The Poems

     on the back of her thigh

looks like Ireland, that the isle

     of white in the north is

Lough Neagh, and while I kiss

     the long way from there

to her buttocks I’m thinking

     about Magherafelt, the town

my grandfather left years ago

    in the hope of finding

something as good, I’m thinking,

     as this beautiful ass.

I touch my lips to it gently, the way

     I like to think of him,

arriving in the Port of Philadelphia,

     getting down on his knees

and kissing his dream come true.

                                         --appeared in American Poetry Review

                                                                Vol. 38  No. 6   Nov./Dec. 2009


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HOPE

Hope Lange, the famous actress –she starred with everyone

from Elvis to Charles Bronson, and she slipped me the tongue –

a long story –

                        now is not the time or place –

the play’s the thing –

                             The Supporting Cast–

                                                                          Broadway–

The Biltmore – backstage -- so

                                                    so long ago, the last dress

rehearsal,

                 and Hope Lange, beautiful Hope Lange,

twenty years my O my

                                      O my elder, old –

but beautiful still – O my

                  God, O my Hope Lange –

and Hope Lange slipped her tongue,

                                    a small taste,

 was it scotch,

             a tinge, more sweet, and fresh,

                                                                            soft, her tongue, 

sweet, soft – fresh,

                                and I was surprised, slipped

it quickly

     through my lips

                    to embrace 

                                                                my tongue, slipped

it by my defenses, all defenses down, resting,

unexpecting -- and

                                surprised, I held it

                                                               in a breath, took it

to my heart, took it home later, Hope,

                                                               a taste, maybe scotch,

or maybe something

                                  sweeter, and so much more,

                                                                                me

just a boy, twenty-some years, O my, O my, so young,

with something now I never had before -- Hope.

                                         --appeared in American Poetry Review

                                                                Vol. 38  No. 6   Nov./Dec. 2009


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STAR

Using an on-line Latin dictionary

trying to find a suitable meaning for garris,

a word, I’m pretty sure, that Martial thought of

as ironic, when suddenly I thought of something – I wrote

it down, that I’m stuck on a wild star that is soaring

through the black sky at some incredible speed

I can’t even imagine and blah blah –

I followed a windsong of pentameters,

never returning to the ribald Martial translations,

and even when later I crawled into bed for the night

I was still wondering about my trip through space.                  

The next day I asked a science guy,

a teacher at the place I work, who I had seen

from time to time walking like a momma duck

with a bunch of funny little duckling eggheads

wobbling right behind, and just last week

with what looked like a high-tech rocket launcher

that they set up in the faculty parking lot,

I thought maybe we were pulling one of the best

school pranks ever against our sister school

on the other side of the park, but apparently not,

they were using it to look into the windows of heaven.       

But when I asked this guy about my poem,

my science, which I knew well enough to distrust –

I said, I’m on a wild star, maybe

a renegade star, am I not?  And I am flying

through the inky sky at an insane speed, right? 

Well, -- and this is what I think I needed

to know – what am I heading into?  I mean,

where am I going – toward anything that can

be named, acknowledged?  Anything at all?    

And this guy, Mr. Science – he just looks at me.                  

I give him time, and he uses every minute

to hem and haw, and then he settles in –

into the box of silence that can pass for thinking

if you pull it off just right, but this guy doesn’t. 

This is the guy who connects the smart kids

with NASA, who, according to the school’s rumor mill,

is ex-C.I.A., or is it Navy SEAL,

the story changes every year or two. 

My own respect comes from the fact that he went

to Power Memorial in NYC,

one of the hundred or so in the school’s senior class,

one of those graduated with my hero, Lew Alcindor,

and though I know it is not true, I tell my students   

that he’d been the underused twelfth man

on a team that never had to go very deep

as long as the super Jabbar-to-be was at center.     

Anyway, the school’s science guy let me down. 

I asked him, How can I be expected to write

my poems if I can’t count on you for my science? 

He started rambling on about what we know

and what we don’t, about the curious new questions

that seem to crop up each day because of string theory. 

I told him, I have the same problem with Zen

monks, something new every day,                                            

there’s no staying on top of it, a mad log

rolling under the heavy minds and boots.                          

