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Not this dividing and
indifferent blue:
The Still Necessary
Angels
Whatever happens. Whatever
what is is
is what
I want. Only that.
But that.
("Prayer", Galway Kinnell)
The
Astonishment of Living
James Ragan
In The Woods
Nicholas Johnson
The Bones
of Heaven
George Dickerson
Meditation:
I
Meditation:
II
Michael Graves
Inches,
a Matter of (IV)
Maureen Holm
Was
That God Asking Us to Listen?
Elaine Schwager
Talk to Me,
Lord
Peter Chelnik
In the Same
Sky
Elaine Schwager
Shiva’s
Six Faces Listed by His Wife Parvati
Reetika Vazirani
The
Astonishment of Living
James Ragan
I saw beneath the spreading
elm
two talking girls
with rainbows
in their eyes. I saw
their lives
on separate shores
of the river
yield up their buckets
to the falls.
Every drop was bathed
in the fragrant
shawls of eglantine.
Every leaf, in wind
rising up to comb
each branch,
sent a whisper out
along the banks--
let go. Lose all the
breath in rain
and every strand of
light in fog.
Let go of the tongue's
crow
until it sings along
with rocks
and runnels as if
it were divine.
Let go of honored
sky and earth.
Let go the horizon
in between.
Lose all the sunlit
undulations
of the season's wheat.
And sing!
Call out to seeds,
to grass, to all
that breathes into
the pores of stones.
Let go the sovereign
moons of space,
the celestial lulls
of aureoles,
breathing out a planet,
pulsing out its days.
And where the stars
ignite in showers,
let them fall. Recite
the moment's song
that tomorrow wind
will bring in squalls.
Free the century's
melody as you would
a line or burden down
a well.
Allow the astonishment
of living
one reed or willow,
feeding
swallows through a
hungry night
until they weary of
elation.
Let all buckets fill,
all loss be light.
I saw two girls weaving
rainbows in their eyes,
and daughtering in
me their dreams, I grew
astonished by all
conception,
the frail grandeur
of life.
(Ragan, Lusions, Grove Press,
1997)
In
the Woods
Nicholas Johnson
Stubborn, the heart
keeps on its beaten track
mostly out of habit,
its black secrets
not all taken to the
grave. Eyes look back--
rolling with memories,
anger, regrets.
The lost ones go over
the same old ground.
So many pathways,
back and forth, make clear
the way they came
and went. There's the sound
of the forest, true
confessions, the dear
Earth. How open is
the mouth, the mind swamped
on its hinges. How
closed, the way you go
off, lean on a sad
fence, feel so cramped
in. Walk on, catch
your breath, count fallen limbs, know
guards are standing
at attention as they should.
The trees do watch
over us. Knock on wood.
(Second Word Thursdays Anthology,
Bright Hill Press, NY)
The
Bones of Heaven
George Dickerson
When children of the
desert are starving,
They crave far more
than wafers of sand.
Their bellies are
crypts where war's gargoyles howl.
No fish swim the fonts
of their fly-gummed eyes
When hunger's thistles
stitch them shut.
Their husks of voices
are shucked-off choirs.
Their fingers are
harps for the empty wind.
They will eat anything.
They will eat tomorrow.
For them, the sky's
a scoured bowl.
Oh, God, my indifferent
God,
Witness how cold,
how far, the stars
are flung from their
scavenged dreams!
The bones of heaven
are long sucked clean.
(Dickerson, Selected Poems,
Rattapallax Press, 2000)
Meditations:
I
Michael Graves
We meditated on the
crucifying,
And I remember most:
The stripping,
Nailing,
Raising of the reddened
beams,
The untouched loin
cloth.
All the time His breathing
ebbed and flowed,
I dreaded that some
righteous Jew or Roman
Might yet be seized
with sudden urge
To rip away the veil,
Expose the genitals
of Jesus,
The mock king's first
and lasting law.
