Mary's first collection of verse, Red Signature (Gray Wolf, 1997) was selected by Deborah Digges in the 1996 National Poetry Series. Her poems have appeared in Denver Quarterly, The Quarterly, Virginia Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. A former Assistant State Attorney General in her home state of Oklahoma, Mary was Creative Writing Fellow for Poetry at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, from 1995 to 1997. I was most happy to get a chance to get to know her while she was here: amazing energy and the lucid eyes of a goddess. Mary returned to Oklahoma last July and is now concentrating full-time on her writing.
i.
I had thought my two palms
Measurers enough:
His worth, my love:
The counterweights.
ii.
I had thought we'd be held
As in
Palms of hands--
My flats of land, his dunes of sand,
My grasses, his waves,
Both moor-scapes, thereby more.
iii.
Symmetry, I thought:
Us: you and I; them: those two; that man, that woman;
Walkers, under field-sky, under sea-sky, free.
What shit.
iv.
What on earth made me think
My love, his worth, got weighed
In the first place, in the same scale. Here
Where the ceiling has mirrors, the walls...
Where the ceiling has mirrors, the walls...
The detailed gilt clock, little crystal lamps.
I'm like the cartoon hippo. "The Night of the Dance."
Stupid choice: ruffles.
v.
Here's the comparison
In this world: not
My love and his worth;
But my love for him and his
"Feelings" for me. What?
A kind of flat
Approbation? a slight
Asexual 'she's all right'?
vi.
Ludicrous. Nay. Grotesque!
The kisses I'd have given him,
Which of the multiple touches:
Ridiculous. My love, like my body, outsized:
Shameful reflection
Asserted in the selfsame mirror that holds
Him tete-a-tete with his princess:
She of pale taffeta, she of pale wine,
Lovely, if callow (but I'm not mean-spirited by
Nature, I'm not all hideous there).
vii.
That raises, however, the other
Comparison: herself and myself:
The acknowledgement-of-beauty gauge:
Moi: nil; elle: galore.
But I will not let
My monstrous shadow fall over him;
Him, the lover,
Whom I desire, who desires
Her, who bends to her, cupping
Each word of hers, fragile--
viii.
So I go outside, where my person can be swallowed.
I say to my vast love: starve.
I look down on you, Town. I can't
prove
That the units you use to bind time are wrong:
The loaf, the nap, the coin.
When I look up, the whole sky scoops!
Safehold my nine aunts, who are sewing,
My
father, storekeeping... Sundust on the till.
Your edge is my hope. I am going.
I come to a window with yellow curtains, picture
Observing an abstract number of green tomatoes,
A cake of bow rosin, amber scarred over with white.
I tell you, I fell in love with a boy, not because
He played the cello, but because I could imagine him
Playing the cello. From a dream I picked his door,
Turquoise paint, not new. He sent me a postcard
From Budapest, that much remains true. He was Jewish.
In history, one walks where two walked before, alongside
The Danube, in my mind, curtains splay in a gust,
Sheet music takes wing, in his life, he turned up his collar.
Beyond the blue-green door, lovers laugh, oh they are
Jars
of honey. A splash of sapphire emotes
Inside one of the, cast by a cobalt, diagonal pane.
Gavin Dillard is the author of seven volumes of poetry, the most recent of which is YELLOW SNOW--filled not only with deft verse, but with delicious images of the poet (and former gay porn star) in the nude. His porn biz memoir IN THE FLESH (Barricade Books) has had the distinction of being canceled, censored, and otherwise suppressed under pressure from some of the Hollywood moguls who he kissed and told about in the book. Happily Barricade Books has come to the rescue, and plans to release the book in early 1998. Gavin is co-editor (with Ian Young) of RETURN OF THE MALE MUSE and editor of BETWEEN THE CRACKS: THE DAEDALUS ANTHOLOGY OF KINKY VERSE (Daedalus Publishing, 1997). He is currently working on an anthology of 20th Century gay verse. A song-writer, artist, and photographer, Gavin raises orchids and tends cats in California. He is currently accepting commissions on compositions for a new CD he will be releasing. For more information, drop him a line
.Taylor and I, this evening,
cleared a large faerie/fire
ring in the upper pasture,
marking carefully with an old
nylon rope radius where the
stones will soon be placed,
and again notching a second
circle where lombardy poplars
are to be planted. We
burned grasses and debris from
trees surrounding, warming our
penes against the funnel of
flame, which lapped against
the overcast sky until at last
the semen drenched us to the
bone.
