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 DREAM OF FEET A Short Course on the Holocaust Harry Houdini on His 100th Birthday Once in a While a Protest Poem
Ù A SHORT COURSE ON THE HOLOCAUST You see, my dear readers, I hesitate to write this down and will only do it if you promise to believe me. I was reading poems until late one winter afternoon, in the Egyptian Room of the Brooklyn Museum, and when I finished a woman I'd been warned of greeted me with a banal rhyme about poetry itself and thanked me cockeyed for my reading. All the while she talked, we stood before the massive sarcophagus of an ancient Pharaoh; behind it, because it was sunset a Hasidic Jew stood dovening facing the wall, bent and unbent in prayer, his black hat bobbing, his peyas curled to his cheeks. Believe me, life is strange, and we are always in danger. It's a wonder with all this madness who survives!
Feet walked into the room last night saying, "Whachadoin' with them fingers, Man? Hug me, Honey. Hold me. Lick your tongue between my toes." "Feet," I says, "Feet ain't my thing," I says it gravely- voiced like crushed rock from driveways crinked between your fingers when you take a fist full, "I'm all feeling from the knuckles down. It's touch, Baby, prints on things that turns me on. Feet, you don't get half the action fingers do." Then Feet kicks up a storm, "Upon my soul, you don't know half nor whole 'bout anything. You ever hear a person say 'put your best hand forward' or 'get your two hands firmly on the ground'? Just walk around. You'll see, outdoing me is no mean feat." Well, I give in on any argument, you know--don't like to step on anybody's toes. So I reach down to touch them, real friendly and I hear, "Don't do it! Don't you lay a hand on me. Kiss me quick or not at all. Love me or you'll never hear another foot fall." Now feet are ok from a distance but lips on blue-veined, bony feet with hairy tops and rough-skinned bottoms--no way I'm going to kiss feet. And I told them so. Out they walked, like I was wrong. Not a word of refutation. Just like theirs was the only stand a guy could take. I tell you, a guy's got to believe he can carry on debate and dialogue without putting his foot in his mouth. But out they went--gone, made tracks, scampered away like I was a fungus in a locker room. Now, I'm not asking you for sympathy, but HELP! Do some footwork, I tell you. Ask them to come back. I haven't had my head tacked down since those feet tripped out on me. See, my hands are trembling. I'll sign anything. Id walk a mile just for a couple feet!
(A The ladies do their hair silver gray to match their foxes hung out on cooler evenings to nip their sagging breasts- demonic children-and make up like red- cheeked trappers. On a concrete pavilion clarinets, accordions, percussion of hips persuaded by loneliness to shuckle- they take their prey to muscle out some dance space. Married again, should they be so lucky, or sharing an efficiency, the elimination dance goes on to the tempo of blood pressures, diabetes, a choleria! Dusting his collar, she is his keeper. Squeezing her knee, he is a suitable replacement. Once, long ago, this would have been a shandeh. Now, sex or no, she's glad he won't let go. (Ratner's was a famous michediker restaurant on When I retire I'll work at Ratner's shuffling, grumpy through the aisles a milchediker existence and dish out rolls like favors to the crowds. I'll time my mannerisms perfectly turning away just as they try to order or clear my throat with relish as they are speaking. Bull-necked, swollen-faced, slumped-shouldered I'll do an ancient pirouette into the kitchen, bring back a quest of tea in a glass, and for me a break with a boiled potato, one crumb left dangling to invite my customers. Ù HARRY HOUDINI ON HIS 100TH BIRTHDAY Locked in your trunk naked, trussed up in your left nostril a locksmith's pin freedom a sneeze away. Tossed in the river chained in a straight jacket you curl up beneath the icy crust cut your way out with a blade kept in your mouth but it is cold enough to turn vodka into syrup. You would have died except for your pride. Now, in the grass at your gravesite you rise into the sunshine laughing. In the air you fume at us for not seeing your escape. At a time when everything is poetry, even the student sloughing his long hair over the men's room blower, which becomes a metaphor, I rush toward classes of unbudging faces to pretend to teach: they breath in unison in time to the click-clock, a chorus of Friday wishes. I live them through their befogged eyes, the local bar, nickel beer, bottles breaking, smoke like warfare, music like cannon, the near-freezing night, their dates' breath steaming, soon their thighs. Out of class I stare into the eyes of other faculty