Tag: Poetry

Pas de Deux on the High Wire

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Photo credit: dadcentric.com

For Chelsea and Maz, whose wedding last weekend prompted me to dust this off.
And for Patti.

Pas de Deux on the High Wire
by John Unger Zussman

One Saturday, in our twenties,
We put up the tightrope.
Eyed it warily.  No sweat,
We reassured each other.
Piece of cake.

At first, we could barely manage
A few quick steps on the rope,
Stretched taut, inches off the floor.
We’d push out tentatively,
Teeter, recover, flail, step off.
Laugh nervously, try again.

No instructor, no mentor,
Just the trying, and ourselves.
Slowly we learned to center our balance,
Arms extended, touching lightly for support.
The posts grew higher, year by year,
And our moves more intricate.
We took tumbles, gathered bruises.
When one wavers, the rope jiggles,
Endangering the other.
Once I toppled from eight feet.
She came too. It took years
To recover.  The scars
Remind us how we learned.

Now we run, hand in hand, from peak to peak,
Skyscraper to skyscraper, triple pirouette,
Grand jeté, entrechat huit. I partner her
In a deep penché, the tip of her pointe shoes
Balanced on the narrow wire. It is exhilarating
And marvelous. We are confident until,
In middle age, we look down. Then we seem
Unbelievably, foolishly precarious.

Just us two. No children, families distant,
A few friends gazing up from below.
We are working without a net. It is glorious,
Yet there is always the premonition
Of the inevitable gust of wind.

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: JUDITH NEWTON

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LAST QUARTET
By Judith Newton

In the end,
you would no longer hear your music—
you, whose rooms had been alive with it,
whose life was Late Quartet.

I think of you and I remember Beethoven
in a Berkeley house,
the light from quiet windows
heightening the patina of well used surfaces,
ferns, like green swords,
piercing the heart of the afternoon,
and, through the swelling turbulence of the strings—
the counterpoint of intellect
serenely resonant at its labors.

To forgo your music was, for you, the worst farewell,
to live in silence, a dark prelude to what you knew would come.
I think of you in the end—a holy man despite yourself—
bearing your body’s discord with deliberate grace,
and with a tremolo of acquiescence
closing off the sweet vibratos of this world.

I think of you, in this after moment,
when the tone arm lifts, the record ends,
and Late Quartet
still dilates the impassioned air.
(“Last Quartet” appears here today with permission from the poet.)
Judith Newton lives in Kensington, CA. She is the author of several books of nonfiction and is completing a memoir: The Joys of Cooking: A Love Story. She is a food columnist for the iPinion Syndicate, and is completing a book of poetry entitled Poetry for the Immune Deficient.

Editor’s Note: Judith Newton’s poems go straight to the heart of what it is to deal with with loss as the one left behind. I was just talking about this with a dear friend of mine who suffered the loss of his partner, and, like Judith Newton, wrote his way through his struggle. I dedicate today’s post to my friend, who knows what it is to endure loss, and who is in tune with the music inherent in life and death.

Want more by and about Judith Newton?
The Joys of Cooking – A Love Story
iPinion
As It Ought To Be

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: SEAN KARNS

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CUTTING DOWN THE PROPERTY LINE
By Sean Karns

1. Tire Swing

He hacks at the thicket, grabs hold
of the blackberry canes,
bloodies his hands;
blackens them with juices.
He looks at his hands,
sees labor: a future in tearing
down. There are children swinging
on a swinging tire. He wants to join them.
He feels a stare; his father sits
on the porch; it’s mid-day and hot.
The yard is dry grass and dirt.
He feels the thorny sting
to take away
what is in the house
that keeps him hacking.
There’s a silk scarf
his mother left under his pillow.
The tire swing creaks.
A swing that creaks
like a deranged mosquito
singing in his ear.
They swing, seeing
how far the lake.
He rubs the blackness
from his hands,
looks at the house, its tilted porch
and chipped paint.
The dark tree-line
and forgetting the clink
of the doorknob.

