Jan Bolesław Ożóg

Jan_Bolesław_Ożóg [Wikipedia]

Jan Boleslaw Ozóg translated by Leonard Kress from Contemporary East European Poetry: An Anthology, ed. Emory George:

Village for a Wedding

Sky like pigeon’s little belly.

Sky like goldfinch egg,

sky like starling’s tune

greenishblue.

But fields like sundrenched sea

where roe-deer bound through oats

like fish through sea of rye.

And the village distant from a hummock

like a chain on a bicycle.

Iris in golden glimmer like pilot-flame.

But trees deeprooted like ponds

of green broth.

But grass like prayers

from lips of decaying willows.

And the village distant from a hummock

harrows gouged by nails

instead of stakes.

Lady bugs slide off lindens,

cockroaches to pick in a kerchief.

In barns peasant gears groan

cranking round the chaffcutter,

and frightened wasps play

like a heathen church at high mass.

Red beaks of carrots

circle higher than storks.

And the power station beyond the village

limping on crutches

like bent herdsman on crook.

Here the morning scented with hemp

saltily with bundle of clover.

Here my beloved hides for the night

safe from the boys in the kneading trough.

But up the ladder to the attic

carrying a measure of rye on his back

like a good husband

Here you are invited to the wedding.

Lisa Jarnot

Lisa Jarnot [John Sarsgard]

from Lisa Jarnot’s Ring of Fire:

Valley of the Shadow of the Dogs

He could be so far outside himself, generating body heat, far from the telephone, in a room, heated, with the outside of his thoughts, turning, with precision, for the reasons he would know, nearer to god and the mountains and the outside of the room, with the chairs, perceived as objects, always slightly passed, looming, on the forefront, like cake, looming, on the forefront, ambitious, like a sumac leaf, lovely, a wing, with wings and made of cake, having counted let me count, one, the ways that there are, unused, potentially useful, held at a distance like a flower filled with tiny bugs, loved and lovely, without raccoons, beside the spiders, smashed on the sides of the forks, lovely the form in the meadow of the shadows of the dogs, howling, reckless, unusual, unfulfilled, with the christmas lights, steady, and how close I am to myself, and how close they are to the sumac leaves, lovely, against the rain, falling out, fully heated, from the inside of his head, with spiders, in a meeting, against the rain, given to this disposition, equally talented, talkative, talking in tongues, beyond the heads of cows, friendly, on the staircase, friendly, where I waited and the city moved, drenched beneath the sumac leaves, having fallen, into the field, where the dogs are looming, in the forefront, in the shadow of the gods, dreaming of being alone, relieved, heated, steady on the trees beside their wings, riding on the backs of all the bears, and the bears, relieved to be the sumac leaves, and the sumac leaves, relieved to be the bears, and the spider, on the plate, relieved to be just so, wanting to be loved, where the city moved, and then I moved, and the pins all moved, out of place, tetanus-like, having syllables, wishing to love, wishing to love the ocean and the ski runs and the sand, wishing to love the sheep, converging, on the frontispiece, having thrown the ball, equally having thrown the ball and having thrown it, into the leaves, near the trees and all the dogs, meditating, on the coffee cups, meditating, on the backs of all the bears.

Sea Lyrics [excerpt]

I am this Santa Ana wind and we are bowlers, we are at the haircut man, I have divulged so little of the avocado dawn, I am waiting to buy coffee near the docks upon the square, I am all the hot dogs and the roof of city hall, I am hardly standing in the kamikaze rain, I am of the new year sober now, I am inside of all the horoscopes at once, I am the rainy part of early fall expecting to go back across the bridges, I am near the greenish plantains down the street, I am the subtler angles of the sunlight from the surface of the moon, I am here to yet predict the dawn, I am getting better like the oceans on the sidestreet, I am surrounded by water, I am walking sideways near the church in Watsonville upon the orange line at Lammas Tide.

Right Speech

Love, which is meaning

compels speech, speech

which is human, compels

mammals, from the trees

of the language of the

mammals, from the mailbox

where they rise, speakers,

hugged close to the

forest fires late at night,

tigers, cicadas, and trees,

name of the one who is love

compels speech which is

meaning from trees to be

mammals, mammalian,

made of music, made of

tigers with the flames,

rising up from the gardens

of the naming of the night,

giant, speaking to me,

content with this, the trees

with tigers and with corn,

the hot spell of speaking

speech, the language laced

with tigers laced with night.

