Voices
The roundness of a river stone
forms upon the river foam
a small oh,
and that is all it speaks.
Above the marsh
one low cloud
follows a tidal path
and makes no sound.
A curling leaf loops down,
touches the ground
and settles with a whisper
so quiet only grass can hear.
On winter shafts of air
when wind lifts fallen snow
to rise again, we cannot know
what seeds are speaking
what prayers.
Sue Scalf
The Children of Summer
"We write to taste life twice." - Anais Nin
White banks of clover
draw them like bees.
A welter of scratches
and skinned knees, children
know the bliss of running.
choosing sides, choosing friends,
making a chain of flowers,
patting out mud pies.
Dirt-smeared and sweaty,
they taste sour grass,
split maypops and hold
on their tongues the fleshy seeds,
pick passionflowers
that wind along the fence,
sip nectar from honeysuckle.
Making pacts, telling secrets,
they climb trees,
bombard their enemies
with pawpaws and chinaberries,
take prisoners, make treaties,
tumble and get up again,
cry and sing until the sun sets
and fireflies appear;
then heavy-limbed and sleepy,
children watch the moon,
a silver quarter they're too tired to spend
instead, they tuck it away
like a coin tied in a handkerchief
kept for ice cream.
Sue Scalf
Reprinted from What the Moon Knows
Christina's World
Alone is a word that stalls on the tongue,
chokes the throat; it is beyond solitude,
for it offers no choices. It is a landscape
barren and bleak, gone brown
with the last of the hay,
winter soon to come. Here she sits,
crippled, hair disheveled, one hand
clawing upward toward the house
on top of the treeless hill.
there is no sound but the wind,
the whirr of grasshoppers.
Gray as the empty sky, the house
with its open dooor calls her in.
Ladders lean against the roof.
She knows each room, the barn,
the clothesline, the world
from her window.
All is clean, scoured with light.
In the night, boards crack,
clapboards ring with cold.
Day and night her bones ache
with a namesless desire.
Sue Scalf
Reprinted from What the Moon Knows
E.K. Daufin
Approval Addiction
Addicted to approval,
Looking for a hit,
Your flattery soothes me,
Your criticism - - the pits.
Most of us got too little of it,
As we were raised or grew up,
Cut to pieces by the belittling
beast,
Criticism,
Was my family's forte,
Our July 4th,
First through 31st,
through next June's
holiday feast.
I pick myself apart nightly,
And all through the day,
So no need to add
your negative opinion,
I'm already working to do things
the impossibly perfect, right
way,
Never get there,
But make a hell of a lot of
headway.
Tell me I'm pretty,
Brilliant,
Dazzling and Smart,
Tell me I've got the brains and
beauty,
To match my kind and wise heart,
that crack-quality,
Compliment- high,
Doesn't last long,
"You did all right,"
Is skanky methadone,
Instead of sprinkling me
liberally with Angel Dust
decadent description of high
laurel and sparkly purity.
Don't pimp me for a hit,
Just cause you know how
desperate approval addicts can
git.
Bring home and fry up the bacon,
As well as lick the hot, greased
pan.
Wish I were cool and clean,
Didn't care one way or d'other,
If you though me worthy,
or just another motha',
I feel the withdrawal shivers,
When a foot is up my ass,
Giving me shit about,
What I didn't do perfectly last.
Know:
You're a dirty dealer;
When you up the ante,
Demand some panty,
For some praise,
Or to turn away the critical eye,
Or that harsh gaze.
Know:
I'm an approval addict,
Who doesn't know where the next
hit will come from,
I don't want to die,
But don't mistake me for a street
bum,
I do want you to like me,
Without having to lie,
But now,
Barely in recovery,
I don't always still pay
the inflated street price,
For a piece of my sweet jones - -
approval pie slice,
Now say somethin' nice,
To me daddy,
Ooooooh,
Found my insecurity spot,
In my fecund, got-to-have-that-
stroke,
Sweet rice approval patty.
