that little brick went home
that little brick went missin’
this little brick’s on his own
that little brick the cops hassle
put the little brick back in jail
built a little brick road & a castle
brick by brick straight to hell…
********
The Gavel
When the Gavel came down it glistened
should’ve splintered from the sound
echoing in my mind, still shaking the ground
no one else heard but I listened…
When the gavel came down I bled
while my family mourns, I’m alive still cold
buried in concrete on steel shelf
filed away, story untold
When the gavel came down
we all shut the book on life, in this scene
a library of lost souls
somewhere-n-nowhere
and everywhere in-between
Then the gavel spoke, deafened
I started to choke, lost my mind
for all life to spend
in this library of prison, when
the gavel gave its final decision…
In his July 17 letter, Conway writes,
“…The other day while going through work change (strip search) the lady (if you wanna call her that!) searched my lunch (state issue baloney, apple, bread & mustard) well I had put a scooter pie inside the bag, I had purchased from canteen — she said I was not allowed to have it, who knows what (security risk) this would present, ‘the great marshmallow pie war’ so I ate it, you know, destroyed the evidence, literally….
“OK now on to bad news, they shot me down Calif Supreme Court on my writ of Habeas Corpus. So now I must file in Federal court. The basis for the appeal is #1 violation of contract (plea agreement) being as there was no mention of 3 strikes law in original plea bargain in 1987 that if I was arrested for non serious crime I would receive life in prison. I have good federal case law that confirms my argument plus the due process doctrines. It’s hard to get anyone’s ear on this stuff, though. Everyone is so caught up in their own drama they could care less about all the people stuck in here on an illegal law, as long as they have their big screen TV and what-nots….”
From July 26:
“I’ve been going to work almost every day since I got assigned to Vocational Education Clerk. So not much to blabber about, except last Saturday we had a yard down incident (upper yard) I’m lower yard, but they make us all prone out on our belly when they answer an alarm. Any rage, it was 109 degrees and I had my shirt off yard shorts on and was walking the concrete track with a buddy, so we belly crawl off the blazin hot concrete (stayin low) over to the grass field in the center of yard and, were obviously lookin to see who got got, so to speak, and I noticed that the grass was itching real bad, and thinkin it had just been a long time since I laid in the grass, I commented to my buddy “man this grass itches” about that time he looks over at me and says “Dude you got Ants all over you” Sure as heck I’d laid myself smack dab on an ant hole, so we slow crawled sideways and I brushed the critters off me, feelin like the interloper. Crazy huh? I know an Ant can’t move a rubber tree plant, but they sure moved me 🙂 “
Pocket Full of Violet
What love can clutch me
will remain forever, sheltered inside
the refuge of this stone heart
among a lazy river of stars
rising to meet my eyes awake
searching this endless silence
waiting for a break, carefully.
Chances & chains connect our soul
with so many sighs undone, reflecting
glittering like glass marbles
framed in stone and drowned by tears
shuffled savagely by foul years.
Broken fingers of the wind
departed softly unheard, and wept
swept through a lost window
behind another dull evening moon
bringing the bright kite
with a pocket full of violet
waiting beyon this wall
heavy on my heart
promising a new start
in an empty chapel
built by the lean,
mean and broken, spider’ web.
I sat alone in the pew
behind myself, daring my heart
to turn the key and cope
pierce this fierce dark with hope…
********
Spider
A spider hurls his rope up high
into an invisible windless sky.
His silk flag floats down
spinning a sticky town.
He laced up a Butterfly begging to be free
he swallowed her, but won’t feast on me
I wave my middle finger, curse & mock
he smiles and points at his key to my lock.
Someday, he motions, but not just yet
I wonder, do spiders ever regret
forget the paralyzed pleas of their prey
cursing the web, his bite, this Day…
********
Little Brick
This little brick went to prison
that little brick went home
that little brick went missin’
this little brick’s on his own
that little brick the cops hassle
put the little brick back in jail
built a little brick road & a castle
brick by brick straight to hell…
********
The Gavel
When the Gavel came down it glistened
should’ve splintered from the sound
echoing in my mind, still shaking the ground
no one else heard but I listened…
When the gavel came down I bled
while my family mourns, I’m alive still cold
buried in concrete on steel shelf
filed away, story untold
When the gavel came down
we all shut the book on life, in this scene
a library of lost souls
somewhere-n-nowhere
and everywhere in-between
Then the gavel spoke, deafened
I started to choke, lost my mind
for all life to spend
in this library of prison, when
the gavel gave its final decision…
Anne Caston: “A Man, Returning, Will Not Be The Man Who Left”
A world view: for months and months before he left
for war, he’d spoken of it as if to be without one
was to be godless. And then the planes. Four.
Forget a world view. What she wants
today is a table solid enough to set things on:
a lamp, a pitcher, a bowl of lemons.
She wants a dress the color of brandy.
She wants a black lace shawl.
A silk slip. A locket.
But Love, that tenderest tyrant of all,
fastens its necklace of flame
at her throat and she gives herself
over again to the lesser glory of who she is
with him: the glory of a bent spoke
and the rut it fell into.
She imagines him sometimes now
as he must have been then
in that other kingdom of men:
his doll-like face in its little uniform
of death; his shuttered eyes,
opening, closing;
and, underneath the ribs,
in place of an actual heart, the far-off
knocking of the guns that opened him.
Reprinted by permission from the website Why Are We In Iraq?
Caron Andregg: “The Thursday Night Trap Club”
We’re skeet shooting
the potter’s seconds.
The catapult slings
skewed plates, cracked
vases in erratic arcs
across the dry creek canyon.
Each Thursday evening
we obliterate
the week’s mistakes.
When the pellet-spread connects,
explodes a shrapnel star
it’s an absolution.
Lucinda’s been casting
reproductions of Egyptian
bowls with tiny feet.
One seems near perfect;
but when I set it
on the trap-box edge
it lists, daylight gleaming
beneath the toes of one foot.
When wet and forming
it must have rested
on a warp, something
not quite level in the firing.
It seems somehow unfair
this small, lame thing
wound up in the slag-box
destined for buckshot
just because it totters.
And it strikes me
how much easier it is
to love a flawed object –
the supplicant’s posture
like a pair of cupped hands;
the sloped bowl tilted in offering;
its little feet of clay.
Caron Andregg is co-editor of the fine journal Cider Press Review, which is accepting submissions through Aug. 31. They also sponsor a poetry manuscript prize open for entries Sept. 1 (deadline Nov. 30). This poem was originally published in Rattle.