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A Meditation on the
Come,
take a chaplet
offer
a libation to Coalemus
the
god of stupidity
and
take care to fight vigorously.
--Aristophenes, Knights 220
Welcomed at the gate
by sportive stegasaurs
to an earth 6,000 years of age.
A gentle vegan T. Rex roams
where Bible children play
close by a mockup of the arc
with details of Noahic
flood
that killed and fossilized the dinosaurs
4,000 years ago.
The pursers who espouse this shrine to Coalemus
know scripture in it’s every jot and tittle
except the part in Pslams
that pleads
Deliver, O Lord, my soul
from lying lips
and from deceitful tongues.
--John R.
Guthrie
§
Meghan O’Rourke
Photo Source: Google Images
On Meghan
O’Rourke’s Halflife
Meghan O'Rourke: Her work has been described as “A spikey, cross currented style of
poetry.” The poet is the culture editor for the online publication Slate as well as being the poetry editor
for the Paris Review.
Our first exposure to her work was “Descent” and “Epitaph
for Mother and Child” on Poetry Daily. (See original in archives here: http://www.poems.com)
I then purchased a copy of her recent volume Halflife.
With its insomniacal urban narrators, and their
earthy reality and gritty poignancy, the works in Halflife constitute writing that
is both compelling and fiercely intelligent. “Descent” is but one example.
Descent
I was born a bastard in an
amphetamine spree,
lit through
with a mother's quickenings,
burrowing
into her, afraid she would not have me,
and she would not have me.
I dropped out down below the knees
of a rickrack halterdress,
sheeted,
tented knees, water breaking, linoleum peeling,
and no one there to see but
me,
I woke on the floor as if meant to
put her back together, to try
to hold on to her
like a
crate to a river, as if I'd been shipped down
to stand straight while in the
misgiving
she said I had a dream of thirty-six sticks
floating
down a river and a dog who couldn't swim
and I could
not swim, I slipped from her grip
in a room where two orange
cats stared
like tidy
strangers at a world of larger strangeness,
and I had no name, I was there
at her breast
and I
thought I could see her, the swag of her hair, the jaw,
the fearing, but I barely saw,
I went sliding down the river
from a
house in which it was sweet to sleep,
and the cool of the sheets
was never
cool enough, and the imprint of the bedded bodies
diving, at once, took the
shape of two geese.
§
Imagery that burns
itself upon one’s consciousness is characteristic of other works in this
series: “I’m a princess with a hole in my heart/--all the plastic deer bend
away from me--/and you’ve got a
melancholic bent./Where did you get the idea to live in a cathedral….”
Beginnings are a specialty with OI’Rourke,
as in”My life as a teenager.” “Epitaph for Mother and
Child,” below, is illustrative of why Billy Collins would refer to Halflife as "Impressive.
A box full of surprises and intense delights."
Epitaph for Mother
and Child
I slept and dreamt
and slept and dreamt—
I woke, the
radiators banged and flaked.
I slept and dreamt,
gnawing handkerchiefs
that turned out to be
sheets—
my mother had tangled
hair
dark and gray as an
oak;
she was growing old.
In the car
I slept and dreamt,
then woke: the shocks were bad.
I woke: I stayed
like that, before anything broke,
before she swerved off
the shoulder of Route 9,
her hair like cotton in
my mouth.
The length of her
arm against my arm,
my leg along her leg,
shoulder to shoulder, the
car's steel frame made a sound
like very young, very
hungry
birds, her flesh drew
away
and then pressed on
me, as if we slept again together.
In a ditch along
which a wire post fence ran,
keeping goldenrod from
grass, keeping us
from the soybean field,
we woke.
Along the post
against which she'd fallen
she ran her fingers
restlessly.
Lying next to her,
I looked and saw
the letters of my name
scratched in the hand of a child—
as if we had been
here, years ago,
on an afternoon I do
not remember, when
the air smelled of
November smoke.
I took my hand like
a handkerchief
and wiped her face. I
slept, and woke.