Claudia Rankine

Claudia Rankine [LA Times]

Claudia Rankine from The Verse Book of Interviews: 27 Poets on Language, Craft & Culture:

I know, because I have been told, some people find The End of the Alphabet to be something other than accessible. This, of course, was never my intention. I wanted only to distress the reading experience so that words were no longer markings to be skimmed over towards the close of an expected narrative. The idea was that a word, any word, would cast its layers of meaning toward an emotional field that was triggered by certain unexpected juxtapositions on the page. The reading experience then would be a journey into a process outside of the narrative plot-driven arc. In this sense I wanted an end to thought as I encountered it in narrative poetry. An end to clarity, however, was never my intent. Always we were meant to come up, to arrive at another mode of expression, for it seemed to me that language could be turned toward rendering an atmosphere, a feeling of flux and desperation, which seems the point of autobiographical, confessional poetry anyway. You know what I mean, people talk a lot and what are they saying beyond, we are not as we “are living” ourselves to be.

Claudia Rankine from The End of the Alphabet:

Overview is a place

Difficult to pinpoint

fear of self, uncoiled.

specter unstrung. staggering stampede. Which

sung? left the body open for the moon to break into,

unspooling disadvantage.

Give a thought, Jane: Did filth

begin in conversation? drag

the mood through before escaping the ugliness. Not to

dwell on but overhear footsteps again

approaching: immured,

not immune, then dumdum

bullet templed, rip the mind out. go ahead.

*

Dawn will clear though the night rains so hard. Rain

and Jane mix and mixing up, thinking shore but hugging floor.

What Jane must substitute for this year’s substitute

for a mind intact? fire?

its greediness egged on, flame after flame

uninvolved

but still fueling the shifting onslaught.

Gray Jane

emphasize otherwise, not the eyes

but the cheek to the pillow. Bundle up and sweep

bare the mind. Land its ooze

at some other gate, soften

dead wood. Sea smoke, drizzle, distance. The moment

of elucidation snipped its tongue, its mouth water

dried out —

thought-damaged throat.

*

Remember a future

from another dream

and hold on. open your mouth

close to your ear: fear

in sanity lives. anatomy

as dissonance,

vertebral breaking. In spite

of yourself.

rising, the mercury

reaching out

to fever. fire. all your civilized

sense, Jane, disabled.

*

Assurance collapses naturally

as if each word were a dozen rare birds

flown away. And gone

elsewhere is their guaranteed landing

though the orphaned wish

to be happy was never withdrawn.

Do not face assault uncoiled as loss,

as something turned down: request or sheet. Pray

to the dear earth, Jane, always freshly turned,

pull the covers overhead and give

and take the easier piece.

to piece the mind.

to gather on tiptoe. Having lost

somewhere, without a name to call, help

yourself. all I want.

Victor Hernández Cruz

Victor Hernández Cruz [Butler MFA]

from Victor Hernández Cruz's Maraca: New and Selected Poems 1965-2000:

Mesa Blanca

If I were writing on rock,
It would be the wind of the year
That caressing me will make
Me aware of the shadows on
A distant stone —
That signifies an eclipse
On some unseen distant roof,
From where in the form of
A kite a diamond leaves for heaven.

It would be that sound that I would
Make into a face,
Present it at the banquet of those
Who came lost on the boats
Punctuate on key
A coco-net of cybernetic eyes
Transmitting from the beach.

The sea a rush or mists,
Christ carrying the cross of Castile
Soldiers laundering heads of crushed guava
Have popped out of there
Salty like bacalao which here has been
Fricasseed with calabaza,
So we have to church the word
Mestizo
Half and Half —
So that textbooks claiming total
Taino vanishment
Should four pages later erase
The word Mestizo,
With the same mouth they say we are,
Was Webster wasting his time:
"mes-tiz-o [Sp. fr. mestizo, mixed, fr. L.L. mixticius]
a person of mixed blood; specif: a person of mixed
European and American Indian ancestry."

