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Widely published and much celebrated, Eleanor Wilner
holds a B.A. from
The following three poems are
published with much appreciation to the inimitable Eleanor Wilner,
a poet for our time and all times.
§
Found in the Free Library
"Write as if you lived in an occupied
country."
--Edwin
Rolfe
And we were made afraid, and being afraid
we made
him bigger than he was, a little man
and
ignorant, wrapped like a vase of glass
in bubble
wrap all his life, who never felt
a single
lurch or bump, carried over
the rough
surface of other lives like
the
spoiled children of the sultans of old
in sedan
chairs, on the backs of slaves,
the gold
curtains on the chair
pulled shut
against the dust and shit
of the
road on which the people walked,
over whose
heads, he rode, no more aware
than a wave
that rattles pebbles on a beach.~~
And being afraid we forgot to notice
who pulled
his golden strings, how
their banks
overflowed while
the public
coffers emptied, how
they stole
our pensions, poured their smoke
into our
lungs, how they beat our ploughshares
into
swords, sold power to the lords of oil,
closed their
fists to crush the children
of
into their
hoards, ignored our votes,
broke our
treaties with the world,
and when
our hungry children cried,
the
doctors drugged them so they wouldn't fuss,
and
prisons swelled enormously to hold
the
desperate sons and daughters of the poor.
To us, they just said war, and war, and war.
For when they saw we were afraid,
how
knowingly they played on every fear--
so
conned, we scarcely saw their scorn,
hardly
noticed as they took our funds, our rights,
and tapped
our phones, turned back our clocks,
and then,
to quell dissent, they sent....
(but here the document is torn)
§
Establishment
Death had established himself in the Red Room,
the White House having become his
natural
abode: chalk-white facade, pillars like
the bones
of extinct empires, armed men crawling
its halls
or looking down, with suspicion, from
its roof;
its immense luxury, thick carpets, its
plush velvet chairs--
all this made Death comfortable, bony
as he is, a fact
you'd barely notice, his camouflage a veil
of flesh
drawn over him, his tailor so adroit, and
he so elegant,
so GQ, almost a dandy, so suited for
the tables
where the crystal, silverware, the swans
of ice gleamed
with the polished purity of light on
precious things;
Death was the guest of honor here, confiding, convivial
among friends who leaned to light his
cigar--his power
seemed their own, body-counts at their
command;
a power beyond even their boy-wet
dreams
was now a custom they feared to lose:
each saw
the world the way a hooded falcon on
the wrist
sees it, blind, waiting for the next
release; one word
could bury villages alive, could send
battalions to an early grave--
so Death can rest
assured, smiling at such a harvest--and so
deliciously unseasonable, like berries in
winter.
Welcome houseguest, he stretches his ancient
frame, warm under expensive wool, sipping
wine,
picking his teeth with a last bone,
meat all the sweeter for being
the lambs of honor, corn-fed and unsuspecting;
or the children playing in the rubble
who reach down for a souvenir of steel
that has fallen from the sky--really,
Death has seldom had a better season or such
a winning score; he must see to their
protection,
these little men who think to be his
master--
flatter a fool and make him useful, he
thinks,
and smiles, benignly, whitely, at his
hosts,
assuring them of his gratitude, his presence
at their councils, his everlasting
support...
until, no longer able to hide
his triumph, his delight, forgetting
the flesh
he has clothed himself in for the
occasion,
he rubs his hands together
in the ancient gesture of
satisfaction,
naked bone on bone--how the sound grates,
how the grateful sparks fly!
-- Eleanor Wilner
§
JUST SO STORY
Do Not Make Treaties with These People
--translation of Navajo message
inscribed on the disk left
on the moon by NASA
It is very quiet on the moon. A cat squarls--
but that is back on earth, on streets
of stone
where sound echoes: trashcans tipped
over,
glass breaking, fear in a gray overcoat
firing its
guns; it is all metal on metal--a
plumber's snake
trying to shed its iron skin, clanking,
sparks
flying; a steel beak hatching out of an
egg
of glass, the cracking shell a shatter
of ice
in the ear. While on the moon, an
airless peace:
the craters aglow with distant sun, and
nothing
to disturb the quiet dust.
In a grove deep in the past,
when the ibex was still bidden by its
image drawn
with a stick in the sand--a lion came
down to drink
where the moon lay, white and naked, on
the pond,
trails of light around her, a corona of
snakes.
The lion was very thirsty, and it drank and drank,
until the pond was dry, and the moon the barest
glimmer on the mud. And that is how
darkness
first escaped from the place it had lain
on the bottom of the pond.
Now, the blood
from the kill no longer returns to the
gods
so nothing is lost, but spills
in the road for the jackals to drink.
In the silence of the moon, Old Glory forever
flies in its fixed imitation of a flag in
wind,
a permanent wave that can't
disappoint
the eager cameras of the press by
hanging limp
in the airless atmosphere of conquered
space.
Far below, the busy cameras snap the photo-op:
a President, drawing his brows
together
in the fixed imitation of a mind at
work.
Down all the streets nearby, the wind rips
at the trash, you can hear the sound
of
shredders in the shuttered rooms. Dogs bark.
The subway shakes the sidewalk grates.
Everywhere, the dark ascends
by stairs, by escalators, up through
manholes
with their covers pushed away. Even by
day,
though just a bit more slowly, the dark
extends
its sway. The rats are growing bolder
now;
you can hear the steady sound of
gnawing
where they have dragged the last bright
crust
of moon into their hole.
--Eleanor Wilner
§
Gabriela Grannis
Los Angeles Resident Gabriela Grannis is
a student in the Master of Fine Arts Program at
Burden
You come again, dawn
You swell and swallow night's quilt,
crashing down,
quickly receding, and
I am awash in light, reeling
and bedaubed with the burden of brightness.
Irreverent day,
Your hours groan under the weight
of my time,
morphing all torpid thoughts
into reminders and bromides,
but through misty musts is gratitude, for
Night arrives then, and
I seek succor in the dark,
knowing that
dawn will return, and soon
the same fecklessness of pretense --
and routine's rictus
before me again.
§
Deborah Bauer lives and works in
TAKING OVER FOR
GILBERT’S SAKE
My husband’s father
waits in burl-wood,
between last year’s tax,
and this year’s receipts.
It’s been eight years
since Gilbert begged,
with shipwrecked lungs
and sinking breaths.
But instead he peers from high,
and wonders if his ash and
bits of bone
will ever ride the waves.
So shush, don’t tell.
Although he’s someone else’s
father,
I’ll slip him in.
He’ll jostle a bit,
among striped umbrellas,
ice chest and oars,
but at last his time will come
to meet the sea.
§
The following poem by Deborah Bauer originally appeared in Steel
Point Quarterly.
Sarah’s Backfloat
I used her
to complain of unruly men,
and self-centered sons,
and ill conceived backfired plans.
But I never supposed
her chemicals
would lose their balance
and spill onto the bathroom floor.
That her husband would find her,
a bird’s breath from death,
backfloating in a pond
filled from the flow of her veins.
He said she’d tried before.
I never noticed the tiny rails and ties
tracking her wrists.
And I took her quiet on the phone
as regard for my rant.
When she answered the door
in a nightgown and slipper,
on Tuesday late-afternoon,
I thought she had the flu.
I never asked if she cried.
If she could wait out sadness,
and survive.
The
Chickasaw
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