-inside Massachusetts-

the fact is

I don't remember studying 

anything in school.

but later on in Boston

I had a peculiar hankerin’

to meet

a young woman from way

out west.

Mount Holyoke.

she studies at

Mount Holyoke, I could say,—

the sound of it

impressing my friends in Boston.

but
I never came to

find true love at

Mount Holyoke

but then

I met a young woman

studying almost everything at

Wellesley way back east.

                    for Beth Nobel

                      

-Breath of air-

Heaney spoke to Hughes, in part,

At the memorial service for Hughes;

—I am the least of poetry’s children.—

I liked that and decided someday

To lift it, with all the obligatory maskings,
For use in one of my own poems.

I am the least of poetry's children.

Here and there, stones are put into place.

Other stones sit atop these and still others
Will form the finishing capstones.

In another direction,
An emerald-coated moss

Clings to the bark of a tree

Which branches outward

Yielding leaves and in winter

Yields the truth of its geometry.

Atop the lay of this Dartmouth farmland,

Weeds protrude from between the stones
Of a wall built longer ago than my earliest years.
The weeds move upward and outward in an act
Of stubborn behavior.

It’s a puzzle of fragments, poetry is and the words
Cling together and build upon one another
And the phrasing spreads outward in its imagery and

Sometimes it all just happens as fundamentally as this.


                                       

                                            

                                        

-high school confidential-

the full-bodied Moon

pendant of the river

illuminates the rooftops

and from the street corner

polishes the gull-finned Impalas.

earlier, her black & white saddles

slipped magnetically

across the dance-floor pulling me in.

but below the dome-light of the headliner

is where we'd find the closing

tune of the dance.

it’s the full-bodied Moon

which conned the saltwater

and bluing the Spindrift, drove us crazy.

                    with Madeline of the Dominican Academy.

                   Fall River 

                                            

-poem 1017 (101)-

proof of poetry

and the facts are such

as they are remembered.

my childhood

friends lace-up their spikes

advanced from the laces

of their sneakers.

on the corner, the sweeping

fins of the automobiles seem designed

so as to be leaned upon.

In the park at twilight,
the dugouts alter their designated functions

and as evening darkens,
drape the incandescence, shielding us
from the eyes at the windows.

the neighborhood girls

are forbidden to do such things

as counseled by their mothers,

as dictated by their fathers.

but the poetry
will not hold them back,

will not throw anything away,
will be recorded — such as
whatever is remembered.

Napoleon Bonaparte's humiliation

I recall reading somewhere,

possibly a satirical publication,

not a historical document

but an exposé I think, maybe an exaggeration, I don’t know,

that Napoleon was saddled with a humiliatingly skinny penis—

that it was, for whatever reason, snipped

sometime after the postmortem on Saint Helena

and summarily pickled— that it was placed in storage

inside a jar of ethyl alcohol,— that it disappeared

for a long time, often changing hands (by jar) before it was found

hidden, unceremoniously under someone’s bed for chrissake

and that it was blackened and shriveled like a neglected basque pepper.

(the motivation to write this bizarre exposé

began while listening to Beethoven’s “Eroica,”

largely because the 3rd is the only number in his

symphonic literature that made sense for me

to consider penning an exposé on Napoleon's

humiliatingly small penis which to this day

remains tucked between fact and fiction,

save, of course, for those of us who write things down.)

                                                

                                       

-A Requiem for Olive Goffe-

Advert at the sidebar

Reads: "Look Up Alumni."

Let’s see what's going on.
Let's intrude into the lives of those
Who never had a chance.

Let’s see who made a lot of money;
Who died ingloriously on the field of lily pads.
Let's see who made the grade.

Let’s find out what the living
And the dead are up to.

Where’s Bob Bradbury,— 
Lanky Junior High School nuisance 

Who ran my noisy school's campaign for Veep

Pressing the snotty seventh graders against the green-

Plastered walls of the corridors

Demanding their commitment?

"Don't be a Queer Vote for D'Elia"!

Where's Joy Liebman––
Brainy beauty,

Queen of her saddle-shoes

Poised on the classroom floor

Toe to toe?

Look Up Alumni,—

Where's Olive Goffe?

Poor Olive Goffe.

Plain Olive Goffe.

Olive in tatters.

Sweet Olive in tears?

What's become of Joanie Sperling–– 
Well-endowed three years before her natural time

Who sold herself by the touch of our palms
Behind the fence for the lunch-money 

Donated to her by our clueless mothers?

What's happened to the simmering
Sheryll Barnes,

Prancing drum majorette
Crossing December's half-
Time gridiron
Whose fleshy knees were hot
As raw cotton?

What's become of the grey-
Eyed girl once locked
In my skinny arms

Sheltered from the dark,
Beady eyes
Of old Miss Sykes?
Elaine of the cloakroom.
Elaine of the clouds.