E. K. Daufin
Charlie Suhor
That Old Feelin'
Sixteen old farts playing 40's charts--
Miller, Basie, the Dorseys, Goodman, Shaw--
strictly recreation,
beenthere/donethat a thousand times,
a bit worn now and not so hot, and yet
nostalgia is not lost on them.
In
walks
chick vocalist,
damn, the niftiest fifty you ever saw,
oozing & bluesing premenopausal charisma,
yeah very hot yet somehow very cool,
and then, a tension arises, attention arises
like an old pecker gone suddenly stiff,
and eyes go flashing, cymbals crashing
hormones kindling harmony,
band swinging out above all clefs,
They find in the music/
the music finds in them
a re-creation,
some new it, or some old feeling
that's never old, and will not ever be--
It's what the music sings about
when music is set free.
Comes the Duke
What do I know of these things?
I'm five years old and working a hand-cranked Victrola
with some brittle records sent over by Nannainne.
What I know is a Ninth Ward shotgun double
and swampy August air that settles on New Orleans
like roux-rich gumbo heaped on rice.
Everything is fresh and baby-bald to me.
Here's “Lombardo” with a languid song of Indian braves and squaws.
Here's a limping something from “Boyd Senter and his Senterpedes”
Here's a Bluebird side that asks, with some appeal,
Why don't we do this more often?
Just what we're doing tonight?
(Nannainne calls that one “zippy.”)
Here's Sharkey Bonano, more like it, with High Society
and on the flipside someone plays a penny-whistle blues.
And then, exotic and luminous a visit from robed royalty
bursting through a louvered door,
comes the Duke: I Can't Give You Anything But Love.
To sort it out in kid-mind isn't easy.
Hey, the saxes there are moving in a different sort of way.
A singer who sounds a lot like Morton Downey
is floating atop a dance-me rhythm.
And then, what's this? It's hard to say--
a muted trumpet, maybe, or gravel-voiced scatman--
some happy guttural thing that wants to jump the grooves, for sure,
and new parts of my body holler, Yes,
You can leap free with this jazz,
This swingout, bounceback man called Duke.
Decades later, stacks of 78s and 45s and LPs and CDs later,
after how many gigs and reads and writes
and all-night jams and conversations later,
after all that and this morning, too, what do I know of these things?
Only that nothing is more true or joyful than lessons learned
with the first coming of the Duke:
Leap free, mes amis, with love and swing,
with the saxes and singers and growling things of jazz.
Charlie Suhor
Published in Brilliant Corners: A Journal of Jazz and Literature (Winter 2002)
These Gifts
To see some truth in a stranger's eyes
I feel his mind, but I can't speak it.
The green light from April leaves
That soothes my thoughts, but cannot be translated
The easy, slinking, wariness of the feral cat.
The gypsy dance of the wind in the birch
The echo of the mourning dove
from the white-washed wall of the church on the hill.
These gifts are the hoarded treasure
in this dragon's cave.
When I fly at night, I am searching for the tale-teller
who will sing my trinkets to the world
But I fear his voice will be cold and weak.
And so I fear the cave will fill 'till it's choked...
But the sweet gifts just melt into my mountainous heart.
I gaze at the clouds and valleys,
At the cypress and the sea
And listen
In the hope that someday what I hear
Will not be me
But just an empty boat, adrift
On still water.
Kevin A. Shuey
We Shall See
There is no place, perhaps
Where you and I
Can both see love the same
But then, the light and shadows
Play their differenct games
Across the garden
Yet share their father sun
And when the moon
Ducks now beneath a cloud....
Or is seen through the upstairs window
Rather than with branches laced
As in the quiet yard
It's safe to say
There is but one soft silvery orb.
Kevin A. Shuey
We Dance
We dance in unbridled joy
Then try to draw the steps
Upon the floor
Pointing with zeal
At painted feet on stone
We extol the virtue of such steps
But where is the joy?
From whence has it come?
While walking on a certain road
The light of perfect love
Dawns in our heart.
We note the spot, the day, the time
And of that place would make a shrine
Does His love shine on this road only?
When the light, the order, the clarity...
