Lightning breaks the hum of planes,
and in the desert night tinsel strands of fire
reveal the pastel fabric of the sky.
Laughing like children, sparks burst
as they fall sizzling to the ground.
We turn to each other, and smile
at this mystery in the heavens.
On the darkened ramparts sentinels laugh
as they fire at planes, coming in low,
gliding like gulls, swarming like bees.
Bombs scream shrilly as they fall.
In the morning, ministers whisper respectfully
in the President's ear as they drink tea and talk of
strategy.
The baker sweats as he stokes his oven, and nearby
his neighbors gather around the radio
and wait patiently for their bread.
In shallow bunkers where smiling soldiers lie,
the young dream of glory, the old men of young wives.
The fable tells of a huntress with a thousand arrows
who stalks the desert land, and, seeing a soldier sleeping,
her breath of fire caresses his fists, her tongue licks his
throat,
and she winds a serpent belt around his neck before he can
wake.
The planes flew over us again last night.
Bombs exploded, lighting vacant ramparts and a pallid sky.
We do not go out to watch the desert storm sweep over the
land.
We do not listen to the generals on loudspeakers,
and the words of the poet are full of dread.
Now, in some distant place lie the sons of victory,
and an evil goddess watches over their sleep.
In the night, the song
of the grinding of wheels
in rusted circles rises from the hills
and fades in the wind.
The always distant human shadows move
mysteriously, like alien gods we respect
but do not know.
Enthralled, we watch them climb the hill
and descend again.
Notes of a song are wafted to us
that perhaps they hear or sing
but that we cannot understand,
we, encompassed by ourselves.
Seething fires cast away
accidental cinders and molecules.
In secret, children are folded
in the snow bosom of Mother Nurse,
who, giving birth, gives no more.
In the mind of the castaway child
is folded the memory of curtains
that fly at a darkened, empty window.
That, she thinks, is destiny.
In time, the hands of another stranger
reach again outstretched and empty,
and the night falls permanent and complete.
I live atop a housing block,
descending, not the bannisters of youth,
but in a trembling elevator cage,
passing neighbors suspended
in the glistening winter's cold.
It's a long wait for the wan winter sun
to signal hopeful spring.
Others live hidden behind closed doors.
I know them not, and see them almost never.
Yet we descend each day to near-vacant letter boxes
to verify the 99 and 44/100% pure of our solitude.
Lobby mirrors multiply any presence,
and I shrink from strangers everywhere,
light warping all into shards which burn like ice before
softening on the skin into innocent transparencies,
like words in bedeviling simplicity that pierce
and are gone, never meaning what I heard,
never meaning...
I review my inventory of ancient pain,
harvests of gall on a land of fertile hope.
Where the young man saw larks gaily soaring,
the old man looks away.
He smells the sting of ether, and wonders
whether death might be better than "all that."
Yet I am not dead, for the frosty windows of my room
reflect shadowy movement within,
and in my head, fierce hopes are spoken
in tones of wary moderation,
cast out casually like a hungry fisher s net,
but returning torn from their voyage to the depths
less than empty, if that can be,
to begin again.
In is where? he asked. Where the clouds are,
of course, but I could not reveal
the eyes' machinery for such visions.
Oh, the sun, I thought,
and stepped into time again.
Without this star that burns, what time is it?
Tell me about the falcon, and how does he fly?
Does he circle in riddles,
like the hand of the sacrificer?
A Rembrandt paints a face, and it is gone.
A bird flies out, and brings twigs in its beak, and yet--
the indefatigable bell that keeps on ringing.
Put away your cares, the leaf of the pear tree will sing.
A man walks, eyes downward bent,
not seeing shadows fall
of creatures tripping lightly
down streets quiet as minefields.
Today I learned that the sun has guns.
The flowering lemon tree can kill.
Silence.
There is no safety in sanctuary.
Spiders play hide-and-seek with us upon the beach,
denying the wisdom of the distant planets.