The sensational things coming together,
Of the Arawak-Taino
The only thing that remains is
What is not gone:
The looks,
The gestures,
The thoughts,
The dreams,
The intuitions,
The memories,
The names of fruits,
Rivers,
The names of towns,
Vegetables,
Certain fish,
The gourd making music
In the mountain,
The maraca making feet
Areyto dance,
And this cigar between my fingers.
More than half is the ground itself
The rock in my hands was in Arecibo's palm.
This is not to disagree with the
Anthropologists of text
But merely to reaffirm what they mean
When they don't say.

This paper which was a tree
is crying for its leaves
That's the route of your mind
To dance its branches,
For that canopy red flower
Of the Antilles,
So high up in air spirit,
Flowing right through that bark,
A water shaft,
A city of bamboos
Liquefied fructus,
Humid swamp for that
Night frog.
To sing without rest
Till the roosters brush their
Beaks with the first
Arriving morning light.

The joyful noise of the night
What might be coming from lips,
Or the rubbing of legs
The full harmonic tropical berserk
Begging for love
In abundance
Not one thousand
But one thousand and one
Lights of cucubanos,
Morse-coding lovers,
That come down,
meow not now
Of the cats —

For that's the flavor,
Within the opening of the
Two mountains,
A glance following the
River
That goes to fish its memories,
Scratched one next to the other
Like the grooves of shells,

To think that no one believes
We are here.
The past in the smoke of the cigar,
Bringing the future in-formation.

. . .

The caciques were descendants of hydrogen
The sun hung upon their chest
Candles near the Indian Head
Simaron rockets
They passed singing through
Mavi trees and rock —
They migrate with the blood
And filter through the bricks
Going toward feathers —
In the frozen ice a gold head
Ring upon a finger calls
And the water boils as if
For tea star anise —
When the prayer takes cadence
Someone's hands circle in the
Rising heat
Elevating from the intestines
A stream
Canoes in fierce paddle
Passing the throat
Broadcasting splinters of words
Like a prairie fire
En route to ignite the Crown.

*

A brush of airs full of words —
Ink on limestone marble —
The house itself is a poem,
Enter through the word: See
Shadows and rhythmic stone.
Sara churns 2,000 pieces of silk,
Passports for sailors,
Shepherd streams in the desert,
A caravana of gold tooth wagons,
Long skirts and sharp eyes.
A-string vibes in the air
The ear that heard the doors
of the Cathedral of Burgos open:
Arco de Santa Maria —
El Cid and his sword
Pointed on the parchment —
Riding the sweet eyes of a little girl
Into the stare of macabre machos
Thirsty for blood.
Peace and rage
The picture brings memory to its knees.
The stroll of a scroll pulled
From the pocket of a Cataluña Street.
In the presence of the past — 
Coming back to wonder
How a fresh of air
Can come and bow amongst us —
In the humid Antillean
From dream to terror:
From Bohíos to apartments
From cathedral to mosque
Words ironed into stone.

The Castilians were coming
Out of the mouth of a volcano
Falling as ash unto red dirt.
Orocovis navel earthenware —
Artisans of finger palms
Had designs for each fruit taste
It is that subtle of a music
What silence for cadence split
Coffee people to enter you
Tobacco people to enter you
Sugar cane to enter you.
Corozo palms supply the material
For the black asabache
The space between stars
To enroll your finger
Vegetable craft
Working bones
Placing mother-of-pearl
Like light into the seeds
Three years before Columbus
The future spoke
The mouth of Volcanos:
Ashes.

. . .

What is the melody in the mountains,
Tubers imagining deep in dirt,
Used to be chanted rosaries
A cadence emerging out of wood,
Down ravine circling region
Eating the wide silence —
In trance with the rosary beads
A medieval gloss,
They lived in Maria's womb.

The coast what it got —
Rhythm and waves —
Palms clapping awake the perfume
Humid women in plaza dance
Tongues out of mouth
At the men who jump in the shadows
Panama hats transmitting
Toward the radar 
Of the waits.

Cucarachas in the chicken dance
The roosters bebop.

