ALL RESPONSES |
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A child born of heat
rises, building up
over warm waters.
The wind picks up,
blows harder,
boils and explodes into cumulus.
Violence from the south
turns from white to gray to gold
to crimson,
pushing northwards, driven
by humid gulf stream gales,
fast and loud, to embrace
cool disposition.
A soft boil begins.
A dance of gray and gold,
not seeking -- driven
by a sultry past,
his rage dissipated
on thirsty earth,
the passing
of another breath. |
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didn’t / you hear?
the storm
has passed
and we are / all safe--
police broke into
a saint paul home
where cameras sat
and lawful citizens
and held the protesters/journalists/
(...?)
in riot cuffs
in the back yard for hours
so that the snobs in town cars
that will be available
to be drunk by the thousands
at the coming convention / will be ever safe
from even the neighbor in the adjacent condo
who was also violated
by the same group of gun toting
... |
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A warm southwest
wind blows unsettlingly;
the time has come to storm.
It whistles sullenly around
the house, down the hillside,
and across the back field.
It quickly rains into silence.
No season. No sound.
Soon the North wind will rise
from the sea to coldly overwhelm
the simplest of longevity. |
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Defeasance
(for Lisa)
She writes poems
that make me shiver,
hip and hard. In a word
filled dream
she was running
through a billowing maze of rose
silk walls, juggling razor blades.
A pale, winged child
hovered at her right
shoulder, gave the Southern
wind these words
to lick at her ear:
Look up and fall.
Look down,
trip in time. Look out.
Flesh pours forth
bloody stories
cut on play and wicked
to flame. Look out.
Find your clause. Take
the netted, smoldering
flesh. Heedless
hungry walls devour
pathways out.
Negotiations off.
When my eyes opened
I shuddered the relentless pounding
of her womanish feet.
Sharon Elizabeth |
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The time on the monitor clicks to 4:47 P.M.
An Asian Lady Beetle skulks
across my windowpane.
The fan above whirls on high,
and stray hair finds my face.
Outside, a playing child shrieks.
Cirrus cloud travels over the sun.
A wizened berry drops from my neighbor’s tree,
frightening the local jackrabbit as it hits ground;
the lark flutters from branch to branch
without uttering a single note.
Here and there, lawn shivers with wind;
downed leaf—bronzed, sere—
teeters but does not fly away.
Like miniature pallbearers a troop of army ants
carry a dead grasshopper into their nest.
Fungus locates a healthy grass root to suckle.
Amoeba and protozoa near topsoil
absorb bacteria like found poems,
and deep in loam, the earthworm burrows.
All while due south the edge
of a perfect storm makes landfall,
with the worst yet to come.
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The bicycle cab driver in Beijing pulls two of us
through the winding lanes of the Hutong – his leg
muscles thick and straining, the dwellings black
with age and dirt, each with one window.
People brew tea in the lane, talk about weather,
real or political. Four older women play mahjong.
The driver stops in front of a wooden house
with a painted door. The oldest, he says then points
to a ragged picture of Mao in the window,
I love Chairman Mao, he says. Then to our refusals,
You love Chairman George Bush.
Roosevelt cares about the working man. My father
pointed to the photograph on our dining room wall
right next to Jesus in agony,
my mother loving one, my father the other. Over
our mashed potatoes, my brothers and I learned
to believe in God and the New Deal.
On our way out of the hutong three boys reading
Garfield comics on the steps of a small library
give us the peace sign. In the shopping center
we wonder who we are beneath our faces.
My mother made us kneel to say the rosary,
stopping to yell at my brothers for punching
in the middle of the sorrowful mysteries.
This was her kind of news and I learned it,
knees sore against the floor. Gabriel’s news to Mary,
You are with child. Never me, I thought, never me.
Held inside my history like a square inside
the circle of an ancient Chinese coin.
In Beijing the old ones practice tai chi early in the park
outside the Friendship Hotel. One gesture flows into another,
arms to wind, heels to ground. They seem sure
the world exists: desire in the wind, bodies in the mist.
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Somewhere between the color indigo and charcoal
I find you, leaning against the wall, stage right
There are no words for this feeling, so I choose
a number instead. 17, perhaps, something prime
a number no one chooses as their favorite--vertical
hard edged, something that requires a spine.
Someone has a fire tonight, wood smoke lofts in my window,
& it becomes the same color, as what I feel, when I find you.
