Saturday, October 18, 2014

Soft Landing (He Never Loved You)

An inkling of him lands
flutters in the chest
chatters in her ear
pecks at her fingers
and toes until it nests
forms an eggshell
around fragments, words

until one day long before
first light comes a singing
an intonation a prayer
of sorts that offers
a glimpse into something
sacredly fragile a fraction
of what once was –

poem manifested
bright with feathers.


Debbie Calverley

Monday, October 13, 2014

And the true genius....


Last of the Leaves & the Summer Roses



Prelude

Overnight, the leaves turned
gold

they scratch against sky so
blue

every hue becomes a magic
realism

late autumn that time of
magnificent

colour:  last minute walks
clouds

scattered so high in the sky
touch

seems  endless, if not
impossible

as if we know the heart:
bursts.

-Debbie Calverley


Saturday, October 11, 2014

Soft Tissue

There is something special
about meeting in the flesh.

Eye to eye, tooth to tooth
a blush of cheek. 

Laughter on the lips
sadness in the fine lines 

spin a complex orbit.
A swallow, then a nervous cough

fingers tug at a pressed collar
small wrinkle at the sleeve

- your brows so smooth. 

So much more
to at long last kiss away.



Debbie Calverley

From "The Desk"

Fair enough: you people have eaten me,
I—wrote you down.
They’ll lay you out on a dinner table,
me—on this desk.


I’ve been happy with little.
There are dishes I’ve never tried.
But you, you people eat slowly, and often;
You eat and eat.


Everything was decided for us
back in the ocean:
Our places of action,
our places of gratitude.


You—with belches, I—with books,
with truffles, you. With pencil, I,
you and your olives, me and my rhyme,
with pickles, you. I, with poems.


At your head—funeral candles
like thick-legged asparagus:
your road out of this world
a dessert table’s striped cloth.


They will smoke Havana cigars
on your left side and your right;
your body will be dressed
in the best Dutch linen.


And—not to waste such expensive cloth,
they will shake you out,
along with the crumbs and bits of food,
into the hole, the grave.


You—stuffed capon, I—pigeon.
Gunpowder, your soul, at the autopsy.
And I will be laid out bare
with only two wings to cover me.

BY MARINA TSVETAEVA
Late July 1933

Friday, October 10, 2014

Moths


A translator who has a phobia of moths
spent three years translating a book with a moth motif.
It’s ironic, she has said, that she knew more about the moths
than the author of the original, who was merely fascinated.
The translation contained a greater variety of moths than the original,
drawn from suggestions she had made, some of which were in fact
too perfect and changed back before it went to print.


Her moths, the ones that were too aptly named,
meant too much, her moths that she hated, where are they now?
The same place as all the versions of people
that have been undressed and slept with, in lieu of the people
themselves, by others. That must include a version
of almost everyone, lots of versions of some people,
some only a flutter, animated then decided against.


CALEB KLACES


Saturday, October 4, 2014

Continual Conversation With A Silent Man

Continual Conversation With A Silent Man
Wallace Stevens
b. October 2, 1879 

The old brown hen and the old blue sky,
Between the two we live and die--
The broken cartwheel on the hill.

As if, in the presence of the sea,
We dried our nets and mended sail
And talked of never-ending things,

Of the never-ending storm of will,
One will and many wills, and the wind,
Of many meanings in the leaves,

Brought down to one below the eaves,
Link, of that tempest, to the farm,
The chain of the turquoise hen and sky

And the wheel that broke as the cart went by.
It is not a voice that is under the eaves.
It is not speech, the sound we hear

In this conversation, but the sound
Of things and their motion: the other man,
A turquoise monster moving round.

Wallace Stevens

Beauty is momentary in the mind —
The fitful tracing of a portal;
But in the flesh it is immortal.

     Wallace Stevens