Sixfold Poetry Summer 2016

and cheek bones, down to the insignia on the shirt pocket,

  the ironing board and the decision against a tie,

  down to the comb, even the television show he watched

  while he pressed that pale green shirt, reruns and

  laugh tracks, the best anyone has to fill the time

  preparing for a broken heart.

  But everybody knows that eye witnesses mistake

  what they see for what their mind conjures

  out of conglomerates and jigsaw memories.

  The pub had dark wood paneling and pockets

  of light. Lily and Kate were there, talking

  quickly and coyly, sometimes slipping into Serbian

  through the privacy of a giggle or nod.

  Maybe there were other reasons

  to close the world out. We were often bad.

  He never got past hello and we never

  even bothered with ordinary niceties.

  As far as brush-offs go, this might have been one

  of the most perfectly written. Turn of shoulders,

  the huddle, then the pantomime: you do not matter to us

  because this is where we take our punishment

  and you are not allowed to make us feel worthwhile.

  What did the boy in was that he could not hide

  the authenticity of his hopefulness.

  We know how to preen thin skin

  and screen smiles through bloody teeth.

  Field Guide to North American Birds

  In my dream, the call

  came from a rose breasted

  grosbeak, but I have seen

  none, only recognize

  sparrows and catbirds

  and hummingbirds

  whom I have heard

  chittering in a blur,

  tickled at their luck

  at being born

  with the ability

  to fly backwards.

  Discovering

  that hummingbirds sing

  shouldn’t have surprised me,

  but it did. While they aim

  toward silence

  and an almost

  sightless blur,

  one could imagine

  their quickness

  as breaking some

  inaudible sound barrier

  that only hummingbirds

  can break. Without looking

  I can tell one

  just passed by.

  Between afternoons

  I wander into

  the forest just past

  peach trees and raspberry

  bushes, completely

  oblivious

  to the blueberries

  ripening in a thick grove

  in the center of the lawn.

  Seeking the nest

  of red-tails

  whom I hear but

  cannot see, I catch

  something

  between a screech

  and a squeal, a plea

  and a declaration:

  I am not anonymous,

  you know who I am.

  After dreaming

  I hear what can

  only be called

  laughter,

  and on the table,

  my breakfast bowl

  is full of ripe,

  misshapen blueberries.

  A song sparrow

  left them, though

  I know she was not

  the one laughing.

  Listen, she said,

  sing.

  Lawrence Hayes

  Searching for God in Vietnam

  —after Laura Palmer

  1.

  He was not in the jar of charlie ears,

  not in the napalm dropped by the ton.

  Not in the eyes of the forest or in the killing fields,

  not in the land mines looking for limbs.

  Not on the hills taken and then given back,

  not in the poker game bet with young blood.

  Not in the colonel’s body counts,

  not in the journalists’ six o’clock scotch.

  2.

  Instead surely God was huddled

  with all the young nurses in Chu Lai,

  receiving the broken bodies

  one by one, earth’s staunch

  stunned angels taking in

  the endless train

  of stretchered flesh,

  the incessant incoming dread,

  their soft firm hands and quivering

  hearts tending to the blasted

  beautiful ones

  who would never be whole

  or nineteen again.

  The nurses worked daily

  caked in blood and disbelief,

  sometimes prayed out loud

  for the bleeding to stop,

  or for the dying to live.

  And there were the times

  they rushed quickly to the scaredest ones,

  boys become broken men become

  boys again in the end

  begging for their mommies,

  looking for a last hand to hold.

  3.

  And at night, off shift, exhausted

  and finally surrendering to sleep,

  some of the nurses dreamed

  of their hearts as lone candles,

  then as fast-melting wax,

  then the molten wax morphing

  into the disfigurement of flesh

  they handled each and every day,

  then the dream suddenly shifting

  to a fire outside

  on a busy street in downtown Saigon,

  the Buddhist monk a human torch

  as he sits in his orange robe

  in full lotus a few feet from the gas can

  impossibly still inside his prayer

  as his body burns

  and his eyes stare cold

  and the world looks on

  in full daylight

  astonished,

  the monk’s final gift

  a silent song of God’s rage

  at what men do to men

  every day in an ordinary war.

  Newtown

  1.

