Edward Hopper, Summertime (1942):
and an ekphrastic poem inspired by her:
Summertime
She is assuredly alone
in the dumbest of the seasons.
The pavement and heating masonry
frame her; the sun, that fiery voyeur, its rays
violations, leers from an unfinished height.
The shadows she exits are severe, sharp
and linear as the darkest of arguments
She looks east, toward light, not for direction
but to [...]
We abandon what only annoys us, take
our faba and melon alone and early
in such as light as the curtains allow, purchase
the weather from checkered gentlemen,
sketch lilies in the margins of unread flight novels
and barely speak of how our days went.
C’est la.
Take the print
from that wall.
It is far
too patent.
Hang it
over the antique
chifforobe, near
the [...]
.
The man of a thousand faces
sits down at the table
eats a small lump of sugar
and smiles at the moon like he knows her.
And begins his quiet ascension
without anyone’s dirty instruction
to a place that no religion
has found a path to, or a likeness.
His words are quiet like stains are
on a tablecloth washed in the river.
Stains [...]
Recording of a reading at the University of Wisconsin, Washington County, in 2007 with my dear friend, Rick Krause.
Poetry Reading, Sept 27, 2007
A pterodactyl
irritated by encroaching mammals
distasteful morsels down below
glides on.
To know
its end is not
its burden.
To end is.
An archaeologist, of a sort,
abiding amid an earth of surfaces,
lost across but two dimensions,
a digger of nowhere.
Not sad.
Merely as.
Stretching.
Extending time.
Avoidance is black and green.
Here speaks in small lovely voices.
Here reads cereal boxes.
Stay.
Here.
Oh water, how can you go where you will?
While here I am, a heap of defeat, leaning
against the porcelain, old ballcock in hand.
New Historians
pore through the past
writing check lists
for the present
and a wish list
for the future.
This is not history.
This is the only history
worth extending.
A corpse in a cowboy hat spews bile at the mic.
This time, he says he’s an idiot.
A drove of men crowd around a bombed car in Karballa.
All look excited. None sad.
14 take pictures with their cell phones. The rest want a camera.
What does the Titanic have to do with Jesus?
You’re a screen upon which all [...]