If a moth flits idly among branches
before the cave, it is not he who explains.
Ever hopeful, say in sequence what your life requires,
and it will be bracketed forever by the godless pencil.
Tell stories not to be alone,
but in the end your reply will be your echo.
Turtle is my name, the song is of pain.
Little fish are swimming around the anchor.
Elsewhere, all is dead.
And you?
12 names per minute
X
====
720 names per hour, into \graduates
__________
Dividend: 1.9111
or
1 hour, 54 minutes, and 36 seconds
we shall sit here
while the Chancellor,
"by the authority vested in
[him]
by the Board of Regents,"
bestows "the degrees
with all rights and privileges
hereunto appertaining"
to Bud Aarons, Susan Able....
Our female speaker gracefully
claimed her turf
--"Over half of all graduates
in the state this year are
women"--
then according to book,
she exhorted the graduates
to adapt to the tight market.
Now she drowses through the
roster
read by a pompous English professor
as each student hands him a 3X5
card
and whispers the correct pronunciation.
Champagne corks syncopate
with each family's claps
--"Way to gooooooow, Laaaaary!"--
and brothers, cousins,
spouses,
jockey for position
in the camera line
where the Chancellor shakes graduates' hands.
Did claps and handshakes precede speech?
Only accidentally did our species select tongue
instead of palm to codify our knowing?
Dean Trader slurs his investiture
of the candidates for master's degrees.
Perhaps he had some of the champagne?
We could have clapped a much amplified Morse,
precursor to FORTRAN and BASIC,
palm closure making diphthongs down South.
Our tongue instead of our thumb
could have done the work of the world.
Our forbearers marched sons
through clapping lines
as an elder clipped their foreskins.
Men clipped daughters' clitorises
to place them as docile wives.
Now No. 1212,
Judith Genevieve
Grumpholzenheimer,
waves her plastic-leather
cotton-sheepskin
to Mom and Dad, as her brother,
Bill Grumpholzenheimer, No.
1213,
holds at the back of his throat
the bite of the champagne he
guzzled earlier.
A large light bulb buzzes
in the 2 seconds between each
name.
Dr. James Steinbeck, known widely
because he has read every
selection
of the Book-of-the-Month Club
for the last 25 years,
welcomes the new alumni
"to take on the burdens
as well as the privileges of status,
to give to continuing programs
of aesthetic and ethical
significance on the
campus...."
Probably 732 of the guests,
46% of the graduates,
don't know what aesthetic means,
but they applaud as if they
do.
(We could have lied as easily as now
had our species talked by claps.)
Probably 82% of all here
would vote down taxes for
education.
Colleague Jim Naden tells me
he's going to resume jogging
over the holidays.
The head of psychology
whispers
that he's already back
at his 7 a.m. swim
since often people interrupt his noon slot.
100% of a sample of 60 graduates
given commitment
on my word association test said,
"putting into an asylum"
or "putting into jail."
"Still, they are no less concerned
than we are," argues my biology
colleague,
taking off his medieval hood:
"people help who no longer
know what holpen means.
"Somewhere out there,"
Quintin Crisp told a TV camera
when it was close enough
to bleed his eye shadow,
"mutants with two heads
are laughing at our fear of
radiation.
We will adapt as well as our forecreatures
who, curious, first gasped
oxygen,
an element corrosive enough to rust iron,
and crawled to the primal
shore."
Judy helps me out of my gown,
complaining that no local
church
has sought her talent,
though she sang weekly
at Ascension in New York City
--for three years a quiet
atheist
paid to wear a big bow
and march in Yaweh's parade.
We rent our space at half
what city campuses charge
but our lot seems lonelier
as the winter snows blow
through the river valley.
The graduates won't eat at McDonald's
Burger Chef, or Hardee's,
at least not tonight.
He used to
put fresh
pillowcases
on a large
bible
inside his
closet
hoping that
when he
used them
heaven
would bless
his dreams.