2. Woods

He goes farther into the woods;
his father stares—
faces in the bark of every tree.
He wants to drop a match
on the everywhere leaves.
And then the twisting
of the bronze door knob.
He hides his face with the scarf
from the footsteps and the black
polished boots under the bed.
He gathers the sturdiest tree
limbs he can pull
with his thirteen years of strength.
With a hatchet, he cuts the limbs
into logs and hammers
them around a tree.
He stole rope
from his father’s work-shed.

3. Fortress

He peeks out of the hollow
of the oak tree.
He slips on the dewy ground.
His father’s dream-weight
pushes down on him. He swipes the mud
from his lips. The insects
sound like the twist
of a door knob. So do the branches
falling. He throws
the rope over the tree limb,
dollies up his scarf, hatchet and hammer.
There’s no higher place
for him to throw his rope.

 

(“Cutting Down the Property Line” previously appeared in Mayday Magazine and is reprinted here today with permission from the poet.)

Sean Karns’ work has appeared or is forthcoming in Cold Mountain Review, Folio, Los Angeles Review, Ninth Letter, Mayday Magazine, Pleiades, and elsewhere.

Editor’s Note: There is a weight to the aural nature of the words in today’s piece that alludes to a corresponding heaviness of subject matter. A narrative poem, the story is not neatly laid out for the reader, but instead consonants become palpable, and the story oozes from the language, thick like syrup forcibly drained from a tree deep in the woods.

Want more by and about Sean Karns?
Mayday Magazine (1)
Mayday Magazine (3)
Sean Karns reads his poem “A Rural Weekend”

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: OKLA ELLIOTT

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ON PERFECTION
By Okla Elliott

1.
My arrogance is perfect—
I want everything I say taken down
in italics. I want
footnotes longer than the original text.
Every woman and many men
will want to look into the green almond eye
of my perversion.
They will thank me
for the privilege of disinterested touch.

I claim to be made of starstuff
brought here across a million million miles.

I claim to be happy
in the inevitable loneliness.

2.
The sanctified blade is perfect.

The colossal slowness of dying is perfect.

Everything is exactly as it should be
here where a goat’s shit glistens with the water
of an idyllic river
he drank at hours ago,
hydrating his living (and dying) cells.

I have become a mystic
a perfect destiny
after all these years
of studied incredulity.

The unsanctified flesh is perfect,
I tell you,
because it always-already knew
every kind of love
our holy pornographers pretend
they invented.

3.
The slick tongue of metaphysics
flicks between stained teeth.

A tongue that could wet
dry lips or give a lecture
on Wittgenstein or lick the needy
flesh we hide (stupidly)
most of the enormous time we have.

4.
The spindle pricks the thumb wants
the needle.

A vest of goldthread
should be buried
with the dead.

Everything will rhyme
in the afterlife
as it does in the beforedeath.
It’s as I’ve
said: perfection permeates
the sound fundament
and the cracked firmament.

It’s as I’ve said, tsk tsk,
it’s perfect
just as it is.

The feast prepares itself.

***

(“On Perfection” previously appeared in Zone 3 and in the poet’s latest chapbook, A Vulgar Geography, and is reprinted here today with permission from the poet.)

Okla Elliott is currently the Illinois Distinguished Fellow at the University of Illinois, where he studies comparative literature and cultural theory. He also holds an MFA from Ohio State University. For the academic year 2008-09, he was a visiting assistant professor at Ohio Wesleyan University. His drama, non-fiction, poetry, short fiction, and translations have appeared or are forthcoming in Another Chicago Magazine, Indiana Review, The Literary Review, Natural Bridge, New Letters, North Dakota Quarterly, A Public Space, and The Southeast Review, among others. He is the author of three poetry chapbooks–The Mutable Wheel, Lucid Bodies and Other Poems, and A Vulgar Geography–and he co-edited (with Kyle Minor) The Other Chekhov.

