– Plato paraphrasing Socrates

Here in the farmlands of Indiana and, for that matter, in the corridors of my employer – a large corporation where we sell hardware, non-computer hardware, that is, like hammers and post hole diggers — poetry is not scorned as once I feared.  Instead it is tenuously respected, by both farmers and executives, as one might respect a proctoscope — they’re certain it performs some valued function, but they’d rather not get too close to the topic.

I accidentally made a small fortune in the hardware business.  I call it accidental because no one who knows me would ever ask me to fix a screen door since I am inept at actually handling hardware.  Still, they would most likely come to me first if they were ever in need of a poem, although this has yet to happen.  And where hardware has almost nothing in common with poetry, it can provide a starting point.

Poems come to be born, like the cotton gin came to Eli, as seminal gifts emanating from outside the conscious.  Any inventor will tell you about the value of intuition or the flash of insight bestowed while one stands in the shower.

For myself I call poems reverse prayers, in that real prayers go forth from one who beseeches outward to the Great Beyond; poems, on the other hand, emanate from the Great Beyond back into the receptor poet.

Quite proud of this term, reverse prayers, I walked around satiated for many months until I read in a Richard Wilbur essay that Emily called them bulletins from Immortality.  This gave me pause.  I didn’t know if I had stepped on the power-rail of poetic luck or not.

But this experience appears to be part of the serious poet’s experience; and where they all describe it differently, they all do indeed talk of an inverse flow, where the poem (however they describe the muse) comes from somewhere outside the poet. In the interview with the wonderful poet, Del Corey, we come across this force again.

I.

I told her many times over
How I watched the lunar landing
In 1969 with my grandfather
On a black and white portable TV
With aluminum foil wrapped
Around its rabbit ear antenna
To improve reception.

I adjusted knobs, re-positioned
Antenna, even reshaped the
Aluminum foil to eliminate the
Graininess and snow on the screen,
And looked back at my grandfather
Seated on our old torn and
Stained sofa to see his reaction.

He scoffed, snorted and waved
His hands, “Don’t believe it! 
They are not on the moon,” he’d say
In broken English.  I thought
My grandfather’s world too small
To appreciate the import of such
A special and historic moment.

My grandfather was born
Before the Wright brothers
Flew at Kitty Hawk and
He could never gather enough
Conceptual lift to believe that men
Were truly walking on the moon.
The past was simply too much drag.

When I tell her this she nods
In understanding.  I often repeat
This story, but she always nods
As if hearing it for the first time
And appreciates anew the irony
That my grandfather was
A traveler from another world.

II.

It was a sunny afternoon
In November and we rode
High up into the Lebanon Mountains
In a taxi we hired in Beirut,
Me in the front with the driver
And her in the backseat
With my Aunt Helen.

The four of us speeding upward,
Sea behind us, mountains ahead
Rising steadily, expanding real estate
Taking up ever increasing portions
Of sky on all sides, as the road
Did crazy curves and swerved
Drunkenly this way to that.

We wound past phantasmagoric
Slopes of limestone outcroppings
That stood eerie and ghostly,
The sunlight on the stone
Painted in light and shadow
Like a chalk and charcoal sketch,
The black and white of the moon.

Her voice from the back seat
Is from another world
An intrusion into my visions
Of this place 100 years ago,
When it was peopled
By goats and sheep and donkeys
And my grandfather.

High among a cluster of peaks
We stop in a small village
In front of a cinderblock church,
Her talking with my aunt
Now a constant chatter of excitement,
And me in the front seat silently
Anticipating a walk on the moon.

Supplicant’s Complaint

All my prayers
are junk mail

stacked up unread,
leaning, this way

and that, in one tall
sloppy pile

on the otherwise
clean white credenza

of the Almighty.

Flight

Her white bra
Lying on the carpet
Where it fell
Or was flung
In the shape of a gull
With wings outstretched.

Like Starlings

My children have all flown away
Like starlings in the morning
That each day fly from east to west
Showing tail feathers to the sunrise.
They were spirited away
To somewhere unreachable,
And I imagine them now
Like the ghostly figures in a Chagall painting
That float somehow magically in mid-air,
Hovering high above me
And all my earthy heaviness
As if I were a blue goat
Grazing on a red rooftop.

They have taken wing and flown
Westward toward a new day, and
The eastward in me misses them,
For they have slipped silently away
Without salutations, no goodbyes and
Suddenly I realize they have
Vanished like the beat poets,
Leaving empty cabins
On the high and windy cliffs of Big Sur,
Shuttered cafes along the dirty streets
Of Greenwich Village.

It is at rare moments
Mostly in the morning,
When my house is quiet
And the windows fill
With the first weak light of morning,
That I recall the purity
Of new beginnings, and wait,
For the starlings to return
Back to where they began,
East once again, toward evening.

You walked up Tabletop Mountain
And found a skull. A coyote, dog,
Or wolf—you are not sure.
Perhaps a deer.  You run
You finger along the teeth:
Canines’ glowing yellowed ivories,
The molars’ compacted surfaces.
Not a single one missing, the animal
Died young. For the skeletal grin
You feel wistful, even as a man—
Is there a secret you missed
Along the way, a better kind of life
Lived among the ruins of  nature
Rather than this entrapment
With wife and grown children
Where you fight your way through
Each urban day, return to the well-kept
House at night.  You walked up Tabletop,
Looked far out to where the shape-shifting
Begins again between sister
And brother mountains twisting blood-red
Sunset colored crepuscules southwest,
Blued by the moon raising its single horn
In the east.  When you picked up
The skull it walked with you, breathed
Through eye sockets wide open
As with the sudden shocked surprise—
You are not sure which—
Of being dead or carried in your hand.

Let the Cold Come

Already it shines in trees
holding seeds, festers
on sloping roof tops
not yet embossed with frostwork.

Already the apples redden
on their espalier, the children
think a little more and harder.
The old grow slowly older—

a kind of moss creeps
into our blood, green on red,
red on green—complementary—
either way it happens.

Not to say time slows:
it quickens. Not to say
we aren’t grateful to have had
a summer as long and hot

as hell. We are. Not to imply
we’ll miss the berries
slipping into our palms.
As if they’d been waiting

on the bush for some kind
of furless, all too human
hunger—for the brush of skin
against skin—that signal

old as the first fall, when
Adam led the cowering
Eve away, behind them
Paradise bursting into flame.

Leaf-Black

It starts like that—
crisp-washed,
waxen, wish-banished—

the next autumn,
always the same-old
stolen fall, a singleton.

The madras schoolgirl who came
after her older sister left,
wearing hand-me-downs.

Against storm’s backdrop
the foliage-downed, branched
double-limned limbs folded . . .