My eyes
can't quite
open
and just
outside
our bedroom
window
subtle glances
reveal
your grace
breathing out
cool caresses
with every
liquid syllable.
living inside yourself
standing in the middle of nowhere
and believing in the mercy of the world
clenched in passion
you have locked into the notes
that only the Gods were meant to hear
The presidential candidate said in his speech
to corporate America, "To all you CEO's out there
all you have to do is break down and give
your people a raise. Why do you think of your
employees in terms of cost instead of assets
to be developed. They need the money
more than you do. If it means that you have
to build a smaller mansion, take fewer tax-free
vacations, God knows they only get two weeks
a year, if they're lucky. And God help help them
if they get sick. Sell the third Mercedes before
you cut their medical benefits. Your employees
are all driving to work in used cars that have
over 120,000 miles on them. What are you
thinking of? What makes you treat people so
horribly? That's all I have to say about that."
David Sutherland is a widely published poet whose work has most recently appeared in The American Literary Review, The Hollins Critic, The Cortland Review, and The Reader (Oxford University). David's latest collection of poems, Steel Umbrellas (Archer Books/Cadmus Editions), has received very positive reviews from The Cortland Review, Tintern Abbey and The Melic Review. Several of the poems in his new volume were nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 1999.
In bengal lights, in camellia bright
Flares and sheets of flames,
Where wren and stars and
Mexican nights tarry then
Rush down step on dangerous
Step. You are too close to dream
Too close to roll off into
The sierra's half night that bakes
Down plain, and distant chime
On distant sky carries you in singsong
Grace, lovingly, gently embraces
You in this blanket of love.
To drift off into an ecstasy as fickle as
The wind in our eyes . . . Tonight
We go naked over tundra,
Soak up the last heat of an act
For sustenance, will ourselves on ethereal
Soles and bodiless terms,
Burrow headlong into the last cool flesh
That tapers into sand.
Seen on the inverted bowl of
Celestial events the meaningless
Derides itself, is measured up
Against itself, flounders in the
Drift of ocean becoming shore,
Shore becoming sea.
As even the elegant redwood
Of centuries past must turn
Its rings to stone, stone to dust.
So with us, these circles of time
Like a sphinx decides its ground,
Its footing, as though the first stone to place
Will be no different than its last.
Millennia will pass their tumulus
Into the verdure of time,
Spend in a thimble's movement
Worlds and peaks and summits,
Recede quickly into the silage
Of entropy's passion for
Here and gone, then rest
Beside us in comparative aegis
With no less terrible an envy.
To be certain that our dual nature
Of experience is no less mutable
Than a fern's reflection off a lake
Or a sunfish purporting magnitude
With glimmer in shoal,
One can easily believe a snowfall
Or rolling mist is muted under thunderous sky,
And that nature aided with spells
Hides half its ecstasy - half its pain.
The object of our reality personifies
A man on the moon betrayed
By this diminutive sense of self
Caught wishing on the starlight
Of millenniums unchanged.
Her face, numinous as fire,
her mouth, a dulcimer of timbres cast
in a portrait of flesh and form.
Motionless the dialogue paints itself
into Modigliani's distortion of
form, physics, style of perfection,
or Vermeer's almond tart of serene attitude
mirrored to a fantasy of boudoir and post.
For today's impression, staccato, cafe au lait, nude
model, graces the canvas on perturbed air.
And a evening star on a wind's hard edge finds
the hallucination of the thing emerge, dissolve
on this palette of love, we paint a certain pathos,
a rumination of Dali-esque proportions, a halt
in the distance we approach unaware.
And like these certain Chaldeans,
these certain critics of divination,
one can only chart the beaute' du diable,
remain covetous over her ascendence
or blink to reposition the illusion.
"Christ may have risen all at once, the gospel according
to Betty Crocker |
He takes the bread from the oven, pausing
midway between the bread board and cooling rack,
absorbing the gluteny scent through crusty skin
--the color of a child's arm
after a long hike on a summer's day.