Editor’s Note: Okla Elliot is the Co-Creator and Webmaster of As It Ought To Be. But today’s post is not about nepotism. Today’s post is about excellent poetry and the fact that you ought to be reading it. Recently Okla sent me a copy of his latest chapbook, A Vulgar Geography, at my behest. The first night I read it cover to cover, something I am almost never able to do with books of poetry. There were moments I literally had to put the book down and exclaim out loud to myself with amazement at the brilliance of a line, a moment, an idea. The second night I re-read the book, cover to cover, this time aloud. My mouth took to the words like a finely crafted dessert. The way one consonant rolled into another, the words were tangible morsels on my tongue.

I say this not because Okla is my Editor here at As It Ought To Be. Not because he is my friend, nor because he is an inspiration, though he is these things. I say this because it is true: A Vulgar Geography is a near-perfect book of poetry. From its outward appearance (a simple clean design with a lone, intricate image that reflects the book’s title) to the types of poems chosen (ranging from left-aligned to prose to experimental) to–most importantly–the poems themselves, which are finely crafted masterpieces of thought, idea, story, and word. I highly recommend you don’t take my word for it, but rather, read A Vulgar Geography and find out for yourself.

Want to read more by and about Okla Elliot?
Buy Okla Elliott’s new book, A Vulgar Geography.

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: W. TODD KANEKO

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NORTHWEST POEM
by W. Todd Kaneko

You will find no herons perched
in this poem. No salmonberries or pine
cones on sodden paths through cedar.
But here is an old woman who slices
her calendar into weeks lost and weeks
to come—those piles sifting together
while she waits for the leaves to turn
into blankets full of moths and ravens.

Here is a girl who dwells in dollhouses
deep in this poem, porcelain boys hiding
fingers from whales’ teeth and butterfly
knives. There are no miles of shoreline
lapping at ends of days like wolves,
no fishladders swarming with sockeye,
only a skeleton where the ocean once was.

Extinction begins as absence, ends gaping
like a surgery, a hole in my chest
marking that mythology we call home.
Mount Rainier does not drift phantomlike
in this poem, but here is that old woman,
crooked under the weight of a century.
She waves off that flock of dark birds
thronging overhead, threatening to pluck
eyes from sockets, tongues from mouths,
until all we can discern is the tide washing
over bare feet, the sound of wings.


(“Northwest poem” previously appeared in Lantern Review and is reprinted here today with permission from the poet.)

W. Todd Kaneko lives and writes in Grand Rapids, Michigan. His stories and poems can be seen in Puerto Del Sol, Crab Creek Review, Fairy Tale Review, Portland Review, Southeast Review, Blackbird and elsewhere. He has received fellowships from Kundiman and the Kenyon Review Writer’s Workshop. He teaches at Grand Valley State University.

Editor’s Note: In response to today’s poem I say, “Thank God for stunning moments in poetry!” If not God, then The Universe, Creative Energy, The Muse. Here’s to W. Todd Kaneko’s muse, at the very least. She is a creature to be awed and honored.

Want to read more by and about W. Todd Kaneko?
Blackbird
Superstition Review
Word Riot

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: CATHERINE PIERCE

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FIREFLY
by Catherine Pierce

Its six legs coated with disease, it’s vulgar
like the aphid, the earwig. Its eyes are nightmare

globes. It does not love you or thank you
for the glass jar with air holes. Still, you want it

in your hands. Not for its yellow light like the soft
glow in the wooded cabin. Not for the vibrating

wings against your palms like champagne
bubbles bursting. Not even for the perfect

metaphors that ride on its sunflower-seed back—
the catching of a gone childhood, the memory

of keeping something alive. You pursue it
because it’s a slow beast, easily captured. Because

it hovers and floats. Because you can win at this,
and because it will fly off when you unfold

your hands, single-minded, unmoved by its loss.

 
(“Firefly” previously appeared in AGNI and is reprinted here today with permission from the poet.)
Catherine Pierce is the author of Famous Last Words (Saturnalia, 2008) and The Girls of Peculiar (forthcoming from Saturnalia in 2012). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Slate, Ploughshares, Boston Review, Best American Poetry 2011, and elsewhere. She lives in Starkville, Mississippi, where she teaches and co-directs the creative writing program at Mississippi State University.

