The New Formalist

Karen Kelsay’s “Lavender Song”, Fortunate Childe Publications, 2011

Leo Yankevich — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 14:17:24 +0000

Oh, to live in a world where nasty modernism never took place: where rivers never flowed with dark undercurrents, where dragonflies never alighted flowering manzanitas, and where a bloody axe in the attic never found its way into a poem. Such is the world we find in Lavender Song, the latest collection of verses by the California poet Karen Kelsay:

Among the Boughs

Tonight, the slow release of summer rain

sweeps through my pear tree. Gentle is the sound,

the metronomic lullaby that rolls

across each limb and patters on the ground.

Outside my room, traversing streamlets run

along the open pane—I try to count them all.

And leaves are soaked a darker green, while buds

appear to peek between the lattice wall.

The sent of blossoms filters through my screen.

I lie awake, yet, caught up in the romance

among the boughs, where whispers hum to me,

and all my evening thoughts have learned to dance.

Of course, this is a blue-haired projection, a neo-victorian poetry that prefers the well-kept garden to the overgrown forest, Eden to the fallen world, harmony to cacophony.

Kelsey writes traditional verses that hearken back to the great poems of the late 19th century when iambic pentameter was the major mode of poetic expression. Although she often uses enjambments, rarely does she introduce substitutions into her verses. She prefers a pentameter line that is easily recognizable as such. Rarely, too, does she abandon the metronome by introducing variation in the stresses of her feet.

The poems in Lavender Song are like sturdy barquentines ready to set sail over the horizon towards the 22nd century.

Four Poems

Ann Eichler Kolakowski — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 05:01:54 +0000

On the Final Day of Winter

The Trailside Anvil Chorus joins in song,

each member barely bigger than my thumb.

Their pleading voices, frozen for so long,

now rise above the humus. Not the thrum

one might expect, this lusty serenade’s

like frenzied jingle bells. Who will succumb

to such a ploy? Where are the gypsy maids?

Il Trovatore on a hidden stage,

performed in sun-warmed mud and new-sprung shade

would doubtless please the operatic sage

who penned it. Verdi, after all, means green.

Sing on! Desire will reap a handsome wage:

The tenor soon shall have his froggy queen.

Charm Bracelet

These fragile links once spanned a wrist

much smaller than my own.

Ten charms distill her days in miniature:

long marriage, family, a faith secure.

All she had loved and known

engraved and captured with a twist.

I slip it on and snap the clasp,

then finger all the charms.

How often had I wished it could be mine?

This symbol of life’s circular design

is all that links our arms:

her loss I’ve just begun to grasp.

Greatness Never Goes Out of Style

—Cadillac advertising slogan, 1965

The sun wakes up on Cadillac,

the highest point on the East Coast.

Its endless granite eyes cast back

the seaspray with a flinty flash.

Like ants, the tourists thread its trail

to find a peace they cannot name.

The mountain bears a Frenchman’s name–

Antoine Laumet de Cadillac.

His life was full of trial and trails

that led to Michigan, the coast

of Loosiana, too. News flash:

he founded Detroit, and was paid back

when GM’s auto execs reached back

in time and stole his fabled name.

The car for those with cash to flash

was henceforth known as Cadillac:

status symbol from coast to coast.

The King’s was pink; it left a trail

of squealing tires behind, a trail

of screaming girls: “Elvis, Come back!”

The King just wished that he could coast

through life in shades and change his name.

He gave his mom the Cadillac.

Soon he left in a drug-hazed flash.

A man named Stanley had a flash

of inspiration: build a trail

on 66. The Cadillac

Ranch, each buried car a throwback

to honor Caddie’s golden name.

The tourists come from coast to coast

to Texas, where they gawk and coast,

then stop amid the frozen flash

in time. They pose and spray their names

on rusted hulks that form the trail

of roadside oddities. Then, back

to work, the ghosts of Cadillac

all coast along their daily trail

and flash in sunlight, forth and back.

The name endures all: Cadillac.

Lucky

—Walter Reed Army Medical Center

December eighth, two thousand seven:

Malone House glows with artificial cheer,

the way one would expect at an almost hotel

that serves the almost well.

Here, where wounded troops deploy to learn

again Activities of Daily Living,

my Girl Scout troop constructs a lobby fortress

from Samoas and Thin Mints

as other groups unload plush bears and racks

of puffy coats that suffocate in plastic.

Lucky, says my daughter.

The guests begin to gather, some with shiny

body parts – a hook-for-hand, one leg

that’s pieced and propped by steely scaffolding.

