Emily is off to college tomorrow. As a parting gift, she gets from Dad a painting of the lake to remind her of our wonderful summers together, and a beat-up old book of mine that might help nip this tuition problem in the bud.
I’m very proud of daughter number one, who is already showing a little moxie by signing up to do some days with Habitat for Humanity in the hardscrabble inner city near her grassy campus before classes start.
Love,
Dad
Tellingly elegant,
Mingus and Ellington
Went to the well for their
Twilight hulloo.
Roach, on cacophony,
Rattled the Caravan’s
Sociochemical
Bougarabou
Max Roach January 10, 1924-August 16, 2007
___
The radio reports of bee demise
Are, frankly, troubling: The British Isles
Bereft of bees, unfertilized for miles.
The murmurings are numbered. No killers rise
From Mexico–no NAFTA-wide trifecta
For the monster-sized. That’s good, I guess,
But what about the honey bees that bless
The gold tomato flowers? No more nectar?
I’m moping at the silent garden gate.
But wait a minute, here’s a bugger preening
On a pepper leaf. And wings are forming
In that calyx. Here’s another gleaning,
Bobbing, buzzing. They exaggerate!
The media should stick to global warming!
…has published my poem Amity After the Fire in Volume IV, just out. Not only that, but the Shit Creek subzine II is running with Waziristan and an accompanying prose piece on driving to work on the Garden State Parkway where I wrote a poem called Waziristan.
Many of my poet friends are in with me. Tiel Aisha Ansari of Knocking From Inside is in both issues. It is a highly regarded (U.K.-based!) online publication and my first break.
I will be breaking in a few other places in the weeks ahead. Watch this space!
RM
Three mackerel look back at me
Forlorn, neglected, oh-so-slightly crazed,
And petrified against all atrophy
In knifed-in oils. If those eyes could see,
They’d see their nemesis. Amazed,
Three mackerel look back at me
The way they always do. “Philosophy
Be damned,” the fishes say, forever glazed
And petrified. “Against all atrophy
You thought to catch us back to life and free
Us to an endless stream of Saturdays.”
Three mackerel look back at me
Like albatrosses. “How’s the family?”
Neglected, I admit. The bastards phrased
That perfectly. Against all atrophy
I’ve scumbled at some artist’s legacy
Of living things, and look at what I’ve raised–
Three mackerel looking back at me,
A palimpsest in crusts, a fucking trophy.
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