Category Archives: 2003

Lili Boulanger and See You Later, Pal by Hugh Fox

Posted on by
Reply

Dear Stephen,

Let me send you my two most recent poems. I’m writing in French now, translating into English, having the French corrected by my Parisian son-in-law at MIT, taking advantage of having the guy as a son-in-law.

What I WISH you’d do is publish them in both versions.
Maybe need a little note about Lili Boulanger, something like”Lili Boulanger was an early twentieth century French composer who produced a large, mature body of work before her premature death at age 25.” See what you think.

–Hugh Fox

Dear Hugh,

Wish granted. I think it is formidable.

–Stephen Morse

LILI BOULANGER

Je suis dans un Paris de
reves d’eternite de beaute,
la riviere, les plus vieux batiments,
Le sacre Coeur qui saigne sur la ville
qui hier a mang’ les elephants
dans le parc zoologique,
les rois et les rebellions toutes
terminees, pas de pauvres et de riches,
ceux qui ont et ceux qui n’ont pas,
seulemente Les Louvres revees
restent, coupoles et toits,
colonees qui se souviennent
des grecs et des romains,
tout qui coule comme la Seine,
la precisement pourquoi
presque rien
disparait comme Lili,
a
vignt-cinq
ans.

–Hugh Fox

LILI BOULANGER

I’m in a Paris of dreams of
eternal beauty, the river,
the old buildings, the church of
the Sacred Heart that bleeds
over a city where yesterday
the revolutionaries
ate the elephants in the city zoo,
all the kings and revolutions over,
no more poor and rich, haves and
have-nots, only the dream Louvres
left, cupolas and roofs, columns that
remember the Greeks and Romans,
everything that flows like the Seine,
there precisely because almost nothing
disappears like Lili
at
twenty-five.

–Hugh Fox

BIENTOT, MON PETIT

Petit, soixante-dix ans,
Autrichien juif, ses premieres annees
a Auschwitz, mais sa famille (mystere)
y rechappant, autre mystere comment il est arrive’
au Michigan et s’est mari avec une Irlandaise convertie
au judaisme, toujours drole comme un petit
chimpanz, mais en meme temps toute l’histoire du
monde un millimetre sous la surface de son crane,
mort aujourdhui, je ne peux pas aller a l’enterrement
lundi pour voir une grand partie de moi-meme
enterr’e.

–Hugh Fox

SEE YOU LATER, PAL.

Tiny, seventy years old,
Austrian Jew, his first years
in Auschwitz, but his family (mystery)
escaped, another mystery how he got
to Michigan and married and Irish woman
converted to Judaism, always funny like
a little chimp, but at the same time the whole
history of the world one millimeter under the
surface of his skull, dead today, and I can’t
go to the buriel Monday to see a great part of
myself
buried.

–Hugh Fox

Days of Snow by Rhiannon

Posted on by
Reply

Days of Snow

Remember days, as kids,
spent outdoors
rolling down hills
tunnelling through snow.
Drifts stood tall.
Mom made hot maple oats.
We’d listen to the radio
for school cancellations.
I’d wear longjohns
and poke my thumb out the fly.
We’d breathe frosty air.
Snots froze in nostrils.
Flakes fell on eyelids.
We’d suck icicles for drinks
and get brain-freeze.
At night our boots stood in puddles
mitts, caps cluttered ’round the door,
snowsuits and scarves on hooks.
We’d sniffle, wheeze,
and gag down Buckley’s Cough Formula.

–Rhiannon

Imagine by John Bennett

Posted on by
Reply

IMAGINE

A stab at stability. Pretense down the mail shoot. Special delivery
on a cold rainy day. Russians teaching English at Oxford. The same old
janitors, mopping up after class.

Anthrax, a fast train to nowhere. A one-in-a-million chance and he
blows it. The sharpshooter in the tower takes aim.

“My fellow Vespucians,” he says. “My dandies and damsels.”

And off goes the round.

***
Up goes the curtain. Down comes the flag. Cubic inches of fire and
brimstone. Mad love in the pantry. Crystal droplets in the cuff of his
trousers. He combs back his hair and walks into the day.