And then a family, the wife

(she can’t be more than twenty) pushing the chair.

Impossible to look away as the toddler

climbs upon the lap

no longer there: the khaki legs cut off

below the crotch and crisply folded shut,

just like a sack that holds a young boy’s lunch.

—2nd Place, 2011 Baltimore City Paper Poetry Contest

Four Poems

Aleksey Porvin — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 05:55:45 +0000

***

It seems so far from whence it came, its two

inscriptions barely made out by the eye

at night—a vague sign on an avenue,

hanging above the heads of passersby.

Yet still it sails towards my window pane,

brushing snow for luck, a letter sent,

though, without any memory retained

of what it does or doesn't represent.

Who is aboard? Tell me, or please explain.

What lies behind the words Fresh Bread, like freight

that hints it’s time for light to come again?

(Sunrise the pretext/union worth the wait.)

You who direct my words towards warm light,

you are both very masterful and holy,

breaking the back of this cold winter night

and this code (but not with the letter’s body).

Translated from the Russian by Leo Yankevich

***

People roam the stalks

searching for new life there,

and each just talks and talks—

as if all is prepared:

among them all the chatter

is an old dirty wall

(no wallpaper—dusty litter—

still glued before the fall.

Rolled-up is a stalk

whose creaking sound is white,

as if it wished to mock,

were march woods in the light.

Yet nothing can renew

a homestead been undone.

(Better if the glue

were fiery setting sun.)

Translated from the Russian by Leo Yankevich

***

A storm cloud strikes a street

with hail to mask despair

(a passage to this earth

with no choice in the air)?

The creation, liberty

here, the movement within

brightly lit, only

street lamps and summer din?

Hailstones, feel the choice?

At evening seen by all:

it comes abruptly, weightless

in the waterfall.

And you, before your fall,

can touch a street lamp's beam

amid the misty noises

and follow light to dream.

Translated from the Russian by Leo Yankevich

***

Woods, too tired to walk into the white,

did you not find a way to warm up

to the blue amid the branches, wound

round pines along a squirrel run?

The opposite with people. They must squeeze

their bodies into heavy clothes,

and yet they do not manage to get warm—

their blood squeezed slowly into numbness.

In people, too: a body with no room

for the warming of the soul, even

a body with sufficient ease of movement,

even when it’s comfortable.

What shall I be wound round by? On tree trunks

in a clearing there is a squirrel run,

striving for a soft and fiery height

higher than the eye can see.

Translated from the Russian by Leo Yankevich

Five Poems

Joseph S. Salemi — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 18:42:06 +0000

Critical Judgment

Young Wordsworth was an egotistic twit

Who thought the cosmos turned upon his soul.

I’m glad I never met the little git

But still he wrote good poetry, all told.

Alexander Pope Comments On “Beach Blanket Bingo”

There’s not much chance of bedding Gidget

When you are a crippled midget.

To Dorothy Parker, On Behalf Of Men

You’re wrong—we’ll make passes

At girls who wear glasses

As long as they’re lasses

With cute, curvy asses.

Ballade Of Health Food

God save us from the health food freaks,

That enervated pallid crew

Of nerdy little tightassed geeks

Who live on tea and veggie stew.

I wish I even vaguely knew

What drives these dopes to munch dry seeds,

To dine on stuff that tastes like glue,

To live on cornflakes, bran, and weeds.

Just gaze upon their hollow cheeks,

Their skin devoid of glow or hue.

When one of them pipes up and speaks

It sounds like death is overdue.

These morons seem to take their cue

From quack physicians whose dull screeds

Insist that one should only chew

On cornflakes, tasteless bran, and weeds.

The young, the middle-aged, antiques—

All sorts are strict adherents to

A diet of dried beans and leeks,

Of fruit juice, yogurt, sprouts. Now who

The hell would choose that witches’ brew

To satisfy his body’s needs?

No person ever thrived or grew

On cornflakes, withered bran, and weeds.

L’envoi:

Prince, advice from me to you:

The state’s endangered by such creeds.

Go after them. String up a few

Who live on cornflakes, bran, and weeds.

Financial Advice To Poets

A poet is a silly sod

If he thinks he’ll earn a wad

Of money from his verse transcendent—

You’d make more as a john attendant.

This has been the decree of Fates

From Homer up to Butler Yeats:

Obscurity and empty purses

Shall dog poor fools who write in verses.

You only turn this trade to bucks

By teaching it to dumber schmucks.