Pagan rituals left us brimming
with energy, the cats following
us back wild-eyed to the
house where beer, wine and
olives saturated our elated
senses.
Sated now, the rains are
steady and calming, our
flame extinguished but the
smoke in our eyes must never
clear.
This at last makes sense, two
old witches who have reunited
not for lust nor for love nor
money, but to rekindle a
flame of tradition that has
bound us for ages to the
same wooden stake, if only
to be burned again.
Goatboy thinks he's Pan
and maybe he is,
who am I to say
strange passion, this!
What recourse have I
when horns do sprout,
but to watch the child grow stout
and goat about.
Who am I to criticize
the raptures of youth,
make angels of devils
or decry goatly truths?
Goatboy thinks he's Pan
and well he may be,
he'll find no reprimand
from an old satyr like me.
Billy's been here a week and
everything smells of him.
Strong smells.
Intense, aggressive
smells.
Not just the reek of Old Spice all over the
bathroom sink, lining the tub,
but the construction sites in their
entirety, big men, steel-backed men,
burly black men and truckloads of
dusty Mexicans;
a lockerroom hanging from his bedroom
walls, oozing from blankets and
pillows - the small bathroom
rug that wafts entirely of
rank socks, as if some elixir had spilt
out of his boots.
His towel, two days fresh, has a
life of its own, matted with
hairs, exuding pheromones -
what are these little gray balls in the
bathtub drain?
In the kitchen I boil pungent Chinese
herbs, burn Tibetan incense and
pour elegant teas;
in my bedroom, the tastes of
sperm always linger, some
lotion or another, the
short breath of latex.
Can he smell me for what I am?
Oh not just the Royal Copenhagen I wear to
remind me of Grandad,
but the urine I've consumed,
the semen I have bathed in,
the feces that have permeated my
pubic rags, the smoke, the
nitrates; the fine dining in my
brain, the elegant hotels,
the liqueurs, the wines that
critics covet?
Here he is now after pouring
concrete all day, blue collar to the
neck with mud and grease
to boot;
moments from now his steam will
blast these aromas thru curtain thru
doors, into towels and pores,
he'll come clean, but his imprint will
ever remain, in the head of
the air, in the strains, in my
hair -
it hardly seems fair,
but certainly
I will become accustomed.
A widely-published poet and critic, Annie Finch is also editor of the highly- regarded anthology A Formal Feeling Comes: Poems in Form by Contemporary Women (Story Line, 1994), and author of a book on prosodic theory, The Ghost of Meter: Culture and Prosody in American Free Verse (Michigan, 1993). The poems shown here are from Annie's recently-published book of poems Eve (soon to be available on CD-ROM). To learn more about her and to read more of her work, visit Annie Finch's Website.
When mother Eve took the first apple down
from the tree that grew where nature's heart had been
and came tumbling, circling, rosy, into sin,
which goddesses were lost, and which were found?
What spirals moved in pity and unwound
across our mother's body with the spin
of planets lost for us and all her kin?
What serpents curved their mouths into a frown,
but left their bodies twined in us like threads
that lead us back to her? Her presence warms,
and if I follow closely through the maze,
it is to where her remembered reaching spreads
in branching gifts, it is to her reaching arms
that I reach, as if for something near to praise.
Grizzel McNaught (1709-1792)
Bound in a chain of women, I
sometimes reach out with alarm,
and catch, sometimes, an old reply.
My chain connects me to the farm
that formed her ground, that fed her sheep.
The chain is just a Scottish charm,
but she grows frantic if I sleep.
The roots that dig around her tomb
deepen, till I reach to keep
the feel of her low-ceilinged room,
the branches that burst from her broom.
Aphrodite, come to me,
even while I lie resting with my infant.
Cover me with your sweet certainty.
Reaching with eyes, they covered her as a girl,
leaving a grain of gaze, the irritant stare
women must cover everywhere, with pearl.
Even in her own room alone, she curled
back from the windows gleaming with their glare.
Reaching with eyes, they covered her, as a girl,
stopping her gaze with a long look, unfurled,
taking her in as if she belonged there,
a woman covered everywhere, with pearls
draping her throat, before she learned to whirl
beside the mirror, pierce her ears, or twine her hair.
Reaching with eyes, they covered her, as a girl
covers and hunches herself back in, to coil
less of her toward the voyeur. But beware.
