1. |
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Here a hen pecks the afterbirth of a stillborn lamb--
with a pitchfork I remove the dead.
Despite the light now of spring, a dearth of life on the land,
and I turn earth to make his bed.
Once henpecked in the marriage hearse, twice shy; but understand:
the fowl song, too, can fill one's head.
Despite the depth now of sleep, I thirst for one strong reprimand.
I aimed to find truth but dreamed instead
that I nursed the blood of a bowing sumac;
you nursed the baby, and the nursery rhymes were sung out from full lungs, a heaving breast--
when the milk was spilled,
who could do but cry?
***
Elegance or solvents, or whatever it is you down to fake a smile:
Your face flushed, O red, red rose.
May the heavens absolve you, and your ablutions at the basin prove worthwhile,
and may you never know again the biting cold of my fears.
Seraphim or herons, or whatever it is whose wings will dry your tears...
Your breast heaves in this brief unknown
May my hands remind you that touch is proof enough of a life made dear--
But go now: close, eyes, close.
We're as empty as a poor pantry.
We're wine-lees, a warehouse of breezes,
old industry, dead language degrees.
The flesh of our own uncertainty.
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2. |
Caught Deep in the Dye
03:28
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The brick is fastened with mortar.
I am attic-bound, witnessing
spring fall. I can't recall
what about your absence
has shocked me to write again.
I have stared for days on end
at squirrels nosing through
skidder-tracks, where needles stormed
from the felled front-yard spruce.
And here, though in bed by ten,
the town wriggles at the first licks
of spring. At Mulberry and Chestnut
my brain presses on
like a trawling motor, the familiar hum
silence can no longer do without.
*The line "I'm caught deep in the dye of her" is borrowed from Anne Sexton's poem "The Interrogration of the Man of Many Hearts"
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3. |
Night Revision
03:11
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I wish to but cannot
access the flight, still eyes
and long descent of the heron,
the harp of its body struck
with wind. Swollen over the pond,
the tones of solitude
diminish as they near me.
Awake with a fever
through a night of tumblers
whose ice barely numbed
these lips I recant
what love I swore to--
and for the bass drum of the heart
or the bolting of the door, accept
a metronome and the muted
churn of water toward the mill.
Head on the feather
pillow, nothing peers back.
The clamor of hours is not music.
Beneath the copse of white oak
there is a point driven deep
for drinkable water. The bones
of a dog are lashed still
to a blossoming lilac.
And for the ever-fickle heart
and the bolting of the door,
I am relearning home
and the emptiness of love
that love will fill.
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4. |
Storm & Wake
04:48
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Stay on the shore, dear one; the wake could overturn you.
The soft ripple of a dorsal fin
in this cove; the cove the cupped hands
of a god at his shaving mirror;
the sky bent well in an Archaic smile.
Dear one, do you while away hours
in song, like a warbler?
Your tremolo, sweetest tremolo,
brings a storm, brings
shipwrecked sailors to your port.
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5. |
Bathtub Mary
06:10
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Well out of town & over
the border, we'll stop for coffee
& a taste of the news,
where a papier-mache Jesus lies
naked,
in a plexiglass casket,
on a strip-mall avenue.
I was raised in a land of Bathtub Marys
--those holy lawn jockeys
worth a prayer in passing--
planted like a hedge, with a porcelain
aura--a spectacle of cleanliness everlasting.
I, though faithless as the next,
admire the hearts that faith brings close,
and the cathedrals raised for nothing
but a faith in the unknown.
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The Warp/The Weft Poughkeepsie, New York
Blending traditional and avant-garde styles, the warmth of a good wool sweater and the sometimes-bleak cold of an upstate winter, the progressive folk and psychedelia that the band brings to bear is propelled by poetic lyrics and a "spirit-conjuring" lilting tenor that prompted psych-folk legend Tom Rapp (of Pearls Before Swine) to ask, "Can I have your voice when you're through with it?" ... more
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