T H E
H A M I L T O N S T O N E R E V I E W
Fall 2010 (Issue No. 22)
Poetry
Billy Cancel
across wooden floors you drag
across wooden floors you drag a string of crystal beads & years are seconds away when
red breeze green breeze grounds a jet in the iron box meaning a taxi through styrofoam
to hungry dogs eating dirty puddings who you tell the crash is established that narrow
machines happen & fascinate people not disparities sub-platform soon your grand tour
of the text will end amongst a gathering outside a l.a courthouse but i’ll reserve a place
in the future for you goldfish fat with the irregular sounds you like & you’ll be a well
tempered piece of living glass & i’ll be your little meth lab in the sun straw cup yellow
suckle nodding tick dock grass unbranched flag disk lead arrow foam nodding tick you
brushed my cheek so i threw myself to the ground clutching my face you remember how
first time no one could hide their surprise graceful blank your dynamic surge into brick
Sherry Chandler
Theosophy
Once, to win an argument, you said
I could not love God because I did
not love my father. That shut me up.
In my hot tears, your cool triumph.
His tongue was snappish as a bullwhip,
the work of loving him as hard as chopping
weeds with a hoe. My father defied piety.
But you had put that mirror in the sky.
Belief from unbelief, good from bad,
savory lamb from gamey willful kid,
all settled, easy question: which girl had
an upright father, which a low-down dad.
Reflection
I see your ghost in every mirror, but not
as straight-on stare, eye-to-my-own-eye
appraising. You don’t show yourself so cheap,
not even when I gaze to gauge
brown iris against fading.
In glances, say, as I reach for a towel,
after washing my hands, I catch you
in a sad line of the eyes,
unguarded droop of mouth.
I can’t hold you, of course.
I wouldn’t want to.
You were hard.
And yet it must exist,
your ghost.
Wayne Dodd
I Have Never Been to Portugal
We were in China at the time
and the mountains rose up
beside the river like mountains
in an ancient Chinese painting,
all sharp angles and clouds
and dots of bright colors like birds
in a painting. The stream at their feet
ran bright and swift toward the sea
a silk hanging contemplates,
above a nineteenth-century writing desk
in Portugal, or on the duro cliffs
of Gibraltar.
*
In Portugal Mount Sintra
lifts its steep sides
above the streets of the village, just as it did
when Byron first came and saw
and hastily hit the road for Seville
and points south, Napoleon's armies stalled,
temporarily, in their drive toward Cadiz
(rhymes with "ladies") and the sea.
The blue of Portuguese tiles
is the blue of the sky above Lisbon
and Sintra, I imagine, not of the sea
around Corsica or Gibraltar.
So I imagine. Of course,
I have never been to China.
One Day It's
Tuesday
and next thing you know
it's Monday again. Some people never
sleep. At least that's how they
remember it. "I was awake all night"
she says, he says. Either way,
it's the same story: Life's
a blur, even with improved glasses.
"What could I have been thinking?"
you wonder now, all those irreversibles
lining up outside your window like witnesses
at a hanging.
"What's the matter with you people?"
you want to shout. "Get a life!"
But of course it's your
life we're thinking about here,
isn't it? a life lived mostly
on the edges (notice the browning
and crackling there, the undeniable loss
of integrity.) Did someone
ask a question? Not really.
That's just the sound
of wind in the trees,
always on its way
to somewhere else.
Second Person, First Person
Now, you may not know it, but you
are doing very, very well. Free as you are
of most case endings (unlike me,
or even him), you can come and go
as you like, and never give a thought
to how others see you. You are,
after all, always on your own: flying high,
perhaps, never having to wonder
if you are being objectified
by him, or even her-Oh,
you know who I mean by "her,"
the one you always pretended
didn't matter, no matter how much
you preened and pandered, catered
and cajoled. Sad to say,
her view of you remains
as it always was, never even remotely
what you had hoped,
or imagined. Were you ever included
when she (or maybe he) said "we"? No?
Forget about it. Now you can get on with
honing your popularity
generally, convincing people
you are not just what you
say you are, not just the object of
your own admiration, but of theirs,
as well. I don't have to tell you
what it feels like to be utterly alone
in one's own skin. You have felt
this singular fact
of human existence
ever since you became aware
that, like every single one of us,
you are "I" only to yourself.
To everyone else, you are,
and always will be,
simply "you"-one who,
alone and unknowable
forever, says "you" to mean,
not one's own self, but someone else
entirely: an I you
can only imagine; an I you
will always hope is meant
when he (or maybe she)
looks at you and says
"you."