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Run beneath the closing axes of the sky
this time the storm will slice us
or stand and stare at
blue undersides stare too long at a word
clouds slide apart until it fragments
on three planes one axis,
oh where is the common hinge
the black winds swing upon
it is all a photo op, all of it arranged
the blue a reflection of swamp gas, the light no god
above the cumuli nor sun
but only glare
the frangible panes of our windows only sand
dollars
fungible as presidents
his image arrives from hell, this storm, a heli-
copter three years high above the flood
to the hall where his imago is released
oh throng: welcome the new but very old
prince of current spinning, See
his bloated face
the empty sockets of his eyes
the way your homes recede and waters rise
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I don’t have no friends in the “You-know-who”
or the interesting jazz hands of an alley craps game
I don’t got fists pumping in the air
and my mothers were “over there” when “you-all” was slaves
but we bite on freedom like it’s owed to us
and you can’t tell me you don’t think that it’s owed to us
but I knows I ain’t ownin’ nothing today
like my daddy, like my granddad and his 22
on the cold dark porch of a desert view
see he hunted gophers like they was food for him
but he drank his check like it grew on him
and I think he said that it was owed to him
like his cancered craw might been owed to him
if you tighten my belt I hold on to yours
and we both laugh harsh when the sunlight is ours
prayin’ that the last time we see each others’ smiles
is a gold road paved with the last righteous miles
of our days. we be the love of the earth
given up to the wings of a second birth
we hope. we pray. we dream. that we don’t get what
was owed to them. |
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There is a glass of water on a table.
The eye is drawn from glass
to reflection of glass and back again.
Meanwhile sky, keeper of horizons,
blueblack earth blanket, holds the whole
bowl of a city in its lap.
In the midst of this still
life, a woman ties her
hair with a red
bandana and boils water in a tin
pail while the cracked
mirror hangs crazy.
Finally, after sky parlays with stars,
the city is frothy again
with charcoal, river fish, jazz riffs.
It is a harmonious cat and dog song,
a gumbo of reflections,
as water is life and life is passion.
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Run beneath the closing axes of the sky
this time the storm will slice us
or stand and stare at
blue undersides
stare too long at a word
until it fragments
on three planes one axis,
oh where is the common hinge
the black winds swing upon
it is all a photo op, all of it arranged
the blue a reflection of swamp gas, the light no god
above the cumuli nor sun
but only glare
the frangible panes of our windows only sand
dollars
fungible as presidents
his image arrives from hell, this storm, a heli-
copter three years high above the flood
to the hall where his imago is released
oh throng: welcome the new but very old
prince of current spinning, See
his bloated face
the empty sockets of his eyes
the way your homes recede and waters rise
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A black ’98 Suburban idles
at a red light before me
and in the dust of its back
windows are three perfect
handprints and “I Hate
Faggots” in thick, childlike
and quite fresh block letters
It turns a hard left and escapes
down a dark street and i consider
how easy it really is that anything
driven can be used as a weapon
as if real hands had taken a thought
from the inside in a direction
it’s never really known |
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There was a very good poem here! Good luck on getting it published, Lou Ann. -- Britt
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The Republican Convention has stormed my town.
Anarchists have moved in a few blocks from my house
in the old movie theater. Police enjoy beating them.
My bridge was closed yesterday; when I finally got back
I drank beer in the black of the backyard
while helicopters swirled over my roof.
How many promises were being made
that will soon be forgotten?
How many lies were being glibly bandied about?
Today I leave for the St. Croix
to live like a gypsy in a tent
where the air is clean. In the driveway my canoe
is upside-down over the roof of the car. |
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The time on the monitor clicks to 4:47 P.M.
An Asian Lady Beetle skulks
across my windowpane.
The fan above whirls on high,
and stray hair finds my face.
Outside, a playing child shrieks,
as a cirrus cloud travels over the sun.
A wizened berry drops from my neighbor’s tree,
frightening the local jackrabbit as it hits ground,
and the lark flutters from branch to branch
without uttering a single note.
Here and there, lawn shivers with wind;
downed leaf—bronzed, sere—
teeters but does not fly away.
Like miniature pallbearers a troop of army ants
carry a dead grasshopper into their nest.
Underneath, fungus locates a healthy grass root to suckle;
amoeba and protozoa absorb bacteria like found poems,
and deep in loam, the earthworm burrows.
Due south my sister and family abstain
from evacuating to hold out in their home
as the edge of a perfect storm makes landfall,
with the worst yet to come.
