5 Poems

*

Row after row
—it’s your usual vineyard
overrun the way mourners

will always lean too far
are already in clusters
holding on to a stone

as if a sharper knife
could fall through
and deep inside each vine

leave no one to walk past
though you come for work
with wobbling fingers

that no longer make you sad
—you pluck each pebble
trying not to touch the dead

show up as if they
would never let you leave
with nothing in your mouth

except as some seedling
just planted and on your lips
the dirt is somehow sweeter

growing itself into arms
and legs and kisses, by now
even in winter the stars.

*

Mouth to mouth this rock
takes back that light
the sun grew fat on

though birds gag in it
still part their wings
not yet the ashes

that run through you
let their last breath
reach under you, hold on

till nothing’s left
except the shadow
the dirt counts on

—you don’t dig anymore
afraid more darkness
will escape, unfold

as in midair
the slow wide climbing turn
into mountainside

unaware how long it’s been
—you sift, lean over
the way this tiny rock

is pulling you closer
wingtip to wingtip
is swallowing you

as if one by one
its feathers had opened
—in time, in time.

*

Already weightless these steps
don’t need the morning
back away as that emptiness

stars are used to
—you can hear them narrowing
creaking and from behind

wait for the sun to open fire
flash past your forehead
though you can’t make out

the week or year or the cloud
that knows you’re there
comes for you between more rain

and mountainside still standing
no longer growing grass
can’t love or remember

—you hide the way this attic
opens inside a door
that is not a flower

—an iron knob
that turns away nothing
and in your arms nothing, nothing.

*

With its feeble hold this hillside
—a simple bond though your shadow
is pulling loose -–this dirt

won’t keep its promise
as if nearness means nothing
even when you expect the sun

handful by handful, back
to warm itself
yet you still come here alone

can almost make out the breasts
the eyebrows and on this mound
the forehead you long for, the eyes

that rise from this leftover darkness
as two mornings and at night
two nights, closer and closer.

*

From habit, burnt
as if every morning now
the sun has to be reheated

still frightened by the cold
more than coming alone
—it’s your usual meal

two slices, made stale
broken open the way coffee
just by boiling

turns your mouth black
—you’ve learned to open bread
till it reeks with ashes

and smoke already rising
to become another mouth
and on its lips

the small blister, resting
though there’s no moon
only this side by side

lowered slowly, no longer
empty, your arms cramped
calling for each other.

- Simon Perchik

Eternal Circle

I sit by the window and watch 
the cars on the highway. These
metallic angels of death hit my 
irises and then disappear in the 
horizon. I am too far away to 
feel anything, too distant. I look 
at an orange on the table. So orange, 
so perfect! Like nothing else in 
my life. But now it’s getting darker. 
The sun sinks behind the hills. 
And I am thinking of some knife 
to break the perfection of this orange, 
but it rolls on the table with all 
its orangeness and falls on the 
floor, and I am too numb even 
to move. 

- Peycho Kanev

CV

In that decade, adding machines
at the U.S. Department of Labor
in San Francisco covered a third of one’s desk;
and, bored between totals,
I would divide something
by zero and listen
to the endless grinding.

In her spare time, Milly, surname forgotten,
typed my novel, all five hundred pages.
Immensely fat, diabetic
(like me now), soft-spoken,
she nevertheless stood up
to our boss, officious and nasty,
who had her own secret life.

Otherwise the job involved
continually updating
binders full of directives
for DOL programs
that multiplied under Nixon:
ill-designed, underfunded,
intentionally (it was obvious) self-defeating.

When I moved to Los Angeles, one
of my quasi-imaginary, 
wise, sardonic informants said,
“In this town there are wannabes and hasbeens.”
“What if a wannabe,” I asked, 
“spends his entire life wanting?”  
“He becomes an extreme hasbeen.”

