a poem about being naked

                                    

                                  P  O  E  M

                      You've probably right away noticed

                the title of this poem is "Poem"

and that's because this is exactly

                               what I plan on writing—in fact

                   I've already begun, sort of.

            I still need to find a subject 

       for such a serious theme—

            nothing too trivial or self-conscious.

                   We've all read poems called "Poem"

                             about would-be lovers or pie-bald foals,

levitating saints or the flowering
                                  of transplanted trees, and I

                          figure a poem called "Poem"

                                  ought to be about something

                  likewise worthy and dignified. But all that

                          sort of stuff seems to be taken.

After finding a topic (we haven't

              but it's more important to keep

                          the damn thing moving) next up

                   is the proper tone, which can't be

too solemn—that's been covered

                                    by folks like Thomas Hardy

                              who let's face it I'm not gonna top—

               but also not too clever, some middle

         ground, tattooed chemo-nurse

                or stepmom-at-a-rifle-range type 

                         of deal. We don't for example

                                 want this poetry professor who's 

been at the lectern the past hour

                                    attempting to detonate himself

                 with hip locutions in

                      between gray mastodons of verbiage,

            proving he's down with Motown despite 

                     being so freakishly erudite.

                 In the midst of his many-sectioned opus

                                      on the history of the human condition,

                                  somewhere between Pol Pot

and the advent of the bikini,

                            I begin wishing he would instead

                        read us a poem about his embarrassing

                            throwing arm, on display at second base

                         in the poetry vs. prose softball game

at the M.F.A picnic. The fact

                                    that he's six-four made it all 

                               the more heartbreaking and I

            wondered, as the ball died

       in the dirt well short of first,

              as creative-nonfiction writers circled the bases, 

                      how he survived his childhood.

                               Was there a father or uncle on the scene

to stave off the catastrophe,

                                     hurling fastball and "Attaboy"s

                in the back yard while Mother

                            peeked through the kitchen blinds?

                Were schoolyard bullies happy 

                       to assist with his emasculation,

                                       or did he have kind friends, a cohort

                     of thoughtful children with international parents

who cared about politics and dance

                             and used star fruit in their cooking?

             Or was it poetry that led him

                        being able to move in the world,

                   marry, reproduce, and eventually take

the field, pound a mitt, and be

                                   naked among the people he loves?

—Douglas Goetsch

published in The New Yorker, April 16, 2012, pp 84-85

•    •    •    •    •    •    •    •    •    •    •    •    •    •    •    •    •    •    •    •    •    •    •    •    •    •    •    •    •    •

I wouldn't have noticed if it wasn't for Facebook, that today, May 30th, is the last day of National Poetry Month. I wouldn't have known it was National Poetry Month at all, since I don't pay much attention to those sorts of things. But one of my "friends"—who I think I met maybe once—posted a link to a reading of T.S. Elliot's "The Waste Land" and I remembered a poem I read aloud to my husband the other night, a longish poem I thought was very funny and poignant.

The poem is lovely, particularly for its last lines. Because they capture what it is to grow comfortable in one's own skin. I suppose this is the glory of middle age: to no longer be neurotically self-concerned, to find it in you to expose your weaknesses in full sunlight—perhaps not heedlessly, but at least with a sense of humor.

I cannot say I am there. I still have enough neurotic self-concern to fuel a small city. I strive, though. I can see it, that ease that says not when I am... but heck, as I am, now. Because being who I am is all I'll ever be. I'm not going to become, though some feat of exertion, someone more glamorous, chatty, fluttery or athletic. I am just me, and I can be naked, here, with those I love. Heck, even those I do not love. 

without a camera

If I had digital eyes
I'd upload blurred photos
of windy pine boughs
behind fluorescent lights,

of shadows scrolling up
dusty windows. Life moving
without proper form,
equations all muddled

and swaying. But I've
only got words, those
inky lines that betray me
by insisting on meaning.

a call from portland

You're in a car somewhere I called home,
sky wrapped around the windows, witnessing
swelling subdivisions, gas stations; the franchised,
highwayed loam turns red, then gold.

And then you come to rain. That cold mother
grows everything, even the asphalt gives way
to green. I miss her cold face, but also the way the
dull landscape brightens when the sun burns

the sky clean. You complain about the clouds casually,
as if I would agree, but I think of rain jealously.
I see evergreens under wet blurry skies, cafés, coffee
brewing, wide windows under awnings, dripping.

Here, above my eastern apartment, the clouds
themselves are ancient, the heavens august. A land
settled, its stone walls tired, its trees don't know me.
But here is where I wait for you, and wonder.

Return from my horizon, from the drizzle of memory.
Bring with you the slip-shod light of morning, the creak of
stairs, and a bed full of library books: my childhood under
the wet sky run down the eaves of my parent's home.

before the storm

The sky is about to break when
I hear your voice in the hallway.
You seesaw into the mailroom

slowly. I notice the veins on your
forearms; how many ways bones can go
wrong. You are my hero, I say.

Your smile does not hide your pain.
You tell me about the day you met
your wife, where you stood in the church

when that blonde goddess walked in.
Where would you be without her now,
you say. And I want to cry at this strength

and brokenness. I tell you I’ve met
someone. I look down, embarrassed,
but you say it makes you want

to kiss me. I grin at such a compliment.
I hold the doors open as we move into
the heat, the rain has just begun,

and you tell me not to be afraid--that’s
his name afterall--and I say I’ll try. I ask you
to pray for me before thunder breaks.

insatiable

Not even the magnolia trees in
full bloom can fill me. Three days this
hunger ripens, rides the edges
of my mouth, pulses through my blood,

asking to be satisfied. I eat through
the pantry, the stomach a compliant
bystander. Bite, taste, swallow:
the burning is not extinguished.

The magnolia blossoms—saucer,
tulip, anise—shine like cold spring stars.
The April sky, lit with fat cherry buds,
burgeons and empties itself.

But I, unquenched, distracted, come home
to quiet rooms hungry, hungry. This is my fire.
O appetite, would three of years of rain
be sufficient to douse such flames?