Friday, February 1, 2008

State to State: Minnesota and New York poetry contest
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1 comment:

Eliza said...

Dear Friends:

I feel like a mid-night stalker: I don't know how to come out of the dark and actually post! So here I am commenting and filling up the airwaves.

But because my resivion has to do with my conflict about speaking and being heard I'm sending these three poems which are the middle of a set of six called "Revision." They're a response to our gathering and my inability to revise the last poem I brought to the group.

Take Note

What’s alive is never what you think.
What you think is already dead.
No, these words are mis-said.
What’s alive is in between. . .
like Kachinas. . .
stepping down. . .
or across. . . living as they do in the cracks
of dimensions
so they appear – if you happen to see them – spindly,
loose-limbed, gigantic.

Everything you see is questionable.
What you think, more so.

But I still lift my head to look out
the door at the river roaring
with Saturday boats.


The Teacher

I’m sure we all wrote a hundred poems
the Saturday after Malena’s workshop.
Twelve disciples in a room communing
with each other’s work.

What else could we do?

Gurdjieff says we go to church for the sex
of gathering bodies, the electricity of minds
brought to attention. . .
. . . and her stillness,
her clarity
held up before us.


The Work We Do
(Sunday)

1.
My brother the engineer builds giant buoys
that ping the China Sea. Counting fish,
the government says.

2.
Like a whale sounding his sea, mapping passage, gauging
threats - where shallows lie, where canyons rise, or fall,
where others group, where dangers lurk - we gather feedback,
collect echoes, test the limits of our event.

3.
After that first gulp, that first smacking cry, the falling panic
at the grave grip of a dry sea, the hard edged world of flat echoes,
unbearable light, what comfort? Who responds late at night?
Are you angry her cries break your sleep, her aloneness echoing
your own?

4.
The buoy’s pings are so loud they stun whales,
my brother says regretfully,
at the end of his career.

5.
If I squeeze into a small enough box, if I muffle
the sound, will my siblings be safe?
Will I?

These poems feel incidental, trivial. But the process of writing them was interesting.

Thanks to all, e.

February 1, 2008 at 8:56 AM

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