Susan Lewis

Like Leaves

1.

more or less

perceived,

allium-pungent,

advertently plangent

while, glossy & glasslike

our point of view

filters & reflects

(to the rumble of agitated droplets)

(like distant hooves

where zebras outnumber

their plainer cousins)—

despite the paucity of

synthesis or

other human ascendancy—

(since beauty’s in

the detours)

2.

cringing

in a dry wind,

her hunted gaze

dodges.

Does he see(k)

Our Lady of Situations?

The Cave of Time?

Dodging still,

her view thins &

runs like gruel.

Shrunken, crouching

in her minor shadow,

waiting for another eye

to see her way.

The hot wind

punishes the leaves

huddling & cowering

like crones

while the heat blurs the edge

of its own weight

& wisdom softens

& submits.

The lovers’ words

repeat & what

needs hearing

withers on the tongue.

Yes but no.

Soon but never.

He thinks what he missed

might wait.

He thinks she

should lead the way.

She sees this hurtling,

hour by hour,

while ripeness ever &

ever eludes.

***

***

Mark DuCharme

4 poems from Defacement


Program

To make of the city a garden
Anointed with heat & birds’ flutter
In daylit anatomy, ripping out your tongue

***

Marrow

To begin again, without knowing
What will or won’t take place
Except in flutters of the marrow
Which we place, transcendently
Evolving from the map
In a language of the sparrows—
Broken effigies
Unique & darkly strung

***

Grope

What, the hidden, violent charm
Within that country of no art
Under birds’ laughing
Birds only laugh when you grope
Under wings’ thrashing
Within laughter’s violent charm

***

Serious

                 "An opportunist! Should get married!
                  Should do big oil paintings! Get serious!"
                         —Ted Berrigan

             These days
The real opportunists

                                              Screw the paintings
                                     & Just do big oil


***
***

Roger Mitchell

I Wonder
Were I a fly,
would I drop down
onto the knee
of a creature
eight hundred times
my size and, there,
let the sun light
up my wings while
I rubbed two
of my hair-like
arms back and forth
against each other,
as though sharpening
the knife of life
on the pure luck
of having it?

***

I Wave and Give It Back

What are we to think when the petals of the rose-pink lily
peak in a gray-green claw or fang
and the stamens and pistils curl
in a cluster of gestures
not unlike the finger I was given years ago
on the New Jersey Turnpike by a sweet seven-year-old
bored in the back of her mother's wide suburban station wagon?
She probably wanted to stay home and listen to her records
or play with her mother's nail polish,
but now she had to go to Ocean City and get sand in her hair.
Being generous, I waved and gave it back.
Where is she now? Bored in Biloxi?
At the bottom of the Rappahannock?
Never use a poem for a personal grumble,
the handbook says, unless you can indict the whole
of Western Civilization along the way.
The whole of Moscow gets in line
to eat the gouged out flank of several billion
anonymous quadrupeds, mooing as they do.
Moo for the simple, unsuspecting thing.
Moo for the one who knows, as well.
It's supposed to make him gentle, the knowing,
but it makes him crazy first
and then gentle, but always with a crazy edge.
The chickadee goes zip, dee-dee, and bobs there upside down.
That man over there. No, not that one. The other one.
The one with his hand in the other man's pocket.
Have you ever seen that man before?
Have you ever been that man before?
Sumeria, it's lovely this time of year.
Ouagadougou, Yellow Knife.
They have sand in Yellow Knife, a kind of song they sing,
and on the short summer nights, you can hear
jukeboxes and broken glass,
the growl of punctured tailpipe.
Stars as big as pancakes fall out of the sky.
Nothing is lost.

***
***