People Observations

Closet Poets - Part iV

“Marcus”
By Matthew Kilbane 

    Laptop. Book.
Half-caffeinated in the breakfast nook,
I study Brecht’s remark
    to Benjamin, July 4th 1938:

“I’m not against the asocial, really—
I like my poets maudits, filthy,
    splenic as Baudelaire—
it’s the nonsocial I despair of.”

    And yeah. We feel that too.
I Google to learn
this same historical Monday
    saw Bill Withers born

in Slab Fork, WV,
bullseye of nonstop
    pop feeling
pulsing in centrifugal waves

that dilate down decades
    to launch you,
spring 2000, junior prom,
ecstatic to the barricades

    of a self so freshly
stitched, so raw, it barely needs
the firebomb
of song, when “Lean on Me”

    comes on, to rout the membrane
and spill you out
all over the linoleum floor.
    That shy sidling piano drops,

your classmates gasp, sigh, get close,
    get clasped, a choke of salmon
spawning together in the sparkling
currents of a half-lit disco ball

setting the airless gym
a-spin—some lost
    once beautiful, still
beneficent river nymph,

anointing the sweaty thrall.
    Meanwhile, Withers’ croon
reaches you muzzled,
sweetened by bathroom walls

where out of sight, alone,
    in the mirror you dumb-show
slow-dance in Samuel’s arms—

by the second chorus
shred to confetti and falling
    to kiss the mass 

of slick bodies shivering,
fettered together. Brecht never
    threw a brick and missed:
Marcus, it’s OK to be alone;

you know the words for yearning
as well as anyone;
even the smallest worlds
    have worlds inside them, turning.

Soo Yon
By Matthew Kilbane

    Zooks! The oak doors of New York’s
Frick flung open for me for free that Friday
her med school held its semester reception.
    Plus one, I waded the throng of MDs-to-be
with the eager ardor of Browning’s
Fra Lippo Lippi—I figured him thrilled, slipping
down bedsheets knotted to curtains
from his Medici studio-prison (a-painting saints and
    saints and saints again) to the street-wise
coquettes in frolic below, to the business
of the world.

            In fact it was the Frick’s
Lippi I most wanted to admire,
so while she chatted with expert pleasantry
about her first tracheotomy, I eked social graces
    from a plastic cup of free champagne
and gawked at his painting, an Annunciation scene
in two panels, Gabriel on the left
swept in the swirling red of a bowling ball
    and the right side shocked
by Mary’s deep stock blue.

                                            The plaque reported
the existence and absence of
    a centerpiece—it’s an altar triptych time
has turned reluctantly diptych—so we don’t know
what squatted between angel and mother,
    what by being lost holds
spirit and flesh so chastely apart now, a chaperone
hassling horny teenagers at the prom.

                                                               I hear Browning—
or is it Lippi?—laugh at this, but no,
    it’s her cackle, beautiful, rude
throb of the throat I was gathering as she
strode across the gallery with new friends to whom
I had to babble then: I know nothing
about painting, really; My business is song,
    song, song, as Browning wrote
in his “Youth and Art,” ditty of two bohemian kids
who ditched their squalid love, their famished sex
    on stolen wine and Byron lines delivered
up in gasps, to marry rich and ruin
every claim to art:

                 Nobody calls you a dunce, /
And people suppose me clever. / It could
but have happened once, / And we
    missed it, lost it forever.

“Charlotte”
By Matthew Kilbane 

Behold you, single in that softball field,
nothing doing at deep left, idly swiping at dandelions,
your glove on your mouth like a mask, that lost day’s last
spasm of sunlight pulsing the horizon behind you
meaningless except should it mean this:

the drafts of frank poems—
behind you, single in that softball field—
should dehisce with the hushed pop of a Pabst can
at your mouth like a mask, that lost day’s last
pledge to the dumb, routing luck running up the lead

your friends—intramural, drunk—couldn’t care less about:
they’re sweating out a franker poem
to make this broiling dusk late spring semester
dehisce with the hushed pop of a Pabst can
to whatever it is these poems are begging

the people we loved to say.
Your intramural team of friends is careless of the fact
they are sudden objects of a wild nostalgia
for one more broiling dusk late spring semester—
I’ve mistaken it often for regret, this longing for what is

still meaningless except should it mean this:
a pledge to dumb luck, a sweet lead on the past,
whatever it is the poems are begging for—
call it regret and you mislay it, that longing