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can’t stop looking at your picture
hypnotized
your beauty a blaze from within
the attraction wouldn’t
be there if it were not
for the essence you offer
a cool drink for a parched soul
a lake gathering fresh waters
of wisdom
from the flow of your river
mesmerized
captured
infatuated
i want to drink you
because
a lake refuses no river
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whose voice is that down there
I have never seen their shadows
a cat in the window
a drawn screen window shade
a triangle I am sure
him, it, and her
at least that’s what
it’s supposed to be
a couple watches
stars from the rooftop
I’ve seen their arms
dangle at their sides
she wears a satin dress
on the rooftop
there is no him, just
a telescope
with snips and snails
and cockle shells
even though no
one makes a woman
or man--the trilobites
with rung gold bells
band their troubled hands
so juxtapose
so the wind blows terrible
down this scene
I miss my gay uncle
from San Diego
his bright voice pattern
his love of my mother
who was only his stepsister
for a time
the blinds are set up for us
to hide from others’ eyes
a time, to guide our barrels
forward as they fall, commercial
from brands and the hands
that are employed to make more blinds
to set them free because this is
the land, right?, the land? |
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Momma it’s time to wake up.
A pile of tangerine rinds is stacked on the edge of the bed;
life sits sourly between my toes.
For what’s it worth I only took partial blame
for what happened.
Brown mousy hair tousled into a half ponytail,
TV blaring obscenities as the fire spits
fervent flames towards my feet.
Tears are negligible, fighting to fall like wax.
They are large yellow screams that flood the
wood halls. On that bright sober night
bottles of rum and hand-painted doghouses
are put to rest. Scarlet flickers in the retinas of our eyes;
a huddle of children have formed
to point and stick their fingers in the ash.
Electrical currents sign their names in my diary,
pass through the old trailer like appendages of lightning.
Nails shoot from the walls like falling stars.
Daddy it’s time to come home.
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It is as old as the prairie itself, older
than the Medwankanton ancestors.
Orange rolling thunder sweeps
down on a row of frail dwellings.
They shrink to half their size, and
switch off the surge strips. An
onslaught of roaring twilight peach
lights up the reds on the warning
boards at Chanhassen weather station.
Alarms will wail. We love these frights.
Our cats hide in emergency boxes
of things we must not be without.
Photographer; captured by cloud-shapes
and color. But the motion, unstoppable,
the what-comes-next, the damage,
passage, aftermath, the ruins laid to rest,
even the best photo cannot tell us.
There is no peace on the prairie.
No basement strong-rooms for safety.
No new government can legislate the skies.
We will have to go another way—
if there is another way. We will need
to try it as the ancestors did—(boys
grow large, and thunder for their power)—
in grey, fragile rows, with many hands,
with moons of talk to bring us to One Mind.
Even then, our efforts may not help.
Storms have never stopped for anything. |
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The conditions are perfect.
High humidity, southerly wind, and air temperature at its peak.
I raise my arms to the north, close my eyes, and focus on the storm to be.
A dull pain grows in my gut.
A tear falls from one eye.
The clouds begin to gather, darkening the earth.
Soon, it begins to rain, heavily.
Pleased, the farmers pay me,
and I walk down the road with my bottomless sack. |
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The leaves hang waiting. Crushed by sun’s hot hand
—no breeze to stir its nap—spent lies the land,
but, at sky’s rim, edging the leaden sky,
hangs monstrous, darkling cloak; and, by and by,
a drumming speaks of horses, unrestrained
to trample branch and blade across the plain.
Beneath their onslaught, earth and sky embrace
in darkness split by whips whose blinding trace
urges them on; their tails, like icy spatters,
come down—yon cloak now torn to tatters.
On grass, bush, tree they leave a diamond gown
and, in the sky, a shining rainbow-crown.
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It’s happened before in history.
You have a house. You had a house.
The wind blew it down. The bank went broke.
You’d be glad to eat a cold potato.
The air, darkening, fixing to rain.
The smell of wind. Clean and intent.
The row of houses crouches.
If houses could feel they’d
shudder in the wind.
Willy nilly, everyone’s servant,
wind’s pushover.
The house may or may not fall,
taking the brunt of in-harm’s-way.
As you’ve been doing,
while I’ve been gone.
This shot choosen from a digital plot,
the photo of Choose Me,
make of me what you will. |
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Ominosity
stalks
once fortified preserves of power
while promises of loss
profound
close in on the horizon
Not
in a narrow band
of tornadic ruin
but
in broad swaths
of near-total destruction
This one builds an ark
that one digs a hole
another races to the highlands
while a fourth makes war
on warm air currents
and a fifth
awaits deus ex machina
In chaos
of biblical proportion
they obstruct one another’s
terrified scramble toward safety
and rage rabidly against
the interference
Sweeping desperation
darkly crosses the land
sucking all in its path
up into a vortex of hatred
the only seeming source
of energy
left unto the land.
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arrives the way words appear
with panache, like Cyrano
brushing his feathered hat
on the ground
words feed their way through time
fatten, meanings leap like dolphins
above the line of print
each word crosses boundaries
connects to others, takes me along
the way empennage
means the tail of a plane
and an arrow’s feathers
parting air the way dolphins
slice through waves
while at this moment’s pinnacle
our bodies depend
upon the empennage
hold armrests
inside the pressurized cabin
and words cavort like dolphins
surfacing in the sweep of a pen
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The time has come to storm
and shake our fists and wail
no more impotent emails,
I mean the unbearable dirges employed in
Mediterranean countries to signify
something monumental. The time has come
to rise up and be the change we want
to be, the chain of defense against
the crippling of freedoms hard-won,
all these years of status quo have to go.