As if origami-papered
these dead flamingos,
left where they were tossed

after pleasantries, dared
to lie down and die
the simple wreath-death of plants.

It’s here we find what we wanted after
all summer long—
sky-drenched indigo.

An afterbirth named for
summer’s still birth—
leisure, pleasure, whatever we dared not taste . . .

The Cossacks

They came, she said, to get her uncle Ben—
the second-born son hidden in a basement
for two years.  They came on horseback
so long ago she could not remember
until she grew old herself—Ben dressed up

as a girl, gone in a hurry, sugar
and salt scattered like seed across floors.
Ben wore what they chose for him—feminine. 
He was used to keeping silence in his grave
with the rats who came in darkness for crumbs. 

Fed once a day, left alone, it was him
down there.  Even as a child he could tell
his life was at stake.  They came to get him
and the joke was on their names, not his,
the ov lending its story of each one’s

brand of serfdom: Tartar, German, Greek,
or Turk. Belief in Christ the only rule.
Grekov may have come for him, or Azov,
the engineer of tunnels. They came
and they left with nothing to show for it.

Ben waltzed out of there in his scarf and dress,
his boots tied up all delicate—silk-laced.
Ben the boy-man departed with his life
while they turned their horses around to face
the assembly, line the Caucasus,

give daggers to their women and children. 
Ben walked his skinny shoulders from the shack
where his family had holed up for years,
she said, hoarse from laughing, fingering
the stem of her glass.  He was not full-grown,

not yet black-humored as the tobacco
that killed him one sunny Miami day.

The Pendulum

Not so much the swinging
Back and forth in the anteroom

Below the golden dome, above
The mosaic sundial, nor

The lack of learning—Foucault,
Schrödinger, Plank, Einstein—eccentric geniuses

Who fought over particle and wave
Until the room thickened with gravel voices.

Not the language of math I never understood
with its double parenthesis—

Suave brackets bracketing other brackets.
Rather the knowledge that my bed moves

While I sleep, my house wanders
The grounds as of an asylum whose keepers

Left long ago so the inhabitants must
Forage for food among bamboo shoots.

Not the perfect sphere lambasting
The empty truth of solid ground

But the force with which it could
Knock down bowling pins, were they placed

Like dominos around the diameter of the circle.
Not this swinging back and forth

Between two points for a period
Made up of twenty-four or thirty-two hours.

But the shape of a wormhole, the talk
Inside the lecture hall of time travel

And the fourth dimension—how these
Things will exist in the future, though not in time

For a woman like Scarlett O’ Hara, with the tiny waist
And breath held tight inside her corset.

Grandfather’s Clock

This side of the deadbeat,
that side the bob,
swinging all night, saying
one word,
another word, and always
we were children
in a house too big.

The glass-enclosed case stood
beside the piano’s teeth.
Wallpaper with urns and flowers,
the fraying arms of chairs…

Absent personages thought    
with their hearts
before those organs took it
upon themselves
to kill flesh-festooned faces.

Whether this side of the arc
or that, whether
day or night time–no friction
stops the harmonic
oscillation,  nor disproves nostalgia’s
fastidious growth…

The sea was big, the sky
wide, a life was long
or half as long. This side
of the beat–tick.
That side–tock—you were
the one who listened
to its refrain all night long.

You were the one
to whom it played out
one second at a time,
while the Chesapeake
withheld its tributaries of blue crabs.

You heard the talk of physicists,
a tribe hoarding germs
and wishes. Their shy smiles
like an infection
From which particles fell—dust in sunbeams.

Oh, there were winters when I tucked
my eternity under my mattress,
but I wore its secret powers like body armor,
when speeding and reeling and hurtling
my youth upon unforgiving ice,
or flinging my future down
mountains with snake-turns hissing
goodbye kiss promises to limbs
I knew I could never splinter.

And my November birthdays tumbled
from my many summers like avalanches,
it seems, into everlasting freezes
under never-warming blankets,
and the rusting springs under my bed
reveal my silly pretense that each spring
would keep bringing another spring.

Now I no longer wear recklessness
on my chest like a medal.
I stare out the frosted window
at the snow-blasted woods
that resemble cadaverous spirits
 scurrying my way.

Biggering

Daddy don’t five it no more.
Now he sevens, eights, and nines
it home, breath on fire,
mouthin’ bout guys he done in
at work,
Ma French mumble-cussin’.

Daddy pantries it
to his "hush-secret" pint,
then biggers himself, ‘n louders it,
‘n Ma shushes him ’til
he big-lips her to a whimper.

Can’t wait ’til I get bigger.

Lunch-box Mysteries

I often followed Dad as he whistled mysterious tunes,
swinging his lunchbox full of sustenance, in rhythm,
as he walked up Belle Avenue for the Main Street bus.

At last it would squeal to a stop, gasp open the door,
swallow him as he tinkled change in the box, shush
the door shut, and spew black fumes while disappearing
in a cloud, then appearing again crossing the bridge
for Springfield.  Sometimes he’d return early,
and sometimes not until long after I’d gone to bed.

I wish he’d appear again, from behind Time’s mist,
whistling home to us, sober, lunch box full of the love
and laughter he sometimes brought home with him.

Fergit the Sea

Aye, Laddy, ye’re right ye know.
Leave the sea now.  Set yer sail
fer home an’ let yer anchor hook
the propity of some place that won’t move
with the wind.  Let the waves be furrows
that open fer yer rudder in even rows,
so ye know where ye been,
an’ ye’ll know where yer goin’.
Cast yer seeds in one place
an’ watch ‘em die into life,
an’ grow in yer wake. 

The sea’s too much like an unfaithful woman.
She’ll have ya an’ love ya one day, then whine
an’ toss ya the next, just ta hear sharks’ teeth
snappin’, an’ bones crunchin in a sorta symphony.

Do it now, boy, before yer legs lose their
land-balance, and yer eye gets to likin’
the look of the sea, an’ before yer nose
gits ta thrillin’ at every sniff a’ salty mist,
an’ tickle yer dreams of climbin’ vines
of uncharted isles.
Do it before ya get ta likin’ the ship’s rockin
ya ta sleep like a cradle, an’ the wind whistlin’
through the caulkin’ like a mother’s lullabye,
an’ before ye learn ye ain’t nothin’
‘less ye prove to yerself, ever’ day,
ye can handle the waves ‘n winds ‘n storms
‘n mutinies, ‘n cargo losses, ‘n loss of self,
ever’ day, I say, ta prove what yer made of,
else ye ain’t a man.

Latch onto some wharf, boy,
fergit the sea,
‘n ride the easy waves.