Lara Dolphin
My Award-ready Novel
Dear Mr. or Ms. Agent of My Dreams:
Once upon a dark
and stormy night
not unlike last Wednesday,
a diary-toting, Manolo-wearing, cocktail drinking
uberfashionista,
who loved her career in biochemistry
almost as much as a good pedi,
left the Armani bed sheets
of her triathlon-winning, tycoon boyfriend
for a stroll through an Edward Hopper painting.
To no surprise,
Mike’s Greasy Spoon was empty
save a bespoke, old man
nursing coffee and a slice of cherry pie.
Without a word
she sat beside him
and ordered a gyro, fries
and unsweetened iced tea.
The faceless man paid her tab
and took his hat
revealing on the counter
the sentient prototype,
which attaches to the gut when swallowed
and reprograms your innards
with tiny robotic arms
and which she will use
to debunk the usual medicine.
Insert relevant plot points here
leading to a climax of Orwellian proportions
followed by falling action
and dénouement into a dystopian fog.
While my masterpiece waits,
ensconced in a bottom dresser drawer,
I am prepared to accept
a large cash advance
for a manuscript
that will surely earn a Pulitzer
--or failing that, a National Book Award.
Sincerely,
Your humble author.
Howard Good
Remember the Alamo
The farts of a hopped-up Mustang echo down the street. Sam Houston could use a shot of mescal right about now. His hand trembles like a courier with urgent news. He doesn’t wish to discuss anymore the dissonant modernism of his early work. Agents in belted raincoats watch the border from nearby doorways. Although the sun is out, the nine-spotted ladybug crosses undetected.
James Harms
Wetback (1967)
He never emerged
from the trees
or their wet shadows
at dawn or even
the greasy smoke
of smudge pots
on cold mornings,
for then we could
say we’d seen
him arrive
when he was always
there at the back door
waiting for my
grandfather to awaken
and tell him what
to do that day,
which rows to pick,
and then at dusk
to take his ten
dollar bill and,
when we’d turned
to answer
a phone that hadn’t
rung, vanish.
The Sunday Birds
Not crows or the lesser grackle. Finally
the grass is picked free of seed. And
Fred on his banana-seat bike
pedals by like a child, his boom
box blasting the Beach Boys, that ruined face
turned away. How I love
the Sunday birds in their
ragged vestments
looking for what’s left
in the rye, my rye.
The house is quiet behind
me. Our beloved “Barbara Ann”
rises with feathers
into the empty branches.
The sky with its
sacramental crack
swallows my Sunday birds.
Understanding Opera
for Peter Cameron
Is it the Italian? Or the insincerity
of our age, confession the easy reflex
instead of locution, the rage
and grief, the longing and doubt
all twisted into scarves to be teased
loose over time and unburdening,
not simply sung from the surface
of our stories? Or is it
the other way around, the opera
that understands us?
A woman
returning from second intermission,
cigarette smoke in her hair,
is interrupted on her way by an old
acquaintance. Who says,
"Do you remember . . . ?" No.
Then: A lovely brooch, the soprano
is splendid, on West 10th Street
near the Post Office. Good-bye.
And as the conductor lifts
his arms, she waits, as always,
for the dumb honesty of music, the words,
which she can never understand.
Thom Gunn
I never knew Thom Gunn
but I loved his name, not far
from my brother’s, Tom Harms.
But his poems pricked and itched
as if typed on sandpaper, rough
to read, all knots and splinters with
rhymes down the right side . . .
how strangely he smoothed the edges
of language.
Send me sweets or send me
home, send me lemon trees
to grow on the balcony
but please (o please): do please.
The English edition of his book
of essays has an Ocean Park
on the cover, a way of saying
I’m never coming home, since
Diebenkorn painted in shorthand
a California Gunn learned
to see: the Pacific in every puddle,
the black oak in a phone pole.
Not everyone can grow a beard.
But here I am in jeans, earring
in my lip and nose and nothing
to do but register your dread.
So cross the street to avoid me.
Or better yet, give me money.
But Gunn was no Merlin of metonymy.
When he held hands with death
he felt a squeeze. And he closed the eyes
of friends in a time of plague, then walked
out into the Castro to fill his lungs
with fog, to watch a spot in the middle distance
until a bell echoed the pulse of buoy lights
in the bay, until two things on earth
conjoined without disaster, sound and light
the last to leave.
