Poetry

Spring 2008

 

 

Dick Allen

Meeting

At the end of the table, a tempest flares
out of a teacup. Someone takes
the pot of simmering bent elbow joints
off the back burner. In the little
corridors of power that we've just come from
horses are held, champing at their bits,
their passions reined in. But in here
it's all smoke screens,
a vase of fingersnaps, clocks winding down,
and anecdotal mints. Some are adept
at bursting bubbles, others hammer home
point after point. In two hours' time
a hundred hands are thrown into the air,
several bald heads roll. We toss
this plum out that window and we execute
a whole contingent of blindfolded crossing guards
until we tip our chairs back and confess
what we've got done's completely out of order
and all that we can do is meet again
someday soon, beneath a trial balloon.
There, friends,
we'll cross the t's and dot the i's — our lives
the stuff that grows inside manila folders.

 

The Bridegroom's Pantoum

The air is clotted with that almost musky smell
When mountain azaleas bloom. It's spring, spring!
You stand by the window, naked, showing all
Your body through thin curtains billowing.

When mountain azaleas bloom, it's spring, spring!
The stream before this house runs wildly down.
Your body through thin curtains billowing
Seems like an angel's, come to bless this town.

The stream before this house runs wildly down.
Wind melts into wind, cloud into cloud.
Seems like an angel's come to bless this town,
These houses, people, all the fields around.

Wind melts into wind, cloud into cloud.
Let winter stay a long time way back there!
These houses, people, all the fields around,
Seemed cold before we balanced in midair.

Let winter stay a long time way back there.
You stand by the window, naked, showing all
Seemed cold before we balanced in midair.
The air is clotted with that almost musky smell.

 

Back to Poetry