members, look for verses, see only chapters of textbooks, Saturdays spent grading papers in front of football on the tube. But the poetry is electric in the student's frying hair. In the dark, warm drizzle standing outside the house I duck from lights of periodic cars to keep from being seen, and watch the details clear within as if magnified by window glass. You drink your coffee, pull your lip (a habit I can't stand). I watch you clear the table, stare dumbly at the window, unaware, then climb the stairs unfastening your slacks as you disappear, legs graduating from my sight. Lights define the upstairs bedroom you undressing, naked, more erotic than I know you as my wife. The voyeur hides in shadows squinting through the fog. Fifty feet beyond the house where I've escaped you, as the lights are extinguished I wonder who you really are. The day your husband dropped like a pigeon, arms aflutter, to the ground, old age attacked you like a rapist. Using muscles you'd forgotten you caught him, falling as he dragged you down. Dazed under his dead weight you watched his eyes glaze and lost your breath screaming for help, but he wasn't dead- a dress rehearsal for your sake that let you practice make-up: your hair grayer within days, tension wrinkling your cheeks, lines drawn toward your eyes, and a limp, a ligament pulled in the fall, Your husband recovered from a simple faint, beats his chest, feels better, eating with relish to cure a sugar complaint, but life for you has lost its sweetness. You make him sell the house, simplify! Move
to As if death could take a holiday. (For Jessica.) Smell my fingers my daughter says and thrusts them at my nose. I back dive off my chair as if the air were poisoned. Where have they been those sweaty things with six years of sticky places scenting their past? She laughs and chases me around the room with germicidal weapons, insists on my surrender. Caught, I find a pine cone in her fist. She tells me it is spring and that means perfume. (1961) The snow is my time piece. It counts my hours in inches.
(For Marvin, who has a profession that made him a 1/4 million in his first year.) 1. The Hack He carries a yellow chain saw and chops off limbs counting lifetimes by rings on swollen fingers. 2. To Become a Surgeon Tie a knot inside a tiny box, dexterous and clever. Probe the rivers flowing through the body with fingers like alligator clips. Find the femur and the vena cava in a cadaver without getting sick. 3. Fee Splitting He cut for what it was worth. A peek at the empty aisle a twist to tuck my shirt in and a box of flash bulbs down my pants. All the camera sees as I pass is me scratching my lumps to adjust the contraband. No store fuzz, fat-faced and sweaty-palmed to grab me. Passing the register I pay for paperclips, mug at parabolic mirrors, see store eyes staring back at my flushed face. I take my change, run mentally away, walk slowly through automatic doors to feel a light that burns as if it were the sun-a burst of freedom. She's driving an MG midget tiny car-metallic blue, double pipes and above her chromed bumper: SAILORS HAVE MORE FUN. She's blond and stylish from behind, a leather jacket, and when she turns off my fantasies it's at La Bonne Vie Apartments. Now I'm parked on the road- side in front of the 6th Precinct Police Station writing this poem just as it occurred, wondering if a cop will ask me what I'm doing; feeling the subtle push of bodies with the wind of every passing car. Ù ONCE IN A WHILE A PROTEST POEM Over and over again the papers print the dried out tit of an African woman holding her starving child. Over and over, cropping it each time to one prominent, withered tit, the feeble infant face. Over and over to toughen us, teach us to ignore the foam turned dusty powder on the infant's lips, the mother's sunken face (is cropped) and filthy dress. The tit remains; the tit held out for everyone to see, reminding us only that we are not so hungry ogling the tit, admiring it and in our living rooms, making it a symbol of starving millions; our sympathy as real as silicone. Once there was a girl who loved rubbing: forehead on cold windows, fingers through shag rugs, feet across hot sand, tongue over salty pretzel's crystals. She wanted contact, rubbing her cheeks on velvet pillows and when no one looked, she leaned to press them on bold formica tabletops. As she grew, she rubbed her knees against the legs of tables, her bottom, bare, against hard, slippery chairs and once herself against the bathtub. She rubbed everything in life, a lonely woman, until her fingers stopped asking questions. Now, her body arches, spins-a golden thumb and finger, grasping at stars, rubbing the universe to keep it warm.
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