Heat that is sweat is the ink
A calor in Spanish that
The Church starts to run
Down Avenida Piel de Canela.

Hot waters rising through the
Songs of minerals
As mountain and coast
Morel Campos danza —
Antique contraband bones,
Flesh of bamboo walking
Senegal the Force Feet
of mountain trovador
Rhythm golden bird
Inventing itself on the
Spot.

A disjoint of bone
Like yoga
The Rig Veda becomes
Foot and step —
From Guayama the priest
Ferment of herbs
Frog breath
Lizard Tail
Opticals of owls
And all the fires there are.

What choice do you have:
Might as well jump toward
land like seed
Tongue in moisture
With green mountain light
And coastal curves —
To lick the invisible
Generations.

Richard Wright

Richard Wright [symphonyspace]

from Richard Wright's Haiku: This Other World, "scarecrow" haiku:

“Oh, Mr. Scarecrow,

Stop waving your arms about

Like a foreigner!”

From the scarecrow’s sleeve

A tiny green leaf unfolds

On an oaken arm.

Late one winter night

I saw a skinny scarecrow

Gobbling slabs of meat.

The scarecrow’s old hat

Was flung by the winter wind

Into a graveyard.

Little boys tossing

Stones at a guilty scarecrow

In a snowy field.

Even the sparrows

Are attempting to thaw out

The frozen scarecrow.

When I turn about,

My shadow lies alongside

That of a scarecrow.

“Let’s make a scarecrow!”

But after we had made it,

Our field grew smaller.

Bedraggled scarecrow,

What a time you must have had

In last night’s rainstorm!

Scarecrow, who starved you,

Set you in that icy wind,

And then forgot you?

Don’t they make you sad,

Those wild geese winging southward,

O lonely scarecrow?

It is so hot that

The scarecrow has taken off

All his underwear!

Accidentally

Cut by the tip of the hoe,

The scarecrow shudders.

When the horse whinnies,

The scarecrow waves both his arms,

Asking for silence.

A skinny scarecrow

And its skinnier shadow

Fleeing a cold moon.

As my delegate,

The scarecrow looks pensively

Into spring moonlight.

A darting sparrow

Startles a skinny scarecrow

Back to watchfulness.

His task completed,

The scarecrow watches the truck

Leave loaded with corn.

The scarecrow’s big sleeves

Advertising in the sun:

Huge, red tomatoes!

On a scarecrow’s head

A sparrow braces itself

Against the spring wind.

He hesitated

Before hanging up his coat

On the scarecrow’s arm.

Sometimes I Wish for

sun instead of rain

freezing rain in lieu of hail

hail after I pull into the garage

a garage attached to the house

a house that feels like home

home for something more than holidays

a holiday on a houseboat

the houseboat where canaries are born

born to walk on water

watered daily unless the roots rot

rot at the heart

a heart with a shot valve

valve missing its handle

a handle on the swinging door

this door darker than the last

last call, last dance, last button

a button less than bus fare

farewell ye bluest bay

the bay window in the music room

room for two grand pianos

pianissimo crescendoing to fortissimo

louder than a klezmer band

band together or part your hair

a hair short of heaven when the tire blows

blow by blow I pummel the bag

a bag of corn candy

candy from the corner store

stored in glass jars with flip-up lids

lids fluttering on a dog’s face

face only a pie could love

love as a way to grace

gravity plus grace after fifty

fifty fleas make a circus

circus tents for half pence

pence, shillings, pounds, guineas

a guinea hen for a wrecking ball

the ball hit over the fence

fence the ram away from the ewes

harmonize ewes for dinner

dinner accessorized with bug zapper

zipper zapper clapper clipper

a clipper ship sails to China

immigrants built the railroads

railroads joined east to west

west of the green spot east of the moon

moon, can I have this moondance with you?

Alive

Dozens of

hours

I have sat

watching

eggs

listening

for inner

peeps

watching

almost

ducklings

try to peck

their way out,

times

ducklings

have failed

& died,

times

I have tried

to help

crack

the shells

& merely

killed them,

the time Ben

tossed

an egg

for not
peeping

off the deck

& saw

below

the almost

duckling

on the grass

outside.