In the streetlight four
porcelain cups on the curb
carefully placed.
Momentarily ruin dares not court
their strict white, the soiled language of concrete,
the way one could not slip a sheet of paper
between the two.
Consider the spring-stunned plumeria,
the florescent bath of nonsense
striping the night from the waste up.
Bare-breasted night, lime-leaf night,
night of a thousand catfish
feeding on the surface of things
where the moon is no longer a reflection
and the stars are actual stars
in a sky that refuses
our complacency
like the song mother would sing
from the bottom of the well,
the one she turned to
cupping her hands
as day broke.
3 responses so far ↓
1 mackenzie // Mar 18, 2008 at 12:33 pm
I think this song starts with:
Bare-breasted night, lime-leaf night
and goes on from there. The porcelain cups, the neon abstraction, seem like distractions. But at bare-breasted night you start singing.
2 A.I.Titov // Apr 22, 2008 at 5:25 pm
Your poems have such visual life, I wonder why the universes they portray are mute. It makes them feel lonely.
You say, as the mother WOULD sing from the bottom of the well… but she doesn’t. Your poems on this site are of such quiet places (so very colorful, but silent). Is it intentional? It may just be the few selected and posted here– haphazardly representing a trend that doesn’t exist in reality. Am I far afield?
3 Liz // Apr 22, 2008 at 8:12 pm
I think its funny that you think they are silent because many of them have song in the title… they are certainly quiet, and i guess i am trying to capture something that comes before languge the way songs can hit on some bare nerve. I think the trying to touch that thing that can be so powerful in song can feel lonely in languge because there is a sense in which it is impossible and shows our infanite remove from people. But i also hope that the poems are also very joyful in this other way, drinking in the marrow….blah blah blah. thanks for asking because it is fun to have to write think and write a response
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