A Robert Peake Poem

Road Sign on Interstate 5
San Diego, California


They are holding hands, or rather, their silhouettes
are joined at the arms like a chain link fence.

Their bodies lean forward, italicized.
They are running: the man is pulling the woman,

the woman is pulling what must be her child,
and the child is lifted, by the speed, off her feet.

It is the same type of sign that might contain
the antlered shape of a generic black buck,

or tell drivers that the road could be slippery when wet.
It is a warning sign, it says: watch out for this.

Every time I pass, I scan both sides of the freeway,
expecting to see a family of three, gathering

up loose belongings, timing the cars, preparing
to run across eight lanes of high-speed traffic.

I have never seen them, this desperate family.
I only know their shadows, how they tilt toward

the bright yellow space in front of them, scrambling
to reach the outlined edge of the thin metal sign.

I have never wanted anything this much, for myself,
let alone to pull those closest to me into flight.

There is so much I could say about growing up
on the border of Mexico. It is not the corrugated

fence, or even the river of sewage, that defines
the scar that joins one world to the next,

but a one-hundred-foot width of sun-soft asphalt,
streaming with commuter traffic, day and night.

The man is pulling the woman, the woman is pulling
her airborne child, whose pigtails flail back.

On the other side is the ocean, salt marsh and a beach
that stretches north, into the source of the wind.

They are holding hands, and smelling the salt in the air.
At night, their pupils contract as the headlights expand.

What begins like a distant starlight grows to a spotlight,
a floodlight, a wash of whiteness, and engines made of wind.

Then reddened, like coals, like dying suns, the lights
recede, a river of cherry redness, a syrup of taillights.

The man is pulling the woman is pulling the child,
who rises as though winged in a blaze of light.


(2008)

A Paisley Rekdal Poem

 Intimacy


How horrible it is, how horrible
that Cronenberg film where Goldblum's trapped

with a fly inside his Material
Transformer: bits of the man emerging

gooey, many-eyed; bits of the fly
worrying that his agent's screwed him–

I almost flinch to see the body later
that's left its fly in the corner, I mean

the fly that's left its body, recalling too
that medieval nightmare, Resurrection,

in which each soul must scurry
to rejoin the plush interiors of its flesh,

pushing through, marrying indiscriminately
because Heaven won't take what's only half:

one soul blurring forever
into another body.

If we can't know the boundaries between ourselves
in life, what will they be in death,

corrupted steadily by maggot,
rain or superstition, by affection

that depends on memory to survive?
People should keep their hands to themselves

for the remainder of the flight: who needs
some stranger's waistline, joint

problems or insecurities? Darling,
what I love in you I pray will always stay

the hell away from me.


(2012)

POEM: "Umbrella"

Umbrella

The thing had just unwound
One moment gone like love

You leave it lying in the street
A principle or an orange peel

Honesty says keep on walking

Of course the storm is coming

The umbrage and the rain

Won't notice you lost the way.

© 2012 Rob Schackne

A Dana Gioia Poem

 Prophesy


Sometimes a child will stare out of a window
for a moment or an hour—deciphering
the future from a dusky summer sky.

Does he imagine that some wisp of cloud
reveals the signature of things to come?
Or that the world’s a book we learn to translate?

And sometimes a girl stands naked by a mirror
imagining beauty in a stranger's eyes
finding a place where fear leads to desire.

For what is prophecy but the first inkling
of what we ourselves must call into being?
The call need not be large. No voice in thunder.

It's not so much what's spoken as what's heard—
and recognized, of course. The gift is listening
and hearing what is only meant for you.

Life has its mysteries, annunciations,
and some must wear a crown of thorns. I found
my Via Dolorosa in your love.

And sometimes we proceed by prophecy,
or not at all—even if only to know
what destiny requires us to renounce.

O Lord of indirection and ellipses,
ignore our prayers. Deliver us from distraction.
Slow our heartbeat to a cricket's call.

In the green torpor of the afternoon,
bless us with ennui and quietude.
And grant us only what we fear, so that

Underneath the murmur of the wasp
we hear the dry grass bending in the wind
and the spider's silken whisper from its web.