Editor’s Note: I saw my first firefly this summer. I know, for those of you who grew up in the Midwest or on the East Coast this is a bit blasphemous, but we don’t have fireflies in San Francisco. I’ve dreamt of seeing one for as long as I can remember, and this summer, when conditions were right, someone who loves me very much and wanted to make my dream of fireflies a reality took me to an enchanted garden, and, lo and behold–magical creatures of my imagination! To me, today’s poem is as if looking at fireflies through Alice’s Looking Glass. I never understood why people would want to contain the creatures, how children could tear their glowing orbs from their bodies and wear them on the tips of their fingers.

Today’s poem is about the darker side of the allure of the firefly. Those human traits that make people want to capture them, to keep them in jars, to pursue only for the sake of the chase. Of course, as with so much poetry, today’s poem is also about human nature. “It does not love you or thank you / for the glass jar with air holes. Still, you want it / in your hands… Because you can win at this, / and because it will fly off when you unfold /your hands, single-minded, unmoved by its loss.”

Want to read more by and about Catherine Pierce?
Catherine Pierce Official Website
The Paris Review
Blackbird
Diode
Anti-Poetry

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: DOROTHEA GROSSMAN

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THE TWO TIMES I LOVED YOU THE MOST IN A CAR
by Dorothea Grossman

It was your idea
to park and watch the elephants
swaying among the trees
like royalty
at that make-believe safari
near Laguna.
I didn’t know anything that big
could be so quiet.

And once, you stopped
on a dark desert road
to show me the stars
climbing over each other
riotously
like insects
like an orchestra
thrashing its way
through time itself
I never saw light that way
again.


(“The Two Times I Loved You the Most In A Car” previously appeared in Poetry Magazine and Askew Poetry, and is reprinted here today with permission from the poet.)


Dorothea Grossman: I have no bio for Dorothea Grossman, who is a bit of an enigma, but you can read an interview with her from Poetry Magazine here.

Editor’s Note: Some poems speak for themselves. And if the poet herself doesn’t need a bio, perhaps it’s evidence that this poem doesn’t need me to say much, if anything, on its behalf. I will say only that I love the simplicity, the way this poem evokes a kind of nostalgia that most everyone can relate to, and I must compliment the poet on a killer end line.

Want to read more by and about Dorothea Grossman?
Poetry Magazine
The Outlaw Poetry Network
Video: Dorothea Grossman and Michael Vlatkovich

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: OLIVER DE LA PAZ

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INSOMNIA AS TRANSFIGURATION
by Oliver de la Paz

Because the night is a scattering of sounds—blunt
branches hurtling to the ground, a nest stir, a sigh
from someone beside me. Because I am awake
and know that I am not on fire. I am fine. It’s August.

The scar on my neck, clarity—two curtains sewn.
A little door locked from the inside.

Nothing wants anything tonight. There are only stars
and the usual animals. Only the fallen apple’s wine-red crush.

Rabbits hurtle through the dark. Little missiles.
Little fur blossoms hiding from owls. Nothing wants
to be in this galaxy anymore. Everything wants the afterlife.

Dear afterlife, my body is lopped off. My hands
are in the carport. My legs, in the river. My head, of course,
in the tree awaiting sunrise. It dreams it is the owl,
a dark-winged habit. Then, a rabbit’s dash
to the apple, shining like nebulae. Then the owl
scissoring the air. The heart pumps its box of inks.

The river’s auscultations keep pace
with my lungs. Blame the ear for its attention. Blame
the body for not wanting to let go, but once a thing moves
it can’t help it. There is only instinct, that living “yes.”


(“Insomnia as Transfiguration” was originally published in diode, and is reprinted here today with permission from the poet.)