  At dusk we come

  to the small dark pond

  at the edge

  of these winter woods

  to pour our cups

  of tears and rage

  into the very face

  of God,

  that cold black

  mirror

  that remains

  still

  and dark

  and waiting.

  2.

  Tell me

  how do you parse

  pure evil,

  twenty little children

  cut down

  like so much fodder,

  all our sweet ones

  who won’t ever

  rise again

  to greet us

  laughing,

  dancing

  on tip toes,

  so glad

  when we come home?

  3.

  Will our hooded eyes

  ever see beyond this muddied

  veil, believe again in the sweetness

  of gospel or grace,

  feel anything again

  outside this black granite fossilizing

  one cold layer of the heart?

  And can we ever hope

  to empty ourselves enough to receive

  the lost benediction of silence,

  this quiet necklace of tears

  we will touch and trouble

  like a dark rosary the rest of our days?

  Will our spirits someday return

  to the ancient healing forest

  that dreamt us once

  in a place outside of time,

  before we were born

  into this fetal scrabbled light

  as something human,

  before memory,

  before sorrow,

  before breath?

&
nbsp; Will the soul finally wake somewhere

  brighter one day in time to join

  the lit wing of the egret

  banking at daybreak

  just above the swamp,

  white bird lifting

  through a sky so blue it hurts.

  Winter Climb

  This day

  a clear blue ship

  I climb the fresh

  powdered mountain,

  stand after stand

  of virgin white birch,

  some with their hair

  pinned to the ground,

  bent as if in weeping.

  Halfway up,

  in a small striped maple,

  sewn to a lower branch

  a little snow-peaked nest,

  twig-weave of field hay and moss.

  Inside I find

  two tiny white scrolls,

  curled parchments

  of thin paper birch.

  Gloves off,

  I anxiously

  unroll them,

  half-expecting

  hieroglyphics.

  Rolled out in my palm

  of course there is

  nothing, just

  the rich stain

  of inner orange bark.

  I’d still like to believe

  in that kind

  of miracle, mysterious

  messages left by

  dark-throated birds,

  secrets sent in code

  from the other side.

  Hardest to hear sometimes

  are the clear notes of the given,

  how in an empty nest

  a cup of snow shines.

  Questions On The Cross

  (They say they hung Christ on a dogwood cross.

  I have some questions about this)

  Did the builders first strip

  the knuckled bark, plane

  the crooked limbs true,

  or was it a rough and rustic construction,

  the wood still green and bleeding,

  the old flower petals plastered

  brown and rotting on the misbegotten bark?

  And what was the joinery

  that connected the horizontal

  to the vertical, the sullen earth

  with the broken sky?

  Were the timbers tied

  by the gut of some

  unrisen animal,

  or in the end simply pegged

  by a single piece of wrought iron,

  one thin pin of doubt?

  Did some idiot savant

  sing his cracked hymn of healing

  in your darkest hour,

  and could you hear it

  through the jeers of the soldiers?

  In those last minutes

  of utter despair did you

  lose yourself in dreams

  of Magdalene,

  how she once washed your feet

  so gently, her long black hair

  damp with tears

  in the temple doorway?

  And where oh where

  was your Father,

  and who cut you down

  at the end?

  Finally, what became

  of the cross itself,

  was it left leaning

  caked in blood

  in the mud on the mount

  or in the end simply

  dragged away by the

  poor sorry faithful

  to be sacrificed

  into smaller pieces,

  your final gift

  a few hours of heat

  and light to pierce

  the all enveloping cold,

  the dying coals

  become risen ashes

  the wind would scatter by morning?

  Bowie Passing

  1.

  Mere coincidence

  the earth served up

  that unbelievable double rainbow

  over New York skies

  the day of the night

  Bowie died?

  I doubt it.

  The Thin White Duke

  went out just

  as he came in,

  in mystery, music,

  style and grace,

  patiently curating

  his own last act,

  courageously choreographing

  his end days

  of trembling and fear—

  Lazarus, Blackstar—

  meditations on time

  past and time passing,

  the finity of all that is flesh,

  his life a performance piece

  to the very end, sweet rainbow

  arcing into the blue abyss.

  2.

  Every once in a while

  the ineffable

  gives us a clue.