I mean, what the hell: that the average
worker can not afford his home, that the
small children are not given the joy
of art and music as their birth-right
in a country where poets peek out of
every window, every on-line journal,
every crack and cranny of the printed word?
Where a digital camera and a computer
are part of a family picnic?
You bet we are mad. We better be mad
at the storm that is coming, kicked up
in our faces because we were too lazy
reading Utne Reader to bust down
the doors of our congressmen’s lies
and too busy idolizing the dollar
to batten down our hatches.
It’s coming all right, fire and storm,
and the way the little seeds burst
out of their shell in the heat,
replant the forest after the ash
has composted back into earth.
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a peach on this last day of summer
as night falls on the front porch, its light
burned out, I sit, peach in hand
its velvet skin warm. To say a prayer
and bite into flesh, soft and plenty, to feel
the stone on my teeth, hard
to let the juice run down my chin, not care, to let
the juice run down my neck, mingle
with the sweat and salt of me. To smell
its perfume, nibble the stone clean, knowing
I can't make it last. Knowing
I can't make anything beautiful, last.
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The scrambled television light flashes
tiny optics of light and dark. The spots
dance over your cheeks, a camera shutter
opening and closing, our life constant.
The texture of your demeanor is unfinished,
a question mark with roughened edges.
Extended into a vowel, you sleep like a small child
Your arm, an appendage to prove you exist,
flesh thick with callus and dark hair.
I would eat the wrinkles from your age,
move light years back with my fingers.
We could meet in outer space you know:
oxygen compounded into one shared breath
out there where no one can see us but God.
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2. a memory of a yellow bird in a silver cage, singing
3. Twilight snug inside her branches, cicadas sing of her moonlit skin.
5. Engulfed in summer's dappled shade, each leaf dances, knows nothing of fall.
7, on my blue schwinn bike, braids lifted by the wind, I find balance in grace.
11. I feel the ball leave my fingers, know without looking, all net, no rim.
13. We bury my dad in a frost-lined grave, know cold like never before.
17. In rubble beauty lies; gems, lines of silver, secreted & alone.
19. I run at midnight, love the quiet of town, the solitude night lends.
23. Picture each leaf a word; linger, rush, thieve, then wait for wind to rouse them.
29. I ride through heat, flaring, shadows fleeing, shade, sweet as a lover's touch.
31. I thieve my way into your thoughts, leave behind a j, a silent e.
37. You hold me tenderly, with sure fingers, make my body resonate.
41. The smell of coffee and rain fuse a straying song to your tender hands.
43. One bird sings a hitching note as the sky rolls yellow, slips out of blue.
47. I know only to fall, dance upon this fragrant earth, wash over you.
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Jasmine skies unfasten
for winds to flutter the pages of the great tragic book.
Rains come
to replace wine.
There is a humility about man
that cannot be taught or falsified,
even when arriving at the breach
of your expectations.
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It’s impossible to remember everything. We try because it is our right. We always try, right up until we die when for just a few last seconds even the smallest bits become clear. I see my father doing that lately. Alzheimer’s seems to be tugging at the seams of his shirt collars. Tuesday might be any day but Tuesday, and for him, it doesn’t matter. If he tells me it’s Tuesday, it is. For a few moments anyway.
Last weekend might have been Tuesday, but it was Saturday and after I told him it was Saturday he remarked when he saw my mother at the train station in Des Moines he thought it was a Tuesday. When? I asked. When I met her at the train station, he said. When? I asked again. When I went AWOL from Leonard Wood in Missouri, he replied. Just like it was last Tuesday. She came from Minneapolis by train and I was to meet her but I went to the wrong train station. Imagine that...two train stations. She was just sitting there. Waiting for me and I was late. I sat down behind her and watched her for about ten minutes. Just watched her. She was so lovely and chewing gum and wore a blue dress. I realized during those ten minutes that I would love her forever.
Forever, I said to myself. What a comforting thought, considering. Father will probably say that again and again. Forever in a day. |
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this strange patterned complex rising
out of the cement, poured and brick, is
something sure--something
positioned;
most likely to sell,
we do not build wolf-proof tenements, with lathe and plaster,
progress you know, moving on from using correspondence
to fill the gaps left in our country’s walls,
straight to filing drafts away
as if they never existed, as if they
will never come again; well, at least I am safe,
being mentally ill and all. |
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