One a clear day, you can see cranes dangling. Something. This one is dangling something off the new Freedom Tower that is being constructed on a small corner of the old World Trade Center site. (It’s on the portion outside of the old building’s “footprints.”)
To my Father (Ill for Some Time Before Death)
I miss you more than I can say–
you, who sat in a chair all day
so far away– What did we say
those days? Just know I called each day
and you would listen–I say, hear.
I miss you in the buzz of silence,
where listening is silenced; I can’t hear
your ear, your soft soft ear, in this silence.
Memento (Aide Memoire)
Tile–pure tchotchke – the terra cotta
Southern California’s sierra/
siesta/sonesta style, with snoozer in sombrero
beneath a palm.
Below, a jaunty “howdy” greets
at a slant, with a dashed
date from ’77, which make me think not
somehow
of ’77–though that the year when Grethe
Rask, Danish surgeon who’d worked
in Zaire, died so strangely–but
of the next ten years,
when thousands died, tens
of thousands, as politicians
of Terra Cotta, SoCal and beyond, snoozed
determinedly beneath waved palms, proclaiming,
when not plain silent, moral failings, medical
misinformation, howdy
doody, their own
damned fault.
Sores
wept, bones
bared, lungs
drowned, and with the sores, bones,
lungs, were blanked
so many eyes and hands and hearts
that lit the world with sparks
and sparkling,
and those too who perhaps
lit only a few
dark nights, too few, too
many.
Honestly, I can barely stand
to look
at this tile, sun baked so carelessly
into its squared veneer, yet rub
my finger over its gloss
as if to trace there
that lost time; howdy, howdy.
*******************************
A rather emotional (sorry) reading of the poem:
Here’s a draft draft draft poem for dVerse Poets Pub Poetics Prompt hosted by the wonderful Claudia Schoenfeld, and featuring evocative photos, one of which I’ve posted above, by Mobius Faith a/k/a Terry Amstutz.
My nanowrimo novel, if I ever get it written, takes place in the mid-80s or so, so I’ve been thinking about that time, which was when the AIDS epidemic hit. Ronald Reagan, elected as President in 1980, serving till 1989, mentioned the word AIDS in only one speech in 1987. I’m not saying this to be partisan; it’s a fact from a complex and very sad period. The CDC reports that in the U.s. there were approximately 50,000 reported cases of AIDS in the U.S. between 1981 and 1987, 48,000 deaths. Between 1988 and 1992, there were another 202,502 U.S. cases reported, 180,000 deaths. Of course, there were (and are) many many more cases and deaths worldwide and into the present.
I should add as a process note that Grethe Rask was one of the first confirmed cases of AIDS (in a non-Afridan) though the cause of her death was not known until a few years after her death as AIDS had not been identified as such in 1977. She is likely to have been exposed performing surgeries in Zaire.
Vacuum (Swept From The Closet)
“Are you drawing that vacuum cleaner?
It had been pulled from the closet.
“You are! You’re drawing that vacuum cleaner!”
He inhaled/exhaled concentration, fumes of marker slashes, too, in the air.
“Since when are vacuum cleaners great art?”
In-out, till, with renewed compression of breath/stare, he flipped the sheet over the spiralwired pad, began again.
*******************************************
Photo by Tracy Grumach
Homage to Wallace Stevens and His Thirteen-Sided Bird
I.
Instead of finding thirteen ways to look
at one
blackbird,
I get stuck in one way
of looking at
thirteen.
II.
Like the thin men of Haddam, I look
for golden birds, not gleaning
the ebon sheen of present
wings, or worse, mistake it
for the shadow
of my own equipage.
III.
O Wallace, Sage of Hartford–Connect(itcut) me
with nothing that is not there, and also
the nothing that is;
the path flown by the
blackbird, hard to miss, harder still
to trace.
IV.
I often revisit
regrets.
Blackbirds circle
the chaff-strewn field, cawing
when they land.
V.
“Should” is a word to which
no blackbird
pays much mind.
VI.
My mind, when sad,
ia like a tree in which
there are no
blackbirds.
VII.
Sometimes the heart takes flight, sighting, hawk-like,
the bright eye of an idea.
Other times the heart takes flight
simply because it has seen
a blackbird.
VIII.
A man and a woman are one.
A man, a woman and a blackbird
are a man, a woman and a blackbird.
IX.
No blackbird will ever
be baked into one
of my pies.
X.
Blackbird singing in the dead of night,
thank you.
XI.
When I want to see a blackbird, I just shut
my eyes. It helps if there’s bright
sun.
XII.
In city rains, each droplet carries one small speck
of
blackbird.
XIII.
The tree trunks stretch limbs of jet black wing;
my heart expands and constricts at once;
in this, it is like
the blackbird.
The blackbird, wings beating, labors,
then soars; in this, it is like
my heart.
********************************
I’m sorry that many of you may have already seen an earlier version of this poem! A draft was originally written fot the the beautiful photograph of Tracy Grumbach, above, a dVerse Poets Pub Poetics prompt, and also, of course, “Thirteen Ways of Looking At A Blackbird” by the incomparable Wallace Stevens. I am not sure if Tracy’s photograph is really of blackbirds–they look more like raptors to me–but the Stevens came to mind, so I used a bit of poetic and ornithologic license.
I am re-posting this for dVerse Poetics Meeting the Bar challenge to write about allusion – hosted by Victoria C. Slotto.