Oliver de la Paz is the author of three collections of poetry, Names Above Houses, Furious Lullaby (SIU Press 2001, 2007), and Requiem for the Orchard (U. of Akron Press 2010), winner of the Akron Prize for poetry chosen by Martìn Espada. He co-chairs the advisory board of Kundiman, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the promotion of Asian American Poetry. A recipient of a NYFA Fellowship Award and a GAP Grant from Artist Trust, his work has appeared in journals like The Southern Review Virginia Quarterly Review, North American Review, Tin House, Chattahoochee Review, and in anthologies such as Asian American Poetry: The Next Generation. He teaches at Western Washington University.

Editor’s Note: “Because I am awake / and know that I am not on fire. I am fine. It’s August.” How could you not be blown away by a moment like that? Today’s poem is spotted with such moments, appearing between flashes of abstract images and ideas. “Nothing wants anything tonight… Nothing wants / to be in this galaxy anymore.” The idea of nothing being an entity of sorts, something capable of desire, is one such abstract idea, ever successful in its ability to get the reader’s mind to think outside the box.

Want to read more by and about Oliver de la Paz?
From the Fishouse
Guernica Mag
Linebreak
The Rumpus
Memali

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: OCEAN VUONG

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By Ocean Vuong:


TO LOVE WELL

is to place a hand
  on another’s chest and know
  that the heart only beats
  when locked in a cage
  of bone.


DEPARTURE

Dawn cracks: a lightning bolt
carving slowly through the clouds.

All night I listened to your breath.
Even tasted your lips
when the moon turned you pale
as a corpse.
I haven’t killed a thing

since the morning
we followed gunshots into a field
peppered with sparrows. Remember
how their necks twitched
beneath our thumbs? Before twisting,
I took some time to feel

the rage of wings against palm,
marveling at such fierce resistance
to mercy. Perhaps
it was selfish—I couldn’t bear
the sound of wings
flying nowhere.

Darling, forgive me. When you wake
and begin to flutter in the emptiness
still warm from my whispers,
I will be too far
from this field
to wrap my hands around
that little bird
                               in your chest.


(“To Love Well” and “Departure” were originally published in Diode. Both poems are reprinted here today with permission from the poet.)


Ocean Vuong: Born in Saigon, Vietnam, Ocean Vuong is the author of Burnings (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2010) and is currently an undergraduate at Brooklyn College, CUNY. His poems have received an Academy of American Poets Prize, the Beatrice Dubin Rose Award, the Connecticut Poetry Society’s Al Savard Award, as well as four Pushcart Prize nominations. Poems appear in Word Riot, Diode, Lantern Review, Softblow, and PANK, among others. Work has also been translated into Hindi, Korean, Vietnamese, and Russian. He lives in Brooklyn and is an avid supporter of animal rights and veganism.

Editor’s Note: I find Ocean Vuong at once inspiring and inhibiting. Like Rimbaud before him, I am in awe of Ocean’s extreme talent and numerous accomplishments at his age, and at the same time I am inhibited by feelings of inferiority when considering both his written word and his accolades. I’ll try to err on the side of inspiration and say that I am honored to be sharing a city, a school, and a genre with this exceptionally gifted poet. Ordinarily I would share with you some of my favorite moments from today’s poems, but I am honestly in awe of every word, every beat, every line. I urge you to read and re-read today’s poems; it is like breathing a new kind of air. I also urge you to consider buying Ocean’s first chapbook, Burnings, to support both this up-and-coming artist and Sibling Rivalry Press, an on-the-rise press you should be keeping an eye on.

Want to read more by and about Ocean Vuong?
Ocean Vuong’s Blog
Buy Ocean Vuong’s book, Burnings
An interview with PANK magazine

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: KEETJE KUIPERS, REVISITED

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By Keetje Kuipers:

THE OPEN SPACES

She said it was a place that held nothing
but sadness for her. Still, I think I could
lie down in it forever, head resting
in the sagebrush flats. I told her I once had a man

who drove us past every chapel in Vegas
threatening to turn in. But I’m wedded
to the burlap hillsides and bearded drivers
of pickups, my dog’s face the shadow

in my rearview mirror. With all this light,
I don’t need water, don’t need the river’s
green lung. I can take up the sadnesses
that surround me, these small ones

of dust in the air, of weeds that climb
the ditches until yellow is the worst
color. Semis that make the dead
bird’s feathers fly again, the deer’s tail

leap from the gravel of the road. She
can go home to the farmer’s sunless chest
under his shirt. I’ll sleep beneath
mountains still choosing which name

they want to take. If I’ve learned anything
about myself, this is where I belong:
with the dead scattered where we hit them,
the engine ticking as it cools under my hand.