With admiration I observed your appearance
after you returned from the long combat.
I believed in myself when I looked at you. 

Gazing into your privileged soul
made me forget the prolonged waiting of delight.
It made me think of the children of our world.
It made me think of the people
concealed on my walls as shadows,
ones never withdrawing.

How fortunate we are to see you at our doorsteps!

You stand across the devil’s eyes,
scratch his skin and drink his blood,
only to prove your existence.
I wish I could touch your hands and legs. 
I want to implant my love into your bleeding face.
I want you to look at me as your eternal God!

You must long for my commands, and believe in my miracles.
I will breastfeed you with the wine of truth,
and you will enthrall the mind of the beast.
You will be more rapid than the light.
The ode of miracle is reborn in your sight,
and your movements predict the blessings of men.

You have never been a mystery.
I remember reading stories of your existence,
while stargazing and cutting the pages of every book I read.
I crafted little puzzles out of the letters,
miniatures, and then raised immense castles in my mind.
That’s where you lived!

I recognized your eyes inside
the souls of those who cried.
I embrace my enemy,
for I am a gigantic person now.
I can forgive your lateness,
for you do not take the fast
and giant steps of the marathon.

Instead, you walk the destiny!

Legends and ancient tales will be told
to the privileged members of the future.
Those willing to believe
in your persuasions and alluring symphony,
will listen to echoes of the morning.
   
I will dance to the miracle of today.
My constitution will be forced to lay down the weapons,
and to follow the peaceful mind who forgives.
Today I commend the hero I used to know,
the one who stands in front of the wide open door.

by Maria Jacketti

Invocation

Come, Clio, history’s doyenne,
nun of Alexandria, tabloid-scroll of truth.
On this mountain of cracked coal,
far from golden ages,
we move closer to the end of the long count,
the new Earth, 
all of us immigrants from the amnesiac stars,
all of us.

Come Clio, help dream-miners remember who we are.
Coal to diamond discernment.
Coal to heat these hearts, these spines.
Time be wed to this unveiling,
Daughter of Zeus, we invoke you,
from the strip-mined  terrain of the mountain laurel,
swamps once studded with hazel-nut
nippled fields,
native sustenance,
that antediluvian wealth,
the miraculous hazel bush wands now long gone limp, in these plastic woods
of William Penn, nowadays that superhighway, infinity-looped.

Part 1:   Moving Matters

I.

Medusa had been traveling in search of that old real estate
where her snakes could  rise to sing and boogie prophecies
to the shaggy wildflowers that still purr her secret camp fire girl name
when the sky wears its anthracite robes
and the stars sparkle like casinos in the Poconos.

Come home. The mountains of her cartoon days commanded,
engaging the cosmic lo-jack, a cellular homing pigeon thingamabob,
placed just under the aura by the vanished science fair gods. 
And so, with her beacon tweaking the ultimate map,
Medusa answered with a U-Haul and prayers
that could only lead to excommunication.

 Now Pennsylvania is not Mesopotamia, exactly,
and her home-town where pizzas still twirl like spaceships,
now meets the Godzilla Enchilada and the Ku Klux Klan, so famished.

Medusa comes home a stranger and shakes her snakes for answers.
Cha. Cha. Cha.

II.

Mama mía, the mariachi goddess exhales, happy at least that she had learned Spanish,
so fluently, after the fall of Babel and before the end of the world.

Hazleton,  second city on the planet
to put on electric lights,
several minutes after they glowed and time changed in New York, New York;
Hazleton, Mecca of once-man-eating coal mines, those who dined
on her earlier man-folk,
now tunnel-stop, underground railroad from Mexico, and other neon- dappled
non-states of the Americas,
city overcast as ashes,
bright, toucans’ fury,
se habla español aquí –

Back in the Electric City,
Medusa inspects a new banana-shingled restaurant ,
the hot pink stucco and lollipop windows that speak in machine gun tongues,
a crayon’s train crash of facades, these store fronts: she loves them,
she fears them, colors marking territory,
the old zing of war.

III.

Medusa’s old friend Hammurabi  taught her all about the law:
if a man steals a flatbread, cut off his hand;
have no namby pamby jurisprudence,
take no felons to your bosom.

Now in this her third cycle of thirty-three incarnations,
since that gangbanger stud Perseus allegedly cut off her head,
in her Mesopotamian cave where she had ruled as garden
and fertility witch-goddess; those were the good old Paleolithic days,
when Venus of Willendorf was CEO of the planet.
So, what had Perseus really taken?  That rocket fuel of woman, claim to the wheat fields, the berries, pregnant fruit trees.  Her kingdom on this Earth and the
seeded dowries of her daughters.

IV.

Coming up Lincoln Street, sun in full bloom,
crocuses edging up through last piles of snow,
leftovers from the carnivorous storms of holidays
— both Saints Valentine and Patrick
conspired cleansing blizzards –
he drives into the gang that will not
get the fuck out of his way;  move.  Go away
 the hell back  to the Dominican Republic.
Seventeen youths pull him out of the car and begin knifing,
digging, jabbing for blood.
Citizens and others watch from their windows.  Once- upon- a- time- coal- miners
try to dial  911, howl the rosary. 

Muere gringo jodido  [1]

V.

The Klan. is glad for this show:
step right up and hear about the true nature of the darker races,
and the terrorized will listen.

Our driver, out for the afternoon, or to buy Wonder Bread,
is riddled with wounds, in intensive care, in critical condition,
sun in full bloom.

Peace be with you.
And also with you.
One nation, one world divided, under God, atop this ancient mountain,
once the home of dinosaurs.
Welcome to Hazleton, Pennsylvania.

VI.

Medusa has seen this kind of thing before,
happening before the end of ages.  Had it not been for good old
Utnapishtim, that is, “Noah,” in Sumerian jive,
and his fleet of arks – who gathered what might be saved,
when the gods looked down from above at their failed project,
and set the seas to rise and cleanse away the rabid monkey-folk –
all record of the great experiment would have ended up
in the greater washing machine.

History has memory.
The North Pole melts  a little more every day. In the meantime,
the City takes the immigrants to court, seizing a wafer of
federal power: the feds apparently too busy with matters in Mesopotamia,
The feds, Medusa muses, “are busier than the gods!”
Their moment hatched, the Klan volunteers
to march along Diamond Avenue.  Medusa volunteers to throw
plantain peels.
The City replies to the big wizard, “Not right now. Thanks anyway.”
“Thank God,” grunt the Snakes.
Indeed, all this calls for a song.  Maybe an opera.
Medusa dusts off her hot pink guitar, her lyre, takes out the fragrant castanets,
the purple squeeze-box, the wash-tub, the jug, tries to get funky,
but somehow everything she plays sounds like “The Pennsylvania Polka,”
run through a meat-grinder and played backwards.

