I found out Tuesday night that FootHills Publishing, a 25-year-old independent poetry press, is going to publish a collection of my work. I really can’t believe it. Huzzah!
Watch this space for more details…
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I wrote this in Oakland, CA, in October 2008 while getting ready for my sister-in-law’s wedding.
Tomorrow the Wedding
for Amy & Michele
Tomorrow the wedding
today hauling cans of soda,
bottles of beer.
Phone: the Italian groom
carrying a bouquet of balloons
back to the apartment.
Meanwhile…
eastern family, recently landed,
descended from the pure blue.
Our temporary hilltop home,
where we sit silently
on the sun-warmed porch,
looking out over Oakland
at the glittering bay beyond.
I wrote this on a plane trip to San Francisco in 2008, while sitting next to the gentleman described in the poem.
Robert Redford’s Banker
makes perfect check marks
next to the names of Maui restaurants
that he’ll visit when the plane lands.
With measured strokes,
he moves money
from one worthy cause to the next.
The handwriting in his register
shows the passage of time,
a certain revealing tremor in the fingers.
A small picture of the actor —
in his halcyon days —
rests on the tray table next to a bill
from the banker’s club, a map of Maui,
and suggestions for avoiding problems
with Medicare and the tax collector.
He nibbles a deliberate biscotti
and counts to three on his left hand,
fingers pressed, one after another, against his thumb.
Perhaps he’s not counting at all, just
reassuring himself of his own tactile reality,
one not represented by ink on watermarked paper.
The plane touches down, the banker gathers loose papers
to his chest and moves off into the terminal,
searching for his connection, dreaming of the stage.
Listen to this poem by pressing the play button above.
I wrote this over the weekend on the train from Albany, NY, to Rochester, NY.
Maple Leaf
ice flows on the canal
and I flow the opposite way,
bound west on two steel lines
toward my old not-home
now the water is a river
filled with half-wild islands
and on each piece of snowy ground,
a flock of waiting birds
Amsterdam, Utica, Syracuse —
ancient and exotic names
they have turned their backs
on the water and rails
further on now through fields
where sparse grasses and weeds
poke up through the snow
like drowning men’s fingertips
blowing snow, fog-like
makes of the rail line a dream sequence
empty nests wedged in tree limbs
empty factories with no hope of spring
for an instant, beside the tracks,
two men with rifles search the trees for prey
while nearby an empty backyard
where an empty swing set sways
Listen to this poem by pressing the play button above.
bus stop effigy
bus stop effigy
low-wage lynching
victim waits
to move from one
rat hole to the next
stop on the line
with only ends
no destinations
no cessation
puffy down coat
conceals smoldering
fire in the gut
winter air hides
shamefaced blush
The thermodynamic arrow of time has always interested me, both as a concept and a phrase. I wrote this syllabic poem last year, my first such attempt. Thanks to Huw Price for allowing me to use the epigram.
Image courtesy of Rush W. Dozier, Codes of Evolution – the Synaptic language Language revealing the Secrets of Matter, Life, and Thought, Crown Publishers Inc., New York, 1992.
William Can’t Tell
Late in the nineteenth century, on the shoulders of Maxwell, Boltzmann and many lesser giants, physicists saw that there is a deep puzzle behind the familiar phenomena described by the new science of thermodynamics. On the one hand, many such phenomena show a striking temporal bias. They are common in one temporal orientation, but rare or non-existent in reverse. On the other hand, the underlying laws of mechanics show no such temporal preference. If they allow a process in one direction, they also allow its temporal mirror image. Hence the puzzle: if the laws are so even-handed, why are the phenomema themselves so one-sided? — Huw Price, from The Thermodynamic Arrow: Puzzles and Pseudo-Puzzles
chaos does not lessen
along the arrow’s path
and time cannot be measured
by order or its absence
the arrow flies forever
no pressure no resistance
thermodynamism
beneath the lives of every
woman, man and baby
throughout this blind creation
there is no bow, no hunter
no target, no intention
A poem about seeing my biological father and grandmother for the first time in 30 years.
Sixty-Seven Unopened Videocassettes
Thirty years and fifty percent of my DNA
have brought me to a double-wide with a steep driveway,
tucked away in an enclave of trailers not far from the iron banks of the Ohio River.