I hate to say it, but I put the Star poem away,

at the top of the page I’d written “Star,” but knew

it was only tentative, unlikely to stay so simple. 

And as I am wont to do, I turn, because

the “new stuff” is not flowing, to labor –

in this case, to the poems of long-gone Martial,

and the chance to brush up on my schoolboy Latin.                        

. . . talkative, loquacious; chattering, betraying secrets . . . .

                                         --appeared in American Poetry Review

                                                                Vol. 38  No. 6   Nov./Dec. 2009


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MOOSEHEAD  

Shame is a moosehead,

an embarrassment,

poking out from the wall

like an erection in church

when it was impossible

to keep your mind and eyes

off of Angela Ferrara

sitting across the aisle

when she would mumble

her Latin and sing the hymns

half-heartedly at best.

I wonder who she was

thinking about and how,

when she turned and caught

me looking, how I smiled

shyly and she just stared

as cold as stained glass

and turned away, and it was

time to stand up and go

to the communion rail,

but I couldn't, even after

my mother poked me, thought

to wake me, bring me back,

but there was no doing that.

                                         --appeared in American Poetry Review

                                                                Vol. 38  No. 6   Nov./Dec. 2009

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COUNTING OUR LOSES

I think of the Greek, Archilochus,

who left his shield, unwittingly,

behind a bush, and it’s theirs, now--

he's resigned-- but he still has his skin,

and there’s something to be said for that.

That shield, though, was a good one.

Still, he knew he could find another

to replace it.   I’ve never had a shield,

but I left a woman once--  or she left me.

I know, I am lucky just to have

my skin.  But I know, too, the part

about finding a replacement—

that’s bullshit.  Oh, I’ll find another,

but there'll be no replacing her.

I think the Greek knew this --

most of the lyrics we have of his

are fragments, only half the story.

                                         --appeared in American Poetry Review

                                                                Vol. 38  No. 6   Nov./Dec. ’09


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THE CLOSING OF THE PHILCO PLANT

Holly Near was singing about better days to come,

and Jane Fonda in her Klute shag was clapping time,

singing along, but the workers just stood there

in an apron spread out across Tioga Street,

not working, women and men who still didn't believe it,

you could see it in their eyes, going dim

like the sad yellow light in the dial of the old Philco

in the corner of the living room when the game was over

and Mike got up to turn it off, but the glow held its own

for that few hard seconds, the time it took for him

to take his glass to the kitchen and pour another Black Bush,

about as long as it took for the light in the windows

of the plant on Tioga Street to quit, give up,

when one of the company boys came through to see

that everything was shut down tight before throwing the switch,

cutting the power to the entire floor.  The huge, dumb beast

of a building went dark that day, and the workers knew

that singing and clapping were not going to bring it back. 

I saw some of the others pick up stones and throw them;

I stooped for one too.  I rolled it in my soft, young hand feeling

for balance; I could tell where one day the calluses would be. 

I threw the stone--  don't know why, or even at what. 

And I sang, too, when I heard the others singing, 

standing with them that day on the radical fringe

--appeared in Schuylkill Valley Journal

                                                          Vol. 5 No. 2  fall/winter ’08 - ’09


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THAT GODDAMN MOON

                                                                 --for Maria Muldaur

Tonight the moon is like a tambourine,

like the one a woman played in a jug band

I saw once and fell in love with,

it must be thirty years ago now,

but I did that kind of thing back then, fell

in love as easily as that, and I still remember,

it had skin bruised brown from the serious heel of her hand,

and you could see she was serious, the way she laughed

and pranced back and forth across the crowded stage,

the moon shimmering in the hand over her head,

and with the heel of her other one ringing out a song,

while a bunch of her friends, all guys, stood around

or sat spooking at the mouths of fat clay jugs

and running clacking spoons along the length of their thighs,

even pulling at some kind of strings that ran from the bridge

of a old mop and over the belly of a big wash tub. 

Maybe you had to be there, to see and hear

the magic of the music, the madness of the moon, but tonight…

I mean, would you look at that goddamn moon.

                                                                        Appeared in Mad Poets Review

                                                                                            Volume 23   ’09


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