(2012)

A Traci Brimhall Poem

 Our Bodies Break Light

We crawl through the tall grass and idle light,
our chests against the earth so we can hear the river
underground. Our backs carry rotting wood and books
that hold no stories of damnation or miracles.
One day as we listen for water, we find a beekeeper—
one eye pearled by a cataract, the other cut out by his own hand
so he might know both types of blindness. When we stand
in front of him, he says we are prisms breaking light into color—
our right shoulders red, our left hips a wavering indigo.
His apiaries are empty except for dead queens, and he sits
on his quiet boxes humming as he licks honey from the bodies
of drones. He tells me he smelled my southern skin for miles,
says the graveyard is full of dead prophets. To you, he presents
his arms, tattooed with songs slave catchers whistle
as they unleash the dogs. He lets you see the burns on his chest
from the time he set fire to boats and pushed them out to sea.
You ask why no one believes in madness anymore,
and he tells you stars need a darkness to see themselves by.
When you ask about resurrection, he says, How can you doubt?
and shows you a deer licking salt from a lynched man's palm.

(2012)

POEM: "The Third Murderer"

The Third Murderer


Enter the third murderer
seedy smelly and fidgets
not aghast at what he’s done
flowers still hold their colours
trees move darkly in the wind
the waves coil like demons
birds are wheeling like
serpents they surrender
occasionally insist on one last
kind of horror I don’t know
he doesn’t feel it like you do
pain decided by the bucket
drought season he falls asleep
never tell him about the wet.


© 2012 Rob Schackne

A Heather McHugh Poem

 

Glass House


Everything obeyed our laws and
we just went on self-improving
till a window gave us pause and
there the outside world was, moving.

Five apartment blocks swept by,
the trees and ironwork and headstones
of the next town's cemetery.
Auto lots. Golf courses. Rest homes.
Blue-green fields and perishable vistas
wars had unscored in red
were sweeping past,
with cloudscapes, just

as if the living room were dead.
Which way to look? Nonnegative?
Nonplussed? (Unkilled? Unkissed?)
Look out, you said; the sight's on us:

If we don't move, we can't be missed.


(2012)

POEM: "Flowers Of The Sun & Moon"

Flowers Of The Sun & Moon

On earth heavenly things
In a terrestrial state
Flowers of the sun & moon

Old Proclus says that

It’s within the power

Of every plant to sing

Forming a procession

Within the limits of their power

Behind the torches of the universe

Art doesn’t kill as fast as science

Venus transits the sun

The moon is its own eclipse

Lacking an organ of speed

There is no speed absolute

Set out for work in the relative

Of cars & other people’s roads

Then behind you is a poem.

© 2012 Rob Schackne

POEM: "Shorting The Dead"

Shorting The Dead


Restless, unknowing, turned away
Convinced that nothing much was real
Anguished, angry, telling lies, wailing
You always said it was a clean machine
But it's all iced up now. Can't bear to know
Every night was shivering while you slept?
Will you, won't you, will you quite forget
How things are done by faces that are gone?
At thirty, it seemed enough, even rather normal
The loved ones, the suffering, the dead stuff
You held your own head like a cantaloupe
And you hoped, when it was not glorious.


© 2011 Rob Schackne

A D.A. Powell Poem

 Useless Landscape


A lone cloudburst hijacked the Doppler radar screen, a bandit
hung from the gallows, in rehearsal for the broke-necked man,
damn him, tucked under millet in the potter's plot. Welcome
to disaster's alkaline kiss, its little clearing edged with twigs,
and posted against trespass. Though finite, its fence is endless.

Lugs of prune plums already half-dehydrated. Lugged toward
shelf life and sorry reconstitution in somebody's eggshell kitchen.
If you hear the crop-dust engine whining overhead, mind
the orange windsock's direction, lest you huff its vapor trail.
Scurry if you prefer between the lime-sulphured rows, and cull
from the clods and sticks, the harvest shaker's settling.

The impertinent squalls of one squeezebox vies against another
in ambling pick-ups. The rattle of dice and spoons. The one café
allows a patron to pour from his own bottle. Special: tripe today.
Goat's head soup. Tortoise-shaped egg bread, sugared pink.
The darkness doesn't descend, and then it descends so quickly
it seems to seize you in burly arms. I've been waiting all night
to have this dance. Stay, it says. Haven't touched your drink.