She asks me to call her “nanna” because all the children do.
He’s missing most of his teeth — waiting for a new set of dentures.
I have no hook on which to hang this porch conversation,
this three-decade history lesson and game of tag.
So we talk about tobacco farming, long-haul trucking,
and spying on the Russians from within a cigar tube deep beneath the Mediterranean.
I learn about great-uncles and great-aunts and an extra uncle,
only to learn that money and land and other tragedies have driven wedges into this family, too.
I want to walk into the dining room like Antwone Fisher,
but the table is given over to Charlie Brown and Linus —
Christmas decorations awaiting transfer to their holiday destination.
There are sixty-seven unopened Star Trek videocassettes,
a bathroom crammed with history books,
lighters from the Navy,
a robe almost like the one I wear,
and an old shaving cup with a worn brush.
No matter what happens, I’ve erased the most terrible vision —
awaiting the end with the moisture of regret dampening my cheeks.
“The next time you come, darlin’, we’ll have chicken and dumplings.”
I wrote this last February while thinking of my friend Julie White. She knits, cycles, gardens, teaches and other worthwhile things. Visit her blog.
It isn’t merely the fashioning
for Julie White
It isn’t merely the fashioning
of new meanings from the threads and whisps,
rather it is the intention, the
unsounded affirmation of a
relationship, woven into each
chosen strand and intricate pattern.
Pearls uncovered in the depths, the craft
rows back to shore, where it is met by
the warm wool and the gathering in.
One must take stock in it, and accept
the gift for what it is, speech rendered,
unspoken, as textile manuscript.
I wrote this poem after a visit to Robert Frost’s house in Shaftsbury, VT.
At Mr. Frost’s
Bathed in
autumn
sunlight
on a
table rock
in the fallow field
behind
Robert Frost’s
stone house,
I’m reminded
of the poet’s
advice
to not press
the poems
too hard.
Sometimes sunlight
is just that,
and fallow fields
need only
sun, seeds,
water
and time.
Long Haul
(for my father and his father)
it wasn’t easy keeping all those wheels on the road
another late-night diner and a nap in the cab
hauling one of the damned things was hard enough
it took a man to pull two
it wasn’t easy to raise seven of them
the boy was first and then six — six! — girls
you’d think we would have stopped trying
to make him a brother
and since he was a solitary boy even then,
he would put on his suit and walk down to the little church
that was happy to have an usher
an extra boy to pass the hat for what little there was
he wrecked the car, I made him replace it with college money
I wasn’t teaching him a lesson about responsibility
I was trying to hang on to my boy
the one who’d always had his eye on the horizon
and then later, when he was home from the service
we’d go down under the church to drink at the Legion hall
thick smoke in the air, cheap beer on tap
looking down the barrel of a one-stoplight life
it took a man — and I knew it — to leave
to drive and keep driving until he’d built a better life
to be more than I was and to do it with dignity
and I never told him, but I was proud
(Thanks to David Faust for letting me use a photo from his collection of St. Johnsbury trucks. That’s the company for which my grandfather drove.)
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Memorex Hummingbird
by Jason Crane
Memorex hummingbird hovers above the nectar cup;
animatronic woodpecker hunts for scuttling food.
Nature or Disney ride? Who can say?
Disconnected as we are from snow falling off branches.
I hold the binoculars steady and point out the Blue Jay
as it pecks the last leaf on the winter elm,
and through those lenses peek the unspoiled eyes of my son.
He shouts, “I see it!” and is rooted to the spot,
A sapling full of the coursing energy of the yet-to-come.
Photo by Ben Johnson, Sr.
I saw organist Gene Ludwig in concert earlier tonight, and wrote these three pieces while watching the show. If you’d like to know more about Gene, listen to my interview with him on The Jazz Session.
Gene Ludwig
1.
Gone deep inside, he slides
effortlessly across the organ keys,
never losing the sense of weightlessness
every earthbound mortal
longs for.
Unlike most, he isn’t held
down by gravity, not forced to
wear the chains of step-by-step,
inch-by-inch. Instead, he
gently leaves the earth, smiling.
2.
