Poetry
Rich Ives
Photo Credit: Jimmy Emerson
Left
| What does the left hand know— raised in a hill town… —Jon Loomis |
|
| 1. | |
| Friend of the blue black milk pitcher’s snout |
living inside the not quite lost but |
| not quite anything else and lifting |
slipping its wet nose under smoked eel with |
| horseradish and chives still marching the eyes of |
a sleepy blue village the dreamers closed |
| something with wings red cedar blue fir and |
getting smaller night descending |
| 2. | |
| I take the dogs to anything I’m busy chasing |
the field to chase my own thought |
| so low the dogs can’t hear it I’ll let them worry it |
if it goes to ground right now they’re happy enough |
| to get lost in something disappeared |
whatever folly they were chasing they’re milling around |
| in circles sniffing they don’t care to know |
each other and pretending what it was didn’t escape |
| 3. | |
| The crow’s cassock a lascivious glimpse |
flaring up out of the darkness |
| we hope will excite morning veiled in a soft green fog |
streets will soon be wet breath |
| edged with fish and soap on three legs |
a stray cat limping past eyes its shadow |
| against the stone wall quickly up then flat again |
its lilt and stretch rising as moonlight |
| alters and passes |
considers and no further judgments |
| 4. | |
| I’m talking to you idiot I’ve aged myself |
as old as the idea of love but not as far as love |
| I could have stopped falling if I had known that I was falling |
a conversation woven into the hush to dream of it is to lose it |
| 5. | |
| Human travail for example as human achievements which |
come to as little nearly hold out against us and |
| could be greater than we are perhaps we only leave ourselves behind |
perhaps it’s true in footprints |
| pointing to this place because we’re in it |
we don’t name and we’re not done |
| not the ones who are the bones behind |
listening closely to the next witness |
| 6. | |
| There’s no home like the body’s home that’s what both eyelids say covering up the moon snug in the body’s branches like a brand new creamy eraser |
|
| yet nothing is missing and nothing is wrong all the lines all the night’s returned shadings right where we drew them |
|
| imagine the taste of it a salacious insouciance indolent and cunning which might contain some indeterminate reward |
|
| for all that we have missed by being here | |
| 7. | |
| My body says I have to admit |
you never take me anywhere and I’m embarrassed by |
| greetings with entrances that seem already to be |
the wrong hand and headed home then perhaps |
| as if it were the landscape redolent evening’s fleet |
pausing and not I the armada departing for |
| grander achievements than clouds despoiled by clouds |
the benign attachments of having escaped |
| some tedious celebration murderer fallen asleep in the |
with the same drunken cellar beside a |
| basket of turnips and the hooking slow |
tired joke the same ride everywhere |
| it’s hard work admiring a spectacular sunset |
perfecting indolence I can’t help gumming the day’s juicy corpse |
| some things are never they do not happen so |
fully imagined even when many small creatures are |
| waiting for you to leave your body | |
| 8. | |
| Earth omelet sautéed seasoned in mushroom |
in the heat of summer flies beetles and straw |
| steeped in urine wine dust and in time |
and dusted with the stable’s divinity |
| whitens holds on like paper those pages from the book |
after rain and tears of lessons overlooked |
| until in its place something green splashes itself all over the air |
and too new like a belching flower |
| 9. | ||
| It’s so tiring screaming apace even from each other What’s all the colorful looking for all Summer long it’s lost interest undergarments fly singing colder nakedness the right light |
the way every Spring this space is mine and until the curious shouting about hidden answers until the wind cools and the next show starts and the seed spills now and angry the way it waits for turning itself |
the leaves begin shutting out the sky wind wants to know and turns them over and back again and pretends and the gaudy cold and the wind keeps astounded at the finally just inside out |
| 10. | ||
| Patiently the left music folded open above interrupted by a few |
hand waits at the piano with its white carefully placed shadows |
that black door to the broken keys fingered between the |
| white lines accidentals suddenly belong and the one I’ve lived in |
they call them still holding onto that but just now reached |
right keys they sound of night with my fingers |
| and my body swaying letting darkness ring I’ll never get out |
and my falling foot if I close and if I don’t |
pressed down the door now I’ll never get back |
| 11. | |
| My caretaker’s the flattened rubber jowls of |
old wheelbarrows sleeping on their own deflated feet |
| what I like to think about even now |
the slow hole is beginning in a pair of new shoes |
| it seems to be a café and me staring straight ahead |
filled with surrealists and goatees and not dreaming I’m in charge |
| of myself I say scraps like grocery lists |
of my intentions still hanging on I went in because it was in front of me |
| it existed and I hungered so badly even if the moment wanted |
to get inside the moment as moments always do |
| to get out O my it’s probably apparent that |
brethren of the foolish words I could use some assistance but |
| I never do that to myself you wanted purposefully but |
still seem to be holding on to something you can’t remember what it’s for |
| I said everything I needed to say that’s when I ran out of endless |
it was not what I wanted to say and we went our separate ways together |
Native Son
| Atlanta, 1928/2008 | |
| The terraplane brought another crow for the sun crow for the moon melancholy flew out from those outside for the future sped on as small as my head |
morning in the rooster’s head crows for industrial advancement its rhythmic wheels for those left in the present while there’s an automobile now but you can’t ride in it |
| the children have always known this and they love it anyway | |
| some of us are more practical and last night I dreamed of Ivan leaking sugar-water father died and the carver took Eleanor I had the sparrows at my windowsill back and forth |
we miss our mule and his eyes Eleanor left when her monument had children and sometimes I ride back and forth with the ferryman |
| we talk of what people carry and the only song is the wide water | |
| a traveler comes and he asks on one foot with a stove and an ostrich plume in his hat his mule is a clever soul and the answer is passed |
how far can a pilgrim walk on his back I like to tell him he doesn’t hear from traveler to traveler |
| I heard that the fever had taken her and her children too | |
| accomplices were everywhere and the wood ducks and the beasts in the mustard their sloppy dog tongues and licked with stinky pleasures violins floating from the bakery but I was flummoxed and I let some children out of me |
until the quail took their places again fields brought back my expression scratchy and warm and I knew they weren’t real the clouds joined in and they grew fatter |
| do not curse me and I will give you the unsuspecting dogwood blossoms | |
| now yesterday’s song has gone into the distance back on itself like a snake I don’t know how I preferred to live with the pines |
hiking up its rabbits the road winds and turns but will arrive many have taken that road and learned the sticky stories |
| someday the task of finding me will ask that you look under the earth | |
| when it does I’ll leave a clue that the game is over I have gone any place you know through the falling leaves |
but don’t expect and don’t imagine that all my life I have been moving further and further apart |
Rich Ives has received grants and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Artist Trust, Seattle Arts Commission and the Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines for his work in poetry, fiction, editing, publishing, translation and photography. His writing has appeared in Verse, North American Review, Massachusetts Review, Northwest Review, Quarterly West, Iowa Review, Poetry Northwest, Virginia Quarterly Review, Fiction Daily and many more. He is the 2009 winner of the Francis Locke Memorial Poetry Award from Bitter Oleander. In 2011 he received a nomination for The Best of the Web and two nominations for both the Pushcart Prize and The Best of the Net. He is the 2012 winner of the Creative Nonfiction Prize from Thin Air magazine. The Spring 2011 Bitter Oleander contains a feature including an interview and 18 of his hybrid works. Email: ivesrich[at]yahoo.com
