Anne Sexton Still Comes From Time To Time

Wait mister, which way is home?
- Anne Sexton

With the imminence
of your passing short life,
I memorized Anne Sexton.
First at your request,
finally at my need.

At the nursing home where you died,
you couldn’t leave your room.
Gray men and women shifted
around me, confused.
You hid poetry anthologies under
your mattress.
The ones I found,
in the basement bathroom.
You marked the pages that you wanted
me to read.

And I still defer to them,
all Anne.
Who seemed to find her way out of this place,
by recognizing what was inside.

Once as we listened to Anne together,
on our way home from Uncle Phil’s funeral.
You were dying then too,
and cried;

Barbara, memorize the poems
so you can come back to them,
In great times of need.

When you move now,
in this ecstatic grief,
I am your child of repetition,
again,
all over.

Poem # 64 Against Death

“But in art, as seemingly in life, things happen without cause.”
- Richard Hugo

Half a decade
after they called to me
from sixty miles north,
to tell me that you had passed
in the night.
The grasp of your hands releasing
from cold hospital sheets,
still unsettles me.

A brief "Dear Johanna" letter

This is the piece is published in Sinister Widom, volume #76. The link to sinister wisdom is below.


A brief “Dear Johanna” letter


An exile I have loved tells me she’s going home
-Cheryl Clark


A full-moon swells into my
hips while a rock hollows out my back.
I didn’t choose the moon moving
into me but I couldn’t let go
so I pushed back with all my force until
The rock dislodged
and left my stroke.
I remember from time to time -
the depth of its uncomfortable presence,
the rough face designed by mother
nature, the cool contact of its constrain.
I sometimes miss its pale demands
and look for retreat in its silent weight.
But can only find my moon
So I swing away and sing
Good bye, good bye.

http://www.sinisterwisdom.org/index.htm

Woman Fish

Behind the rocked buttes
another self is formed.
Behind the rocked buttes
in vain I call upon its most creative instincts.
Cry trying.

I walk along the edge of visibility,
the un-clarity shakes me
to where the road sweeps into the mountain
I do not feel the life-movement
song beyond.

The legend says:

Woman fish
Lie down at the mouth
Heart beat beats
Vibrations with the great mountain
Native sister comes
Guides woman through
Thick dark passage
Woman eats bounty,
Dances new fire rhythm
Makes healthy family.

Or so it goes.

Blue Possibilities in Portrait of Gertrude Stein

Hands under thighs – loose legs, head hangs below
the Woman With Crossed Arms, you
rummage around your decades
constructing Matisse
portraits pushing the mind of poet.
My restless bird
scooped into my sight
you are too strange.
At 27 Rue de Fleur
sits genius under

Woman With Crossed Arms, your
blue chiaroscuro contrasts
impressed sacred omissions
Why are you woman?
crying bluely
saturated despair

Bolivian Love Roast

Bolivian Love Roast

Mud-green coffee beans
arrive tied-
up in grainy burlap sack.
I sift the cold scentless
rocks into the popper
sit back await the crack
through a fury of flurried shucks.

My kitchen burnt
after a good roast.

rey, rey de reyes

The vision of baby and politics
juice decadence
something new rises to the surface
a new understanding
controlled compassion a vigorous
creativity
wants to be touched by the human
not the one who thinks he is
king, king of kings
no, but unnamed baby
Jose my brother
I place his baby face on my
chest and he cries warmly
with my breath. Baby
somewhere in America, someone
wants you dead – and me perhaps.
Dead weight under dead weight
a cross is erected
for a new sort
of burning
hanging
the America appears
where is ours?