It only hurts for a little while, and then they open the door.

–John Bennett

babbitt by tpf

Posted on by
Reply

babbitt

creature of habit
of knowing it all
comforted
conscience perverted
moral groper and beater
of women and dead
hippies are the best kind
of like indians
and gracious he
wasn’t he smug as a
can of raid kills
and no pest strips
saved he knew he saved
talents under a bushel
and bad
synaptic
cleansing and hair oil
where they would never
be found or
used against him
fondling his genitals
in the dark
they could have been
anyone’s and that was
his strength and
secret stubble

with a bad breath
stale airwick
air freshner on a stick
stale bread
molded on the edges
capped by grand forays
into woolworth and piggly
wiggly food
spinning honey butter
gilding gilded
aphorisms
nothing ventured
nothing knew.

–tpf

Hello, Jack (Jack Kerouac) by Joyce Metzger

Posted on by
Reply

Hello, Jack
(Jack Kerouac)

Still reading your word abundance,
and note your photograph tucked
into odd niches, dark eyes staring
from tattered posters
taped to obscure bookstore
windows.
Sad eyes. Haunted.
Canuck eyes which understood
no other could comprehend
who you were, where you had
been, where you were headed,
or believed you wanted
to go. Dislocated poets
slip from place, feel alone
in people filled rooms.
Ginsberg enjoyed that spotlight;
you didn’t, unless fired
by drugs or drink. Corso
and Burroughs could not relieve
hidden pressures. No one could.
Women weren’t the answer. Mamere
wasn’t your salvation. Inner
conflict rots cores, Jack.
You felt clawing inside your bones.
“On The Road” wasn’t a maverick
song, an anthem to ignite, nor was
it a fresh beginning, Jack.
In some mysterious way, it was
your signature song, that lonesome
wail of troubled soul, the beginning
of the end.

–Joyce Metzger

3 Poems by Cindy Wright

Posted on by
Reply

Send Off

Grandmother believed,
“Dog’s have souls”.
I listened.
I still hope you
never have pups.

Sans Reason

He liked to say “nice shoes”
to barefoot children in the snow,
and watch the homeless fight
with pigeons over bread.
He told his doctor he thought
he might just be omnipotent as he
inspired beds of For Sale signs
in neighbor’s front lawns.

Death Rattle

Tie my corpse
to the lowest branch
of the oldest oak
and face me west.
Braid my gray tresses
with Spanish moss
to flash silvery-green
in miasmic breeze.
Find me next winter
on a moonless night
by the wind as it
chimes weathered bones.

–Cindy Wright

Nothing Becomes Her As The Leaving by Douglas Holder

Posted on by
Reply

NOTHING BECOMES HER AS THE LEAVING

It is not her place to stay.
It is her’s to exit–
When the fat lady
drops her last
sonorous note
it is then
when she leaves us
with only our applause
perhaps her scent
behind the empty
flapping of a scrim
the hollow swing
of a back stage door.
And this is
when she is most beautiful
when she is
no more.

–Douglas Holder

About My Memoir by Laura Stamps

Posted on by
Reply

About My Memoir

In a time of butterflies
and bluebirds, when the moon sifts
the dark sands of the night,
and the sun simmers
in the sky’s hot hand, I dream
of cool sheets, the soft sigh
of a black kitten warm in my arms,
and time to listen
for the wisdom hiding beneath
the blue waters of silence.
There is so much to unlearn
in this world, a daily practice
as daring as the desire
to untangle the milky lace
of a meadow parsnip.
The greatest gift I give
to myself is to live each day
as if I have no past—
that musty book of names
and dates begging to be buried,
a burden I no longer carry.
This morning, in the darkness
before dawn, a rowdy congregation
of Canada geese honked
across the house, turning
every furry head in the room.
Let it be said that I lived my life
in the moment with no regrets,
light as the wind-flutter
of a butterfly or a bluebird,
my wings cluttered
with nothing but love
and the golden shimmer-dust
of the sun.

–Laura Stamps