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Two Poems by Sherwood Anderson

Man Speaking to a Woman

You have come to me from a tall awkward city. You have come to me from the sister cities of the

north. On your way here to me you have run in and out of a thousand cities that lie like unhatched

eggs on the prairies.

You are a distraught woman with tangled hair and once you owned a house in a street where

wagons and motor trucks went up and down.

I am glad you are tangled in a web of thought.
I am glad your thoughts have driven you out of the cities.
You have come up a hill to a place where I sit.
I am glad.
I will take the end of a thought in my hand and walk back and forth.
I will climb into trees.
I will run in holes under the ground.
I will weave a web over yourself.

You shall sit on a stone under a wall where a gateway leads into the valley of truth and as I weave

you into oblivion I will tell you a tale.

Long ago, on a day in October, a woman like you came here to the face of the wall. The shadow of

many perplexities lay like a film over her eyes. She sat on the stone with her back to the wall as

you sit now. My father, who was then a young man, laid long threads of thought over her body.

A stone fell out of the wall and the woman was killed.
The wall is strong but a stone fell out of the wall.
It made a great noise.
A noise like the firing of guns was heard to the North and the South.

In the Valley there was a day set aside for the cleansing of doorsteps.
The sound of the tinkling of bells came over the wall.
A stone fell out of the wall on the head of a woman.
She fled from my father.
She fled like a frightened bird over the wall.

A Vagrant

I am become a brightly colored insect.
I am a boy lying by a river on a summer day.
At my back is an orchard.

I look dreamily out over warm stagnant waters. There is a reed grows out of the yellow mud. In the

orchard at my back a hog grunts. An insect with brightly colored back and wings comes swinging

down stream. He has lived more freely than the waters of the river. I go with him as I would go in

at the door of God's house if I knew the street in which God's house stands, as I would go into

you if you would leave the door open for me.

The above published with appreciation to Poetry Daily, October 2, 2007

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Note: John R. Guthrie’s heteronymic poem below is an excerpt from his upcoming chapbook, Jesus’ War: A Contemplation of Shock and Awe in Iraq. Signed copies of his chapbook may be preordered directly from the author at johnrguthrie@roadrunner.com, $6.99 + $1.00 S&H. Available worldwide, late December or early January, 2007.

Preternatural Light: A Heteronym

--Soyhela Omidvari, April, 2001

Last spring night I heard you as an ibis,

Black throated singer of the marsh,

your strange and dreadful calling.

Peonies bloomed in the sky

the stunted budding of the blossoming orange.

Heavy hanging fruit bedecked

a tree of lights,

a night transformed.

I listen now in vain

for owls in solemn song,

crickets singing,

skinny, long-legged frogs.

The garden’s now

consumed by locusts.

Vultures circle.

You are gone,

and even the cat is ash,

sifted on a bed of daffodils.

Baghdad, April, 2001

Trans. fr. the Arabic, John R. Guthrie

With appreciation to Dr. Ismet Qadir

Dept. of Middle Eastern Studies,

USC Santa Barbara

Soyhela Omidvari, Jan. 2001, Baghdad

Soyhela Omidvari was born in Baghdad in 1977 She was the only child of an Iraqi physician and an Englishwoman. Her precocity was recognized early on. She received her undergraduate education in the United States, primarily at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where she majored in comparative literature and American History, graduating in 1997. She attended law school at Kings College, London, receiving her degree in 2000 and being entered as a barrister in the courts there in the same year. She then returned to Iraq, working there as general counsel for UNESCO.

It was as a poet, however, that she received her brief measure of international renown. She was awarded The Charles Baudelaire Prize for Poetry in 1999 while residing in London. After returning to Baghdad, Omidvari wrote primarily in Arabic. She was awarded the 2000 First Writers International Competition for poetry in languages other than English for her volume Al Gineyna—The Gardern. Omidvari also received the Open Door Annual International Poetry Book Contest Prize in 2003.

She largely disappeared from public view after the American Liberation of Iraq in 2003.

Soyhela Omidvari, last known photo

(UNESCO, late 2004, Baghdad)

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RAILROAD BILL: Tune: “Railroad Bill” (Traditional)

Railroad Bill was a blamed mean man

Joined Blackwater to attack Iran

"I’m gonna kickass" says Railroad Bill.

Give him a Humvee and a submachine gun

Shootin’ up some desert country’s your basic redneck fun

Better than Nascar, says Railroad Bill.

Railroad Bill, ain’t got much in the cranium

He fired them shells with depleted uranium

He don’t question authority, not Railroad Bill.

Railroad Bill can’t find a wife

Radioactive gonads from Gulf War strife

Ladies won’t ride on Railroad Bill.

Oh, Railroad Bill, you’re lookin’ mighty ill

If only we had a contraceptive anti-war pill!

Have a pleasant journ-ity, to eternity, Railroad Bill!

With appreciation to Free-lance journalist Sherwood Ross.

The Chickasaw Plum - Volume IV - Number 11 - November 2007

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