(2012)

POEM: "Nica & Monk"

Nica & Monk

Enormous house, servants for everything

curtains drawn to protect the paintings

a Rothschild, she dreams at needlework

denied what you’d really call a schooling

gets married, has children, waits a moment

flees to New York City, she’s falling for jazz

and Thelonius Monk (who’s got problems)

Nica is very rich (that you can’t deny)

she’s heard of a thing money cannot buy

smokey music in the basement clubs

bass notes and the thunder of Charlie Parker

then that hesitant, hopeless, hopeful piano

‘round midnight when the crowd thins

when connoisseurs of the soul sit still

and a dirty draw of perfect sound

permits the long drawn out breath of bliss

Nica, Nica, Nica, Pannonica, a butterfly

like Cho-Cho-San, casting off her own angels

another subject of the foreign winds of love

a rich white lady faces prison for a black man

you read it and you say it over and over again

try and imagine this power any way you can

at Monk’s funeral she sits next to his wife

and all who come pay homage to them both.

© 2012 Rob Schackne

A John Koethe Poem

 

The Perfect Life


I have a perfect life. It isn’t much,
But it's enough for me. It keeps me alive
And happy in a vague way: no disappointments
On the near horizon, no pangs of doubt;
Looking forward in anticipation, looking back
In satisfaction at the conclusion of each day.
I heed the promptings of my inner voice,
And what I hear is comforting, full of reassurance
For my own powers and innate superiority—the fake
Security of someone in the grip of a delusion,
In denial, climbing ever taller towers
Like a tiny tyrant looking on his little kingdom
With a secret smile, while all the while

Time lies in wait. And what feels ample now
Turns colorless and cold, and what seems beautiful
And strong becomes an object of indifference
Reaching out to no one, as later middle age
Turns old, and the strength is gone.
Right now the moments yield to me sweet
Feelings of contentment, but the human
Dies, and what I take for granted bears a name
To be forgotten soon, as the things I know
Turn into unfamiliar faces
In a strange room, leaving merely
A blank space, like a hole left in the wake
Of a perfect life, which closes over.


(2005)

A Jane Springer Poem

 

Pretty Polly


Who made the banjo sad & wrong?
Who made the luckless girl & hell bound boy?
Who made the ballad? The one, I mean,
where lovers gallop down mountain brush as though in love—
where hooves break ground to blood earth scent.
Who gave the boy swift words to woo the girl from home,
& the girl too pretty to leave alone? He locks one arm
beneath her breasts as they ride on—maybe her apron comes
undone & falls to a ditch of black-eyed susans. Maybe
she dreams the clouds are so much flour spilt on heaven's table.

I've run the dark county of the heart this music comes from—but
I don't know where to hammer-on or to drop a thumb to the
haunted string that sets the story straight: All night Willie's dug
on Polly's grave with a silver spade & every creek they cross
makes one last splash. Though flocks of swallows loom—the one
hung in cedar now will score the girl's last thrill. Tell
me, why do I love this sawmill-tuned melancholy song
& thud of knuckles darkening the banjo face?
Tell me how to erase the ancient, violent beauty
in the devil of not loving what we love.


(2012)

An Adam Clay Poem

 

Scientific Method


Twenty-three percent when placed under
intense pressure did in fact kick
the door in. Soldiers creep on the other side
of the turn. Every little thing
is destined for ease. Music, be still.
Keep the mannequin secrets
to yourself. Remember a ladder
can take you both up and down.
The weather grows less stable
than us. This line here is where
the season starts. Spring seems
fluorescently golden. Too much
milk in the fridge. When left alone
long enough, the prisoners
began to interrogate themselves.


(2012)

An Henri Cole Poem

Gravity and Center

I’m sorry I cannot say I love you when you say
you love me. The words, like moist fingers,
appear before me full of promise but then run away
to a narrow black room that is always dark,
where they are silent, elegant, like antique gold,
devouring the thing I feel. I want the force
of attraction to crush the force of repulsion
and my inner and outer worlds to pierce
one another, like a horse whipped by a man.
I don’t want words to sever me from reality.
I don’t want to need them. I want nothing
to reveal feeling but feeling—as in freedom,
or the knowledge of peace in a realm beyond,
or the sound of water poured into a bowl.

