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Ed. Note: This month’s
featured poet is Marc Levy. Marc has been a contributor from time to time of
photos, poetry and a short story to the
Quick Reactionary
Force
they are dumb fuck stupid and it serves them right
assholes fuckin fuckin assholes.
in dry season it gets so hot you cannot see straight
everything shimmers as the living heat sucks the life
right out of you. so the platoon, new to the area goes
out QRF weapons, ammo, one quart each gets lost
in the sun bleached jungle gets heat stroked gets
found and choppered back to
in the aid station capt neel
takes charge pig face
stink breath capt tells medics slit clothes slap tape
on the Ringers lactate toss the sun baked uniforms
into the cooler churn the ice churn it
we slap the cold cloth back the bodies
shiver shake to life, fuckin amazing.
next day we get hit-mortars-rockets capt neel
stone fuck drunk so later we frag his ass
frag him can't walk, can't help the wounded
but we missed he lived that stopped that
but it didn't stop the war and the casualties
the dumb fuck casualties they just kept coming
(first published on poetz.com 2005)
Dead
Letter Day
He sent the letter to the guy’s wife
The same day,
Leaving out the following:
“About 2 in the morning the automatic went off
And nobody moved, we just waited for the morning
Light and the order to recon.
There were two of them. One was dead.
The other hung on all night,
Waiting to blow away some round-eyes
Before he bought it, too.
He shot the second man, missing the point.
The point opened up and somebody threw a frag
And it was all over. Except that your husband
Took a bullet through his helmet that tore a
Gash in his head, and going down shot the man
In front of him. The blood was deep, dark red;
He was lying flat on his back, in shock;
His eye’s were wide open and lifeless.
As if he could see everything.
They say he lived a few days in the rear,
Even got up and spoke. Then
died.
Head wounds are like that.”
She wrote back. First thanking him and the platoon
For writing her, then going on and on for pages asking
About his last moments. You could tell she was crying;
And he cried too, and did not reply to the desperate
Letter, and has desperately not replied ever since.
First published in Peregrin 1998
***
Boston Poet Sir Gawain Ross
is s frequent contributor to “The Chickasaw Plum”
Meeting Sara
Gawaine Caldwater Ross
Peter bought a broken down step van
leaking a gallon
of oil
every ten miles,
so we did moving
jobs
for six weeks,
hauling so many pianos
up and down
stairs
and working 16
hours a day
it was a great
autumn.
We moved Sara and
Dave
for three days
because the boxes
were all labelled and ordered,
and we couldn't
mess up the order,
(or Dave would lose his mind)
Sara the whole time
in lingerie,
her blonde hair falling
and bouncing on her bosom,
I swear
I deliberately forgot my gloves.
I called her at
to ask her for a date,
she'd just been dreaming
about making love with me,
so we met
at a friend's house
because I was homeless,
but liked.
That was important.
We would screw
in anybody's home,
we were shameless and young,
the love radiant,
and
it still radiates.
Never While
Gawaine Caldwater Ross
(Never while richness of greenery
Stands a shield for prurient minds)
- William Carlos Williams, Abroad
Mr. Williams, with all due respect,
the grass, she's pubic
, and the
vernal pools cool in the shade
reflect light like my lover's eyes,
and the skin of the snake, so smooth,
so firm, muscular, rampant
in caverns,
and the spermies, they're like snakes too,
as is the lightning,
which is why they called the
lightning snake spirits the
Seraphim to begin with.
And the clams with succulent stuff inside
are no less sexed than the
alley cat squawling to get laid.
Oh I think Nature's very sexual,
the stamens stick out all proud
with pollen, the fragrant nectar
draws the man like the bee,
around the shaft and hole of life.
Praise the Tree of Life! The Cosmic Pole!
The Solar Shaft!
Praise the Hole it belongs in.
Verily, verily, holy is the Earth
in all her venereal
verity
***
Pattiann Rogers
Pattiann Rogers has
published numerous books of poetry, including Generations (Penguin,
2004), Song of the World Becoming: New and Collected Poems, 1981-2001
(2001), Firekeeper: New and Selected Poems
(1994), which was a finalist for the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize; and Eating
Milk and Honey (1997). She has been the recipient of two NEA grants, a
Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Lannan Poetry
Fellowship. Her poems have won several prizes, including the Tietjens Prize and the Hokin
Prize from Poetry, the Roethke Prize from Poetry
Northwest, the Strousse Award twice from Prairie
Schooner, three book awards from the Texas Institute of Letters, and four
Pushcart Prizes. She is a graduate of the University of
Missouri (B.A.) and the University of Houston (M.A.) and has been a visiting
writer at the
The Hummingbird: A Seduction
If I were a female
hummingbird perched still
And quiet on an upper myrtle branch
In the spring afternoon and if you were a male
Alone in the whole heavens before me, having parted
Yourself, for me, from cedar top and honeysuckle stem
And earth down, your body hovering in midair
Far away from jewelweed, thistle, and bee balm;
And if I watched how you fell, plummeting before me,
And how you rose again and fell, with such mastery
That I believed for a moment you were the sky
And the red-marked bird diving inside your circumference
Was just the physical revelation of the light's
Most perfect desire;
And if I saw your sweeping and sucking
Performance of
swirling egg and semen in the air,
The weaving, twisting vision of red petal
And nectar and soaring rump, the rush of your wing
In its grand confusion of arcing and splitting
Created completely out of nothing just for me,
Then when you came down to me, I would call you
My own spinning bloom of ruby sage, my funnelling
Storm of sunlit sperm and pollen, my only breathless
Piece of scarlet sky, and I would bless the base
Of each of your feathers and touch the tine
Of string muscles binding your wings and taste
The odor of your glistening oils and hunt
The honey in your crimson flare
And I would take you and take you and take you
Deep into any kind of nest you ever
wanted.
--Patiann Rogers
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