VII.

At the hairdresser’s, Medusa gets “just a trim.”  Her snakes dictate
the fashion, retreat into the pores of her scalp , holding their breath during the wig wash
and quick snip.  Under the hair dryer, here at the beauty salon, we come to understand the nature of this latest world:
Imagine the scene set in a snow-globe:
an old man of these mountains tells the stylist,
that he damn well is packin’
armed on every street of this old town, this  new world,  here in the salon, too, packin’,
dammit, it’s true,  and at the supermarket, and under his pillow, packin’,
damn immigrants stole his identity,
hacked into his Eden,
even on Sundays when he goes to church to get his sacrament,
he packs it, in the name of Archangel Michael,
Lady Liberty,
and Brother Uzi.

VIII.

Easter brings frigid winds, a reminder of the last season,
so many now extinct, astringent seasons, iced up nights,
immigrant conduits a-clog with sugar-plum wishes,
Italians and hunkies wearing the mule-yoke,
plumbing the underworld for ingots of luck,
wood for the stew pot,  venison to bludgeon into a happy stew,
a space, wide as the distance between stars,
to plant that star wars’ victory garden, vermin extinguished, at last,
that vision.
Aquí, this chimera of an Easter Bunny still mines coal
and wears Nike’s army boots, broken in, in the new Mesopotamian follies.

VIX.

Medusa never knew her immigrant grandfather,
although Millie, her aunt, had no good words for him,
implied that he was a drunkard, with a penchant
for shooting guns in the house.

Ran away back to Italy once, maybe twice, leaving the wife
perpetually knocked up and broke.  Had another wife in Argentina.
House lost and sold for taxes,
once, twice.  Illiterate.  Famished.  Never heard of the Buddha,
hardly knew Jesus, except to blaspheme.

Another rat in a wheel of curses.
Finally a boulder hailed down on him and his torture, in the yawning
shadow of the mines, that womb.

Exiled, the family buried him away from the others.

X.

Medusa’s father hardly did better:
forty-eight years the breaker boy, never a sick or vacation day,
body absorbing more coal dust every day, drying up,
turning the man to live stone.
Yes, the problem is family karma.  Could going to Mass
erase this gossamer plague that embroidered the group-soul,
genetic memory?
They never taught karma-science in catechism.  In fact, according to Medusa’s pop, Packy, religion seemed like just another good screwing.
He refused to go to church,
his long mineral sacrifice enough to put him and his kin
on the same page with the real Jesus Christ,
who if he had the chance would probably also get drunk,
and play cards, rather than listen to the priest’s endlessly
excavated sermons.

And when it came to brainwashing,
Packy Medusa washed his scalp with Lava soap, every day,
grey suds like those karmic clouds,
at last only through human sacrifice, tired blood,
washed away.

XI.

When Medusa’s father died and was laid out in the house,
the whole neighborhood came; nuns and priests made a long parade
in those robes, like anthracite.
Sister Newman, her third grade teacher, asked the snake child
earnestly, “What about the resurrection?

And Medusa, suddenly with no reason to be even half goody good,
looked back at the nun, knowing this day would make her
grow into even more a scoundrel, so many lives
gone and resurrected just enough to touch earth again, that she could only answer,

“Yeah, what about it?”

XII.

Medusa channels the masses and reels in
a migraine:
can’t you see, Old Girl,
you over-educated spoiled brat- bleeding- corazon, they are
pirates foisted upon  wilderness, insects in our aloe.

Could it be that new ones are actually
wanton consumers  of   a history she once helped to quilt from virgin atoms?
In the old world, “immigrant” and “invader” were the same word.
All sense depended on the inflection, the slippery, shape-shifting contexts.

Yet, all those incarnations in monasteries, caring for the violets,
the restorative herbs,  tending the neutral bread loaves , brought other lessons. 
Why then, could she speak their language,
but be only pushed back words?
Has the universal translator blown its brightest fuse?
Could it be that the goddess is flunking sainthood?

XIV.

Too many saints end up barbecued at the stake.
“No, thanks,” Medusa concludes. 
Hadn’t she been there and done that sacrifice quite enough?
Clearly, she would be up all night reinventing old cuz karma’s wheel.

But with such labor comes an epiphany:
creole food will save us:
saffron rice, sofrito, jumbo shrimp.
“She’s starving again,” the stove angels, write without emotion, in their experiment logs.

“Jesus,” we need more arroz, gandules, cilantro, azafrán,
your thermonuclear chiles. 
Many new and transfigured salsas. 
Give every soul a spoon and require an original recipe.
And make that a rush order.  Add  Mexican beer, tequila, crescents of lime.
Virgin Marys on tap to dance with the Shirley Temples. We’re thirsting like Death Valley here.

Perhaps those industrial clouds will urinate one hundred proof painkillers.
Medusa will paint spumoni stripes on apple pies, with surprises baked inside.

God bless America redundantly and forever,
however long that may be….

XV.

Every day, consider the starvation on Gaia’s  farm–
and the angels do nothing.
Couldn’t they descend with Betty Crocker and at least make smart bread?
Nothing fancy, just daily wonder baguettes, well perhaps extra large loaves fortified with celestial vitamins.  How hard would that be?  Prime directive indeed.  Let’s cook up
some of your mama’s manna in that replicator, Spock. it’s time for a bake-off.

Captain’s log, just about right now:
As the Twin Towers burned, gods watched on their closed- captioned earthling TVs.
Couldn’t they have brought parachutes to the conflagration, the demolition?

“Captain, remember the prime directive.  We cannot intervene.”

Screw the prime directive, Scottie.  It all smells like dog shit to me.
I am not drunk.  Not stoned.  Not cloned.
Not born again.   I am re-writing the rule book.  Don’t try to save me.

And now Kirk unzips himself, and I mean completely, from head to titanium toenails,
sloughing his costume, a post-NASA-G.Q.-snake skin –
out steps a woman, naked as a nectarine, tattooed completely with maps of the stars,
her dreadlocks, pulsating, erect, braided straight to the roof
making one antenna.

“It’s about time that I came out of the broom closet,” she finally breathes it all out,
at last, un-corseted.

When Medusa made her mistakes, those that still haunt her pillow,
the saints ticked off boxes marked:
“I told you so.”  Smug clairvoyants.  It is all so easy from where they spawn.

XVI.