(2007)

POEM: "Per Una Selva Oscura"

Per Una Selva Oscura


                            Ma tu perché ritorni a tanta noia?
                            perché non sali il dilettoso monte                           
                            ch'è principio e cagion di tutta gioia?
                                          

My friend wrote a poem about
an unkind remark she once heard
and a deep wound took hold of
this compassionate old friend
nel mezzo del cammin to the laundry
but now I'm a dozen countries away
and so many years have passed us both
trying to make sense of unfairness
wrong-headed intemperate thinking
only I get nowhere remembering
the heavy blood in the awful words
that we do our damndest to let go of
the shock they caused the tears and pain
or the other acts that held a bigger knife
but in the dark woods of the tongue
in the wilful distance from the heart
just seven years after the scattering
of all the poetry washed under
looking for ever better tidings
one nation under a blessèd sky
it's now moved on, fuck that guy.


© 2012 Rob Schackne

A Jan de Roek Poem

 

In Hoc Signo


In this world of listed buildings
of comics, singers, couturiers, travel agencies and novelists
not of poets, in this world, this laundry
of civil servants, in this world of meetings,
of meetings with the same, the eternal speakers and writers
in this silk-lined time of minks and furs, in this dolled-up
cautious time, this paper time of paper
people, this time of insurances and shrieking popes
in this dulling time, not of poets,
of copywriters, of journalists and advertising
tonight, as a poet, I lend this occasional poem – as you will see.
In this time of rubber stamps and counters, of forms,
not of hands, in this disinfected, prefabricated
time, I read you these, my credentials.
In this time of plush, this sticky time
in this faltering time. In this ritual time
of capital letters. In this raging time.
In this time when only brothels flourish.
In this time of wigs and whining
I stand with you defending myself.
I want them to listen. I want to speak to someone
in this soundproof time, in this grave,
polite, impersonal time. In this world suffering
from chronic prosperity, this contagious world of prestige
and ambition. In this world of photocopies,
of enlargements, in these lowlands where homage
is grown in rows, where they like to hold commemorations.
In this quenching land, in this land of bend or break
this grinding land, in this land of nail-biters
where the priests are surly judges. In this humanist
land from before the Renaissance. In these late middle ages.
In this time of euphemisms, in this, the time
of subjunctive moods, in this belle époque
in this fin-de-siècle, in this time garnished with whipped cream
and with mayonnaise, this time of ice-cream parlours
and afternoon concerts, I am attempting to write a poem
with words that are familiar to me. In this land of
thirteen thousand nine hundred and seventy-three parishes
where the church catches the rats with jukeboxes.
In this land of giving and taking and of grabbing
of grabbing. In the midst of this pastoral people,
in the midst of the sheep, in this, the applauding time.
In this time of open doors, in which the generals
undress in public. In this hygienic time.
In this time of nude culture. With a minister of scouting.
In this time of nickel, in this chrome-plated, silver-plated,
gold-plated time of sports trophies and medals.
In this time of immortals. In this time of mediation
and of house calls. In this time they still speak Dutch,
even the animals speak Dutch,
but there are no poets left.
In this, the parboiled, plodding, passive time.
In this time of indirect speeches, in this, the timid time,
this time of excuses, this time of lack of time for
lack of time. In this posing, plumaged time. In the sleeping cars
of this, the yawning age, the yawning age
I am trying to speak.
See how we are snowed under with rubbish,
with avalanches of newspapers. The drool of news reports
sticking to our faces. We know our beauty queens.
Sometimes we wake up in the middle of a film.
Sometimes we say I’ve read that before: an eye for an eye
and a tooth for a tooth then back to sleep. In this, the obscene time,
in this, the neutral time. In this time,
in which the poets no longer swear.
In this, the bitter time.
Here, nothing is lost. Here everything is useful,
to somebody or other. In this, the competitive time,
this time of for or against. In this world of storeys
and towers, in this, the steep world, on each
floor the world becomes smaller for these, the surviving Babylonians
(Nieuwenhuys, you should know) and the fear grows
amongst the Quakers. In this world of enclosures
a poet knows only shame.
And he is equally ashamed of the Vienna Boys’ Choir
and the inevitable ice show.
In this, the idyllic time, in this time of pastorals
and ballads. He is ill at ease in the saunas of politics,
in the ready-to-wear off-the-peg behind the scenes in the parties’ compartments
in the foaming future. In this time of imitation,
of curves and axes, of averages. In this literal
time, in this close-cropped time, in this time of tinned food,
in this sterilised time, this museum time,
in this shadow of old masters, beside the gloss
of the oils a poet can no longer speak.
Here everything is diluted, adulterated, cut and
shut away in the remote refinery of authority.
Here, in this deep-frozen time, every breath is broken off,
frozen to death. Here, only the barracks stand open.
In this, the world of glasshouses, only the shares
and forget-me-nots flourish, not the poems,
and a poem is every necessary word that needs to be said
in this, the grim time.
For believe me, poetry serves not for trade
but for discussion, in this, the one-sided,
the superstitious time. And it is no revolutionary
floor show, either, no international rock or beat, but
it holds the attention in this, the time of headlong
and hurrah and hosanna. In this, the time of Geiger counters
and the atom. In this time of false teeth and teeth whiter
than white. In this time of make-up, this time of
radar screens, documents and archives. In this time
where stop is a swearword. Defenceless, the poet looks on
with a lump in his throat. In this time of
polyester, in this, the plastics time and sings out of tune.
And still living and pressing patience on the lotteries. In this, the thrilling
time. In this, the paper time. This written time,
this sung time. From behind their armoured glass
the showrooms of politics still beckon
to the rat-catchers and believers. The poet, he looks on
he watches it with his underground friends
if needs be he can undermine it.


