Sixfold Poetry Winter 2016 Read online

  round and around a clay track or Odysseus laying his infant son

  down in the furrows before the bronze plow and the rebar of iron ropes

  twisted in bold and fantastical shapes, into hearts, crucifixes and

  writhing snakes flung from the talons of bald eagles, he having vanished to

  vapor and atoms.

                                                 How shall we plaster the hole in the sky where the

  towers once stood, shall we paper the hole that the man with his briefcase in

  hand while the wind was on fire with the swirl of our contracts and folders and

  pages of blank actuary reports fell so casually through because

  Troy never mattered?

  Michael Eaton

  Silence Is Quiet

  When I attended

  the poetry reading

  at William Blake’s

  coffee house, no one

  showed up; drinking

  my caffe latte,

  I rehearsed, under my breath,

  reading magnificently

  to a wilted white daisy

  in a dirty green glass vase.

  However lonely,

  there were certain benefits:

  no one to critique

  or blow raspberries,

  no anxieties, no stuttering,

  no misreadings and

  starting all over again;

  imagining twenty appreciative

  listeners, applauding loudly,

  (no, make that fifty),

  the music of one hundred

  hands clapping, one hundred

  trees falling in the desert

  with no one to hear.

  Uncentered

  I’ve always felt a bit off-kilter;

  not in the same world as others.

  A child trying to seesaw with himself

  while the others played on swings.

  Afraid to go to church because

  the congregation prayed for

  the final Rapture of death.

  I believed that prayers came true.

  I always felt my nose was larger, that

  I had on different colors of socks,

  the right one brown and the left one blue;

  as if the rear of my pants was torn,

  as if my DNA came from alien worlds.

  Perhaps I was a foundling

  brought in from the forest,

  having been raised by animals.

  My thoughts stroll on different paths

  than ones where others are jogging.

  My hot air balloon is blown out to sea;

  the rescue ship has sprung a leak.

  I am locked in a space capsule when

  it explodes, seeing only

  blue sky, flames, and angels.

  I should sneak off and hide somewhere,

  before they realize there is a wolf

  loose in their holy places.

  Remembrances

  They only exist in the

  corners of the room now,

  like repossessed spider webs,

  the tenants gone,

  unable to make rent;

  dusty strands of silk,

  fading threads of memory,

  offering only glimpses here

  and there, sneak reviews

  of life already past, or recollections

  of that bare sight of thigh

  above a woman’s stocking,

  before she lowers her dress.

  All things you do

  become memories and

  attach like mistletoe,

  needing a host,

  slowly draining you,

  sprouting white berries;

  lovely to kiss underneath,

  but dangerous to eat.

  Or, perhaps they are like

  the wispy ends of dreams

  as you awaken,

  not telling the whole story,

  but letting you remember

  just enough to keep you

  from going back to sleep.

  Naked in Dreams

  Poetry is just too damned embarrassingly personal;

  airing your own dirty laundry in public,

  or writing unpleasant truths about your friends,

  praying they won’t see themselves in the poem,

  hoping they will see themselves in the poem,

  trusting they won’t kill the messenger.

  Reading a poem aloud is like

  coming out of the closet to your parents,

  like standing red-faced in the bathroom

  with your pants around your ankles,

  like loudly breaking wind in the middle

  of your onstage plie’.

  Poetry doesn’t always smell like roses.

  The audience stares with blank gazes,

  yelling, “Take it off. Take it all off.”

  looking for their money’s worth,

  wanting to see the poet’s naked soul,

  even when they know that souls are invisible,

  even when the poet thought

  he had it lit in flashing neon.

  Poets will continue to be caught and embarrassed

  putting their hands down unbuttoned blouses,

  sneaking back in their windows late at night,

  slipping the magazines under the mattresses,

  trading quick kisses with other men’s wives,

  walking naked in dreams while others are dressed.

  But, poets go on with their singing—

  eccentrics in their own home towns—

  with stains on their shirtfronts

  and their flies unzipped,

  wishing their voices carried better,

  wishing for the silver tongues of gods,

  reading poems with pebbles still in their mouths.