“From a Kitchen in Time”
By Sevali Hukku

Once when I was a little boy
Long ago, not more than 10 or 11,
I had an argument with my mother.
It was something trivial and I got angry.
In a fit of rage I locked her in the kitchen
While she cooked the afternoon meal
Along with my sister and grandmother.
Sure of myself,
I peeped in through the garden window.
What I saw
Stayed with me a long time.
While my mother cooked some dal,
My sister prepared the raita,
And my grandmother sat on a chair
Slicing green cucumbers and carrots.
They worked in harmony,
Seamlessly together,
Laughing, singing and gossiping,
Passing around cups of tea
And a small plate of bakery biscuits.
They did not realise that they were locked in
As they continued
To slice, chop and stir.
The tune of an old song floated from the radio.
The women chimed in
All at once, the closed kitchen
Turned into an immobile splinter in time
When the knives, ladles, and spoons
Continued to work
While the women sang in one pitch, all together,
Unknown to the world beyond.
I realised, I was the one locked out.

“My Poet Is He Who”
By Justin Lerner

My poet is he who sees you walk
Down the city street in unfamiliar clothes,
With a 22nd-century beard decked out in
Ornamentary stencils, and remembers
You for when he is alone, surrounded
By 150 moment-makers in Bryant Park,
And pulls out his pad to write his own moment,
Your own moment, amidst the history being
Made next to the tower of letters.

My poet is he who wants to be part of that history,
Knowing this isn’t something to want; rather,
It is something to make happen. Yet, he doesn’t care.
He writes despite your rules because he knows there are none.
And as his head makes a panoramic photograph
Of the one holding a child’s hand,
Holding a lover’s hand,
Holding a bag with a big red sign of gratitude,
He writes with a grin, eager to remember you.

“So Much Time”
By Annette M. Magid

So much time now that my appointments
are gone. So much time to do exactly
what I would like to do. So many un-
finished projects left in my sewing room
and now I have to time to complete
them. So many books I purchased over
the years but had no time to read them
and now I have the time to read them.
So many recipes I found online or got
from family and friends over the years.
Delicious ingredients that were easy to
locate while browsing through Trader
Joe’s or Wegmans or Tops, but I had no
time to prepare them. No time to find,
measure ingredients, mix, pour, bake,
let alone find the time to eat my creation.
But with so much time, there seems to be
No time. My schedule is lost. My focus
Is altered. My days drift by with nothing
To show for the block of hours and days
That have marched by since March.

“In The Long Island Sound with My Father”
By Carmela Delia Lanza

I remember holding on to my father’s bumpy, cold neck while he walked farther and farther out into the dark animal’s belly. We were past the point where the waves licked my legs. “Come on, I’ll take you far out,” he said. That was not what he usually said. “Be careful,” my mother’s voice sang out from the blanket. “There are rocks and animals that will bite.” That was what he usually said, agreeing with my mother about animals biting and strangers taking a rock

and bashing you on the head. He found my grandfather like that, on the ground,

bleeding, someone had bashed him on the head.

But that day, he was not afraid of the animals that might bite, “I saw those animals when I came to this country,” my mother’s voice sang out again,

her black bathing-suit, always looked new because it never touched the ocean water. She would only stand at the edge of water and sand and stare out at the waves with a frown, blaming that water for taking her to this place. “Those animals are out there, somewhere,” she said reminding me of what could happen: a child strangled by an extension cord, a brother dies from influenza, an uncle falls from a donkey, a husband is buried alive when a mine caves in, a wife dies of breast cancer. I started to slip and my father told me to “hold on.” I could see the seaweed underneath, taller than me. It started to wrap around my legs, whispering a name of someone we had forgotten, someone we had lost . . .

“It’s me . . . it’s me.”