FEATURED POEM 1
— Doolin Rook
It landed brash, still young,
on the Burren limestone
by the boat to Inisheer;
its beady dark look out of the rocks
and wind and shear of the place.
But that dead-eye stare, she thought,
under the rook's black hood,
a bit murderous, was it not,
in her camera’s face on it,
as she took the shot?
But that rogue's-gallery eye,
hung in a gallery far away,
caught another appraising eye
and spoke to that woman infallibly
of tenderness and the great Irish hunger,
too late to be fed on the spot,
but bought and taken home to be gazed upon;
a shame that or perhaps not,
if only a wayward thought like that could sing
and famine everywhere had such wings.
— <>—
FEATURED POEM 2
— Blast Silhouettes (from Paradise Is Orange)
Respond to the line “The sky has an opening.” by Mark Strand
in “A Piece of the Storm.” -- Robert Wrigley
1
At midnight on the perimeter,
when he thinks no one’s looking,
he pats a warhead, “easy there,”
touches its sleek sides, HAWK,
centurion of the skies,
then pats each one down the line.
Involuntary act, “conduct unbecoming”
an officer in this man’s army;
a voice in his head, echoed by
a chattering down slope, mockery
beyond the barbed wire --
slicky boys looking to breach again.
2
Off into the night
from across the Yellow Sea,
green blips, Chinese, on his radar screen,
blip-blipping south and east
and massing into solid green
along the 700-mile fail safe line.
And the dark mountains to his north
pocked like terrible acne,
those silent ferocious deaths.
And the silence of the blast silhouettes,
on the Aioi bridge at Ground Zero,
where he stood a week ago
looking into a dirty haze
above Hiroshima,
for what? Little Boy descending?
The skies splitting open above him?
Or seen in his upward gaze
at the last instant, there!
Boy ascending! White thing
flying back to bay intact,
into Mama Enola Gay, “silver
airplane with a white long tail”
in that beautiful blue sky before the drop.
Fly away Boy with your ungodly shock,
instant evaporation of blood in their brains
before they felt the great wind,
saw the clouds of ash
above their radiated city,
became its charred remains,
its shadows at his feet.
So he stands, ridiculous pilgrim,
turning back the clock
at the epicenter of his thought,
in a firestorm of lunacy,
not all his, while Japanese
rush by him on their way to work.
3
Tonight in South Korea,
Code Red, October 1962,
the world again is nuclear.
Skies open at dawn or sooner.
Somewhere above somewhere
it will be faultlessly blue.
When console bands swarm
with green blips incoming,
who else will give the warning?
Wherever your hands are then,
on duty, at prayer, or at loose ends,
make a sign to someone you love.
He’s been on site a week
with nothing much to prove.
Stay awake, don’t malinger.
So he pats the warheads down the line,
flips the boys the pilgrim sign
with a middle finger.
4
From their black pitch below
the payload in the launch zone
the slicky boys appear.
It’s not his aim they fear,
nor his useless sidearm,
as they approach the wire.
“Agi jung-wi!” they taunt,
“agi jung-wi!”
“아기 중위!”
“Baby lieutenant, baby lieutenant,
where are your war dogs?
Show us your teeth!
—<>—
Notes
These events took place during a tour of duty with the U.S. Army Air Defense in South Korea around the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, October 1962. Composed in verse in 2015.
Slicky boys are local scavengers. War dogs, the German shepherd guard dogs, were usually on leash patrol on site and the only effective deterrent to the slicky boys.
“Silver airplane …” words of Shigeko Sasamori, a resident of Hiroshima who was 13 years old when she survived the first nuclear weapon dropped on a city. Cited in “7 Things You Learn Surviving a Nuclear Blast,” interview by Robert Evans, Cracked, October 5, 2014.
FEATURED POEM 3
— Savannah Noir (from Goodbye Jersey Mud)
1
Savannah, where you're asked,
if asked at all, not where
you're from or what you do,
as up north we do or think,
but directly what you drink.
On icy River Street I present
a sour belly to the saucy
mixologist; under her head rag
a wink, "Just call me Irma,"
invoking the visitor in September
who turned River Street
into more Savannah River than street,
blew ghosts out of falling trees,
and whose proxy at this bar swears to me
nothing less than a Moscow Mule
will do; a "shoe-thumping" shot
of the house vodka with ginger beer and lime.
And only for a blink do I think
Irma might be having me on
with a cold war bit long before her time
about a shoe-thumping head of state
who knew how to play the press
and finally when to blink. But Irma,
who looks across her bar into many futures,
had something else in mind
besides my gastro-intestinal relief
or loosening these old knees
to try a Georgia two step to the street,
but instead to test each icy step
with a firm heel to gauge the slip.
The mule set down, not a wink,
she holds my eye. "Just this one.
Two or more and that river
might rise right to your stool.
So tonight, you two, watch your step."
2
And she was right -- about the medicinal effects
of a single mule and the slippery steps
awaiting tenderfeet afoot on empty River Street's
unseasonable black ice, housing the venerable
cobbles of the waterfront district,
lumpy underfoot and slickest
in the gaslight shadows,
which assured a dance of sorts
between the gaslights and upslope;
a slow-motion stomp, hesitant
with every step and shuffle,
like Tim Conway's "oldest man"
played by an older couple
gripping each other, cobble by cobble,
beyond the final gaslight circle,
then up an alley passage way,
dreading the slip and stutter step,
slick shoe slide or buck n' tip
of a stumble, fall or tumble
in this Olympics-level ice routine,
unheralded in the dark.
Against all odds luck held;
no cantilevers, camel spins,
death spirals or points for style,
as we teetered higher to the base
of two flights of high stone steps
by the foundation of the Cotton Exchange,
leading steeply upward to our car, and there,
as if groping along a dungeon stair,
unsteady on the iron railing,
slipping on foundation stone,
we reached the second flight,
to see on our periphery
deep in the alley to our right
a misbegotten creature of the night
hunched against a wall and staring.
"There’s a man down there," I said.
"Who says that's a man?" said she,
as we scrambled out of there.
-<>-