Perhaps he’s the local mortician,
skin made alabaster through
affinity with those he serves;
or an accountant, toiling away
until life’s energy winds down
like the gold watch they’ll give him;
he could be any one of a hundred
buttoned-up Rotarians in grey flannel suits,
friends with the mayor or with
the chief of police.
Then he sits down at the organ, and
joy springs from those ivory fingers.
He strips off the grey shell,
revealing the light at his core.
That light is the only thing
that reaches us faster
than his sound.
3.
Grabbing two handfuls of
electricity, he
naturally believes that life is beautiful, that
everyone has ready access to this
level of presence, this certain
understanding of the melody.
Doubtless, they all
would trade places
if they could, exchanging
Gene’s grace for their own.
A poem for my grandfather. The first letter of each line spells out his name.
Bernard Orrin Joseph Flanders, 1912-2009
Bent over one of many art projects, he is perhaps
eyeing a stitch in a pattern, or
running his hands across the smooth surface of a
nascent scrimshaw.
All of our houses have some
reminder of his artistry,
done on commission or by surprise,
or given over after a move to a smaller apartment.
Rarer pieces, such as the carved nameplates
resting from nails set
in doors of his own making, will
never pass from their owners’ hands, nor will our
joy dim each time we catch sight of
our names carved in the
soft wood.
Each of us holds onto whatever small treasures we’ve
placed so carefully in the bank of our memory.
He never seemed to understand the weight of his gift,
feigned embarrassment at our gushing praise,
lowered his eyes
and said, “It’s
nothing,
don’t mention it.”
Each of holds onto whatever small treasurers we’ve
received from him, ever thankful that his love has been captured in
stitching or ivory or wood.
UPDATE: This poem was published in the Winter-Spring 2010 issue of Blue Collar Review. You can get your copy at partisanpress.org.
Lillian Dupree & The Ballad of Frenchman Street
It always starts with the rain and wind kicking up.
Clouds circle like vultures far out over the ocean,
higher than the sailors could see them,
if they were looking.
In a bar near Charity Hospital,
the TV shows the slowly spiraling storm,
but the sound is off and no one pays much mind
as the weatherman says “this is the one.”
In old westerns, the Indian lies prostrate,
ear to the ground, listening for the approaching hoof beats
of a warring tribe. If Donald Harrison, Jr., were to put
his ear to the ground, he would hear the low rumble of the future.
A factory in Texas made the guitar
that will be strummed when the horn should be sounded.
The strings are tight across the bridge,
like the cars and the buses and those on foot will be later.
Back on Frenchman Street, Lillian Dupree gets up from the bar
and starts for home, noticing that the breeze is strong.
She’s still in her scrubs after a long night taking readings,
listening for pulses and watching the moving lines.
This is the old part of the city.
The part the French built when it seemed like they’d be here forever.
As time and the storm proved, no one
is guaranteed this plot of land at the edge of the gulf.
First the French, then the Spanish, then the French again;
they all tried to conquer what could not be tamed;
tried to civilize the wild Caribbean soul of a city that was
never really part of this country, and yet is at the heart of it.
Perhaps it is that very separation, that very wildness,
that will make it easy for many to look away
as the bowl fills with unholy water like a rusty pot
left to decay in the tall grasses out behind the house.
Lillian Dupree is tired.
Tired of walking these same streets every night.
She wishes she could drive, or that she could afford to live
far enough away to commute.
She was born at this very hospital, born to a mother
who was born to a mother
who was born to a mother
who was born a slave.
Did you know that the last ever shipment of African slaves
from the continent came to this very city?
By that time, all the Africans you could ever want
were being mass produced in Virginia.
Bongocero
(for Arturo O’Farrill)
the meaty slap of flesh on flesh
the pop of skin on skin
fingertips, the side of the thumb
legs a vice to hold the shells
the heart of the matter is a mix
of rhythm and freedom
of accompaniment and improvisation
of ancient order and modernity
then from the back of the stage
the trumpets kick in
and the bongocero drops his drums,
which fall to the stage with a thud
now it’s skin grasping wood striking metal
as the bell cuts through
the urgent stabs of the horns
and gives a lift to the dancers
gi-gi-go
gi-gi-go
gi-gi-go
gi-go
gi-gi-go
gi-gi-go
gi-gi-go
gi-go