After Hazleton, the moon.
We are always going higher, getting higher.  That is the way of evolution.
Online she reads of Chinese plans to colonize the moon within fifty swift years.
Now that’s immigration!
The moon is rich in still somewhat immaculate potential. Right!  Grey aliens on that prime turf stand ready to set up casinos.    With some negotiation, they could add techno- brothels,
golf courses, virtual cinema in a can, a shopping mall.  You name it, Baby.

Another article blabs on about terra-forming Mars.
Check this out: it would be a bomb- and- seed endeavor.
In fact, it might take a thousand years – which is really nothing when you consider
the wee millions of patiently squandered solar loop-de-loops the Earth absorbed,
refining denizens.

Medusa’s father had been a breaker boy, who never really got out of town,
except for emergency surgery in Philadelphia, once before she was born:
he was bleeding to death – a botched up hemorrhoid cut job broke at the seams
as he bent over after a long day of picking coal  –so he could not tell you much about the sites in the City of Brotherly Love for he tossed unconscious in transit between worlds during the greater expanses of his solitude.
Packy Medusa often strained his neck to look at the stars
from a backyard where the ancient dirt of his Yankee Doodle Dream paled,
sucked dry to the color of malted milk powder.

XVII.

Rather than taking a shuttle, Medusa rides one of her many colored brooms
to Earth, knowing that only magic can save this crew;
technology elaborated their current plight.  Moon like a wheel of Brie,
–not yet a planetoid of take-out indulgences —
She touches down behind a large grocery superstore where Honduran immigrants have built a tent city.  Quiescent fires sizzle the flesh of wild rabbits, other game.  
T-shirted men hunt expired food from the dumpsters, sporting their dream teams: The New York Yankees, Eagles, Pittsburgh Steelers, Penn State.
Young women with terracotta faces nurse babies, so many already afraid to cry,
trained not to utter disclosure.
Tomorrow, they will move those tents into the heart of the woods,
sending out patrols to gather again.

Come dawn, all tents will roll up into backpacks, and our travelers will take indirect
routes to anonymous factories.

Pass the tortillas, with butter and maple syrup, please.

Medusa will need an army to steam up this kitchen again.
Soon the pre-Pilgrim huckleberries will cover these mountains,
now corporation-posted,
sapphire-tons of bittersweet desire for
illegal pies, Pre-Columbian mouths.

[1] “Die, fucking gringo.”

1.

I am agony.

I am fire.

The flames sear
my fleeing flesh.

I am incarnate.
I am pain.

The fires scorch
my thoughts,
then sever them
from my mind.

I am forever . . .
yet I must die;
I want to cease.

I must drive
myself away,
to rid myself
of the fire.

The heat becomes
my very breath,
and inside of me
I rage and rage.

I cannot get rid
of myself.
I cannot
escape.

I burn,
I burn . . .
I cannot come
clear to abort
these flames.
So I burn forever,       

in torrents of suffocating heat,
the agony of flames,
excruciating fires,
all drive me crazy,
hammer me with waves
of wrenching pain as I try
to find an escape.

I must flee.
I must run away.
I must rid myself
of the fires.

Save me . . . save me . . .
where are my guides?

Save me . . . save me . . .
how can I possibly
save myself?
What can I do
to escape the agony
of the fire?

Was I damned?
Was all this only
a sinister prelude
to my own damnation?
Was I tricked,
and now damned?

My flesh ripples
in thousands of knife-points
as the flames sear holes
into my skin,
and I shake my head
back and forth –
this pain not deserved –
this pain not earned by me.

Where are my guides?
Where are my saviors?

And then,
somewhere inside the agony,
somewhere between the flames,
I find my way to the thought:
maybe this was what
I’m meant to witness . . .
even though I never
earned this punishment,
it’s still something
I’m meant to witness
then convey to my fellow
humans.

For some unknowing reason,
some faith in intuition,
I let go.

I allow myself to become
consumed by the fires;
I allow my nerves
to sense the nature
of the flames . . .

and when I did, I begin
to feel remission . . .
to sense a baptism
of comprehension . . .

as if I broke through a runner’s wall
of pain, and there, on the other side,
I’m privy to an alleviation
of my pain.

On the other side
of pain is great
understanding,
a coolness of endurance,
a sainthood of introspection . . .
something a long distance
runner might understand.

And there,
inside the pain,
I find Joan.

2.

Her spirit appears
within the flames lapping
at my flesh.

Her face
seeks me out
in my blistering
red blur of suffering . . .
and she comes to redeem me,
to reach out to me,
she comes to me, to me,
to my soul through
the fires, and embraces
me with her cool limbs,
the refreshment of her flesh
assuaging my tortured skin.

Soon she creates
an envelope of sainthood
around the two of us,
and the fires fail
to touch our skins.

All the pain of the fires
vanishes, and this remission
leaves my soul in
the breathless balm
of the absence of great pain,
as if the understanding
of its absence is a pleasure
in itself, a unique delight
seldom realized.

I see flames
on all sides of us,
yet we float in a bubble
of protection,
and I’m able to rest against
the sides of this invisible orb.

She says,
“I am Joan, the Maid,
the child, the one who
listened to the voices.

I am the Pucelle,
the girl brought
forth to witness
of what it means

to commune
with saints.”

3.

I can hardly talk . . .
so deeply immersed
was I in my own
recuperation.

I raise my hand –
an awkward salute
to the saintliness
of her visible spirit.

“You do not have
to speak, good sir,
for I can surely wait . . .
it is something I
trained myself
to accept.”

She comes to me,
and puts her arms
around my spirit,
and we both sink
to the bottom
of her envelope,
her bubble
of saintly balm.

She caresses my cheek,
then says, “Who better
than the Maid to describe
the secrets of the fires?
I know them as a metaphor
for the relapse into
the breathing ones,
the journey we all take
through the teeming . . .
are not fires simply
a metaphor for the
refinement, the rounding,
the rounding, the polishing
of our rockish souls?”

I remain mute,
but I kiss her palm,
grateful for the cooling
touch of her hands.

She continues to lecture me,
quite determined to impart
a specific knowledge,
“The first time
I heard the voices,
I felt greatly afraid.
The voices first came
at noon. I was a young
girl, thirteen . . . at noon
on a summer’s day,
a feast day, in my father’s
garden, the voices hardly ever
appear without light, a steady light,
always in the direction of the voices.”

The orb we occupy
begins to slowly rotate
within the flames.

“The voices always took
good care of me.
The voices taught me
how to behave . . .
I, who am only a poor woman,
who knew nothing of riding
or making war.”

The fires rage around
the protection of the saint.

“I never asked anything
of the voices . . . save,
at the last, for the salvation
of my soul.”

Even though now safe,
I never lost my fear
of the fires whipping
around us.

“The voices always
told me to answer boldly.”

What if she went away?