  How to Start a Fire

  Looking at you ignites

  lust; you are dry kindling,

  during a drought,

  stacked underneath the wood

  pile, carelessly left unguarded,

  your incendiary qualities

  quite forgotten by your

  husband, a negligence

  that allows homes

  to burn to the ground,

  destroying families inside,

  batteries dead in their alarms

  with no advance warnings

  of the coming conflagration.

  Fire burns in your hair

  and flames play between

  your slender fingers.

  If we take the next step,

  and lie in the next bed we find,

  the mattress will alight

  without a dropped cigarette.

  Neighbors will flee the condos

  in pajamas and bare feet,

  as a blaze of red trucks,

  bringing water and hoses,

  siren their banshee wails

  through the dark wet streets.

  They will be too late.

  There will be nothing left

  but glowing red ashes,

  the woody smell of smoke,

  and exposed, scorched plumbing.

  The inspectors will suspect arson;

  they will pinpoint the flash point

  of ignition, will discover the

  images of two smiles melted

  into the blackened sheets.

  Lawrence Hayes

  After a Ten Minute Silence for John Lennon, Snow

  Just as the silence

  in Central Park ended,

  just as the heavens began

  quilting our sighs—

  rare moment of presence

  on this nervous

  bastard earth—

  just then

  from the sky

  an empty silent sifting,

  the kiss of a quiet

  angel

  who pities us our prayers,

  white tears


  setting down

  on the cool bruised

  cheek of the earth.

  Walking the Earth

  1.

  A path curving

  Into deep woods.

  A silence so thick and ancient

  it swallows trees as I go.

  2.

  The path twists

  And thickens,

  two-hundred year

  hemlocks surround me,

  a stand of native

  beech saplings shiver.

  In the darkest of these woods

  I empty myself of seasons, turn

  to the mute quivering lives

  each silent step divides,

  knowing myself neither

  shunned nor needed here,

  here in the depths

  of a presence so strong

  my breath is but a dampness

  it takes back and gives,

  a flower unfolding

  each finger of grief,

  unfurling in the mist

  of whatever hush there was

  before the earth knew itself

  in my name,

  before I walked these woods

  carving myself in the wounds of an ancient tree,

  relieved when finally the new healing

  wood came to curl

  over each slow

  darkening letter,

  knowing somehow it was

  better this way,

  wordless, covered,

  walking the earth without a name.

  Cousin Steve in Vietnam

  for Steve Melnick

  1.

  When the full dressed

  soldier showed up

  at your mother Mary’s

  door that day

  she lost God

  in half a minute,

  collapsed into

  a grief so deep

  the family priest didn’t dare

  meet her eyes.

  2.

  After the brutal burial,

  after the empty echoes

  of the gunshots

  in the graveyard,

  we reconvened at the house

  where things quickly spun apart,

  there being no center

  to hold,

  your girl bent

  screaming in the kitchen,

  animal anguish

  so naked and pure

  it stunned

  everything into silence.

  3.

  At 22 you’d left

  the States

  like many your age,

  never to return.

  The sniper’s bullet

  took you

  a week before

  your tour was done.

  In the only picture

  we have of you from that place

  you’re grinning lightly in full camouflage gear,

  a small monkey chattering on your shoulder.

  4.

  The black granite wall

  in Washington holds your name now,

  one among many

  in the too long list of the dead.

  Chiseled by human hands

  your names will endure

  perhaps a couple centuries

  in the rain.

  In the rain

  another aunt, Eleanor, said

  it looked as if the stone itself

  was weeping.

  Birth Song for Iris

  1.

  In the face

  of such stark naked miracle

  Your folks

  must have choked

  on the utter

  wonder of it all

  That moment

  they first saw

  you crowning

  from your mother’s womb.

  The midwives

  must have gasped

  and danced in tandem

  to your perfect beauty

  that hour you first emerged

  bloody and bawling

  ultimate gift of the gods

  themselves astounded

  by all that pink

  grasping flesh of yours

  new blood-rich being

  swimming startled into warm arms

  Iris wet and welcome

  Juniper there beaming in her own skin

  2.