The radiator
banged, the clock was wet
with
Note on the above capsule review: The Chickasaw Plum
customarily contacts poets before quoting from their work, even brief excerpts
to which the Fair Use doctrine obviously applies. Despite efforts over the last
several months to contact Ms. O’Rourke, we were unable to do so. Thus the above
commentary on Meghan O’Rourke’s work is provided on a non-profit basis in order
to give wider exposure to her vivid and inspiring work and as an educational
service under the Fair Usage doctrine the Copyright Act, Title 17, US Code. Halflife is available throughAmazon.com and other online
sources. jrg
*****************
Editor’s Note: I Iast saw Chrys Tobey at the Rhapsodomancy
poetry reading at the Good Luck Bar in
Delay
I never
wanted
to be this young woman
with a smile as lost
as a tube of lipstick.
I watch as
she tries to hold
onto her youth in blue jeans
like snake skin, as though the tight
jeans that once fit are yelling,
This
child does not define me!
I never
wanted
to be this young woman
with lips as narrow
as a dirt road.
Each year
I didn’t
get pregnant.
Each year
I didn’t
resemble
my mother.
My mother
who never smiled.
I don’t
know
if she had any reason -
being young and alone.
There is
one photo
where she smiles -
floating on a green raft in
Maybe
this young woman
is going to some place far away.
Her
little girl, about two,
honey blonde hair in pink barrette,
yells from the airport window,
Hello! Hello airplane! Hello!
The young
woman sits,
face straight ahead,
her little girl
a few feet away,
little girl who makes
all the passengers smile.
My
friend, Kerri, repeated,
No one
ever said how
hard this would be
and after a martini confessed
she would take it all back -
the pregnancy, two year old son.
I never
wanted to be
this young woman -
indigo eyeshadow
disguising tired eyes.
Her
little girl still yells,
jumps up and down,
tiny hands pressed to window,
Hello! Hello airplane! Hello!
and the young woman
looks the other way,
as though this all could
wipe away like pink blush.
Chrys Tobey—a graduate of AntiochLA’s MFA
program, Poet Chrys Tobey
has been an occasional contributor to the Chickasaw Plum.
The
Minister’s Daughter
Brush
teeth, go to church,
sing Bake, bake a cake,
The
baker has called!
as mother pours
clear liquid into tea
and strange men slip
in and out of house like shadows.
Play with
Uncle, whose stomach
hangs like a hammock
as he unzips his black slacks
and tells nursery rhymes:
Bumpety, bumpety, bump!
With
his daughter behind him,
so rosy and fair;
Lumpety, lumpety, lump!
and sneaks you candy corn
and hazelnut truffles.
Sing Bake,
Bake...
Don’t
tell Father.
Aus den Augen.
Bake a
cake...
Don’t
tell anyone.
Aus den
Sinn.
The
Baker has called!
* “Aus den Augen. Aus den Sinn” is German for “out of
sight, out of mind.”
§
Burning Man Festival
Photo Source: Google Images
The Burning Man at
Playa
Burning Man is an eight-day-long
celebration organized by Clack Rock City LLC under the guidance of founder
Larry Harvey. The annual festival ends on American Labor day. It takes place on
the playa of the Nevada’s Black Rock Desert, 150 km. north northeast of
Reno.The temporary city is an experiment in community radical self-expression
and self-reliance. The event takes its name from from the ritual of burning a
large wooden sculpture of a man on the sixth day.
The Chickasaw Plum appreciates
Boston poet Sir Gawaine Ross’s contribution of the following:
Impressions of the Burning
Man
Gawaine Caldwater
Ross
The Burning Man was eighty feet high
Atop a temple of Moorish lace
Confections of stars and midnight suns
All on a lake bed flat and sere, already
Old when primates first appeared.
Fire dancers whirled as the stars chirped
Hosannas to the primal rite.
Nothing is lost, but all is gained,
Extravagance is the law of the land.
Open now, as the clouds pass by,
Fire is water, and water itself
Soars into the stratosphere.
High art falls into the dust,
No one complains, and all rejoice.
Surreal it is, and yet romantic,
Bacchus himself rides on the wind,
And here it is that once a year
Artists bring about the birth
Of Shiva's endless pillar of fire.
The
Chickasaw
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