 “The first time I heard
the voices, I vowed my
virginity to them, as long
as it should be pleasing . . .
I was thirteen at the time.”

What if she withdrew
her protection from me?

“The voices often come
to Christians who do not
see them.”

The flames appear
to dance with even
more frenzy.

“Before I was burnt
at the stake, the voices
told me to take my trial
cheerfully, to answer
the judges boldly . . .
the voices told me this
simply, they told me this
definitely.”

The flames lick and lick
at our solemn orb.

“And in the end, I was able
to tell my judges that one
cannot cleanse one’s conscience
too much.”

Joan moves both her hands
over my cheeks, then smiles,
“This is what I know
of the breathing . . .
this is what I can tell
you, the witness of the fires
of hell. Yet I have one
more thing to tell you of myself . . .
one more confession to make
to a man.”

Then she cradles my head
against her tunic, against
her breasts, and she causes
the bubble to move forward
into the flames.

I discern shapes in the fires,
Shapes of souls, screaming ghosts,
elongated faces of yelling
spirits . . . but I cannot
hear their cries, here within
the envelope of Joan.

4.

Faster and faster she causes
the bubble to penetrate
the flames, and thousands
of thousands of souls fly
past our faces . . .
all these ghosts screaming
in the searing torment of
the red, blistering fires.

At last I find a little
part of my voice to whisper,
“What are their sins?

Joan answers, “These                                     
are the souls of anger.
These are the violent people,
the murderers, the ones who hate,
the ones concerned with revenge,
the ones who were traitors.”

Still I can only whisper,
“How can they redeem
themselves?”

Joan shakes her head,
“It is difficult.
They must arrive at

a gratitude for the flames . . .
and this is not easy . . .
as well I know . . .
to see the fires as a balm
for your very own soul.
And then they must think
on from there, until they
arrive at beseeching forgiveness
for all their crimes and sins.”

I ask, “And then they can think
themselves out of hell?”

“They are the most pointed of rocks,
these souls, and when they return
to the teeming, they are rounded
again and again, back and back
and forth and forth from hell
to the teeming to hell.”

Soon the terrified faces,
the very souls themselves
in their torture,
attack our orb,
assault the two of us,
as though no tortured
soul, no spirit in such torment,
can stand the thought
of witnesses, free of pain.

These poor dead ones
flail at us, their teeth gnawing
the invisible shell
of our haven.

Such hatred seems
to startle even Joan,
and she stands,
then helps me
to my own feet.

She says, “We must leave
this place,” and immediately
the orb rises within the fires,
threading its way

upward through all
the seared souls in judgment.

We arrive at the top
of the flames, then enter
an oily, black smoke,
but only for a minute
as we next break free
into a crimson sky.

We pull away from
the smoke, going faster
and faster in our
protective orb,
and soon I see
the total conflagration
as a giant column of
flames, topped by
black plumes.

Joan lands us on a
beach of pink sand,
far from the column
of fire.

The orb dissipates,
and I’m free to move
again according to
my own will.

I walk only three steps,
when I feel Joan embrace me
from behind; she slips
her arms around my
waist, and I feel her
lips on my back,
as she speaks into
the folds of my tunic.

She tells me, “I stated
to you before about
one further thought
for you to witness,
and it is this I now
want you to feel . . .

I need you
to feel the depth
of my own great sin.”

What sin could this girl,
this maid, have committed?
What sin could this savior
saint have afflicted on
anyone?

Joan squeezes tighter,
and I feel her strong chin
embed itself in the soulish
flesh of my back.

She continues, “There at
the end, there in the fires
of the stake, there in front
of my judges, and there
in front of all the townspeople,
I faltered, and I failed my voices,
my dear Saint Michael, my
adored Saints Catherine and
Margaret.

“For it was true I chose
the fire . . . I preferred the quick
torment of the flames to a life
in the cell, subjected at all times
to the men, the guards . . .
and it was true I found
the courage to lapse my
testimony, knowing the path
to the stake . . .
but I failed myself
at the end, there where
I felt for certain the agony
of the fires, there within
my young body . . .
there, oh there, oh there,
where I meant to yell out –
as the fires ripped my flesh –
to the spectators how I forgive
the judges, how I even forgive
the guards, how I, at last,
forgive the English . . . there
at the end, the terrible pains
choked all my nerves

and closed up my courage,
and, oh my witness,
when I attempted the yell
of forgiveness, I instead
could only yell out the name
Jesus right as the final flames
twisted my body away
and I died.”

I squeeze her hands;
I don’t know what
to tell this girl.
I want her to forgive
herself.

She says, “I failed
to tell them I forgive
them all . . . and in this
I failed in my final test . . .
and I grieved over this
for all these centuries past.”

I’m so saddened
by the way she torments
herself, so sorry for this
young girl, I turn
around to face her,
then kiss her gentle
forehead.

I whisper, “You have
indeed forgiven us all.”

She smiles, then touches
my cheek, “I have
at least, been able
to forgive you.”

And before I can
respond, I black out.

by Ward Kelley

Del writes:

Del Corey was born Adelbert M. Corey, in West Springfield, Massachusetts, near the banks of the Connecticut River, November 19, 1934. Although this was during the Depression and his family was poor, everyone appeared happy – Del, his one sister, and his four brothers. The homestead included chickens and a garden in the back yard.

Del spent many hours sitting on the bank of the river, trying to form poems in his head, but mostly they were romantic fumblings with the language. He attended public schools, graduating in the middle of his class, and joined the army, to serve as a paratrooper from 1953 to 1956.

Following his discharge, Del went to Aquinas College, in Michigan, and after 2 years, transferred to Michigan State University. Del went on to earn Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees.

He taught seventh grade, then high school, and then began his 30 year stay at Macomb Community College in the Detroit area. It was there his writing began in earnest. He taught communications, but mostly literature and creative writing. He began a writers’ group, The Fantasy Factory, and held regular meetings with a large following. This lasted for 25 years.

Del has written over 3,000 poems, published 5 books of poetry, and had countless individual poems published through the years. Del says, “Poems and stories are waiting to be told at every turn in the road of my travels.” He is currently working on a novel, tentatively titled, “Turning Inward.”

Ward Kelley:At what age did you hear the calling to poetry?

Del Corey:I tried writing poems when I was about 14, sitting on the bank over the Connecticut River, trying to formulate romantic, gushy poems.

In high school, I was introduced to poetry in a more formal way, and I decided to write something in the style of Poe, Dickinson, Shakespeare, etc., and ended in writing imitative, rhymey things, that some said were good, but I knew they were surface attempts at trying to be “meaningful”. They were no deeper than ice on a pond.

