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Sunlit Table by Archie Forrest |
Still
Life
One day
the still lifes
moved
for
reasons of their own
the pears
turned blue
the fig
dropped its leaf
the vase
fell, saying
I'm empty
there's
nothing in me
don't add
a stroke to save
what isn't there
what isn't there
I'm
clear, I'm glass
you can
see through me
if you
want to, now,
painted
on canvas
with opaque paints,
with opaque paints,
all the
way through.
painters and poets
ekphrastic
A Small
Death in Spring
The
Red-bellied woodpecker was dead
To begin
with.
He didn't
need to be Holmes to know it,
There in
front of his home in azalea-Spring.
He had
seen through the picture window
A lump on
the path, perhaps the neighbor's
St. Bernard
had left another offering. But no.
And to
think, as on many days:
That
morning he had filled the feeder
And put
suet cakes in the holders nailed to two limbs
Of the
salix nigra Marsh.
The
stunning bird mistook unwashed glass for air.
Mysterious
gods work in mysterious ways.
(In this
poem Jesus in the title is pronounced
like Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus in the text
like Jesus Alou)
Jesus,
the Pinch Hitter
Jesus
shuffles to the plate as if
he's
wearing sandals not spikes.
He's
spent time in the desert, working
strictly minor league,
For the
Dodgers, I think, or Cardinals.
At
thirty-two (or -three, there was confusion
about his birth
document in '00),
this may be his only
shot.
The pitcher's a crafty lefty.
(Righties
of that devil's ilk are called junk-ballers.)
On this
rain-threatened Friday, it must be Jesus'
day;
he clips one off the end of the bat to the 301 in right.
Dominican
Sister Juan Andrew reaches down
and cradles it. Home run
the umpire signs,
though everyone else in this heaven knows
it might
have been, but wasn't one.
Loving
Tierney Finn's Daughter
The old
man said the extra money went to relief
For
families in the north, gut-poor and haunted
By
British soldiers. It was a MacNamara's Band
That
played in a Woodside bar in Queens.
Tierney
said of the twenty apiece
I shelled
for Cathleen and me and the twenty for him:
"It's
pennies only to the widdas. The fiddlin' costs."
I bought
bullets. I bought guns.
I bought
a part of the machine
That blew
up in a Belfast square.
I knew
not what I did.
Here I
stand;
Here I
stand and lie.
Catholic
then I loved Cathleen.
painters and poets
ekphrastic
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