Women can cover everything, like pearls
orbed and alive. A living ocean swirls;
encompassing it, we spiral everywhere.
Reaching with eyes, they covered, in the girl,
what the woman covers: everything, like pearl.
Rachel Hadas is Professor of English at Rutgers University and a poet, essayist and translator. She has authored twelve books as well as innumerable book reviews and scholarly papers. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Governing Board Member of the National Book Critics Circle, Board Member of the Poets' Corner at Cathedral St. John the Divine, and the recipient of a vast array of prestigious awards, including the Ingram Merrill Foundation Award in Poetry, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Literature Award. To learn more about her life and work, read The Poet's Life: An Interview with Rachel Hadas, on this site. The poems below were selected from her books, Pass It On, A Son from Sleep, and Mirrors of Astonishment
What starts as one more Monday morning class
merges to a collective Dickinson
separate vessels pooling some huge truth
sampled bit by bit of each of us.
She sings the pain of loneliness for one.
Another sees a life of wasted youth;
then one long flinching from what lay beneath
green earth: last, pallid peerings at the stone
she too now knows the secret of.
Alone,
together, we'd decipher BIRD
SOULBEE
dialect humdrum only until heard
with the rapt nervy patience, Emily,
you showed us that we owed you. One small bird
opens its wings. They spread. They cover us:
myriad lives foreshortened into Word.
Violent, the severing: a song from sleep,
me from my cord, myself, connected to
a head, a body--mine! I wield the knife,
flinch, painless; slice, survive
into new life. Or do I?
And you, the other, cower in a corner
glaring a threat or promise.
I no longer
distinguish these twin poles.
Provoke me, I withdraw;
testing the bond, I scratch it like a sore.
Let nothing be too big or small to say or see.
End of the world; cockroach on the counter;
deja vu; tail of a dream; anonymous phone call;
child asleep; kettle begins to boil.
Over the ribbon of winter river creeps the sun.
The pigeon preening on the synagogue wall
ruffles its wings and tucks its head back down.
The daily touch of hands
by gradual degrees turns white to black.
And there are other signs of tender wear.
Cats softly rub their chins on edges they make dingy.
Slow concavities, step by step,
hollow out the hardest granite stair.
Such are the markings I sit down to make.
Paradise: first the world within the mirror
and then the knowledge that the mirror mother
and father faithfully
would render back the world and never waver
or crack. So that the lesson
of the broken world
needs to be taught remedially to us
big oafs who saw ourselves
in surfaces that never seemed to tremble.
Visions from which they scrupulously shaded
our infant eyes light up
belatedly. The atmosphere
we bathed our little lids in
dries; unfamiliar absences take shape
and death's black hole. But wait,
absence is the other side of love.
All of us, confronting--sooner, later--
some version of the mirror
recognize our faces cracked with age
suspended in solution for our children
to find themselves within our steady gaze.
Kelly Cherry is the author of more than a dozen books, including the poetry collections Lovers and Agnostics (Carnegie Mellon U P 1995), Time Out of Mind (March Street Press 1994), God's Loud Hand (L.S.U. 1993), Benjamin John (March Street Press 1993), Natural Theology (L.S.U. 1988), Songs for a Soviet Composer (Singing Wind Press 1980), and Relativity (L.S.U. 1997). Her new collection, Death and Transfiguration, is forthcoming from L.S.U. later this year. Among her other books is Writing the World, essays about writing and the writing life (U of Missouri P 1995). A novel, Sick and Full of Burning, is available electronically from Boson Books.
1
I am beauty.
I am silence's silhouette, dark
green against a darkening sky,
stark
as a reminder---say, of something
you wished to forget, some humiliating desire,
some subtle, unending burning.
My heart is fire-
wood, I am a green flame
lighting the hillside at day's close.
Beauty's name
is mine, my fame hers.
2
And I am the austere candle,
the moon my wick.
Night puts me out: I'm a mere stick,
beauty's greatest scandal.
Your right eye goes blank,
Can't see even the dark.
The dog barks, and you hear
No bark.
Messages your brain sends
Down your left side, derailed,
Never get where they're going,
And the slow slide
Of your whole brain
Is like that of that train
To Southend---
Went straight off at the bend, didn't it,
And into the lake.