- Frederick Pollack

Haiku del Desierto

hot sticky day
yellow dogs lie
in the shadow of the silo

the night is stirring
by the arroyo
coyote eyes

Salton Sea Bar
the sun prays
for another round

you flourish your dishcloth
through the swinging doors
drugstore matador

- Virginie Colline

of exes and spots

the last of the summer flies
buzz in circles on the window sill.
Their evasion of months of cobwebs
and fan blades have earned them
this much. A final hurrah at the warped
window panes, the manic whir
of their magnetic wings;
they drop like anise seeds
and dry into caskets of lint in the light
of late November. They suspected the air
outside was warmer when it wasn’t.
Heat being a factor of magnification.
The physics of glass, sun, and angle
stir the soup of air as invisible as chopsticks.
When the physics of memory
and tables of elements lie.
                                    Same as ever
belladonna casts off her batik scarves
and the fields outside wash to ochre,
umber, sienna, sepia, dun; (sash
weights ripening inside the walls)
a knocking heard from within. Outside
the harvest’s opulence of gourd and blackberry
is revealed by the naked black limbs
of the trees gesture to the lovers
walking their dog up the grass hill where
there is an acorn tree and a hundred
and sixty degree view.
                           Portraiture of cities,
or knots in the tails of kites,
trail vines of smoke that empty off clouds
or shadows of clouds lit up like war.
The radio tower’s aerials blink
their single red eyes
to the contrails of jets
that are trying to spell
something—

- Philip Kobylarz

Catullus: Carmina, 100

Aufilenus, loved by Caelius, who’s one brother;
     Aufilena, loved by Quintius, who’s the other
(Verona’s best young men): this must be what they call
     That Band of Brothers, sweetest bond of all.
Which one should I favor? Caelius, you, for you
     Were tested in the fire and saw me through,
True friend, when passion’s flame burned crazy in my marrow.
     Good luck. Let’s hope you win despite Love’s arrow.

- translated by Len Krisak

Catullus: Carmina, 101

Trekking through countless lands, and over endless seas,
     Brother, I come to these sad obsequies,
To make the final offerings the dead are due
     To silent ash; to speak—in vain?—to you.
For Fate has robbed you of yourself, and now bereft,
     Poor brother, I bewail that unjust theft.
Still, in the meantime, take these mournful gifts you’re owed—
     Sad offerings enjoined by ancient code.
They’re soaked through with my tears, as you perhaps can tell.
     Brother, through all the years, hail and farewell.

- translated by Len Krisak

INHERITANCE

The standard-issue complement, as trite
As it can be: to ride a bike; to swim;
To tie a Windsor knot or learn to shave.
It’s true these dull clichés were gifts from him,
But they’re the things that every father gave
You growing up in Beaver Cleaver days.
Why then, before I go to bed each night,
Is it this trivial tip of his that stays:
Like him, I wipe my cloudy glasses clean
With bed-sheet flannel till they’re polished off.
“It works because there’s nothing that’s as soft.”
And when I wake each day, it can be seen:
The world; that he was right. It’s this
That I remember like a boy’s first kiss.

- Len Krisak

God Dresses Differently Here

God may be in control in Shrewsbury
In Worcester, it’s not so clear

There, the granite curbstones pop your tires
and the children call you names

You say you’re only visiting and they humor you
They’ve heard that one before, hear it every day,
It seems like all they ever hear

They’ve made their peace with the old men
who hold court in a Dunkin’ Donuts,
reciting Red Sox games to each other

Maybe God’s mercy does rain down
on the pastel houses and athletic fields of Shrewsbury,
on its amateur real-estate speculators
idling in European sports cars

They see themselves as winners
and see little else
They leave you hungry in a different way

In Worcester, they shrug at that God and His plans
They drink and fuck and are relieved by neither
They have a resignation, a desperation and a hilarity
that seems its own kind of holiness

They at least have the kindness
To say they’re happy
you’ve found your way out

- Colin Dodds

1960s

There never was a first. The one and only
heart attack made her a widow at fifty.

Men his generation died young. Smoking
didn’t help. Exercise was telling dirty jokes;

shooting crap, bellies on the floor;
shifting gears in their Chevies.

Unlike the Red Admiral Butterfly that defends
his turf, these men would dive bomb in and out,

pollinate and split. Like Mayflies,
they lived one day and died.

- Connie Beresin