Connie Stadler
Asturias
… but in the tangle
of those hours
that evening of the serpent
when my eyes were bleeding
when you covered my bed with
wheat and silver
'Asturias' is a tribute to the juxtaposition of love and death in the work of Neruda.
Screams
Breath
pause
Breath
Breath
pause
Breath
Breath pause brea…
No.
I remember I was eight years old
on Tremont Avenue. Eight years old …
A car had swerved
and there, at what seemed the epicenter of the world
were two halves of a dog.
One strewn.
One screaming.
There are three kinds of screams.
One fears death.
One begs it.
One begs murder.
This dog was pleading for murder.
His.
Grabbing a trash can cover
frothing wild agon, I sought to oblige him.
I screamed
Murder.
This day
A half century beyond
the fear that I would ever hear that again
Breath
pause
Breath
pause
Breath
Scream.
Clawing for breath
I grabbed air; seized the man.
Seized the man to tell
the man to tell me
how the dog
came
back
I screamed.
No.
It was a mother.
It was a childless mother.
It was a childless mother
carrying the invisible shroud of her dead child
to scream before God
to scream
Murder.
A car had swerved
A car had swerved
in the instant pulse of having
Just
One
More …
he took her daughter.
Scream.
The dog came back.
Scream.
Taking her daughter
Eighteen years old …
Taking two souls --
One strewn.
One screaming.
'Screams' takes absolute fear and dissects it into physical sensation
Elizabeth
Bleeding bitch
Whelp of unconscionable strumpet
Sorocidal monstrosity
Mother to none
Regina
Gloriana
I look to rivulet damnation
My breathing thighs scream wanton inadequacy
And so
Lady
I look to you
Good Queen Bess
Burgley and his brethren
Dampened your hemline
Of Gilded Time
The Armada has returned
Dudley has proved impotent
So say our metaphors
And conceits
Cry the Common Prayer Book
In smallpoxed beauty
Video et Taceo
There are many Nine Years Wars
In centuries anon
Your unacknowledged descendants
Fresh daughters of the illegitimate whore
Will curse and bless you
Befitting all our plangent tragedies.
'Elizabeth' twists the snappishness of Elizabeth's furor and becomes a tirade against abuse to women.
Assignation
Back lit from the moonlight
surrounding his lips
Catherine stood, disconcerted
Apologetic
That her eyes were not sienna
brown
That no Pre-Raphaelite tendrils
fell upon a nonexistent breastplate
of sepia satin
That her cheek was not crème caramel
softness
That her bronze décolleté was not a ravine for the succor
Of amative gods
That each nuanced phrase of his sonnet
Could not be matched in
A complement of perfect
pearl
flesh
That, rather, she surreptiously stood
In that midnight garden
concussed and forlorn
That she was
Assignation -- Another variant on the irony of love.
Depression
Where young dew should be swirling
With comfortable routine, and that faint, spry knowing, kissing the hem of hope,
that "today" is a palette to embellish a spry child.
I open my eyes to a wash of grey barren where the morning
droplets are a wilting wet invasiveness. And the euphoria in a small pup's eyes,
passes through this stillness, as if my core were as transparent,
as any spectral hovering.
In a single laugh
a breath of real
a wave from an anonymous car
I measure the increments of unlived life,
And pray tomorrow's droplets
Will be soft
new
cool.
'Depression' is vision of the beautiful world through pained life.
Aperitif
the flambeaux lit
jester's penumbra
bent against granite --
carnadine
fingers
slide
on
thick
walls
trace
circles
in
nitre …
s
t
e
p
night winds
pause
dog
licks
spittle
threads of darkness
s
t
e
p
now
s
t
e
p
now
t
i
l
t
…
shards
in
wet mortar.
'Aperitif' is a commentary on "occupying" the thin air of Poe's Fortunato.
The Mad Watcher's Stance
I heard them, the Dublin seals,
near McCafferty's island, far in the swells, the bark was fierce, a wild
slattern cry, a whelp sob, though the teat was full, acushla
all came rushing in, all ~
that last man over the side of Hyperion's skiff, the great, vast crumbling ancient dominions,
the new made dust-swollen myths torn at the root bark,
the crushed fathers under the carrion thumb,
all came rushing in and there they were in the congregated Great Salt Sea,
at the very thigh of the Risen Christ on that chill Monday morn,
all, all crying with the breath and the West wind, the she fog,
the cloak of wizened dew, the heathen storm in the daemon sky,
the ringing calves silencing the black-tongued bells,
all come together in the prayer psalm, laid before us all,
purposeful as death
all, all in the wait of the once to come
O sweet Morragan herself felt the coursing blood of the land, the lamb stood high above the glen vale
braying the mongrel joy and such purer grief,
peering through the grey-green mist, complement high,
the full tuatha-de-dannan stood that day, tall, high,
high as the heather bright hither-blown meadow,
kiss the light, such as it was …
… so the frost green hills ranged far that day far, far past
the grasp of the heart
and in that momentous still
no gold tithings strewn
no pipe singing to the weeping gulf,
no squadron passed the unknelt child
no calamitous bodhran to be heard,
no kettledrum found
to sound that last tattoo
so there she stood in the baneful clock-tower
with frock of arms, garlands teeming with bog-rosemary and spring squill,
fair Maud, good Maud spake the names lowly:
Connolly, Pearse, MacDonough, MacBride
and, o my torrent blood
a thousand million were the fatherless tears, as She, a nation born,
rose to the full of Her fearsome grace, bedding the cancerous cataract,
preening the golden poppies, lifting the man-kind angels
tearing the blue-green circumferenced hide and flesh unto ghost
in the last rays of the sudden sun:
hold fair the little Sabbath
fear not the crow black flag
conjure the maggot in the stool
stand past the semblanced grave
hold fast the Mad Watcher's stance
'The Mad Watcher's Stance' -- Running along Thomas' side, a story is told.
The Lark
A breath of blue
ripples
the
eiderdown
in sugar-
ed
molten
pathways
scented by lantana
and
dried, warm
blood.
'The Lark' -- How beauty and agony can be held between two hands.
Lamentation, Keeper of the House
Black enamel marks
a tawdry indiscretion.
Broil is not bake
in any clamored tongue.
These sullen pans,
the mark of char,
accosts my Wednesday reveries
of domestic accountability.
A denuded shopping cart
steals between these gloating aisles
stripping these coupons
of measured worth,
indicting my sorrows
to brethren lives.
'Lamentation, Keeper of the House' --- The nobility of the common; the common nobility.
Stille Nacht
In those final hours
nacht
I remembered
There were crystals
… Black stars
mein schwester
As the boxes slid open
There were crystals
Reflections off a visor
Salted ice
A gloved finger
Steam and grey wool
Grey upon grey
men
… Walk
der atem
Smoke, crystal
steam
from boxcars
from chambers
der schrei
Moving chambers
Her heart
ka-tzenik
fog
'Stille Nacht' -- how to dissect every sensation; the anatomy of terror
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