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Broken Pantoum
First and last line, phrases from the poem “Dear Rose” in Time is a Mother, by Ocean Vuong.
A word is only what it means
one way to know white noise round sounds
so rapturous at night in daylight
fractured as old skin fault-lined
one way to know white noise round sounds
my maquette tries to be a poem
faultlines again did I write that say that
yes here it is
my maquette tries still not a poem
& the passion’s not quite gone
yes here it is (the likeness doesn’t scan)
my edit-eye excises sentiment
allows some passion (his receding chin)
a taste of past Selma’s cake with plums
my edit-eye my tongue remembers
cold-sweet warm-tart enjambed as lovers’ limbs
those plums in Selma’s cake
sharp intense but flat depending on the year
cold-sweet warm-tart enjambed as lovers’ limbs
despite my private fears
sharp intense & flat depending on the year
but colored wild & rapturous
despite those private fears rapturous ravenous
but words aren’t only what they mean
(feeling is the only truth)
Depression Soup, 1936
the chicken feet
at Sammy Yee’s
a jumble
grasses tuck
slivered duck
scallions in bao-clouds
orders sing out
loud
vowels
treble clatter
roll & rattle
metal carts
right here
mother ladles
soup pot to bowl
noodles
tangle
mounds
of ancient
hens’ feet
broth leached & leached hours & hours
from barely bubbling bones
father’s bald head
a brass-globed finial
gleams tall over
suit & tie
starched dinners
mother’s ordered breaths Her Table
set for dining
with me an animal
whose procreant urges
primal ravenous
suck jellied bits off
mount of moon
mount of Venus
my hands
their feet
In Palmistry mount of moon, an area at the base of the palm opposite the thumb said to be the source of creativity, moods & emotions. Mount of Venus, opposite the mount of moon said to be the source of energy, love, affection and sympathy.
Portrait as a Complex Object
She has excised
what some call
excess
an ever so slight
fat-flap at the waist
a prominent nose
her pointed chin
pain + time
her currency
her only leverage
leaves her
longing
for something unseen
searching
her deep reaches back
in that dim corner
where she (privately)
turns over arranges rearranges
her portrait
(composing her real self)
from shattered redactions
an object something like
a decorated dish warped in a mirror
she is looking
for anything that might
prove
(it must be there)
her worth
just the thinnest slice.
NOTE:
“I say inner beauty doesn’t exist. That’s something that unpretty women invented to justify themselves.” Osmel Sousa, longtime head of the Miss Venezuela pageant, on the popularity of plastic surgery in Venezuela. (NY Times, 11.9.13)
Another Slow Fade
After Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun
reads as disappeared not
an insult though unpredictably
spawning rage
permission to relive lingering
papercut-cruelties
or tenderness
& abandonment again
you know how it goes
one gone & one left
plunged into orphanhood
affecting the same absence
of person wisdom & smart-ass repartee
alpenglow fades & disappears
in every direction
weeds
unwashed dishes disheveled sheets
two fishing boots each molded by a foot
body heat
not erased simply
(like Verdi’s Va Pensiero )
a pulse
a heart whole & beating
that outlives us
Untied
scraps collected
saved & shaped to stanzas
or laid out with care on paper
like starched & ironed organza
crushed
oh those crumpled hours
torn & tossed away
(something might be there)
then
once when I was three
I tried to tie my shoe hurled it flying
fury against the flowered wall
paper
making bruises of the purple-petaled flowers
not so much later
I came to know
the shoe’s lace better
its loop-the-loop
its up-round-down
& then the lace & I
became a bow
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