13 February 1970


Tr. Rosland Buck, 2012

POEM: "Let There Be Junk"

Let There Be Junk

                              for Oliver Raw

To the true progress

The line in-and-out

A bee flies to the candle
A hand is upon the wheel

Let scattered indirection
Be your god's perfect lie

Every straight edge tries

A falling off to the side

Like a stamp lies in the atlas

The cat on top of the fridge

A glove on a snowbank

A sandal in the waves

All things lost someplace
Please let there be junk

That when it comes to us
We can relax & move fast.

© 2012 Rob Schackne

A Tom Disch Poem

  The Library of America


It's like heaven: you've got to die
To get there. And you can't be sure.
The publisher might go out of business.
Or you yourself might not be good enough.
The vagaries of taste might swerve,
Suddenly, leaving you disaudienced.

Marquand. Aiken. cummings. Mailer.
What are their chances now, which once
Loomed so large? Ubi sunt, as they say
In France, while their language
Expires. It's sad, this transience
We share, but look on the bright side:

It makes us, even the snottiest,
Human, which is a good thing to be.
And, in any case, inalterable. We die,
Others occupy our premises, decide
They don't need so many bookshelves,
And redecorate. Every vanity

Will be deaccessioned, as Islam
Deaccessioned Alexandria. Ubi sunt.
Cling as you may, assert whatever claims,
Once you have fallen into the public domain,
There's precious little hope, and all that
Little is reserved for those who had no doubts.

The man who carved the Sphinx's nose:
What was his name again? For centuries,
Millennia, that nose was there, and now
It's not. We are—I am—like him
Ephemeral, a million Ozymandiases
Drifting about in a vast Sahara.

Sift those sands, you archeologists.
Number the shards of the shattered nose.
Reprint the words that once we shivered
To read, and annotate each line. Still,
When we die, we are certainly dead,
And only a few of our books will be read.

And then even those will be forgotten.


(2001)

A Jack Gilbert Poem

 Horses At Midnight Without A Moon


Our heart wanders lost in the dark woods.
Our dream wrestles in the castle of doubt.
But there's music in us. Hope is pushed down
but the angel flies up again taking us with her.
The summer mornings begin inch by inch
while we sleep, and walk with us later
as long-legged beauty through
the dirty streets. It is no surprise
that danger and suffering surround us.
What astonishes is the singing.
We know the horses are there in the dark
meadow because we can smell them,
can hear them breathing.
Our spirit persists like a man struggling
through the frozen valley
who suddenly smells flowers
and realizes the snow is melting
out of sight on top of the mountain,
knows that spring has begun.