New York Nonplussed Minutes
I am feeling, I confess, low–
when sirens squeal
conspicuously close, just below,
in fact, my window, and firemen rush
into my building, strides big=booted, black
backs horizoned
by yellow tape, and, as more sirens squeal/sigh
near, more firemen follow
(fore-armed with
folds of hose), and
my spirits, dear reader, somehow
lift, particularly as I look down to other
tenants not-scurrying through the self-
same doors, but simply side-
stepping boot-cuffs, trucks, some
walking dogs.
But being not nearly as irresponsible as
you might assume, you who may not
know the hard smushed bite of this big
Apple, I peer down
the smokeless desolation
of my hall, sniff what might be the slightest halo
of burned rubber or simply
my baking yams, watch,
with increasing cheer, firemen
drifting back into the night, lugging unsullied
hook, hose, sled, as other other-tenants, with
dogs and without, continue
to filter past, till I go poke, at last,
those potatoes, testing
for sweetness.
*******************************************
Yes, I’m trying to scribble a November novel, but last night major non-fire seemed to happen in my building. No noticeable smoke or flames but tons of terrific firemen and three or four trucks. I am linking this to With Real Toads, Kerry O’Connor’s challenge re addressing the reader.
Cowspotting
Life, she thought, let him off easy, while she–
she had to fight
for everything.
So when he declared, stentoriously, that cows
always faced
the same direction, she fumed
inside.
You just look in any field, he proclaimed,
the cows will all be facing
the exact same way.
The country road they traveled curved
around hills spotted,
she realized horrified, with
almost-gridded shanks.
Look, she squinted, that one’s
completely sideways.
An anomaly, he crowed. The exception
that proves the rule.
For years then, still smarting over fate’s
unfairness,
she carefully checked (when she had the chance)
the collective stance of cows, refusing to ever settle
for a near unanimity
of moist soft snout. but finding, even if it took
a rearrangement of gaze
or slope,
that one, that two,
that several
who stood askew, and oh, then,
how righteously
she delighted.
****************************************
Supposed to be doing Nanowrimo and am, sort of, but I could not resist revising an older poem for dVerse Poets Open Link night. I make no claims as to any accuracy.
Train Refrain–Don’t As(k)
So, I moan upon the train,
refrain of work week:
Why is it why is it why
sit I? Until each cheek
is less than sleek–
Sure, I’m sure I won’t regain
lines that never reached the plane
the vain label chic–
but must I sit and fit my–
slit my– The word I seek
is not quite “seat,”
nor rhymes “in the,” nor “a pain.”
******************************
I’m actually blessed with a beautiful train ride some days of the week but despite the view from the window it’s long and seats are–shall we say ‘worn out’–
and to while away the stiffness could not resist the challenge from Kerry O’Connor of Real Toads to try a very complicated rhyming syllabic form invented by Louis MacNeice.
(Reading note -as with virtually all my poems – pauses only come with punctuation and not at ends of lines. Thanks. It’ll make more sense that way!)
This somehow felt to me like a November 11th kind of photo.
I am back to Nanowrimo now, more or less. May post pics, but trying to focus on November novel word count. Since I find myself writing in a notebook mainly at this point, this will be hard to compute! (Needless to say, type). But you can only do what you can do, I guess.
Joining Forces
There is always the watcher, the one who espies
inside, slyly
analytic, silent
except when snark.
Though for hours, she’d tried
to decamp,
to flee the body that we share (ensnared
by pain), to pull out
of any continguity
with lower torso. Whining
well before the Irish nurse crooned push,
push the baby, that all
was going wrong–impossible for her, the mistress
of ‘should-be,’ to believe so much pain
not terribly incorrect–
Then, when all did
go wrong, the knell
of my wired belly slowing
to the low thuds of the inconceivably
inexorable–oxygen
wrung from room and umbilical cord and only
in those seconds after life and flesh hardened beyond
what could be borne, unleashing, briefly, the
flutter of caught bird’s heart–
push push push push
now–
Straddling contractions-1-2-3-
they–LIFT– maneuvered us urgently
into the OR–push
push push push–
while she, peering through face-clasped hands,
crouched in the ceiling corner
of my brain’s buzzing
flourescents–
Overhead, masks aimed metal shells
of high-tubed light–I grabbed her by hunched–
you’ve got to–
just this once–
push push push push–
and she–
and she–
and she–
gave me
our all.
*********************************
Here’s a reading of the poem, which is the true story of the birth of my first child.
As a “process note,” the wired belly refers to the fetal monitor which conveys the sounds of the baby’s heartbeat (all those thuds and flutters.) Contractions make the pregnant stomach unbelievably hard. Tangled cord can cut off O2.
I wrote the poem for my prompt of “truce” for dVerse Poets Pub, a community of wonderful poets, which I am hosting today. Check it out! I am also linking to Emily Wieranga’s Imperfect Prose (about childbirth).
And also, my books! Poetry, GOING ON SOMEWHERE, (by Karin Gustafson, illustrated by Diana Barco). 1 Mississippi -counting book for lovers of rivers, light and pachyderms, orNose Dive. Nose Dive is available on Kindle for just 99 cents! Nose Dive really is very funny and light hearted, and 1 Mississippi is a lot of fun for little teeny kids.
ManicDDaily 
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