But you can still make
The odd, small gesture,
That thought-out investiture
Of movement with sense,
And in your mind, you dance
Under the lake.. The puff-fish, the pancake,
Even the devilfish trailing his whispery wake
Nod and bow
As you waltz underwater.
The music bubbles to the surface and me,
Your wondering, admiring, loving, listening daughter.
The pines without peer
Are taller than air.
They grow in the sky,
Their roots in your eye.
And the tops of the pines wave
From the top of the sky, brave
As banners. And the tops
Of the pines are steps
To the high, wheeling
Stars. And your brain is reeling
And the trees are falling,
And you are falling
In a forest, pulled,
Drawn, blinded and mauled,
And you are the ground
And the wound
And the one wild sound.
Phillis is another of my closest friends. We met in Joseph Brodsky's class in 1985 and have been spiritually (if not geographically) inseparable ever since. Phillis was already a respected figure in poetry circles when I was just beginning to explore those worlds. She was--to me, as she remains with other aspiring poets--exceptionally generous. Phillis's poems have appeared in all the finest magazines, including The New Yorker, Paris Review, The Atlantic and a wide range of other important literary journals. She teaches poetry in the MFA program at the University of Maryland and also at the Unterberg Poetry Center of the 92nd Street Y (New York City). Her honors include a Fulbright Fellowship and a grant from the Ingram Merrill Foundation. Her first book was Temples and Fields (Georgia University Press, 1988). The poems here were selected from The Afterimage (Copper Beech Press, 1995).
Digging deep in the garden
My father hit a buried hive,
A thousand thorns rose around him:
"Run into the house," he cried.
I ran away but he stayed,
Taking the stings so I could flee;
Darkening waves of angry blind
Bees repeated, "Where is she?"
All that night inside a dream
I kept my father from his pain
And sang to him among the bees:
"O father, do not save me."
I used to be ethereal:
It was my natural state
To be detached, removed, indifferent,
Not to others but to myself.
Certain things fed me: the sky, clouds,
Books, and blue flowers;
Anything red was taboo.
Now I have softened in my outlook,
If you could say who I was
I would die, if I was no one
No one could hurt me.
Does this seem ridiculous to you?
Of course you noticed me,
Just as we all notice a child
Who covers her face
From the glare of other eyes.
All those years I was hiding
From you, noticing so many things,
I really saw nothing at all,
Except who you were;
But you weren't hiding from me.
I thought I saw more,
Because I didn't know you could see.
Now I am lost without you:
Tell me who I was.
The happy poet is not a contradiction
In terms: he or she has walked the earth,
Juggling ontologies and keys,
Savoring the news, delivering the future,
Ferreting a forgotten iota.
There must have been a trauma,
We assume--some horrible private
Or public sight whose witnessing
They forever must sing.
You think there are too many already,
Barely audible babblers,
Throngs of depraved bards,
Multitudinous generations of shores
Feed the heaving ruin of the sea;
Erosion, unseasonal migration
Drive away a disconcerted muse.
Count on infant fingers
The eyes of those whose eyes still shine,
Disclosing being's core
More than they betray
The tremor of an hour.
Guess who plays alone in irony's backyard,
Excavating eros from error's skeleton.
The happy poet is glad to be human,
After all, and with this "after all"
Redeems the earth, rousing us
From nights of sleepless sleep
And meager tears, stories
We should have ended,
However dear--bidding us to speak.
Traveling on waves of dust,
Alchemist of the vernacular,
The happy poet memorizes
Gestures, horizons, declensions,
Trading the current style
For a jester's vestments,
Dragging out the ancient props
When history steals the show,
Damning, in stammering lines,
Sham's mellifluous flow.
All of us witness, some of us sing.
The happy poet beads a string of syllables,
Rose petals, pine needles, buttons of shell.
Those who do not sing have stories to tell.
Enemy to the worm, time's pawn,
Trickster of tone, the happy poet listens
With an ear to the ground, overhearing
Birth cries, bird calls, busy signals,
Uttering provocative notions
To a petrified heart, printing truth
On rags and wood, not in blood.
The happy poet greets the honored guest,
Who walks into the party overdressed.
Looking Knowledge in the eyes,
The happy poet charmingly replies:
"Let me take your proud disguise."
Behind the mask of Knowledge lies
A rolling sea, an empty sky.
The happy poet cares about details, i.e.,
A blade of grass, a sigh, a drying gourd.
Dangerous, adoring, arrogant, absurd,
The happy poet struggles with a word.
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