Deep Dish poem-a-month

Bagram, Afghanistan, 2002

The interrogation celebrated spikes and cuffs,
the inky blue that invades a blackened eye,
the eyeball that bulges like a radish,
that incarnadine only blood can create.
They asked the young taxi driver questions
he could not answer, and they beat his legs
until he could no longer kneel on their command.
They chained him by the wrists to the ceiling.
They may have admired the human form then,
stretched out, for the soldiers were also athletes
trained to shout in unison and be buddies.
By the time his legs had stiffened, a blood clot
was already tracing a vein into his heart.
They said he was dead when they cut him down,
but he was dead the day they arrested him.
Are they feeding the prisoners gravel now?
To make them skillful orators as they confess?
Here stands Demosthenes in the military court,
unable to form the words “my country.” What
shall we do, we who are at war but are asked
to pretend we are not? Do we need another
naive apologist to crown us with clichés
that would turn the grass brown above a grave?
They called the carcass Mr. Dilawar. They 
believed he was innocent. Their orders were
to step on the necks of the prisoners, to
break their will, to make them say something
in a sleep-deprived delirium of fractures,
rising to the occasion, or, like Mr. Dilawar,
leaving his few possessions and his body.

Marvin Bell

From Mars Being Red, Copper Canyon Press. Copyright © 2007 by Marvin Bell. Used with permission of the author and publisher.

Fugitive Connections

At night we cross the fifteen mile no-man's land
into Mexico: you're explaining to me
how to drive the lightless road, looking
at the rocky edge, not approaching headlights;
that there are vulcanizados who'll wake
if we need help with a tire. You wake me with
the pressure of your hand when passing a city,

and at sunrise we stop on the steep cobbled street
of Tobasco for fresh tunas, yellow
and red.I see a barefoot girl
in a velvet dress, and realize it's Sunday. You tell me
the word for wheat, trigo, just think
of trigonometry: I equate
your velocity with transience, as

the color blue is fugitive in a kiln
and can settle anywhere, as pale blue ink vanishes
when one tries to xerox it, and another poet
said to me, don't you know blue
is the language of love, it's transient? Your hand
flickers over my body gently in bed, as though
passing unmarked terrain: grazing my nipples
you murmur, they're hot, and press me hastily
to your chest.  In Guadalajara

the Perferico circles the city, and I float
on the periphery of your immense family
a few days.I go on along the coast
without you to name the immense black birds,
the silver cactus; but you're a continuous flicker
in my background like the quick fine line
of an unnamed road on a map.On the beach,
the edge of a wave like gold-green pressed glass
against the deepening blue force of the storm.

Inara Cedrins
From Fugitive Connections, published by the Virtual Artists Collective, 2006. Posted with permission, Inara Cedrins.

Nogi

        Great soldier of the fighting clan,
Across Port Arthur's frowning face of stone
You drew the battle sword of old Japan,
And struck the White Tsar from his Asian throne.

        Once more the samurai sword
Struck to the carved hilt in your loyal hand,
That not alone your heaven-descended lord
Should meanly wander in the spirit land.

        Your own proud way, O eastern star,
Grandly at last you followed. Out it leads
To that high heaven where all the heroes are,
Lovers of death for causes and for creeds.

Harriet Monroe, 1860 – 1936
Source: Poetry (November 1912)

How Many, How Much

How many slams in an old screen door?
    Depends how loud you shut it.
How many slices in a bread?
    Depends how thin you cut it.
How much good inside a day?
    Depends how good you live 'em.
How much love inside a friend?
    Depends how much you give 'em.

Shel Silverstein, 1930-1999. 

A Light in the Attic, copyright 1981 Evil Eye Music.

To Be In Love

To be in love
Is to touch with a lighter hand.
In yourself you stretch, you are well.
You look at things
Through his eyes.
A cardinal is red.
A sky is blue.
Suddenly you know he knows too.
He is not there but
You know you are tasting together
The winter, or a light spring weather.
His hand to take your hand is overmuch.
Too much to bear.
You cannot look in his eyes
Because your pulse must not say
What must not be said.
When he
Shuts a door-
Is not there
Your arms are water.
And you are free
With a ghastly freedom.
You are the beautiful half
Of a golden hurt.
You remember and covet his mouth
To touch, to whisper on.
Oh when to declare
Is certain Death!
Oh when to apprise
Is to mesmerize,
To see fall down, the Column of Gold,
Into the commonest ash.

Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000)

The World of Gwendolyn Brooks, copyright Harpercollins 1971.

Immigrant Blues

People have been trying to kill me since I was born,
a man tells his son, trying to explain
the wisdom of learning a second tongue.

It's the same old story from the previous century
about my father and me.

The same old story from yesterday morning
about me and my son.

It's called "Survival Strategies
and the Melancholy of Racial Assimilation."

It's called "Psychological Paradigms of Displaced Persons,"

called "The Child Who'd Rather Play than Study."

Practice until you feel 
the language inside you, says the man. 

But what does he know about inside and outside,
my father who was spared nothing
in spite of the languages he used?

And me, confused about the flesh and soul,
who asked once into a telephone,
Am I inside you? 

You're always inside me, a woman answered, 
at peace with the body's finitude, 
at peace with the soul's disregard
of space and time.

Am I inside you? I asked once 
lying between her legs, confused
about the body and the heart.

If you don't believe you're inside me, you're not,
she answered, at peace with the body's greed,
at peace with the heart's bewilderment.

It's an ancient story from yesterday evening

called "Patterns of Love in Peoples of Diaspora,"

called "Loss of the Homeplace 
and the Defilement of the Beloved,"

called "I Want to Sing but I Don’t Know Any Songs."

Li-Young Lee

From Behind My Eyes by Li-Young Lee. Copyright © 2008 
by Li-Young Lee. Published by W.W. Norton. 
Used with the author's permission.

Momma in Red

They said 
that the only reason 
my momma wore a red
dress to her daddy’s funeral
was because she hated him 
and was just being sassy

I know she wore it
because it was
the only one she had

Nichole L. Sheilds (1969 - 2009)
One Less Road to Travel: A Collection
Publisher: [s.n.] (1998)

When

In the early 1980s, the black men
were divine, spoke French, had read everything,
made filet mignon with green peppercorn sauce,
listened artfully to boyfriend troubles,
operatically declaimed boyfriend troubles,
had been to Bamako and Bahia,
knew how to clear bad humours from a house,
had been to Baldwin's villa in Saint-Paul,
drank espresso with Soyinka and Senghor,
kissing hello on both cheeks, quoted Baraka's
"Black Art": "Fuck poems/and they are useful,"
tore up the disco dance floor, were gold-lit,
photographed well, did not smoke, said "Ciao,"

then all the men's faces were spotted.

Elizabeth Alexander
American Sublime, copyright 2005 Graywolf Press. Used with permission.

Nothing Was Out of Reach

I ordered a bottle of wine
because I love the idea
of letting alcohol make all
the important decisions. 
By dining room, I mean a den

of iniquity and the double
entendre in being asked
if I would like anything
to eat.  I am thinking
of a specific kind of tree

and the acres of orchards
nestled in the foothills
of the Cascade: imagine
a stream bank moonlighting
as a hotel bed, imagine

the two of us dying
of curiosity, imagine us
arm wrestling over who takes
a bite first.  I am describing
the tree as slumped

because there is real danger
to knowledge.  It wasn’t
a garden as much as
a speakeasy in the center of town
with waitresses dolled up

in Bavarian outfits, circling
the room with late-harvest
fruit: apples with pistachio-
almond butter and poached
fig. Your fingers were snow

melting in a bright room, the perfect
mud, my secret affection
for cliché rolling up its sleeves. 
Nothing was out of reach.  I clapped
my hands, the fields rose up. 

Frank Matagrano

originally published in Cider Press Review, Volume 9, copyright Frank Matagrano. Used with permission of the writer.

Windy City

The garments worn in flying dreams
were fashioned there -
overcoats that swooped like kites,
scarves streaming like vapor trails,
gowns ballooning into spinnakers.

In a city like that one might sail
through life led by a runaway hat.
The young scattered in whatever directions
their wild hair pointed, and gusting
into one another, fell in love.

At night, wind rippled saxophones
that hung like windchimes in pawnshop
windows, hotting through each horn
so that the streets seemed haunted
not by nighthawks, but by doves.

Pinwheels whirred from steeples
in place of crosses.  At the pinnacles
of public buildings, snagged underclothes -
the only flag - flapped majestically.
And when it came time to disappear

one simply chose a thoroughfare
devoid of memories, raised a collar,
and turned his back on the wind.
I closed my eyes and stepped
into a swirl of scuttling leaves.

Stuart Dybek

Streets in their Own Ink, Copyright 2004 by Stuart Dybek. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, pub.