as long as you get your point across

16D

                                 BY SHERMAN ALEXIE

On the airplane, the woman across the aisle and one row in front of me was beautiful. She wore the best pair of blue jeans in the history of the world. Okay, I’m exaggerating. Is there such a thing as the greatest jeans in the world? Can denim be sacred? Probably not. But I’m trying to make a point here. The woman was an epic series of curves. The ghost of some ancient Greek lute player is vainly searching for his instrument so he can sing ballads for and about her. Okay, I’m exaggerating again.

/

rimbaud's love of sounds

Vowels

A black, E white, I red, U green, O blue: vowels, I shall tell, one day, of your mysterious origins: A, black velvety jacket of brilliant flies which buzz around cruel smells, Gulfs of shadow; E, whiteness of vapours and of tents, lances of proud glaciers, white kings, shivers of cow-parsley; I, purples, spat blood, smile of beautiful lips in anger or in the raptures of penitence; U, waves, divine shudderings of viridian seas, the peace of pastures dotted with animals, the peace of the furrows which alchemy prints on broad studious foreheads; O, sublime Trumpet full of strange piercing sounds, silences crossed by [Worlds and by Angels]: –O the Omega! the violet ray of [His] Eyes!

. . .

Voyelles

A noir, E blanc, I rouge, U vert, O bleu: voyelles, Je dirai quelque jour vos naissances latentes: A, noir corset velu des mouches éclatantes Qui bombinent autour des puanteurs cruelles, Golfes d'ombre; E, candeurs des vapeurs et des tentes, Lances des glaciers fiers, rois blancs, frissons d'ombelles; I, pourpres, sang craché, rire des lèvres belles Dans la colère ou les ivresses pénitentes; U, cycles, vibrements divins des mers virides, Paix des pâtis semés d'animaux, paix des rides Que l'alchimie imprime aux grands fronts studieux; O, suprême Clairon plein des strideurs étranges, Silences traversés des [Mondes et des Anges]: —O l'Oméga, rayon violet de [Ses] Yeux!

. . .

.

all that is not gold

HYMNUS AD PATREM SINENSIS

I praise those ancient Chinamen
Who left me a few words,
Usually a pointless joke or a silly
     question
A line of poetry drunkenly scrawled
     on the margin of a quick
                    splashed picture—bug, leaf,
                    caricature of Teacher
on paper held together now by little
     more than ink
& their own strength brushed 
     momentarily over it

Their world and several others since
Gone to hell in a handbasket, they
      knew it—
Cheered as it whizzed by—
& conked out among the busted
      spring rain cherryblossom
      winejars
Happy to have saved us all.

                                Philip Whelan

..

a thumbprint

   


OLD RAILROAD tracks run
      like text along a swerve of 
water,  a story of the way we've
moved from there to here,  along
the axis of a past that endures in
lines of rusted steel and crum-
bling timber.  City and forest
both began as rain.  Like clock-
work,  a geyser shoots a spume
of steam and vapor from a crack
in the earth.


                           Aaron  Parrett

prurient perceptions

     What Peeping Tom Knows         

In the silence of his gaze

in silence surrounding women

he beholds,  he feels the touch

of yearning,  like a hand once

 laid along the curve of a face.

A hand no longer there.

He hears the pulse and flutter

of longing,  like a bird wings

beating in the rafters of old barns.

Loudly,  startled -- then soft,

softly as feathers that descend

through shafts of light and dust.

In each window he peers:  feathers,

feathers -- he watches them alight

finally,  at the bottom of his eyes.

          Charles Levendosky

......

dialectics with the eternal

Plato, Azaleas, Bluebird                  

  

A shaft of sunlight on the creek; in the shallows
Three trout slip in & out of shadow, nudging moss-green stones.

The mathematicians tell us that there are
An infinite number of infinities.

Did I say July? My grandmother said, I meant 1953.
A spray of lilacs in a small vase.

I was trying to identify the little bird in the pine tree
That makes a sound like Plato crying in the forest.

Spooned together in bed, my arms around her, our fingers
Touching. I notice our hands are sleeping swans.

                                       ~

Old & twisted cottonwoods line the creek;
It’s their asymmetry that gives them balance.

Is there anything you have left undone?
Is there any undone thing you have left?

We lay down in our bodies. Such a nice place to be.
Thank you thank you thank you thank you…

Rilke words: star, puppet, mirror, rose.
Dickinson words: purple, soul, secret.

Did I say lilacs? I meant azaleas.
Did I say Plato? I meant Chief Joseph.

                                       ~

Silhouettes of horses returning to the barn at dusk.
A mountain bluebird sings a last song with his whole body.

It’s not ugliness or violence
That will break your heart, but beauty.

I don’t think I can bear it any longer, my friend said,
& I don’t even know what it is.

This evening’s sunfall is a literal translation
Of Dickinson’s poem beginning, The skies can’t keep their secret.

Let worry sleep; let hope dream.
Let silence have the last word.

                             Gary Short

///

like the birth of country music

 Driving in Oklahoma              

On humming rubber along this white concrete,
lighthearted between the gravities
of source and destination like a man
halfway to the moon
in this bubble of tuneless whistling
at seventy miles an hour from the windvents,
over prairie swells rising
and falling, over the quick offramp
that drops to its underpass and the truck
thundering beneath as I cross
with the country music twanging out my windows,
I'm grooving down this highway feeling
technology is freedom's other name when
—a meadowlark
comes sailing across my windshield
with breast shining yellow
and five notes pierce
the windroar like a flash
of nectar on mind,
gone as the country music swells up and drops
                                me wheeling down
                      my notch of cement-bottomed sky
                             between home and away
and wanting
to move again through country that a bird
has defined wholly with song,
and maybe next time see how
                         he flies so easy, when he sings.

                                           Carter Revard

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