THE POETRY CHALLENGE
Who writes THE BEST POETRY
in America today?
(c) copyright 2007, David B. Axelrod
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THE POETRY CHALLENGE Who writes THE BEST POETRY in America today?
(c) copyright 2007, David B. Axelrod |
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A MEETING WITH DAVID B. AXELROD AND GNAZINO RUSSO
There is a single heron, tilts in the night waters a foot poised an eye for silver to flash down - a patient fisher after supper; teaches me that balance counts as much as speed, grace an equal for any force. from it I learn to swallow life whole and down the gullet.
I. The deer startled, headlighted at the roadside: I remember Jackknife, his wife hugging him on their super black Harley outside North Hadleyville. Nearly midnight the coroner guessed when the full buck leaped from the roadside impaled on the handlebars. II. A heavy rain: I am riding full-throttle down the highway when the road ahead comes alive with small white flashing frogs, jumping unsyncopated: hundreds and unavoidable--plowed through and I swear I hear their rubber skins popping beneath the wheels. Tommy, my friend, touring England with his new wife out on a fling turned a corner in the countryside head on into coma. IV. Mr. Katz, surviving twenty years pogroms, fifteen days a crossing, sixty years a cobbler, at 80 years old he met a fender of a Mustang in Miami Beach. V. I tuck the seatbelt around, a harness, a way to hang onto life; but the reins are loosed behind me. On impact, where do we go?
One man burst his liver with a bottle, the alcohol fine slivers rushing through the blood. He bleeds until it kills him, colored yellow for the wake, a bit of rouge for emphasis. He is still 40 when they bury him.
brain moves in. Somewhere, she thinks, she is pregnant, cells growing in her mind in spherical, think-layered zygote, pulsing with life, displacing her vision (it blurs and she is crying); making her left arm numb (her fingers clutch and release the yellow cotton nightgown). She is concerned about her hair, a glossy black; it will fall out from radiation. The coffin closed, they save themselves a wig. She was a comely 38.
he pisses; congestive--his kidneys lazy and his heart--a catheter to drain him; a surprise for the nurses when he gets it up as they adjust him. A character he is and old enough you'd think but never satisfied. He dies in his sleep with a smile, his fingers on his peep.
What is all this clockwork ticking in our bodies stuffed like pipe bombs with crude electric fuses? The alarm is set, a ring that wakes and kills us. We live however many years just waiting to explode.
Ù A MOMENT IN HISTORY, OR THERE'LL ALWAYS BE ANOTHER POSITION Each day suburbing home I hear the news a stew of history stirred by lugubrious announcers juxtaposing global occurrences like clockwork with the same commercial: Cousin Brucey dialing up the dreams of every housewife that she may one day be called. rrrr rrr “Hello?” (the poet reads, falsetto) “Mrs. Myra Murdock of Shawnee, Oklahoma? Cousin Brucey here to ask you if you can sing THE CAMPBELL SOUP JINGLE?” “Oh yes, yes, I've waited all my life to... mmmmm mmmmm Good.. etc.” (The poet encourages the audience to join in for several choruses.) And at that moment, precisely, the news has said the Air Force will launch - for the first time ever, from beneath the aircraft belly, and for two billion dollars, an ICBM. Just as Mrs. Murdock hits her high, at 40,000 feet the aircraft bomber bursting through the clouds, the silver tube shoots its load, a white plume vaulting from its oxygenated rockets! (The poet releases several crepe paper streamers he has concealed.)
And the soldiers, always somewhere down below embattled, the soldiers witnessing these feats - a cloud of noodles drifting down to drape their hills - run screaming noodles, noodles, slipping, fast as they can in joy and terror - the ultimate weapon ever tested, Intercontinental Can - surrender. (the poet pauses, having worked to a crescendo) And Mrs. Myra Murdock, softly mmm-ing how good it is. Her vision monumental; her reward apparent - for this and moments like it they will ship you a free box.
We descend at down the bluff, ominous in ½ moonlight to black Sound water. You doff your pants—a flicker of white butt—launch in fearless enough to pull me, too. Amazed—bioluminescence—green sparks alive in eddies off our bodies, flecks off our fingers with every stroke. We pat ourselves like babies, dive to see our limbs irradiant. Exploding to the surface in streams of light, we stroke toward each other slowly, drawn together
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