Poems Of The Week

[jazzy_dave]

The French Girl

BY ANN LAUTERBACH


1.

Someone plays
& the breaking mounts.
Raw material for worthy forthcoming;
indecipherable, discrete.
Plays
rhapsodies as the air cools
and vanquishes: nothing sits still, yet.
The land is a result of its use, I explained.
Everything else rested while the kids made a girdle
removed from classical syntax. Shed, and

something breaks, mounting
the small hill to its vista: I saw
a rope of trees in another country.
I could not say I am lost in the proper way.
The season is huge.
This house is haunted: I planted it.
Where? In the shed, and

spoiled by attention. You see?
Every bit counts, when the morning displays
the serious ratio of the given stars.
What made us tear the hours into lines?
So things became a burden to shed, and

astute as a hungry pilgrim
but not brave, not expert.
It is impolite to stare. Is unwise
to plunder the easily forgotten,
easily shed, and


2.

They drummed and drummed, attached to a vestigial
clamor. The heat splayed; sparklers
ravished the fog.

Morning tore the dead back to shore;
enemy ships floundered and were forgotten.
Still, nothing was appeased:
the living silhouette drifted into view
like an ephemeral sail promoting ease
between wreckages.
Not speaking a word of English
she animated the landscape
with abundance, a chosen self
lively translated into the color of her eyes.
Awkward and luminous, a stilted charm
separating figure from ground, and solving it.
What pushed up toward the abysmal
with such new appraisals, such sure interest?
The mute girl had seen glories
but what had she come to know?
A finite figure in a rainy field.
A naked figure in a pool.
A skipping figure across a bridge.
A lost figure on a city street.
A moaning figure on a huge bed.
A smiling face in a photograph.
All summer, I circled the garden for her sake.


The Inkspots


BY GERALD STERN


The thing about the dove was how he cried in
my pocket and stuck his nose out just enough to
breathe some air and get some snow in his eye and
he would have snuggled in but I was afraid
and brought him into the house so he could shit on
the New York Times, still I had to kiss him
after a minute, I put my lips to his beak
and he knew what he was doing, he stretched his neck
and touched me with his open mouth, lifting
his wings a little and readjusting his legs,
loving his own prettiness, and I just
sang from one of my stupid songs from one of my
vile decades, the way I do, I have to
admit it was something from trains. I knew he’d like that,
resting in the coal car, slightly dusted with
mountain snow, somewhere near Altoona,
the horseshoe curve he knew so well, his own
moan matching the train’s, a radio
playing the Inkspots, the engineer roaring.