And there you were, singing on the J Car.
You sang Rodgers and Hart, you sang as far
as Noe Valley, then tripped on the stairs
to the street, scraped a knee and sat with tears
in your hands, your face in your hands, shaking.
Were you ashamed? Or was your heart breaking?
And who were we to watch the suffering,
to buy the groceries, to keep living?
He wrote an elegy for Cunningham,
three couplets, a little wry, just right
for his subject. But there they are,
the words he sought to join
together in life, intellect and passion,
two lines apart, separated by rhyme
and another word he probably liked: fashion.
What Leonardo Knew (The Burlington House Cartoon)
I am sure St. Anne didn’t mean to speak
with a glance like glass breaking, or hold
her finger like a Deringer, or know
before she should why her daughter
wept through dream after dream only
to wake into a sky of windows through
which, as they say, the Lord of hosts is seen.
And what of Mary’s regret, which isn’t
anything yet but worry: should her little boy
be playing with a lamb? with John? Is he hurting
or being hurt? But there it is in his grandmother’s
face: the inconsequential longing.
As his mother pretends to attend to
the moment. And the child rehearses.
Lyn Lifshin
All Afternoon We
read Lorca
by five snow
blurred the
glass. February. I
leaned against
those chill panes.
Gypsies
burned through the
snow with apples
You in the
other room
I was thinking
don’t let
this be some
warmth I can
move near
and never know
White Trees in the Distance
a white wind of
petals, maybe snow.
The longest I’ve
been so close to
you on the sheet
of paper. Like your
death, these poems
about you, a wild
surprise. The last
page in the note
book, still I think
I’ll need another
notebook before I
can let you go
Donal Mahoney
Winter on Astor Street
The Gold Coast, Chicago
Beneath the canopy,
a doorman holds
a cast-iron door that lets
an ancient duchess issue.
Swathed in a silver gown
she tugs her sable cape
tight around a tumor
that nice young doctor
will announce tomorrow.
Bag Lady
Chicago's North Side
This senior citizen
whose face is Rushmore still
squats with pigeons on the steps
of the Rogers Park Masonic Temple.
She wears a shawl this snowy day
and is beneath the visor of a hunting cap
a woman who has paused along the way.
Her shopping bags, stuffed, frayed,
and each square feature of her face, confess
she speaks at best a little English.
Rested, she will rise,
a penguin on a floe,
and navigate her day.
From the Train Going Home
As we roar over and by
the oaks are as still
as the pond they surround
Only the swans
on the pond
are moving
Then from an oak
a buckshot of crow
cawing and leaving
Simon Perchik
Hurt though its leaves
smothering the cry, each branch
disguised, flies out as birds
still battered by wings -haze
festers in these wounds :the dark bark
tries to trap the sun
tighter, tighter and always the pain
escapes :the harrowing cut
roots hear first and each footstep
softer than rot
nearer and nearer till nothing snaps
and everything falls on its side
-the tree still breathing
fed at last :infected, my saw
swooping to bring
what might have been the sun
and the tree remembering this nest
binds the blade :each leaf
sharp and shaking.
Roger Pfingston
Stroke
Your neighbor, Mr. Papps, is at it again,
mole dancing in his front yard, each step
carefully measured, scissoring forward,
then a slow backstep, arms extended
like a tightrope walker, as if the raised
tunnels require a certain flair, a tender
tamping to restore the earth to its
manicured level. And now, trading window
for door, you can see that he is eyeing
the humped grass under your silver maple
as you step out to address his good intentions,
wondering how you might blur his focus,
bring it around to what news, if any,
of his wife: Good morning, Mr. Papps!
Tree of Heaven
Ailanthus, aka tree
of heaven, weed, alley,
or stink tree, I celebrate
your tolerance of polluted
environments, your leafy
success along railroad tracks
and roadsides, in junk yards,
parking lots, abandoned lots,
and all the future lots
of your invasive nature.
Devil-may-care,
you live where you root.
Adam Sol
City Song
Who’s seen the phantom boy
who used to drum pennies against metal gratings
down here by the switching station?
Where could he be, now that I finally
have something to share with him,
after months of marching past
on my way to strategy meetings and lunches?
I used to shrug
at his pathetic entreaties,
suggesting that I had nothing to give him that day,
not today,
and the shrug satisfied both of us.
He would smile and say, “Nice day,” or “Cold one,”
and I pretended to take that for
a metaphysical forgiveness.