When the joy of Truth shines forth
We cling to the shadows it casts.
Listen to Rumi.
His new rule is:
"Break the wine glass, and fall toward the glassblower's breath."
Kevin A. Shuey
Tomatoes
I looked for love like a gardener
watching tomatoes every day
....................still green........
prodding a bit, watering
adding compost
pullling out a weed
...................still green.......
staking, pruning
killing bugs.
Each morning eye straining
no miracle overnight
....................still green......
Tired of hard green fruit
I looked away, got busy.
Red and plump they drop
into my hands, my basket, my jars.
Enough to keep.
Enough to give.
Enough
to throw against the walls
and into sour faces.
Ester Hauser Laurence
For Bill & Michelle
It's made
Love is.
It's chosen
It's allowed.
It's fallen into
on purpose.
And best approached
Like a puddle
By a child.
Ester Hauser Laurence
To Save My Life
I would crawl under smoke
across scorched floors,
tumble down stairs,
break through windows
and jump into a fireman's net
to save my life.
To save my life
I would throw myself
out of a speeding kidnapper's car,
pound my way out of a locked trunk,
push through waistdeep snow,
pull myself out of the suction
of goopy marsh.
To save my life
I would swim away from stiff currents
or hungry sharks.
I would cling to cliffsides
or pull the parachute ripcord
with my teeth.
I would battle bulls or alligators,
lions or polar bears.
Nothing is too hard
to save my life.
Yet, to save my life
I can't get going out to walk.
I keep enjoying second helpings,
More food! Chocolate, cheese, ice cream!
Easy. Nice. Good living. Can I never spare it
to save my life?
Ester Hauser Prudlo
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I Dreamed of Hendrix
The white ones unwarranted,
hardly a one cared for
a colored lad with long locks,
greedy for the guitar and
assorted girls, especially
during that goddamn War.
But I was born to rule
the blues, to do with it
whatever I chose. And I
would take that guitar
and I'd choke that son-
of-a-bitch. I even made
music with my mouth, by
taking those tiny strings
into my teeth, making them
sing, like a sparrow on
its first outing into early
April sun. And the people
didn't know what to make
of me, a prodigious man, no,
a wild, black, prodigious
man controlling the band
stand. And I could not
cross the crowds that swarmed
like flies to the concerts, or
wherever I was performing
only to see me, witness
the magic of my every opus,
I was an ex-patriot. I
was angry as every average
person was at America's
politics. I was ready for
a revolution long overdue.
I was propelled by the
plight of my people, called
colored then, but emerging.
I, well, put me in the place
like the parapet ready to
see the bottom rail rise
to the top as the Biblical
passage spoke of an oppressed
people. We were the only
ones, see, all of the Indians
wiped out, or having lost
the distinction of indiviual-
ity. I needed that dumb
needle and the coke in order
to cope with fame, and with
failure, too. It became as
perfunctory to me as an at-
omizer is to any woman
with night needs, having
to look to more than one
man to earn her quota
in money. I made music
And the music made me.
America wasn't only fas-
cinated with that fat, lean
thing making an odd seam
down the length of my jeans,
it was also fascinated by
the slow, heavy weight of
a dark man dying by
the help of what it makes
available to that sinking
man's hand, sometimes
in the notion of his needs
this, as medicine, knowing
all the time it is dealing
death to him in disguise,
but my fame continues to
rise, all of those unusual
beats I brought, strange
chords, and other things
which made my music amusing.
But no marvelous man has
ever been alive to witness him-
self being made into a martyr,
neither me, Malcolm, nor
Martin. And even dead,
sometimes I find my form-
less mind befuddled by such
ambivalence, of how they
can kill a man in America
and canonize him after the kill.
Willie James King
(Published in Wooden Windows, 1999)
It Was Hard
It was hard having
To live with the fact
That my father's
Bruised body
Would never heal,
That there'd be wounds,
Not always the gaping kind
But those that
Are concealed.
I could never see
The blue upon his blackness
But I had a way
Of always knowing
It was there.
Willie James King
Published in At the Forest Edge