  The cold hard world

  can be set aside tonight

  that old bitter Dylan

  put on hold forever.

  Instead from his tower

  Leonard’s calm hallelujahs

  jai on endless repeat

  your mama’s sweet milk

  spilling on your tongue.

  3.

  This morning you are the only

  being here on earth

  Your father’s loveliest poem

  dreamt at last into flesh

  baby borne swaddled

  in soft arms forever

  your memory that song

  your mother hummed you to sleep

  in the womb all those nights

  you tossed on your inner seas

  your old dog Sophie finally settling now

  with a grunty sigh on the front mat

  her long watch finally done.

  Melancholy

  Autumn, of course

  is its season, dusk

  its time of day.

  Anything fleet

  and vanishing,

  footprints

  the red fox

  etched an hour ago

  in the morning dew.

  It ripens into

  the darkest of grapes,

  into the deepest merlot,

  sweet tears spilling

  on the banks of regret,

  that blessing you forgot

  to give or receive.

  Nectar of the poets,

  empty nest still warm

  in love leaving,

  night train headed

  through our bones in the dark.

  Thumbnail moon

  against a cobalt sky,

  distant buoys tilting

  to a foghorn out at sea.

  All we love

  or have loved in this life

  tugging its sweet sad saxophone,

  each riff a play

  on time past

  and time passing.

  Late Prayer

  Sometimes late at night,

  lying wide awake

  with you on the far edge of sleep,

  all at once I feel your whole body

  shudder, shifting through the slipping

  transmission of dream,

  as if something

  deep inside of you

  were breaking.

  At times I get suddenly

  frightened, pull myself

  to you a little tighter,

  wishing somehow

  I could wake you

  or pray,

  or that, closing my eyes,

  I might open some secret

  other eye.

  Sometimes that day in the rain

  returns, and I remember thinking how

  this should be enough—

  the matted leaves shining on stone,

  our history a small black cat

  that shivers and settles between us.

  Tonight, after work,

  let’s talk to each other,

  huddled in the dirty afghan.

  In the dim light let’s close

  the tired book between us,

  imagine a new kinder ending

  we’ll work on tomorrow.

  Daniel Sinderson

  Glued Together then Burst Apart, the Pain Between Our Teeth

  We wake together and see ourselves

  as fractions, infinite geometries

  boiled into ratios of space and time—

  locked eyes, dawn-warmed sky,

  i-love-yous from phlegm-choked throats—like a simplified bit of crystal

  where we hope to find a me and you and
us,

  but we know that somewhere else along this surface

  a living dog is eating a dead one,

  and somewhere else is our microwave

  or uncountable stars choking on iron.

  Even outside of time we are stuck here with everything else.

  Even considering questions like ‘who is happier?’ and ‘what is true?’

  living an examined life seems like a wash.

  How can I live with you and love you and want you

  while feeling dissolved—like Cantor’s Set or a sugar cube

  drowned in black coffee. We wake together and see

  how we become us

  choking and in love

  with a few bright slivers

  and another clogged holy book paged with floods.

  Snapshot Under Vesuvius

  Chinese takeout half eaten.

  Cat’s head half inside the box

  behind us. Bed sheets

  crushed and messy. Fingers gripped

  and cast in ash.

  Our clothes tossed off as the sun cracked.

  Lost for a moment. Then scorched.

  Cracking Open, I think of Dido;

  Using My Flesh as Surface

  to Bind some Sense of Me

  as Mine in this

  I saw it again, the drowning

  everywhere. Inside, we are not one thing,

  but an endless ascension of ever more total

  disasters. We stay for

  the show—the cheers the tears the bets—

  like it’s not our ribcage in this dream

  between the sphinxes teeth. A few years

  between psychotic breaks and counting. I hear

  those words too loudly sometimes—echoed through the theater

  until my ears grow claws, until I want to eat the world away and into me

  except I am already full and leaking and finished

  with all those hallelujahs from the back row.

  Imagine that you and I are alone

  like everything else. Imagine that the water is high

  above our heads in a wave. Imagine everything

  is a shrieking mouth, a light, a blade, a perspective