Category Archives: CW

Line Poem
by Caroline Knox

Long jetty, long shell-racked jetty, cracked warped planks.

Beautiful fish, beautiful sea-bass poached with an August tomato,
on an ironstone plate.

A snake’s slough, a snake’s spinal cord, a dry-rot stump.

A twill tape measure, an audiotape cassette unspooled and puckered,
shining.

Agate prayer beads, kazoos, whistles, rattles.

A bike chain and a bungee cord. A möbius strip and a broccoli elastic.

Split vanilla pod inset with paltry-looking flat oily brown seeds.

Egg-and-dart molding of vitreous fake sandstone. Contrails,
mares’ tails, mackerel sky.

List Poem

Old comic book, a Wonder Woman comic book, soiled pages.

Pink worm, a slippery earthworm cracked and dry, in a plastic sandwich bag.

A raccoon skin cap, a rabbit’s foot key chain, a piece of driftwood.

A crinkled dress pattern, several eight tracks labels faded, dusty.

Knotted prayer rope, song flute, marbles, music box.

An airplane gear and a silky cord. An infinity symbol and two pieces of velcro.

Soybean shell burst with beans missing and husk brown and dry.

Papier-mache volcano with soda-vinegar explosions. Sun dogs,
neighbor’s dogs, Red Dog Saloon.

Just
by Alan Shapiro

after the downpour, in the early evening,
late sunlight glinting off the raindrops sliding
down the broad backs of the redbud leaves
beside the porch, beyond the railing, each leaf
bending and springing back and bending again
beneath the dripping,
between existences,
ecstatic, the souls grow mischievous, they break ranks,
swerve from the rigid V’s of their migration,
their iron destinies, down to the leaves
they flutter in among, rising and settling,
bodiless, but pretending to have bodies,

their weightlessness more weightless for the ruse,
their freedom freer, their as-ifs nearly not,
until the night falls like an order and
they rise on one vast wing that darkens down
the endless flyways into other bodies.

Nothing will make you less afraid.

Just

before the snow, in the late morning
slow moons dangling above the horizon dipping
behind the red finishes of the antique barns
beside the woods, beyond the fields, each tree
bending and blowing forward and bending again
beneath the dipping,
…
I am not really fond of the original poem or mine, so I’ll just stop here. I usually like Shapiro’s work, too. I think if I want to write like him, I need to outline the parts of speech and analyze how they work together and go from there.

Oh, may your silhouette never dissolve on the beach;
may your eyelids never flutter into the empty distance.
Don’t leave me for a second, my dearest.

From I Crave Your Mouth, Your Voice, Your Hair
by Pablo Neruda

Soft feet dancing surf
washes traces of you goodbye-
you step and then
sand remembers you no more.
But I do, as your footprints
leave me empty-handed on shore.
I remember my waves crashing into your shore,
an open cave moist with sea and scented lime.
Don’t leave me- white surf seems to pound
into grey beach
or memory will be what’s left.
Don’t leave. Not even if for a moment.

The Assignation
by Ciaran Carson

I think I must have told him my name was Juliette,
with four syllables, you said, to go with violette.

I envisaged the violet air that presages snow,
the dark campaniles of a city beginning to blur

a malfunctioning violet neon pharmacy sign
jittering away all night through the dimity curtains.

Near dawn you opened them to a deep fall and discovered
a line of solitary footprints leading to a porch:

a smell of candle-wax and frankincense; the dim murmur
of a liturgy you knew but whose language you did not.

The statues were shrouded in Lenten violet, save one,
a Virgin in a cope of voile so white as to be blue.

As was the custom there, your host informed you afterwards—
the church was dedicated to Our Lady of the Snows.

A woman shrug and slight of step hobbling up the scarlet
aisle, intricately carved between aged cushioned wooden pews.

She, shrouded in pungent smell of candle-wax and lilies,
clutches coins firm in her grip, knuckles white, head slanted down

on her thin wrinkled neck. Her eyes? Slits, as tears flow freely
from beneath clinched lids, lashes twinkling moist yellow flashes.

“A poor widows mite, a poor widow’s mite, a poor widow’s
mite,” she whispers advancing. Heads turn, all eyes stare. She trembling

continues her assault, inch by inch the carpet woos her.
Chin now to chest, palms impressed by coins, cheeks chapped red by salt,

she kneels. Her body convulses, wracked with grief stricken sobs.
Hunched, she sways and intones her sins, naming each one clearly.

She rocks flagellating; her fingers loose depositing
her poor widow’s mite: cable car token and poker chip.

a can of beer becomes
an AM-FM transistor
radio with a video
screen, all put together
to be lifted

to the eyes and tasted,
collage after collage,
formally eloquent or
laced with a hard core,
trendaciously sensual,

himself withdrawing as
he reveals, low-profiling
as he faces full on. And
since style without
content is death

Style without content is death.
No poem will come.
No death will come.
To come is death.
Come to death.
Petite morte.
Little death. Style without content.
Be content without style.
No poem will come.
Death will come.
Come. Death. Style. Content.

Style without content is death.

You come inside
my tomblike womb
but no babies grow there.

Your fetid sauce pools
in my pool.
I find my smile
drifting away on a sea.
I see
you and who
you are.

Your slipstick shaft
carries fluid virus
stylizes masses—
its content infects me.

But the disease stops here.
Without style death is content.