She says, "I have a marvelous sourdough starter,
passed on to me from a cousin who ran a bakery--
I can send it to you."
One pinch of starter travels two-thousand miles,
five hours through adventure, through altitude,
the acrid odor filling the cabin of the plane.
"It makes a bread that Jesus would be proud to call body."
"Just a pinch," is all she asks.
She says that not to let her test it is tantamount to lack of
love.
He gives in, just to see her face grow sanguine and lustful.
Except once, when he knows the loaf needs five minutes to
set.
She says, "How can you deny me?"
He once baked thirteen loaves for a homeless shelter;
then, nervous over numerology, he baked a fourteenth.
He couldn't remember which one had been the offending loaf,
so he started all over again. This time he scored each one
with a distinguishing mark using the blade of a sharp knife.
In the bread bowl, he mixes flour, water, salt.
Kneads, lets it ferment. Kneads again, pulling and folding,
folding and pulling, lets it come into fullness.
Then lifts it into the oven, from where it will emerge
so finely crusted, so evenly textured, so giving of itself.
Bread that cries, when placed in her mouth,
"Eat me and you will never die."
Lambs, jostled, forgive
the wolf, break
its taste in lamb
into a toddler's gallop,
bumping headlong
into thick-piled ewes--
lanolin slicking their noses, as
they stumble on the fescue
dotting the valley,
a pointillist's landscape.
No shepherd, no sheep dog,
no gate to enter (the Lord's or otherwise);
a small, orange plastic snow fence,
neatly staked at four corners
with steel posts,
gives form to the sheepcote.
The last ounce of sun
a violet tremor the wolf
forgives, lingering
along the western ridge,
the shepherd's fear
returning to the valley.
A ram, brown and floculent,
secures a silent corner
of the fold--eyes intent
upon a slow-moving shadow.
The wolf culls the sickly
lamb, and is gone--
sleek as mercury,
leaving behind a hardy,
inelegant flock
for shepherd's bidding.
"It's hard for me to think
of sheep as anything
but sheep," says the shepherd,
"I've worked them for twenty years
and they never became anything more."
After Psalm 23
You prepare a table for us
in front of our enemies,
picking the sheepfold clean
with your own hands--
raw with the sting of nettle,
stained the color of sheep laurel.
Your back is stiff from bending,
from holding your arm to your lap.
Shirtsleeve full of false hellebore,
which you say will give us
one-eyed lambs, and lupine,
that wolfish poison we love so well.
From the bluestem foothills
comes the hush of rustling.
You look to the north,
sighting down landscape,
scenting the wind.
Your breath fills the air,
as pungent as pipe smoke.
Goodness and mercy, friend,
come forth from you as naturally
as clouds darkening this valley.
We would follow you anywhere,
dear shepherd, putting our fears aside,
although you often seem foolhardy--
O, that all days could be so:
This green land, this restful pool.
"Grace Happens." a bumpersticker |
The rain comes with the familiar cadence
of an old friend chattering-on
about nothing in particular.
And the still, small voice
comes from out of nowhere
--an unlikely sound in a spring storm.
No thunder, no trumpet:
"So this is your house and how you keep it."
The house, lived in for years,
perhaps recently swept clean
--you keep a house fit for spiders.
It comes with a calm,
moves like an undulance in a pine floor.
And the still, small voice that resonates
below thunder, reaches under the rain
to take part in the holy chorus,
encircling in a pool of slow-moving glory.
You talk about redemption,
talk about the need for the personal,
and then go quietly about your work.
When the storm ends,
it's with a murmur, "Peace be with you."
You cannot recall every word.
Sing praises, now, for that stillness
and for the need to make out the sound;
sing praises, now, for the thunder,
which did not come with the rain,
but that filled your heart
of a spring evening, in your repose.
It is your own voice calling to you,
and you must take heed.
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Copyright © 1997 - 2000
Dr. Gloria
Glickstein Brame
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