Nine Poems

Patricia A. Marsh — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 04:01:42 +0000

Window Peeper

startled

by the motion

censor lights you installed,

your landlord stumbles down the walk

cursing

Remember…

…old tricks

your brother played

yesterday–-April fool!—

but don’t miss the new laughter in

his eyes…

On Second Thought

Remove

your flannel robe

from the Give Away box:

a welcome shower turned once more

to snow.

Cross Country

bedbugs

vacationing

in a Winnebago

caused the family reunion

to suck

A Neighbor’s Best Friend

Dang dog!

Give him a bath

and he itches to go

rolling in cow-flop and week-old

road-kill . . .

No Windows Underground

Sis watched

the sun go down

with a crippled miner

who lived across the road until

daybreak

Status Cymbals

MY B

F F PRISSY

BADONKADONK SED SHE

UNFRENDED ALL 1003

UV US

Disconnected

Love called

and I answered

with a pre-recorded

message: “…busy right now…call back…"

later

Trying Mother’s Patience

(An exercise in monometer)

She counts

from one

to ten

and, then,

to ten

again.

But when

she counts

from ten

to one

. . . . . run!

Five Poems

Leland Jamieson — Sun, 01 May 2011 04:01:35 +0000

Magical Balaclava

I’d worn my balaclava when I took
a walk this morning. It was zero— cold!
No doubt folks thought I was some kind of schnook . . . .
Surprising warmth, though, started to enfold
my windpipe as my body’s heat cajoled
the arctic air to drop gelidity—
as frost-pearls knit of breath’s humidity.

The Peach

(Visiting a friend in “Peach Country,”
Rockingham, North Carolina.)

For T.T., who spoke the truth without
exaggeration. Thanks for the invitation.

Your peach tree limbs are laden near to breaking
with fruit, and in the breeze we’re swept by scent
of what the sun has quietly been making—
inviting us to eat ’til we’re content.

I gently grasp the fuzz, not yet the fruit—
when it drops in my palm with all its weight.
Turning it over, truly, it’s a beaut.
I stroke its blushing face and salivate.

(Looks nothing like the choke-down deeply bruised
gas-ripened radiated peach in stores.
My wallet and my palate, long abused,
gave up that store-bought fruit not fit for boars . . . .)

One bite of this squirts juice up in my eyes
and down my chin. You laugh, and rhapsodize.

Consciousness, in Passing….

René Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am”
appeared self-evident until Jean-Paul
Sartre observed it was a subtle sham:
“The consciousness ‘I am’ is not at all
the one that quips ‘I think.’” Still, thoughts enthrall
most egos ’til approaching our own deaths—
feeling ‘I am’ with just our last few breaths.

Against All Ohms

For E.K.J., an electrical engineer’s
engineer, on his 47th birthday.

The joy we dads take in our kids
as they grow up is hard to show
among conflicting egos, ids,
and superegos in the flow.
Few things are what they seem to be,
and fewer turn out as we’d think.
The teenage personality
hangs up a sign: ‘Back Off, Please, Inc’.

Since we’d not quicken splinters’ smarts—
perplexed, more puzzled as we watch—
we do back off with aching hearts
as they let belts out, notch by notch . . . .

As each new step becomes a stride
we are electrified with pride.

Connundrum of Movement

(After Zecharia Stitchin’s Earth Chronicles.)

How take The Unmoved Mover, moved to make
the Anunnaki—and the likes of us?
What moved this? Love? Too utterly opaque!
The Unmoved Mover moved? Ridiculous!
It won’t save us to read Leviticus.
Yet human eyes turned outward may, when ashen
at what they see, be moved to feel compassion.

Four Poems

David J. Rothman — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 04:01:31 +0000

What Love Is

Now I’m going to define true love.

Don’t worry—I won’t go slack or soft, it won’t

Be a load of sentimental crap. I don’t

Describe it in terms of the turtle-dove.

Give me a break. It bubbles up the way

That lava does, too hot to touch or know,

For it both burns and makes. Just watch it go

Across the little roads of what we say

We think we know we are. Deep in some night,

The necessary flood of love bursts free

Again and flowing irresistibly,

Incinerating towns, a car, a cow,

Is utterly itself down to the sea,

Where it explodes and comes to rest held tight,

New land that makes us stammer, stupid, “Wow…!”

So now I’m going to tell you. Now. Now. Now.

Hydrogen Bomb Ignition Sequence

So now you’ve learned to make the flash with no known tense,

Which, falling into time, then made each grain of sand.