  You were one of them

  and will always be by far

  the coolest dude in the room,

  the ultimate class act,

  that guy up on the catwalk

  in blue shoes

  looking for one more dance,

  one more track to lay down,

  the jeweled cat collar in the sky

  your final costume change, outrageous

  astonishing beauty only you could pull off.

  AJ Powell

  Mother and Son, Morning Meditation

  Silence such as it is

  And the occasional riff of jazz-like anger—

  Caught and carried by a neighborhood breeze

  From anonymous lips

  In the apartment complex across the way,

  Obscenity-laced—

  Or at times the sweeter song of bluesy infant-cries

  Silence such as it is

  With the bee-hive hum of traffic

  The flotsam-and-jetsam sounds of compact cars and hemi trucks

  The ebb and flow of engines

  The stall and honk calling to a carpool’s congregants

  While next door’s dogs bark “Intruder” at the morning sun

  Silence such as it is

  Threaded under by the watersong

  Of our drainage-ditch creek,

  A song of utility, a quiet canticle

  Gurgling to stillness in an algae-skinned, peridot-green pond

  In this accompanying cacophony we find our silence

  Such as it is

  For five minutes,

  My ten-year-old son and I set a timer and forget it

  While we settle into a chosen stillness,

  Brief as it is,

  Together in it as companions

  With nothing to notice but a chattering squirrel

  Or the faucet as Dad starts his coffee—

  No homework or chore, no nag or complaint

  Permitted trespass

  We have the silence while the silence has us

  And with it a camaraderie

  He sits in imperfect silence

  His electric-charged body slowing to a lower voltage

  His bucktooth grin slackening to rest

  For him, for me, temporarily there is

  No pleasing or easing or expectations-meeting

  For a blesséd change

  He listens I think to the symphony of accidental noises

  His mind maybe drifts, and his limbs loosen

  We are there alone together

  Mutually side-setting the world away awhile

  Letting the silence

  Sing us awake to each other

  Bifurcated Heart

  There is a bifurcated heart

  Beating in my chest,

  A dual heart:

  Loyal and wishful, grateful and grabbing

  Wanting what it doesn’t have.

  Still the moon is full tonight

  Hanging in the sky absolute and entire,

  An orbed womb haloed by silvered mist

  Birthing tides.

  Whole she hangs,

  Cratered by Space’s every hurled attempt

  To break her. She did not break.

&nb
sp; Her strength—she is round with it.

  Tonight she shows us how wrong is

  Our assessment of her changeable nature.

  Shadows merely cycle across her face;

  Only our perception of her is ever slivered.

  She is unchanging.

  So also my heart.

  It drums a rhythm as tight as a time table

  As regular as tides

  Steady while it houses

  Its manifold desires and devotions.

  A Poet’s Triptych

  I.

  I cannot capture Shakespeare’s lilting song,

  The rocking sway of five iambs in a line.

  Each slant and crooked rhyme reveals how long

  The distance lies between his ear and mine.

  For each syllabic strike that lands amiss

  Upon my heart another strike does fall.

  The urge and grip within me now does list;

  Each nearly capsized thought I’ll keel and haul,

  Then toss it on my beach of wants repressed,

  And like so many words I’ve lost before,

  And many other hopes I’ve not expressed,

  Another grain of sand falls on my shore.

  To turn my hand to poems is a wound

  I cut upon myself—relief unfound.

  II.

  A poet is an obnoxious thing to try to be.

  Smug.

  Artful arrogance metering out my meaning

  with a rhyming suggestion of universality—

       oh please.

  We are each of us alone,

  and none of us is normative.

  Perhaps our shared humanity is our most

  carefully composed illusion.

  Delusional is the attempt to write

  a poem.

  III.

  There is no iron in me.

  I am bone and flesh and compromise.

  I am capitulation.

  Water seeps into crevices

  And soil-softness that will receive it.

  Call me Puddle.

  I wish I could find my mettle,

  My metal-minded, mercury-fired power

  To unbend the bending compliance

  In my voice.

  I want to speak like a prophet tonight,

  A terrible light to burn behind my eyes,

  A chorus of seraphim to add its vibrations to my timbre.

  I want truth to blaze, tinged with sulphur.

  God the Baker

  I can hold both in my head,

  Can’t you?

  The possibility I am right and

  The possibility I am wrong.

  It seems the weather should’ve taught us by now:

  We’re in this together and better be.