Marching, poem by Jim Harrison

MARCHING
by Jim Harrison

At dawn I heard among bird calls
the billions of marching feet in the churn
and squeak of gravel, even tiny feet
still wet from the mother’s amniotic fluid,
and very old halting feet, the feet
of the very light and very heavy, all marching
but not together, criss-crossing at every angle
with sincere attempts not to touch, not to bump
into each other, walking in the doors of houses
and out the back door forty years later, finally
knowing that time collapses on a single
plateau where they were all their lives,
knowing that time stops when the heart stops
as they walk off the earth into the night air.
***
“Marching” appears in Jim Harrison’s collection Saving Daylight (Copper Canyon Press, 2006), available at Amazon.com.

PHOTO: “Footprints” by Tom Gowanlo. Prints available at fineartamerica.com.

Barking, poem by Jim Harrison

BARKING
by Jim Harrison

The moon comes up.
The moon goes down.
This is to inform you
that I didn’t die young.
Age swept past me
but I caught up.
Spring has begun here and each day
brings new birds up from Mexico.
Yesterday I got a call from the outside
world but I said no in thunder.
I was a dog on a short chain
and now there’s no chain.

PAINTING: “Bark at the moon” by Robert Wolverton, Jr. Prints available at fineartamerica.com.

Kafka’s Hat, poem by Richard Brautigan

KAFKA’S HAT
by Richard Brautigan

With the rain falling
surgically against the roof,
I ate a dish of ice cream
that looked like Kafka’s hat. 

Photo: Franz Kafka (1883-1924)

My Name, poem by Richard Brautigan

MY NAME
by Richard Brautigan

I guess you are kind of curious as to who I am,
but I am one of those who do not have a regular
name. My name depends on you. Just call me
whatever is in your mind.

If you are thinking about something that
happened a long time ago: Somebody asked
you a question and you did not know the
answer.
That is my name.

Perhaps it was raining very hard.
That is my name.

Or somebody wanted you to do something.
You did it. Then they told you what you did was
wrong — “Sorry for the mistake,”– and you had
to do something else.
That is my name.

Perhaps it was a game that you played when
you were a child or something that came idly
into your mind when you were old and sitting
in a chair near the window.
That is my name.

Or you walked someplace. There were flowers
all around.
That is my name.

Perhaps you stared into a river. There was
somebody near you who loved you. They were
about to touch you. You could feel this before
it happened. Then it happened.
That is my name.

Or you heard someone calling from a great
distance. Their voice was almost an echo.
That is my name.

Perhaps you were lying in a bed, almost ready
to go to sleep and you laughed at something, a
joke unto yourself, a good way to end the day.
That is my name.

Or you were eating something good and for
a second forgot what you were eating, but still
went on, knowing it was good.
That is my name.

Perhaps it was around midnight and the fire
tolled like a bell inside the stove.
That is my name.

Or you felt bad when she said that thing to
you. She could have told someone else:
Someone who was more familiar with her
problems.
That is my name.

Perhaps the trout swam in the pool, but the
river was only eight inches wide, and the moon
shone on and the watermelon fields
glowed out of proportion, dark, and the moon
seemed to rise from every plant.
That is my name.
****
“My Name” appears in Richard Brautigan‘s novella In Watermelon Sugar (1968), available at Amazon.com.

Photo: ”Forest’s Edge” by Holly Northrop, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Birds Again, poem by Jim Harrison

BIRDS AGAIN
by Jim Harrison

A secret came a week ago though I already

knew it just beyond the bruised lips of consciousness.

The very alive souls of thirty-five hundred dead birds

are harbored in my body. It’s not uncomfortable.