Strange, how it is a chain of diamond-cut events:

First, cock and pull cold Pluto’s A-bomb trigger and

Ka-Pow! It smoothly crushes the next stage’s sphere,

Igniting Tritium, Deuterium to equal

Four Helium, one neutron and…well, looky here:

A real-time, hot-damn thermonuclear blast sequel,

17.6 million electron volts

Of free, indifferent energy, a boiling blaze

Whose model is the old beginning force that jolts

Two atoms into one and yields the perfect rage

For order, radiation coupling x-ray dense.

Good job, my small, forked sparkplug! Nothing will be spared.

Come on, just one more time: E = mc².

Luck Madness Money

Darling, I’m sorry we’re ridiculous,

So much less than you it’s like we’re dead,

Cultivating hothouse words meticulous

Or private games that taste like cardboard bread.

Enough already! Time to act alive

To cities lips eyes words all long since freed,

Farms factories schools churches roads to drive,

Luck madness money each old truth new need.

Nobody needs a theory of what’s real

To talk about it and I will not choose

Between the finch and dirty business deal.

Bring it all and bring my walking shoes.

Yep, last apology. I what? Since when?

Lover, just show me if—I’ll show you then.

O Captain

Pulled up, cradled my sandy lance, ate lunch.

Mid-day, hot and quiet. Had an itch—

Standard issue boxers in a bunch—

But scratching under these clothes? Life’s a bitch.

Sancho was complaining, pointed out

How our rides need up-armoring, ignored.

I nodded, ate my rations, said “No doubt.”

Told him “Off-shift. Take a nap.” He snored,

Then woke up, muttered “How about a beer?”

I laughed and closed my visor. A truck exploded

In the market, killing twenty. Fear.

Blood everywhere. We went in locked and loaded.

That’s when all hell broke loose. I still believe.

I’m just so sorry that I had to leave.

Five Poems

Hassan Melehy — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 05:01:41 +0000

Community Outreach

At age twelve, beginning to shiver at
Porcelain and steel while my little cock
Hung above a zipper's castrating threat,
While a handful of friends could meanly mock
Me for not having dirtied my finger
Up a girl's asshole to reach her sweet dreams,
I was blinded by worldly light. Linger
I did by the orange dress with scarce seams
Our just married but unpregnant teacher
Sported at her desk, while she scolded me,
Legs spread enough to show me that feature
Of creased flesh men have razed cities to see.
Thus pummeled to loving her my life through,
I watched the boys genuflect to my coup.

On the Tegelersee, Berlin

One tight and sweaty afternoon
the sky knots tendrils of a winding day:
in leopard blouses ladies swoon
at sunburned stubble, and tattoos festoon
thick arms whose fingers point the way
to 80s parties on the Tegeler See.
The cook heats up a Wienerschnitzel
while he winks at the barmaid, who trades gentle
strokes for goods whose name she can't say;
big dinners nourish middle-aged love handles,
then evening unpacks Roman candles
for 80s parties on the Tegeler See.

Rust

A set of tools was ruined in the rain.

A finely wrought bunch of steel instruments
now wears a shroud of rust: it bears the stain
of negligence and cold abandonment,
resulting from its having been a point
of harsh contention between former friends
who years ago stopped speaking. At one point,
after inflating words to vile offense,
they vowed to kill each other, to destroy
all ties between them and the ties that made
the life of their community, the joy
all people take in friendship–someone said,
"So for the sake of some mail order deal,
we're giving up the fruit of our travail."

Small Town Life

A country green with flag and cannonballs
Lined by colonial houses, painted fresh,
Concealing secrets of old families' falls
Into the dearth of coveting their own flesh
For satisfaction. An old garage with rusty
Automobiles gathering spiders' chores,
Abandoned shoes and boots left in the dusty
Paths to the post office and hardware store
Where the town elders gather. They've reviewed
The new family, without kinship to the rest,
Imagined their young daughter in the nude,
Ensured that soon the wife will bare her breasts:
Donating to community delight,
The newcomers will soon dispel all spite.

Vieux Montréal

Like honey on our Lady of the Harbor
the sun poured down. So Leonard Cohen sang,
just naming bits of it so as to garble
the order of the buildings set along
the waterfront, among the freighters and
the sailors, happier to see the smile
of a nighttime lady than anything the Virgin can
communicate across the watery miles.
There was true peace amid the old gray stones
where poets, whores, and hipsters made their home
before being forced to scatter across town
and live at much less distance from the tomb.
Outside the tatters of a sad old tune,
gone are the saintly ones who sleep till noon.