Meditations:
II
Michael Graves
Holding the cross in
hand,
Thumb, forefinger,
on the thorns
Ringing His pierced,
pricked head,
Before the decades
began,
With not one blood
drop drawn,
I began to rub my
fingers 'round His features:
Crown of creation,
Crown of creatures.
Inches,
a Matter of (Pt. IV)
Maureen Holm
For God so loved the world
that He gave His only begotten,
‘Re-joice!
Re-joice!’
reconceived Himself,
immaculate and helpless as
a winter foal,
‘Im-man-u-el’
to endure the slings and arrows
that the prophecy be fulfilled.
‘shall come to you, O Is-ra-el.’
Sweet pulp of the new vintage,
‘while we were yet sinners’,
offered to an obdurate bottle,
that burst and spat Him out:
water of Cana changed to gall
in the mouth of iniquity.
Banished to the solitude
of toad and prickly pear,
the risk that He would slake
his thirst
on serpentine interpretations
of glory at the foot of cliffs.
Instead, He raised the stakes
on the devil and the dare,
and emerged to ride the colt.
Met on the outskirts of His
passion
by the odor of willing women
and the bonds of strap-leaved
palms,
He snapped and cursed the fig.
Fury and odor subsided.
The fig shriveled. The palms
curled.
‘Even the foxes have their
burrows’,
the lilies their gilt,
but the seedless grape its
ripe exposure,
-- though stones cry out
in praise or protest --
its winepress to endure.
A volunteer among the bramble,
they rehung Him on the vine,
between the ninth-hour penitent
and the thief,
the contrite and the twice-condemned.
Right or left,
a mere cubit leap from Paradise.
And dug the spear Cesarean
deep into His naked side
to penetrate the gushing rib-eye
of His narrow womanhood.
‘I know that my
Re-dee-mer li-veth!’
‘The Lord giveth
and the Lord taketh away.’
He maketh me to fall down in
yellow meadows
beside the lion and the lamb.
He restoreth my soul,
‘And with a new
verse the ancient rhyme’:
‘THIS DO.’New
covenant for the old.
One time for all time,
to surrender and ascend,
that the prophecy be fulfilled
the first weekend in . . .
Surrender and ascend.
Body to the original image.
Will to the genuine ideal.
Obedient to the final iamb breathed
between the purple . . .
Behold the unseen Poet.
Behold the Poem redeemed.
Ecce homo.
For God so.
For God so.
Talk
to Me, Lord
Peter Chelnik
Talk to me, Lord.
I am thick Sunday
Times
macadam crack sidewalks,
pile level to
eye and stray Doberman.
I am square coffee
rolls,
hot out of Canarsie
oven,
sugar-coated,
dervish swirls like
Cape Code snail
Mom's capped Maxwell
House.
Talk to me, Lord.
You place me
through iron hoops,
spirit faith emerges
out of
long reach and flannel
shirt,
liberation theology
--
wooden pick-up sticks
do not suffice,
ears in multiples
pierce.
Talk to me, Lord.
I am holistic Jewish
chicken soup,
a warm Amish patchwork
quilt
snug against chin
beard,
no shadow university
ignorance,
no mirror disco floor.
Talk to me, Lord,
with Boulder, Colorado
resonance --
spunky Eddie over
at Gracie's Coffee Shop.
I am easy smile afternoon
quiescence
rare cat's eye marble
rented saxophone in
flowered alley.
God, take me away
from
derelict carousel,
no broken furnace,
plastic kewpie dolls
who line
velvet Second Avenue
feminist shotgun load.
Talk to me, Lord.
Notions run
through red neck skull
father's five-year
battle stars G.I. pragmatism
third gear of Austin
Healy 3000
coffee at Mohammed's
tobacco stand.
Don's warmth over
taut
telephone lines,
out in moonshine Arkansas.
Talk to me, Lord.
Quarter tones will
suffice,
John Coltrane saxophone
genius.