After that, I wrote when I was in college, trying to find a voice, but didn’t find it until I began teaching. I prefer free verse, but have tried the many rhyming forms.

WK:Can you identify what compelled you to formulate poetry back then? Is it the same thing that compels you today?

DC:Sometimes I would get angry at something that is going in the world, politics, injustice to the weak, the poor who can’t seem to climb out of their environments.

Other times, I would be driving along and get some insight about nature, (seasons, trees, sun slants), and jot it down on a pad I always kept in the car.

These things still compel me today, but I have taken to just scribbling until an idea strikes me, and I let it take me where it wants to go.

WK:You mention ‘insights’ and allowing an idea to ‘take you where it wants to go’. Over the years have you purposely nurtured and developed this ability to ‘let go’ and see what happens?

DC:Yes, I’ve been able to let the ideas take me places, I didn’t know I would or could go. Sometimes I would get insights and wonder at how deep or incisive it is, and turn around to see who thought up that idea? Then I’d realize it was my own thought, that appeared, that I didn’t have before. It’s the secret of creation that you and I and many poets have discovered from writing for years.

WK:Yeats referred to it as ‘dictation’. Does it hit you this forcefully?

DC:Although I wouldn’t call it ‘dictation,’ I suppose in a way, when I have a good insight, I follow its dictates. It’s not as though someone were dictating words to me. It’s more like lightning flashes that light up inside.

WK:Is this something a young poet can develop? How you found yourself doing anything in your career to nurture this ability?

DC:I believe this would be too difficult for a young poet to develop. Usually, the would-be poet is too concerned with rhyming, and is too impressed just by the fact of writing, that he or she won’t let deeper thoughts in. But, of course, this can be developed just by writing a great deal, and allowing thoughts to flow. Stream-of-thought writing would allow this.

I find I can do this, merely by finding a place where I can be alone, whether it’s in a library, or a noisy restaurant. Just being alone with my friends, a pad and pen, can facilitate this.

WK:Some writers say you have to write a million words before you become proficient. Do you ascribe to this maxim?

DC:I don’t know how many words have to be written before one becomes proficient. But I do believe one should write a great deal. Also, one must read, read, read, the classics mostly, but also many of the modern writers.  

WK: Which poets would you recommend to a potential poet?

DC: The first poets I’d recommend would be Rudyard Kipling, then Emily Dickinson, and Robert Frost. For Kipling, I remember the poem "If" from my early years, because my mother had it tacked to the door going upstairs. It fascinated me, for its message and rhythm.  "You’re a man, my son."

Dickinson, of course, had short poems, seemingly simple, yet often quite penetrating. "The mind is wider than the sky."  Robert Frost had short poems, but often they were profound. My favorite is "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening." "But I have miles to go before I sleep." Of course, most of their poems rhyme, which will attract the young would-be poet.

Then I’d recommend W.B. Yeats, and John Keats. Yeats had some brilliant lines. "A tattered coat upon a stick." They are worth reading and savoring. One of my all time favorites is John Keats. Too bad he died so young. What brilliant classics he wrote and would have written. "Ode to a Nightingale" is uppermost in my mind as a great classic. "All ready with thee! Tender is the night."And the line, "No hungry generations tread thee down" is just a great way of describing immortality.  Then "Grecian Urn" has many lines worth drinking from also. "For ever panting, and for ever young."

Of course, I’d tell the would-be genius, to save Whitman and Plath for the second or third year of his education, but certainly should be on their list. 

That leaves the great William Shakespeare, in his sonnets and plays. Watch the plays, but read them also. There are so many great lines. Also, one might pick up on the basic tricks of the poet, like assonance, alliteration, half-rhymes, synesthesia, simile, metaphor, etc. He also was one not afraid to play with the language. He would take a noun and make a verb out of it. (Verbing?)  They’re all there, in the works of this great writer. I’ve read and re-read Shakespeare, and will continue to do so.

I’m sure there are others the new poet should read, especially some of the newer poets. But this might get him started.

WK: I often pondered Keats’ youth; where, do you think, does someone so young finds such wisdom?

DC: John Keats was born a genius, I believe. He was born in 1795, and poor. I understand he wasn’t interested in literature until in his teens, he happened to read Spencer’s Faery Queen. This turned him on to poetry. So he read more and more. He went through surgery school, but by then he was only interested in poetry. He wrote some imitative works. But he kept reading the classics, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Shelly, Burns, Milton. And he kept writing.

It is interesting that his best works weren’t written until 1819, at an early age, much before the great writers even starting writing.  He had a great memory, and used literary, mythical references often.

He died at the age of 25, of tuberculosis. I must not forget to mention, that Keats knew nature in detail. He liked to take long walks with friends in the country-side. Shakespeare also knew many details about nature. This is another aspect of becoming a poet.

WK: So a trained eye concerning nature, or a love of nature, is a good tool in the poet’s toolbox?

DC: Yes, since the most powerful poetry has imagery, appeal to the senses, knowledge of nature in detail, will enable the poet to bring the reader right into the world of the poem. As one example of thousands, just feel and taste this one line from Keats’ "Ode On Melancholy": " burst Joy’s grape against his palate fine." All of us have eaten grapes, and felt it burst in the mouth. A bit of personification gave this so much power.

WK: Years ago when I interviewed the poet John Horvath, Jr. I asked him to pick his favorite poem from his own work. He replied his favorite poem was always the one he was currently writing. At first I thought it might be a flip answer, but shortly it made a lot of sense — the exhilaration and infatuation of creation always gives a jolt of love.

If you look back at the thousands you’ve written and published in your career so far, can you pick out three or four, that still give you a jolt, to share with our Warnborough readers?

DC: During my ride north, I re-read many of my poems. I enjoyed that, but discovered how tough it is to choose only a few poems. I liked many, for different reasons. A few were too many pages long for this purpose, I guess. Nevertheless, here are a few. Thank you for getting me to read my works again. These all come from my book, “Sunset Songs”.

Engines

Early evening, sitting in the woods,
leaning against the peeling sycamore,
like Thoreau, I observe the world.
Invisible mosquitoes revving
their little high-pitched engines;
flies buzzing like chain-saws,
dining on slices of deer-dung pie;
june bugs ramming trees
like crazed construction trucks,
fork-lifting mythical enemies;
fire-flies strobe-searching for answers,
as I am;  ants exploring new territories
over and under my forearm hairs
and I let them, they are life too,
and much stronger than I.
They can lift their weight and more,
but they also have purpose, goals,
all without PERT charts, graphs,
profit and loss, retirement plans.
Up in the branches, I glance a gossamer
floating, and I know a tiny spider
is parachuting to a new home.
Did he make a bid?  Does it have a pool?
Likely he’s talented enough to build
a mansion to his liking,
where meals come knocking.