In this way we achieved an understanding,
a sort of communion between men,
an agreement to accept
that we would never touch each other.
But here I am,
I have walked this strip of sidewalk
for two hours in search of him
because I think I found his dog behind my building,
half buried in a pile of last year’s leaf oatmeal.
Bones so thin they could be pencils.
5:30 pm on a Thursday
Time for a bit of breath and beer
while the night leans over
and stumbles into the yard
like a man having a stroke.
Squirrels whiplash
around the compromised maples,
chuckling fiendishly.
I know, I know.
I’ve seen the prognostications
and read the reports.
And yet I still find myself,
or a version of myself,
inhabiting a space on the porch
like a real man,
with all the concomitant benefits.
Perhaps it’s an error in perception,
or my upbringing.
I have not been able to escape
my own search for pleasure
or its occasional fulfillment:
the beer is cold and foamy,
and even the non-recyclable cup
bears a satisfying weight
as its sweat drips onto my lap.
Burning nearby forests send delicious
barbecue odors over the mountains.
How to reconcile what I think I know
about the world going to hell, et cetera,
with these confusing sensations,
false and contingent as they probably are?
Then, like a punch line, a crabapple
drops into the plastic
kiddie pool and drowns.
Don Stinson
Pineapples
Stumbling, stuttering, vacant and lost,
The old man with the Billy-goat beard
And the 15-gallon straw cowboy hat
Cut through the crowd of consumers
At the Wichita shopping mall
Like a machete through a pineapple
In an old South Seas survival film,
One that the old man had seen often
As a child at the now-closed cinema
Downtown by the Harley dealer,
Where one of the dudes has a similar beard
And a fondness for blades and forbidden fruit,
Though pineapple is forbidden only by fools
Who’ve never been to the Oahu roadside stands
Where the old man with the beard and hat
Used to take his girlfriend for a treat
After a long day of snorkeling and making love
Before his Naval hitch ended and she stayed
And he returned home to the aircraft plant
And his high school sweetie who’d broken his heart,
That same sweetie who died giving birth
To a daughter who died later that day,
And he started in with pineapple juice and rum
But soon shucked all pretense and decorum
And took to the thick strong wine
Straight from the brown bagged bottle
Until he couldn’t keep anything in one piece
And bit by jagged bit he burst apart
Though that bursting took twenty years
And this morning he went to the mall
For no reason, no reason at all,
And walked its sweetly-tiled length
Until the security guards ran him out at closing
And he sat down in the empty parking lot
And watched the bright moon over Wichita
Turn slowly to the ripest of pineapples.
Sawdust Man
Now, father, when I think of you,
I think most often of sawdust—
Fine, sandy grainings of the stuff
Sifting down my collar, my arms,
Pooling at the base of my spine.
Together we slaughtered forests,
Fashioned boards into makeshift barns,
Sawed, planed, sanded, hammered in place.
And all the time you coughed and swore,
Sputtered and raged, and I looked on
With the son’s sad, detached concern.
Oh most imperfect carpenter—
Shall we never again approach
Those trembling trees with saws in hand,
Never again inhale their flesh
And from their muscles build a child?
The Old Country
There, they fold the days neatly away
like freshly-laundered, ironed sheets.
The women are tall, but the men are taller.
Morals flourish between corn’s straight rows.
The sun lingers longer than anywhere else
because the girls are so beautiful.
Neighbors raise each other’s barns
in timed competitions for schnapps.
Each genealogy is read in the face,
births, baptisms, weddings, funerals.
The steeples outnumber the shadows,
though folks avoid the full moon’s glare.
There, your passport is stamped in blood.
David Trame
A House at the End of the World
I have passed by it since I was a child
innumerable times
and never seen anything of it
beyond the iron work of the gate
and a dog on an iron leash
sliding to and fro on a wire.
Today it’s late afternoon
and the sun has broken
out of thick rags of clouds
after a day long storm:a new world, we breathe
a gush of openness and the unrestrained
wind’s blue throat.
A sunbeam fills the yellow wall
like a heart, it cups it
in a blinding glow.
It’s a house on the edge of a cornfield,
the window panes mirroring sailing clouds,
the ears of corn pierced by windy light
like trailing blades.
An edge, a border.
What must be reached.
Just a field now, but it could be
the furthest peak of a cliff
where you would rest finally
accomplished on your margin
and ensconced alongside
the world’s slightest rustling,
with half-closed eyes.
James Valvis
On Lincoln's Poetry and Mine