DOLORES PARK

In the flattening California dusk,
women gather under palms with their bags

of bottles and cans. The grass is feathered
with the trash of the day, paper napkins

blowing across the legs of those who still
drown on a patchwork of blankets. Shirtless

in the phosphorescent gloom of streetlamps,
they lie suspended. This is my one good

life—watching the exchange of embraces,
counting the faces assembled outside

the ice-cream shop, sweet tinge of urine by
the bridge above the tracks, broken bike lock

of the gay couple’s hands, desperate clapping
of dark pigeons—who will take it from me?


(“The Open Spaces” and “Dolores Park” were originally published in The Offending Adam. Both poems are reprinted here today with permission from the poet.)


Keetje Kuipers is a native of the Northwest. She earned her B.A. at Swarthmore College and her M.F.A. at the University of Oregon. She has been the recipient of fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center, Squaw Valley Community of Writers, Oregon Literary Arts, and Soapstone. In 2007 she completed her tenure as the Margery Davis Boyden Wilderness Writing Resident, which provided her with seven months of solitude in Oregon’s Rogue River Valley. She used her time there to complete work on her book, Beautiful in the Mouth, which was awarded the 2009 A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize and was published in March 2010 by BOA Editions. It contains poems previously published in Prairie Schooner, West Branch, Willow Springs, and AGNI, among others. You can also listen to her read her work—which has been nominated five years in a row for the Pushcart Prize—at the online audio archive From the Fishouse. Keetje has taught writing at the University of Montana and is currently a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. In the 2011-2012 academic year, Keetje will serve as the Emerging Writer Lecturer at Gettsyburg College. At the moment, she divides her time between San Francisco and Missoula, Montana, where she lives with her dog, Bishop, and does her best to catch a few fish.

Editor’s Note: Well, this is embarrassing, but I’m determined to make lemonade out of lemons and take this opportunity to open up our discussion about poetry from today’s little mishap. You see, when I went to prepare today’s post, featuring a poet I had secured reprint permission from a couple of weeks ago, I discovered that my co-editor, who edits the weekly Friday Poetry Series here on As It Ought To Be, had shared the work of Keetje Kuipers on her series yesterday. At the time I made the discovery it was too late to secure permission from another poet, and so here we are, looking at the work of Keetje Kuipers for a second day in a row. This little blunder, however, gives us a chance to think about what draws us to poetry.

While my co-editor and I both read The Offending Adam, from whence today’s poems came. But the poem my co-editor shared yesterday actually came from a different journal altogether. Somehow both of us found today’s poet in the poetry world at large and were both drawn enough to her skill with words that we each wanted to share her work with you.

Are these poems that everyone would like? Is there such a thing? What is it about today’s poet that we both found so captivating? My co-editor and I both like Walt Whitman and Federico Garcia Lorca. Is there such a thing as a poet who is so universal in their way with words that everyone who reads them is drawn to their work? Poetry, like any form of art, is subjective. And yet, there are some who are so adept that most people agree on an appreciation of their work. Keetje Kuipers, apparently, is among the next generation of such artists.

As for me and my co-editor, it is fitting that our friendship came about as a result of our involvement with this site, and that we became friends in San Francisco, the city that houses the Dolores Park written of above. We have both left San Francisco, and yet, when it comes to poetry, our hearts and minds clearly still reside in the same place. Much love, Lezlie. Great minds clearly think alike!

Want to read more by and about Keetje Kuipers?
Keetje Kuipers Official Website