Happiness

Dr. Faustus taught me
that joy is unattainable to humans,
for once we fulfill a dream, 
it loses its luster, like copper,
and tarnishes, as we go on 
searching, for a house, a car, a boat,
a Helen of Troy, ourselves.

But there are moments, sweetheart,
when Sol delivers morning,
glowing red with greetings
through mournful clouds,
and a breeze gentles your tresses
with soft fingers like a celestial hair dresser,
gulls circle and shriek their hungry songs,
dolphins dive and rise in peaceful grace,
ships ease their way across the horizon
and disappear under the earth’s curve,
and you snuggle close to me
as we breathe deeply the salty air,
silent, as the waves
tumble, and froth, and roar,
like pacing giant lions,
and we sit in awe 
of the magnitude of it all,
sensing our transitory insignificance,
and realize, suddenly,
what we have is Life,
we’re part of it, we have each other,
and this is happiness,
and, though momentary, it is ours,
and it will live in our memories,
and perhaps, in this, our poem,
forever.

Endings

With flannel sleeve he wiped his wrinkled face,
stared at the seeming endless soybean row
of seedlings peeking, greening from the soil.

Remembering his wife’s waving gray hair,
he forced back the encroachment in his throat.
How he missed her and her love for this farm!
Work!

The kids are gone, of course, college, knowledge,
and he knows when he goes that they will sell,
or build a subdivision, pave it all.

On his knees, like praying, he caresses a handful
of the fertile black dirt, sifts it, lifts, sniffs,
presses it to his lips until tears drip.
Got to stop this and work!

And so he did, weeding, prodding the plants
until he paused, cringed, reaching for a vial,
and placed a tiny pill under his tongue.
Work!

Forget Tomorrow

For so long I longed for tomorrows,
not realizing they’re as elusive
as fireflies in daylight.

But each morning the sunrise
fills my cup with today,
that I sip with breakfast,
gulp at golf, drink during dinner,
and nightcap under the liquid moon,
spilling stars throughout the sky.

Forget tomorrow.
I drink to another today.

Garage Sale

Come in and buy what remains
of a lifetime of shames and fames
that perhaps will fit on a shelf
of trophies of many selves.

There’s a picture of a wire-eyed youth
in patchy school rags, never couth,
another of a football fullback
before his rib was tackle-cracked.

Soldier duds with sergeant stripes,
jumper’s boots, the hero types,
college degrees filled with promise,
photos of a wedding kiss.

A grandfather’s clock swinging, chiming,
children growing, wife un-rhyming,
career glutted with drinks of same,
poems reeling just short of fame.
Glorious polaroids of sunrises and falls,
grey-haired trips and hospital calls.

I’m ready, now, to sell it all.
No reason any more to demur and stall.

Del Corey
Detroit, Michigan
USA

Aug – Sept 2009

“This Consciousness that is aware
Of Neighbors and the Sun
Will be the one aware of Death”
Emily Dickinson

Whether karma or kismet, I find myself swept by Maria Jacketti, or Emily, into an affiliation with this periodical. So it might be the proper time for confession. As much as I admire Professor Jacketti, I must confess I’m an Emily junkie.

‘Junkie’ is an over-used word thrown around by us old fogies to exaggerate any unexplained fascination with a topic, but allow me to relay my confessional, then let’s see if I truly qualify as a junkie.

Several years ago I completed a business trip in Boston, and discovered I now possessed a day to myself. Any self-respecting businessman might find a hundred other things to do with a free day in Boston, but this addict realized I could readily make the trip to Amherst – Emily’s hometown – and get back in time for my flight.

I showed up for the morning tour of the Dickinson homestead, to learn I did indeed hold a slot on the tour . . . as the sole participant. The college intern who took me through the house knew less Dickinson lore than I did myself, but it seemed fine with me – just to see the furniture Emily used, stand in the same spaces she inhabited, go upstairs to her bedroom and touch the four poster and her desk, all this thrilled. Well, maybe not on par with the Beatles arriving in America . . . but close . . . although I admit I didn’t scream or faint. Still for me to stand at the top of the same stairwell Emily refused to descend while her editor friend, Samuel Bowles, demanded her presence from the bottom, made me feel kindred with Samuel, and I too wanted to yell out for her.

After the tour I asked the intern for directions to the Dickinson family plot; I knew she rested within easy-walking distance, since Emily instructed – before her death – her coffin must not appear on the sidewalks or streets, so the funeral procession went from the home to the cemetery by way of the backyards. And I made it there quickly, soon to present myself at the wrought iron fencing surrounding the plot. There stood the unassuming stone I sought, nearly as tall as myself, proclaiming the words she directed to be chiseled, “Called back”. I felt an odd wonderment, in the presence of the actual remains of a great poet.

I thought I might reach out and touch the top of her stone, then berated myself for being a groupie. ‘Act like a grown man, for godsake,’ I chastised myself. But as I stood staring at her, I soon broke down, “What the hell will it hurt?” I reached out my hand to caress the top of the small monument . . . and the very instant I touched the stone, a substantial church bell blurted a loud toll, causing me to jump back, scan the cemetery for witnesses, and abruptly focus on a large tombstone heralding the surname, WARD, my own name.

It scared the bejesus out of me. And I hurried back to Boston, to the safer realms of corporate business . . . far, far away from the disquieting world of poetry.

So if I’ve established my credentials as a junkie, I’ll go on to modestly describe our current issue: We started the periodical with four poems by Michael Lee Johnson, who asks what does the poet know of suffering? Quite a bit, we learn; we then follow with Gale Acuff who conjures a childhood evening when Ed Sullivan is juxtaposed with a UFO. Next we find Gigi Marino’s excellent treatment on sexual power. Judith Skillman follows with five poems most reflective of this issue’s tribute to Urania, the muse of astronomy, then two poems with mythology themes from Tricia Crawford Coscia.

Santiago del Dardano Turann skillfully used the laurel as metaphor; then Nyuka Anaïs Laurent draws a wondrous arc acoss the solar system. Rose Grimaldi offers a poem on the glowworm, followed by Agnesa Lamaxhema’s sublime answer to her question, you’ll never deny my existence, right? We end the poetry with one by Irish poet Oritsegbemi Emmanuel Jakpa, and also a few poems by the co-editors, Jacketti and Kelley.

This edition’s interview is one I conducted with our own Warnborough professor, Maria Jacketti, diving into her favorite topic, Magical Realism, among other startling revelations, almost as startling as hearing the bells toll at Emily’s gravesite.

Ward Kelley
Indiana
July 2009