[Original Poetry] - "Preliminaries of the Engagement" & "Poem From Hot Corner Coffee"
Alright, so I understand that I am severely delinquent in updating, oh, pretty much all of my WIPs. However, seeing as how my brain is too bedraggled from hours of monotony at work - not to mention weeks of sleep deprivation - I bring you, as a peace offering, more old poetry. These are from 2003-2004.
I warn you: there is a bit of teh suckage. Hubris of youth and all.....
Preliminaries of the Engagement
We blink humid eyes, the day his mother died -
that rolling tide of grief, and
the sandflies’ neat swarms mottling the
liquid blue of a seawater dusk.
Slump wet-faced,
straining towards the rain; we
prickle beneath the
hole punch sky, and
the porch steams, tiffin-hot.
We rasp, our mouths
smoke-dry, puckered lips
seizing his collection of foreign cigarettes.
I picked a continent that day-
and we stroll it.
Me with my comfort locked to the rear:
metallic and cocked, voice like a tin coil.
I smoke a Lebanese cigarette and explain Colombo,
how you shop and learn the beggar’s smells,
how the market-fish shine, how
Thoo-rye-rath-inum twists their barrels.
He walked his lanes slowly,
some Kandahar alley clotted with blood,
that matted dog’s wimper, his hands
quivering on a tow missile, eyes cold with night and sand,
that feeling of grit beneath the lids, the
sulk before the grim.
Children grasping for lemon candies.
I crush my cigarette into the cement.
Pass him the Glock. And then
that familiar snap, like shucking, as he
extracts the shells,
turns the rounds in the dimming light.
He waits for night to wash the sky.
Poem from Hot Corner Coffee
One musty night, late May, and I’m twisting my engagement ring, trapping light in the stone. Tapping my foot endlessly.
I turn my hand, ponder if Anne Carson flaunts acrylic nails. Mine are
French-tipped, diamond-studded - nearly gloss in the fluorescence of this
Athens’ cafe. That boy I
knew from class, in the corner, drums legitimately artistic fingers.
Tidy blue smudges in the cuticles
As though he’s the Writer Unbound.
3 AM in the growing dim.
Dana idles across the table,
spooning her coffee with a silver sound. Across the street Athens
still throbs, and this guy in brown slacks stoops to piss
near a parking meter. Blond-bobbed girls outside in sorority shorts -
brief and blue with Greek letters -
Alpha-something-Zeta, and I’m thinking of Bellerophon as I watch them sway.
Dana critiques a cigarette nearly to the filter.
I evoke Homer.
We tossle, indicate passages in Carson’s book, and at the counter a customer
hectors the Tanner for lemons with her boiled down tea.
I finger my sweating cup of ice. Swipe away the beads.
Dana chews an American Spirit, reminds me of religion. Assumes a head-nodding sensibility, that listener stance. I prattle and her left eye crinkles.
We unravel Ceylon: my father’s diagnosed Christianity and how the tarp-huts
wriggled in his wet village. The broken-glass stucco of Colombo Seven.
I wonder at my validity as a writer.
That boy-from-class counted my prepositions,
marked them prolific. The yawn of his poetry was a sauntering, swaggering delicacy, where mine stomped, tripped a little - was dilled and sour and common:
my whispers and shouts and this love of television.
Dana returns to skimming Carson; I
propose joint ventures, my Lakshimi to her Thought-Woman, my
convenience-counter Ganesh to her reservation gods.
She purses, doubts our Indian authenticity. We laugh over
my weekend curry, her Wal-Mart moccasins.
I scrawl a title. Gnaw my Bic until
the ink dimishes.
Dana produces five empty successors. Returns to reading. I skim
Aeschylus, press words onto the
bare backs of chapters, inkless so I
carve like cuneiform, like Hamarabi knifing clay. That boy’s work
slips to the floor, flutters beside my sole. My Marlboro drizzles ash,
anoints it unnoticed until I
bend like Achilles to graze my heel.
I warn you: there is a bit of teh suckage. Hubris of youth and all.....
Preliminaries of the Engagement
We blink humid eyes, the day his mother died -
that rolling tide of grief, and
the sandflies’ neat swarms mottling the
liquid blue of a seawater dusk.
Slump wet-faced,
straining towards the rain; we
prickle beneath the
hole punch sky, and
the porch steams, tiffin-hot.
We rasp, our mouths
smoke-dry, puckered lips
seizing his collection of foreign cigarettes.
I picked a continent that day-
and we stroll it.
Me with my comfort locked to the rear:
metallic and cocked, voice like a tin coil.
I smoke a Lebanese cigarette and explain Colombo,
how you shop and learn the beggar’s smells,
how the market-fish shine, how
Thoo-rye-rath-inum twists their barrels.
He walked his lanes slowly,
some Kandahar alley clotted with blood,
that matted dog’s wimper, his hands
quivering on a tow missile, eyes cold with night and sand,
that feeling of grit beneath the lids, the
sulk before the grim.
Children grasping for lemon candies.
I crush my cigarette into the cement.
Pass him the Glock. And then
that familiar snap, like shucking, as he
extracts the shells,
turns the rounds in the dimming light.
He waits for night to wash the sky.
Poem from Hot Corner Coffee
One musty night, late May, and I’m twisting my engagement ring, trapping light in the stone. Tapping my foot endlessly.
I turn my hand, ponder if Anne Carson flaunts acrylic nails. Mine are
French-tipped, diamond-studded - nearly gloss in the fluorescence of this
Athens’ cafe. That boy I
knew from class, in the corner, drums legitimately artistic fingers.
Tidy blue smudges in the cuticles
As though he’s the Writer Unbound.
3 AM in the growing dim.
Dana idles across the table,
spooning her coffee with a silver sound. Across the street Athens
still throbs, and this guy in brown slacks stoops to piss
near a parking meter. Blond-bobbed girls outside in sorority shorts -
brief and blue with Greek letters -
Alpha-something-Zeta, and I’m thinking of Bellerophon as I watch them sway.
Dana critiques a cigarette nearly to the filter.
I evoke Homer.
We tossle, indicate passages in Carson’s book, and at the counter a customer
hectors the Tanner for lemons with her boiled down tea.
I finger my sweating cup of ice. Swipe away the beads.
Dana chews an American Spirit, reminds me of religion. Assumes a head-nodding sensibility, that listener stance. I prattle and her left eye crinkles.
We unravel Ceylon: my father’s diagnosed Christianity and how the tarp-huts
wriggled in his wet village. The broken-glass stucco of Colombo Seven.
I wonder at my validity as a writer.
That boy-from-class counted my prepositions,
marked them prolific. The yawn of his poetry was a sauntering, swaggering delicacy, where mine stomped, tripped a little - was dilled and sour and common:
my whispers and shouts and this love of television.
Dana returns to skimming Carson; I
propose joint ventures, my Lakshimi to her Thought-Woman, my
convenience-counter Ganesh to her reservation gods.
She purses, doubts our Indian authenticity. We laugh over
my weekend curry, her Wal-Mart moccasins.
I scrawl a title. Gnaw my Bic until
the ink dimishes.
Dana produces five empty successors. Returns to reading. I skim
Aeschylus, press words onto the
bare backs of chapters, inkless so I
carve like cuneiform, like Hamarabi knifing clay. That boy’s work
slips to the floor, flutters beside my sole. My Marlboro drizzles ash,
anoints it unnoticed until I
bend like Achilles to graze my heel.