(2005)

A George Oppen Poem

  Image of the Engine


1

Likely as not a ruined head gasket
Spitting at every power stroke, if not a crank shaft
Bearing knocking at the roots of the thing like a pile-driver:
A machine involved with itself, a concentrated
Hot lump of a machine
Geared in the loose mechanics of the world with the valves jumping
And the heavy frenzy of the pistons. When the thing stops,
Is stopped, with the last slow cough
In the manifold, the flywheel blundering
Against compression, stopping, finally
Stopped, compression leaking
From the idle cylinders will one imagine
Then because he can imagine
That squeezed from the cooling steel
There hovers in the moment, wraith-like and and like a plume of
       steam, an aftermath,
A still and quiet angel of knowledge and of comprehension.


2

Endlessly, endlessly,
The definition of mortality

The image of the engine

That stops.
We cannot live on that.
I know that no one would live out
Thirty years, fifty years if the world were ending
With his life.
The machine stares out,
Stares out
With all its eyes

Thru the glass
With the ripple in it, past the sill
Which is dusty—If there is someone
In the garden!
Outside, and so beautiful.


3

What ends
Is that
       Even companionship
Ending.

'I want to ask if you remember
When we were happy! As tho all travels

Ended untold, all embarkations
Foundered.


4

On that water
Grey with morning
The gull will fold its wings
And sit. And with its two eyes
There as much as anything
Can watch a ship and all its hallways
And all companions sink.


5

Also he has set the world
In their hearts. From lumps, chunks,

We are locked out: like children, seeking love
At last among each other. With their first full strength
The young go search for it,

Native in the native air.
But even in the beautiful bony children
Who arise in the morning have left behind
Them worn and squalid toys in the trash

Which is the grimy death of love. The lost
Glitter of the stores!
The streets of stores!
Crossed by the streets of stores
And every crevice of the city leaking
Rubble: concrete, conduit, pipe, a crumbling
Rubble of our roots

              But they will find
In flood, storm, ultimate mishap:
Earth, water, the tremendous
Surface, the heart thundering
Absolute desire.



(1975)

An Amy King Poem

 

The Moon in Your Breath


Man acts as an antenna for the sun
and then: a trout in the milk, 
men who wear kilts after darkness. 
Build a bottle of fish with a few dried figs. 
Dear Shadow,
when did I become that person? 
I mean one who says "plastic glucose" 
without wondering what 
rotten-sweet is? The one who teenagers
represent? There's a room in your breath
I crawl into, eating the wallpaper's yellow,
looking out for the man on the stairs,
his knife in hand, poise incarnate.
I am your minimum envelope,
your string between tin cans and
cannot stop the talk between us.

In Berlin, they lay buildings on concrete
slabs that look straight back at us.
The windows of the soul seek to err
on the side of humanity. Put a piece of glass
between us for less resistance.
Invite rococo scrawl in heated breath upon it.
The moon appears in a cinched waist. 
Stand penance atop her curvature's axis, 
above a hill where headstones claw up 
through the clouds, pulling their fibers 
into blankets across us.

The sleet and silver smiles loom, gauze-thin.
We slip from a reel of translation back 
into how we cater to loneliness,
how we move our mouths and mouth
our meals, engorging entrails where 
even foodstuffs give off energies. 
I am that uncontrollable,
fear in a mesh of moonrock's lapis soup.
We demons are in love and afoot.
As in the primordial diary, time will come 
to take the hem in, tether the ether 
that dreams become from, and examine 
our ankles as the sugar washes over,
disappearing. As with everything, 
that's the body he works on. She also
knows honey lasts best in the future.


(2012)

POEM: "After a Tanka by Rosemary Nissen-Wade"

After a Tanka by Rosemary Nissen-Wade


I talk to the one
you were which

comes back to me
conversing as if

he were doomed
or blessed. The cup

finally full of need
Lord, but we have to

talk again as lovers
like it was our food.

© 2012 Rob Schackne