by
we pour this wine for the earth
that gives us a place to stand
we pour this wine for the air
that gives us breath to speak
we pour this wine for water
which gives us life on the planet
we pour this wine for the fire
which purifies our failings
we pour this wine for the ether
which connects us to the world
we pour this wine as an offering
that we may survive the dark
that the madness will spare us
and we will return to the light
(February 25, 2025)
by
I found “The Laughter of the Sphinx” by Michael Palmer on one of our bookshelves a couple of days ago. I finished it today. Back in the early 80’s while still an undergrad at UTAustin, I spent an inordinate amount of time in the Half-Price Book store which was then located at 15th and Lavaca (now torn down and replaced by a bank building, like much of Austin). I would spend hours going through the record albums, or poetry section, both of which were rather large. (Poetry is no longer a very large section in any of the Half-Price book stores nowadays). Emily Dickinson wrote that she knew something was poetry when the back of her head exploded when she read it. In the early 80’s, while my head did not explode, I would feel the words thicken on the page, taking on a physicality which went beyond the page. This would happen even if I could not understand what the poem was saying. I felt this when I read Pound and Ashbery for the first time, and still happens whenever I read Dickinson. It happened when I read Michael Palmer’s “Notes for Echo Lake” standing in the cold aisle of the poorly heated Half-Price Books. Over the years I continued to read and buy copies of Palmer’s work. I’m not sure he has gotten easier to read, or I am not as shallow a reader as I was in my early 20’s, but I did find more to hang on to than I did in my youth. If you have not read Palmer, “The Laughter of the Sphinx” would be a good place to start. It is an abstract and surrealistic delight, while sometimes taking on the concrete feel of the Objectivists. Perhaps I’ve been reading too much George Oppen lately, but several times in “The Laughter of the Sphinx” the poems read like Objectivist pieces. In an interview I read with Palmer decades ago, he said he did not like the term avant-garde because it assumed a direction. I love getting lost in his poetry.
(February 22, 2025)
by
he did not mention
any more than did she
what was never said
those parts off stage
never explained yet
implicit to the scene
the vast open silences
their words spoke into
the vast open silences
their words tried to seal
the resonant confessions
which adhered
(February 21, 2025)
1
the chihuahua. chases his tail
spinning and spinning
ever faster, then stops
as if it slipped his mind
as if it never existed
as if not a part of him
2
no redemption no salvation
for the innocent no sins forgiven
except those perpetrated by us
3
memory tightens even as lived
the street where I lived was not
the street i lived even as I walked it
4
the details left in the burning village
the character arcs tangled in the bodies
left in the streets their chores undone
5
fifty years in my head were other
people’s lives written over mine
each revision scraped a layer clean
6
I don’t know what to say anymore
all the shades slither a dance
along the edge of the trees
a slow shuffle forward three back two
enough to circumnavigate the field
to find only this overtime
(February 19, 2025)
by
a wind chime rattles
like bones in a broken cup—
few people drive by
(February 19, 2025)
a honey bear sits
silently on the table
next to cold tea bags
(February 17, 2025)
A hawk slips between the trees,
silently like a child’s paper plane.
Here is no truth lassoed tightly
by a smug Wonder Woman.
For what is truth? The mountain
is still a mountain, despite its name.
We see it—imposible to deny—
but we insist words mean more,
tripping over them like shoelaces
as we cower in the short grass, and
listen for air as the hawk descends.
(February 6, 2025)
I want to fall
to be in the storm
through the night
the wind breaking branches
above my head
rain lashing the air
with elemental righteousness
instead I cower
in the dubious safety
of this cave
huddled against a stone
with no reason to believe
the rising water
will not continue
until I drown
(February 7, 2025)
by
Poems of witness. Too bad they must continue to be written. These were written by a 27 year old woman in the dying Soviet Union’s gulags. Carved into soap with a matchstick, then washed away after being memorized.
And then they’ll torch the cattle, houses with napalm,
measure the children with wheels of a tank,
level walls to the ground.
But maybe they won’t touch the crazed old women—
and don’t keep bringing up the schoolbook: the condemned
know the histories—
time’s worn thin above the place of execution, begins to leak.
God grant you don’t learn what the wife of salt will see:
a PPSh machine gun or a short Roman sword?
—23 July 1984
Irina Ratushinskaya
by
This morning, I pulled a book of unread Russian poetry
off of the shelf. It was contemporary when I bought it
forty years ago. The Soviet Union still had a few years
left to force its tight ideological voices to sing together.
The poet had been condemned to prison for being
a poet — the audacity! Standing there in front of full
bookshelves, I read a few of her poems. She spoke
of silences, talking through walls at night, friendships,
fear, love, and hope for a future, vague and undetermined.
Outside the light changed, it grew darker and forty years
vanished within the pages of the slim book of poetry
I held in my hands. Beneath the deafening drum beat
demanding one voice, one monomaniacal lie, I heard,
through our fears, a hope begin to scratch at our walls.
(February 4, 2025)
a quarter moon slips
below the horizon
as an empty lifeboat
drifts out of reach
of the sinking ship
(February 4, 2025)
Beneath the whispers
I hear a nascent breath:
a phrase, isolated,
out of context, yet
still a residual force—
like a white noise
days after a concert,
sings in my inner ear.
Outside the poem,
ghosts of my desires
rise mouthing words
out of order, slurred,
as a pentacostal’s
frozen fire burns.
(February 3, 2025)
by
I finished “Bewilderment” by Richard Powers last night. It was a lovely disturbing and heart-rending novel. Awhile back RFB read The Overstory by Powers, it too was lovely and disturbing, but not quite as sad. Where The Overstory was about trees and the destruction of nature and our connection to it, Bewilderment is about the destruction of life as we know it and ourselves. If you have read “Flowers for Algernon” you will recognize the strong allusions and parallels to that classic novel. (If you haven’t read Algernon—what is wrong with you?) In addition to the end of life on the planet, Bewilderment is also about the relationship between a father and son after the loss of the wife/mother. If you haven’t read The Overstory, you should read it. Bewilderment is also great, and a bit shorter.
subtext 