I’m only temporary habitat for these not-quite –
weightless creatures. I offered a wordless invitation

and now they’re roosting within me, recalling

how I had watched them at night

in fall and spring passing across earth moons,

little clouds of black confetti, chattering and singing

on their way north or south. Now in my dreams 

I see from the air the rumpled green and beige,

the watery face of earth as if they’re carrying

me rather than me carrying them. Next winter

I’ll release them near the estuary west of Alvarado

and south of Veracruz. I can see them perching

on undiscovered Olmec heads. We’ll say goodbye

and I’ll return my dreams to earth.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jim Harrison is the author of thirty books, including Legends of the Fall, Dalva, and Shape of the Journey. His work has been translated into two dozen languages and produced as four feature-length films. In 2007, Mr. Harrison was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He divides his time between Montana and southern Arizona.

Painting: ”L’Homme au Chapeau Melon” (1964) by René Magritte

The Cities Inside Us, poem by Alberto Rios

THE CITIES INSIDE US
by Alberto Rios

We live in secret cities
And we travel unmapped roads.

We speak words between us that we recognize
But which cannot be looked up.

They are our words.
They come from very far inside our mouths.

You and I, we are the secret citizens of the city
Inside us, and inside us

There go all the cars we have driven
And seen, there are all the people

We know and have known, there
Are all the places that are

But which used to be as well. This is where
They went. They did not disappear.

We each take a piece
Through the eye and through the ear.

It’s loud inside us, in there, and when we speak
In the outside world

We have to hope that some of that sound
Does not come out, that an arm

Not reach out
In place of the tongue.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Alberto Alvaro Ríos was born in Nogales, Arizona, in 1952. He received a BA from the University of Arizona in 1974 and an MFA in Creative Writing from the same institution in 1979. His poetry collections include Dangerous Shirt (Copper Canyon Press, 2009); The Theater of Night (2007); The Smallest Muscle in the Human Body (2002), nominated for the National Book Award;Teodora Luna’s Two Kisses(1990); The Lime Orchard Woman (1988); Five Indiscretions(1985); and Whispering to Fool the Wind (1982), winner of the 1981 Walt Whitman Award. He has been honored with numerous awards, including six Pushcart Prizes, the Arizona Governor’s Arts Award, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Since 1994, he has served as Regents Professor of English at Arizona State University, where he has taught since 1982. In 2013, Ríos was named the inaugural state poet laureate of Arizona.

ART: “Surreal City” by Phunke Pixie

That Thing, poem by Alberto Rios

THAT THING
by Alberto Rios

No word rhymes with silence, or tries to. 
No word wants to visit that furtive backyard garden. 

Silence is the word that will not be spoken–
After all, who can pronounce it? Once spoken,

We will not hear it. It is the story not told, 
The memory carefully unspoken in this house, 

Your house. Silence is the place underneath language 
An unto-itself, an army 

Stronger than words, more patient, 
Bigger than the dictionary. 

Its weapons are familiar, 
Painful, without antidote and giving of no respite. 

Quiet tells us it is coming, and so, too, 
Quiet is tolerated, left to be, undisturbed at its work, 

Silence’s grim reaper, allowed only to make deliveries,
To fill the bins, to cut the grass, eat if it needs to, 

Then expected to leave, quickly, cleanly, 
No trace afterward, no errant grass cuttings, 

No black from the bottom of its shoes on the floor. 
Good bye, we say, and in saying 

Mispronounce its name, but happy not to know,
Ready not to ask. Good-bye, we say, and mean it.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Alberto Rios‘s ten collections of poetry includeThe Smallest Muscle in the Human Body, a finalist for the National Book Award. His most recent book is The Dangerous Shirt, preceded by The Theater of Night, which received the 2007 PEN/Beyond Margins Award. Published in the New Yorker, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, and other journals, he has also written three short story collections and a memoir, Capirotada, about growing up on the Mexican border. Regents Professor and the Katharine C. Turner Chair in English, Rios has taught at Arizona State University for over 29 years.

PHOTO: Claude Monet‘s garden, Giverny, France.