Four Poems

Karen Kelsay — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 05:01:02 +0000

Aria

I hear your voice. It circles scarlet leaves

that scatter on the back of midland farms.

You hum through unexpected nights where eaves

of sparrow-songs are dandled in cool arms

and fold like the ascendancy of dusk

across the day. You wander over stars

bringing a tune of tuberose and musk

beneath my sill, then curl between the bars

of my wrought-soul, where everything is rocked

by savage lullabies that wake remorse.

I lose your voice. Andromeda has locked

it in a cage of stars, there is no force

that can release it from her mottled gleam,

left for another springtime to redeem.

A Beating Wing

Had you but sacrificed one lilac

from an unpruned tree, or smoothed the knotted

curls from my face with your bedraggled hand;

had you but crushed a leaf of lavender

and poured a thimble full of balm into my mouth,

like some elixir

from an ancient land; or sprinkled down

the clumsiest of sighs into my hands.

Had you but arched your eyebrow

like a dying willow branch

across a muddy pond—in one last shade-song

to the minnow near the rocks,

or slipped through untamed gardens

in the august heat, a breath-depriving feat,

without a single rest upon a bluebell rim.

Had you but wrapped your head in orchids,

sung to troubled sky larks without chanting

curses at the bougainvillaea thorns—

I would not had to write this verse.

This poem, cobbled up from twisted twigs,

that scrapes the feathered whispers

of my throat. This moulted, metered thing,

that taps inside me like a suffocating wing.

I would not have to listen

to these syllables that parrot out my days

and flap their somberness against

a rib cage of had yous.

Anna

You stand erect in that old photograph,

a sago palm bends sated with the breeze

and Hotel Del, her rooftops peaked in red,

is clad in white behind a row of trees.

This is the way is see you, still. Your eyes

with lash-rimmed corners that turn slightly down,

your fine jaw line, which I envision through

a weave of yesteryear’s—a floating crown

of daisy thoughts, both frail and light. A vine

that burgeons tendril memories of you

on summer soil, where darkness never yields

a single bud releasing an adieu.

A Winter's Day

Another wintry day has come to close.

Across the fields and valleys it resigns,

With daylight’s last rays falling in repose

Between the spreading sycamores and pines.

Tonight I do not rest; I count each star

Above me, as they light up, by and by,

Like fireflies left inside the sparkling jar

That is this evening’s cold majestic sky.

Eventually I shift my thoughts and see

The rooflines of the village down below,

And, scattered here and there, a lonely tree

Is waiting patiently for falling snow.

I ponder what the new year holds for me,

And hope the heavens don‘t think me remiss–

If I should pray my future years may be

As perfect as a day and night like this.

Four Poems

Michael T. Young — Sat, 01 Jan 2011 05:01:51 +0000

Symphonic Dance

I’ve heard enough of nightingale and thrush,

of trees and long, deserted country roads.

They’re beautiful, of course. But just as lush

are city lights, its traffic and its crowds.

There’s music in a subway’s clatter, sparks

from the third rail make subtle melodies,

and car alarms seem tuned to distant barks

invisibly conducted in major keys.

A steal baton clicks when the streetlights snap on

shifting the rhythm, and the city’s theme

changes to night, wind twirls a paper scrap,

lights flicker, keeping cars and people in time.

Every spontaneous decision blends

or counterpoints, even an accident

is part, where someone’s final note descends,

revising over and over what it meant.

Becoming Narcissus

All day long at work I pass the window

and steal a look at that far world outside,

thinking of all the lives, of all the places

I hope to know or visit before I’ve died.

Toward the end of the day the window darkens,

and when I pass, only see my reflection,

and think that dying might be like that: turning

from the world to a long, dark introspection.

Patience

Words fall from me

dropping around my feet,

pages of them

scattered and in retreat.

The syllables

discolor, harden and scratch,

limp through the lines,

through the crippled syntax.

I hold my tongue,

put aside the pen

and fall asleep

until it’s light again.

Suffer No Fools

Curse the fool and everyone of his kind,

Curse the halfwit, the dolt, the crass and crude,

Curse the philistine who misses his cue,

The boorish and the bore who think they’re refined,

The dull, the overly polite, the overly rude,

Everyone afraid of something new,

Of art that offends them, questions what they know,

The gutless, passionless, lingering prude

Who condemns you for having a drink or two —

A plague on your houses, and everywhere you go:

Fuck you.