The World's Soft Prey

Am I Next?
—Poems and Photos by Joyce Odam, Sacramento, CA 
 

A STORY

I was driving along down an ordinary street on my way to
somewhere which doesn’t matter now. I was driving along
and I stopped at the stop-light, at which I am always in-
clined to obey on any ordinary drive on any ordinary —
or not so ordinary, day. The light turned green again. I took
a moment longer than I should, I guess. The car behind me
honked its horn and the guy behind me in the car gave me a
dirty look and nudged my bumper. I took another moment,
looking both ways, not trusting traffic or random circum-
stance to keep me safe from fate or harm or loud impatience
of bigger cars with bigger horns and dirty looks. (And maybe
he had a gun — one never knows.) I tell you it was dangerous,
this chancing out into the world like the world’s soft prey.
But, somehow, by being ever careful and anxiously alert, I
survived the day.

___________________

TODAY IS NOT THE DAY

Today is not the day for luck.
For rage, perhaps;
for staring at the rain.

But today has come too swiftly,
on borrowed news, with static
and wet shoes.

And with today comes
those two proper sisters,
Grim and Lonely,

who sit
on my two chairs. I feed them
whiskey and dirty blues.

They blur and whisper.
The man I am holding
is half unholy—

the half I’m telling—
the other half
is heavy with mute clues.

Today is not
the day I choose
for dim remember.

The sisters are sleeping now:
I follow
the secret smile and meaning.


(first pub. in Riven, 2004)

 Holding the World
 

                   
OVERWHELMED

The esteemed poet stands in a marsh of swirling words that
settle around him like a homing of white birds. He can have
his pick of them but only stands there—stunned to silence
by the sheer whiteness of the words—blinded by them, even,
when he contemplates loving one more than another, wanting
to capture them, somehow, in immortal poems, when all he
can do is watch them in their shining presence, and become
their poem.   

_______________

GULLS, FACING NORTH

Somewhere a long black fence dividing nowhere
from nowhere stretches out toward the horizon.
Two gulls rest to let the red sunset wash over them.

Beyond the fence a thin black horizon line

defines the sun going down. The sky flares red
and the sea reflects. The two gulls stay perched.
The red ripples of the quiet sea flow beneath them.    

  I Will Grow Up To Be . . .

IN THE GREENHOUSE
(Theodore Roethke)

Imagine the long dark of morning, the slithering aside,
the soundless whisperings heard above growing :

the ghost : come from the skeleton, come from the
flesh, come un-weighted by all, save death, moving
in deep sea-rhythm, made of the same stuff as wind,
looking around with new force—being both seed and
withered conclusion, both orchid and moss—moving
now to the source of love : memory and its rhyme . . . .

looking toward the glass distortion to the sky
(made of that light) the images in the glass :
fragmented eyes that are green, struck blind by light,
glancings of time in shock-value of
timelessness . . . turning that look aside . . .

so out of death (whatever death is) the ghost, male
and aware, knows all that it gave old question to,
dreaming back to all the error and concern—
teaching again, whatever next comes to learn :
all that moves here—all that is alive in the
grave-like dark, damp as a forest—are
transmutations, in stubborn life (whatever life is)

celebrating this most perfect place that is
everywhere, but here most especially :
Ghost of Roethke—putting it all back—
whatever was out of order—whatever was harmed.

 I Will Hold You

             
FROGS
              
We hear of frogs that are missing,
that are deformed,
that are thinking new thoughts,

there in their bog of language and evolution
strange to themselves—
or not even strange,

but different—
green-smelling and iridescent,
like spells cast by witches in fairy tales.

But, here, they are real—enormous-throated
with warning, with trepidation,
the world around them bristling with doom.

They freeze, then leap
into known environments—the shallow green of murk,
the thickening shadow of extinction.

   
(first pub. in Albatross, 2004. Also won
1st Place at INA COOLBRITH, 81st Annual Contest)

 Ivory

BENEATH THE FATAL CLOCK

1.  The daily trouble
bogs us down
in dullest woe.
The nuisance, Death,
is at the edge of everything,
pestering like a brat
at the mother-hem.

2.  Songs begin at morning
but the singers lie
beneath the fatal clock
trying to be immortal lovers.
Birds persist in happiness
and leaves go joyfully forth
like resurrection.

3.  Somebody who is old
comes knocking at the door:
Selling my life!
New rags for old?
Any broken mirrors
you can’t use?

4.  Look what I bought,
I tell the one
who loves me for my bargaining;
look how its colors
dull the light…
look how it tarnishes the eyes…
look how it crumbles in the hand…


(first pub. in Prairie Schooner, 1972)

 Peace. Dream.

NEW YEAR’S MORNING

A leftover horn from some
stale celebration is bawling in the distance,
probably in the hand of some child—
loud in the morning.

I can see it now : crumpled on the end,
red foil peeling, three tassels dangling.
What a sad, old sound it makes—
over and over—

like some animal
trapped in quicksand,
or on barbed wire, or drought,
or winter—you know—a suffering.

                                                 
(first pub. in Listenings, Mini-Chap, 2002)

_________________

TO A SICK GERANIUM

Come on, old girl,
we’re tougher than that,
you and I.
We can surmount
a little droop,
a little falling-off
of petal.
What if our leaves
turn brown
and curl
to the edges
of that old wind.
Time is a circumstance
and you and I
still have
a season in it.

   
(first pub. in Manifold, England, 1967)

__________________

Today’s LittleNip:

WEARING
(Sedoka)*
—Joyce Odam

I am wearing stones
to remain bogged in sorrow’s
sympathy.  Do you wear stones?

        .

I wear light like pain
in eyes that cannot weep or
ever close to what they’ve seen.

__________________

A big thanks to Joyce Odam for today’s poetry and photos! She writes: “I found myself taking the S.O.W. of "Quicksand" to a meaning of current (...and-ever...) grieving over the conditions of life...Homelessness, cruelty and greed, the lack of conscience over the killing of animals to the point of extinction. The blindness of it. These surfaces of helpless rage that result, which I hope might resonate in my choice of poems and pictures this time.”

Our new Seed of the Week is Forbidden Fruit. Send your poems, photos & artwork about this (or any other) subject to kathykieth@hotmail.com. No deadline on SOWs, though, and for a peek at our past ones, click on “Calliope’s Closet”, the link at the top of this column, for plenty of others to choose from.

*SEDOKA:  Made up of two katautas (5,7,7 / 5,7,7,) with a turn between the two triplets.  Can be a dialogue, but with a single author.

—Medusa

 Ungilded by Rosario Romero

Celebrate poetry with the new issue of Sacramento's 

convergence, at www.convergence-journal.com/spring18/.

Photos in this column can be enlarged by clicking on them once,
then click on the X in the top right corner to come back
to Medusa.