POEM BEGINNING WITH A LINE BY FRANK LIMA ~

 

Poem Beginning with a Line by Frank Lima

And how terrific it is to write a radio poem

and how terrific it is to stand on the roof and

watch the stars go by and how terrific it is to be

misled inside a hallway, and how terrific it is

to be the hallway as it stands inside the house,

and how terrific it is, shaped like a telephone,

to be filled with scotch and stand out on the street,

and how terrific it is to see the stars inside the radios

and cows, and how terrific the cows are, crossing

at night, in their jaundiced way and moving

through the moonlight, and how terrific the night is,

purveyor of the bells and distant planets, and how

terrific it is to write this poem as I sleep, to sleep

in distant planets in my mind and cross at night the

cows in the hallways riding stars to radios at night, and

how terrific night you are, across the bridges, into

tunnels, into bars, and how terrific it is that you are

this too, the fields of planetary pull, terrific, living

on the Hudson, inside the months of spring, an

underwater crossing for the cows in dreams, terrific,

like the radios, the songs, the poem and the stars.

________________

Lisa Jarnot

Ring of Fire

Zoland Books, 2001

WILLIAM CORBETT ~

Mirror, Mirror





As I wipe dust

from the old mirror

my face looks out

red from the sun,

unshaven, tiny river

systems of burst

blood vessels, skin tag

under one eye,

same old friendly moles,

nose hairs—how they

grow!—flesh crease

where chins divide.

I'm a round faced,

heavy faced, middle

age man with a hand's

span of forehead topping

a big head. Size 7 1/2

for hats. "Master dome,"

says Arden who has one

of her own. The little Billy

I was, unmarked, cute

enough to eat with a spoon,

gone with so much else

to the mirror's other side.

God bless him.



______________________

William Corbett
Boston Vermont
Zoland Books, 1999

William Corbett, 1975

photograph by Jonathan Williams

PATRICIA SMITH ~

A Poem for the Man Who Shot My Father



I don't know where you are now,
so for the purposes of this poem
I will imagine you dead.
The circumstances of your death,
of course,
should be ironic. A bullet smashes into
the back of your skull. A bullet
smashes into the back
of your skull. A bullet smashes into the back
of your skull. A coincidence.


For the purpose of this poem, but only
for the purposes
of this poem,
I will imagine you in hell
where you are doused and torched
each second, every second,
and you feel it all;
you feel everything.


For the purposes of this poem
I would like you to describe
my father's face
the moment he turned
and saw you          
                    wild-eyed and thirsty
the moment when he knew
the moment before he turned away
to run, to run


And for the purposes
of this poem, I would like to hold
that picture in my head. I would like to live
over
and
over
again
that look of an animal trapped
in the headlights


because, even though
I have imagined you dead,
you are probably not too dead to remember
that there is a hell
here too.


_____________________

Patricia Smith
C L O S E     T O     D E A T H
Zoland Books, 1993