How to Tune a Xylophone, poem by Jennifer K. Sweeney

HOW TO TUNE A XYLOPHONE
by Jennifer K. Sweeney

Go for a drive and let it sit in the passenger seat.
When the air feels dusty as a roadside chapel,
pull over and start walking.
If you come across train tracks,
lay the xylophone on the rungs
and let the vibrations tune it.
One note is a wasp boring holes in the air.
One note is a bleached newspaper
rattling in the brush.

PHOTO: “Xylophone” by Studio Blonde. Prints available at fineartamerica.com.

Night Travel, poem by Esther Belin

NIGHT TRAVEL
by Esther Belin

I.
I like to travel to L.A. by myself
My trips to the crowded smoggy polluted by brown
indigenous and immigrant haze are healing.
I travel from one pollution to another.
Being urban I return to where I came from
My mother
survives in L.A.
Now for over forty years.

I drive to L.A. in the darkness of the day
on the road before CHP
one with the dark
driving my black truck
invisible on my journey home.

The dark roads take me back to my childhood
riding in the camper of daddy’s truck headed home.
My brother, sister and I would be put to sleep in the camper
and sometime in the darkness of the day
daddy would clime into the cab with mom carrying a thermos full of coffee and some Pendleton blankets
And they would pray
before daddy started the truck
for journey mercies.

Often I’d rise from my lullaby sleep and stare into the darkness of the road
the long darkness empty of cars
Glowy from daddy’s headlights and lonesome from Hank Williams’ deep and twangy voice singing of cold nights and cheatin’ hearts.
About an hour from Flagstaff
the sun would greet us
and the harsh light would break the darkness
and we’d be hungry from travel and for being almost home.

II.
I know the darkness of the roads
endless into the glowy path before me
lit by the moon high above and the heat rising from my truck’s engine.
The humming from tires whisper mile after mile
endless alongside roadside of fields shadowy from glow.

I know the darkness of the roads
It swims through my veins
dark like my skin
and silenced like a battered wife.
I know the darkness of the roads
It floods my liver
pollutes my breath
yet I still witness the white dawning.
***
“Night Travel” appears in Esther Belin’s collection From the Belly of My Beauty (University of Arizona Press, 1999).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: A Diné (Navajo) multimedia artist and writer, Esther Belin grew up in Los Angeles, California. She is a graduate of the Institute of American Indian Arts and the University of California, Berkeley. Her poetry collection, From the Belly of My Beauty (1999), won the American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. Belin’s parents were relocated from the Southwest in the 1950s as part of the federal Indian relocation policy, and her work reflects the experience of a Native American living in urban Los Angeles. She often addresses the attempts to assimilate Native Americans into mainstream American culture, as well as larger themes of racism, alienation, and substance abuse. Belin lives in Durango, Colorado, with her husband and children.

PHOTO: “Los Angeles Smog” by Benjamin Amstutz, ALL RIGHT RESERVED.

Living at the End of Time, poem by Robert Bly

LIVING AT THE END OF TIME
by Robert  Bly

There is so much sweetness in children’s voices,
And so much discontent at the end of day,
And so much satisfaction when a train goes by.
 
I don’t know why the rooster keeps crying,
Nor why elephants keep raising their trunks,
Nor why Hawthorne kept hearing trains at night.
 
A handsome child is a gift from God,
And a friend is a vein in the back of the hand,
And a wound is an inheritance from the wind.
 
Some say we are living at the end of time,
But I believe a thousand pagan ministers
Will arrive tomorrow to baptize the wind.
 
There’s nothing we need to do about John. The Baptist
Has been laying his hands on earth for so long
That the well water is sweet for a hundred miles.
 
It’s all right if we don’t know what the rooster
Is saying in the middle of the night, nor why we feel
So much satisfaction when a train goes by.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Robert Bly (born December 23, 1926) is an American poet and author of Iron John: A Book About Men (1990), a key text of the mythopoetic men’s movement, which spent 62 weeks on the The New York Times Best Seller list. He won the 1968 National Book Award for Poetry for his book The Light Around the Body. (Read more at wikipedia.org.)

PHOTO: “Train at Sunset, New Mexico” (1941) by Jack Delano.