Look Up Alumni—

Elaine San Marcos

Pressed to the coats on winter's hooks,

The Halo scent of jet-

    Stone hair in the morning

        Perfume of the Projects
            Below the hill

                At the edge of the river
                    When the trees were still growing.



Quequechan

                  

-Dedications from the Hugo A. Dubuque School-

If you push Joyce Jewel to the pavement

On the way home from school
And she skins her knee on the concrete

Her case against you will be adjudicated
In the morning by cranky old Miss Stanton
Delivering her verdict with a swift "rat-hand".

The whipping stung like four disturbed hornets

And the thin switch gripped in her meaty fist

Whooshed like a terrible wind and snapped

At each of four strikes to the trembling fingertips
Of this poem-writer as a fifth-grade kid.

Stanton's office was on the first floor corridor
Directly above the stinking trough in the school's
Dank and miserable basement where
The boys urinated throughout the day

So she always smelled like evaporating piss,

                                  
                                  

-It's how it was-

He's on the road behind the steering wheel,—

Could be Buick, could be Pontiac.

Could be Chevy.

My father would be driving the Mid-Cape
Back from Hyannis through Buzzards Bay
Toward New Bedford into Fall River

And home from the long day's sales.

She's at the kitchen sink.

Could be looking out the window,

Could be swiping the oilcloth or sponging

The pantry counter down.

My mother could be standing at the gas stove.

It’s how it was.

We were home long before my father. We changed

Our school clothes into the beaten stuff we were still told

To keep clean,— our mother simply rolling

The words from her mouth in her commonplace
Attitude every afternoon when my brother left the house

To meet his whacky little friends

And I’d leave the house
Crossing the street to the park to meet-up with mine.

My sister didn’t have to be told to keep her clothes clean.

I don’t want to get into it.

In a few hours my father will drive up to the curb,

Move outside from behind the wheel,— could be Buick,

Entering the house through the kitchen door.

Could be wood.

Could be screened.

Quequechan

                                 

-and now for something barely beginning-

an early morning fog has pressed

its palm of water

into the fabric of the city.

it seems to be heavy-handed

and the muscle of granite

powering the mill /church complex

is seen to struggle against it.

but the smokestacks and steeples lance the atmosphere

and the city, with its blue-collared tenacity rises

from the banks of the river arching its back like a cornered cat.

when the fog lifts from the backbone, the final preparations

of the interiors will begin.

the city's sleeves will roll above its blood-

colored elbows, and as in birth,

the outside will be populated from the inside.

                                                           

-directions from the gatehouse-

(William is now friends with Miss Ida Wardell)

the plot of ground reserved

for this elementary classroom music teacher

lies in a remote location.

this remoteness is due to years of constant

clearing and expansion of land

made ready for the onslaught of new internees 

moving her space of earth backward in time. 

her grave is marked with an actual stone.

says here she died in 1966. no reason. just.. "died".

standing there, I imagine the fullness of her face,

the impossible girth at the sash of her dress,

the sweltering mouth at the pitch-pipe's disk,

her narrow eyes rocking like metronomes.

she surveyed the classroom, eyeballs brushing across us

like bristles in the process of shellacking something.

she was unique,— a blimp of a woman, gaseously floating

before the eager moorings of our disciplined expressions.

we breathed in and breathed out in the collective,

picking-up the pitch of her pipe, plucked from the scale

and the true romance is found etched at the face of a simple stone

weathered by time, listing awkwardly on a distant plot of ground.

Wardell, Ida

born 1908 / died 1966

              

-Your Show of Shows-

everything appears to be

functioning normally.

the dishes are washed

and the rung-out dishrag's draped

over the faucet to dry-out.
the interior lamps are lit

casting light to a bronzed patina

the way Rembrandt liked it. 

the cat’s in its mode of discovery

walking to an empty bedroom doorway,

stopping in its tracks,
staring into the empty darkness
as if it senses something going on.

my father’s in the living room

standing at the blank-faced television

rolling-up the sleeves of the white

dress shirt he wore to work.

he’s the man of this house

and the Lucky Strike pressed

between his lips is there to prove it.

L.S.M.F.T., my brothers and sisters.

there’s a moment in time when time

seems to be suspended at this ancient house

when the oldman squats at the screen
and the family knows that when the dial

is turned to its on position everything could go wrong.

It’s droning like a dozen hornets.

the snow builds in intensity

the way the Big Bang aficionado likes it,
and shadows of substance appear like phantoms
within the phosphorescence.

Odilon Redon comes to mind.
we can hear them laughing behind the cathode ray tube.

another adjustment to the roll of his sleeves,
another drag of hot smoke sinking deeply into his lungs

biding their time before the diagnosis.

and then—

the horizontal goes crazy,
ignorant of its place the horizon.

the vertical twists with the tortured inaccuracy
of an amusement park's funhouse mirror.

it's all about recurring anticipation in the house

with the squatting Zenith. 

but—with his fingertips adjusting
as sure, as swift as with a surgeon's touch,
the oldman makes his move just the way we like it.

                                             c.1954