Manhattan Wild West
frontier --
high tide in Davenport
Neck --
I am stand-up string
bass,
poetry read in mythic
Woodstock,
fried egg sandwich.
Talk to me, Lord,
like Houdini escape
genius in steel box,
an antique match box
--
bring home vats of
five-alarm Mexican chili
to crafted poet and
cascade madman.
Talk to me, Lord,
like laid-back three-year-old
with fresh baseball
cards,
clean Oshkosh get-up
--
tilted black cowboy
hat, six-shooter --
Talk to me, Lord.
I unfurl like flag
on fried chicken Fourth,
southbound to Baton
Rouge --
fireworks along placid
East River, Myrna's
cowgirl two-step.
I come to you, cherished
Yahweh,
a teeming spice rack,
tarragon and ginger,
cinnamon time --
bring on Iowa fiddle
ho-down,
Scarsdale milk-fed
knee sock sweetie.
Talk to me, Lord.
I am fresh crimson
autumn in motion,
soap box derby rig,
pick-up baseball game.
Talk to me, Lord.
Touch horizon in Oklahoma
hope, dream.
Talk to me, Lord.
Expand beyond frontier
California sunset --
reveal mythic sign,
burning bush communiqué.
Talk to me, Lord.
I am round planet
of infinite highway
providence,
a hard rubber ball
in traffic
in search of watershed
liberation,
promised land serenity.
Was
That God Asking Us to Listen?
Elaine Schwager
God was the whole
bloody mess--the ovens
and the gas
and the children dressed
in white slippers
and soft shirts before
they were given as fuel
for fire. God was
the dumb silence
behind it all
in which there was
shuddering and prayer.
How could we expect
God to listen,
when he was filling
the graves, blocking off air,
using the dead to
scream
as loud as he could.
It seemed, for no good
reason, but to turn
the tables
on us. He made us
hear the prisoners
of fire living their
death,
without which God
could not continue
to obliterate laughter.
God was the tears
and the offering and
the not
listening, and the
days of no bread and then bread
again, the yell of
pain that will be our lives
forever.
(Schwager, I Want Your Chair,
Rattapallax Press, 2000)
Shiva’s
Six Faces Listed by His Wife Parvati
Reetika Vazirani
one face you undress
me
one face you see the
other
you remember former
lovers
one face you enter
me
one face you want
three girls on you
you leave me three
forevers
eon age year you create
to keep me waiting
verse says I waited
at the lighthouses of Hatteras
verse says I grew
my hair
waited tables for
a song
verse says I knitted
a shroud by day
could not vote or
choose my body’s drama
I am waiting in a
waiting room to see the lawyer who won’t see me
verse says you wouldn’t
even fuck me
so singlehandedly
I made my daughter rise out of mud
had a headless son
who had to wait till you crowned him an elephant
verse says I was not
a single parent but I was
then I remember all
six faces
especially the night
you undressed me
had me
wrote a hundred verses
to my eyelash holding the raindrop
which fell to my lower
lip
rolling down my aam-ripe
breasts
smarting with your
nailmarks
down my three folds
deep into my navel
where you looked
for my face
& found all sanskrit
verse untucked there
love-in-enjoyment
I had time and again
but not-with-you god
not-with-you
when all along I’d
never waited
alertly facing love
in the wide world
("Aam": Hindi for " mango.")
In
the Same Sky
Elaine Schwager
Every night I see my
sister ready to give
birth, turning to
the same
God who saved me.
Her two thin boys, like
timeless cries
of innocence are draped
around her.
Why was she chosen
to watch her childen
burn
to feel life that
should have
just begun, die inside
her?
Why was she chosen
to question why
I was chosen
to praise the silence
that would not answer
her?
I have been obedient
and kept my heart
a grave
for bodies to be buried
in
and for the questions
left in her
unanswered. But still
I cannot sleep
in the same night
she dies in.
(Schwager, I Want Your Chair,
Rattapallax Press, 2000)
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