Gabriel Gadfly's Blog, page 28

Floodwater

The rivers swelled that spring,

rose three feet an hour

until the front porch

looked out onto a sea

of muddy water.

There was nothing to do

but wait for the swell

to recede and wick back

down into the earth.

No way to reach town,

no supplies or news,

no power, so we scrounged

what we could

from the back of the pantry:

cans of white beans

and tinned meat

and a mason jar

full of last year’s

apricot preserves.

I lit a candle, and that night

we sat on the porch,

wrapped each other

in your grandmother’s

old hand stitched quilt

and ate those sticky

sweet gold preserves

of slices of crusty bread.

Listen to the water rushes by,

watch the candle flame flicker,

your mouth is sweet gold, too,

let the waters never drop.

Unsinkable

I was just a boy

when the dark Atlantic

swallowed the great ship down.

My father hurls me into the sea,

his voice in my ear screaming,

“Kick your feet, boy,

if you don’t want to drown!”

Hit the water

sledgehammer cold,

it crushes the air out of your lungs,

and the first frantic gulps

are sea and oxygen,

the smell of ice and black salt.

I am kicking my frozen feet

towards a frightful bobbing boat,

towards a ghost-faced woman

in a flowered hat and an officer

with a pistol in his hand.

I am pulled in,

I lie on my back, shiver and watch

as Titanic’s stern lifts up,

bronze propellers and all,

like the last farewell wave

of some dying sea goddess,

and then plunges down.

All is quiet.

The band has stopped,

and the only sound

is bodies in the water,

my father somewhere

among them.

Years later

I am an old man,

kicking at bedsheets,

my head full of the smell

of ice and starlight

and Death’s bony hand

gliding on the sea.

Back to Savannah

August, 1865

You trudge home,

finally, after months under

the sun and the dust,

shades darker, bronzed

and withered and caked

up to your knees in mud

and more.

Your sons have grown

into farmers while

you were gone.

They have tilled the fields

and sown the seeds,

and although you look

like you might fall over,

you wander out into

the rows of potatoes, kneel down

and pick up a handful of earth.

Only some of it washes off.

Much of it never will,

but you are home

and that enough.

Spice Shop

This spring afternoon,

the sun through the windows

warms old barn-beam shelves

and glass jars full of spices

with names like small poems:

pink peppercorn, red saffron,

turmeric and star anise,

and bulbs of blooming teas,

of jasmine and globe amaranth,

yellow osmanthus

ready to steep and unfurl.

The owner is writing

the spice of the month

on a chalkboard so old I think

it must have been salvaged from

some one-room schoolhouse

of a bygone era.

(tart sumac, cherry-dark,

measured out in little hills

on squares of brown paper,

if you’re wondering)

There is a sacred quiet here,

an honest stillness,

like a prayer you can taste

in the fragrant heat of

cinnamon and dried chiles,

in bold cumin and mustard,

in every tiny seed of fennel

and black sesame.

Conflict

I have never understood

why you abandon books.

You leave them hewn

half-open, peaked like

the homestead tents

of tiny lost settlers

trying to build a life

in strange lands:

carpet, coffee table,

the open wilderness

of the kitchen counter.

Sometimes I pick them up,

just to meet the character

you left nursing a beer

and a bloody wound

in a shady Boston bar,

the fright-eyed one

hiding under thorn bushes

from goblins and wolves,

the mother with hair

like sunset and her finger

on the trigger of a gun

and I have started

to notice a trend:

you put down stories

as soon as their central

conflict is revealed

and this explains

why you are not here now.

Mouthfuls

And Myself, Myself

I’m teaching myself
to love broken things.

Books with loose bindings
and misplaced pages.
Coffee cups with chipped
lips and snapped handles.

The rusted old tractor
in my grandfather’s yard
that hasn’t rumbled in years,
and the sparrow nest
in its belly full of eggshells
a tabby cat tore open.

A burnt patch of grass,
a pile of glass taken in
by a family of gravel.

An old red oak,
opened and weeviled,
that becomes a home
for new and varied life,
even if it cannot stand up
any longer.

Another Fellow Cult Member

The quality is less than perfect and this isn’t exactly a life changing story, but it’s my story and I told it.

Why Poetry Matters To Me

This one’s not a video, but it’s something just as good.

 

A little Doomsdays WIP and other news

and a gut full of sand —
hot grit, salt sharp
rasps the inside out of you

a morning
full of your mother’s looks.
She has a slaughterhouse
lamb’s eyes,
an orbit in yellow-blue.

I’m hard at work on the manuscript for Doomsdays, my third collection of poetry, so I thought I’d share a little of my progress from this week. The lines up there are from a not-yet-titled poem that will be included in the book.

If you’ve missed my earlier comments about Doomsdays (mostly on my Facebook page and Twitter), the book will be a collection of poems about grief and tragedy. It’s about the sort of “My God, this can’t be happening” events that change the course of your life in a sudden, painful moment — and it’s about recovering from those events and establishing a new normalcy, a new sense of okay.

The book doesn’t have a release date nailed down yet, but it should be published by 1889 Labs in late summer or fall of this year, if all goes according to plan. The book will include a handful of poems that are already published on this site, including Drink The Sea, but will mostly include new content. You can read a draft copy of another poem from the book, The Roots Down With You, at my friend Tim Gallen’s website: http://dailygallen.com/the-roots-down-with-you/

Other Happenings

Don’t forget the Big Poetry Giveaway happening this month. I’m giving away two poetry books, including a copy of my book Bone Fragments. Dozens of other poets and bloggers are giving away poetry this month, too. Check out this post for the details to enter your own chance to win.The Poetry Matters project is going strong — we’ve had seven video submissions so far, and I’m hoping to get in many more before the month is out. View the project landing page to check out the videos so far, and submit your own.There’s also a Poetry Matters Twitter chat scheduled for Thursday, April 18th, so mark your calendars. To participate, just use the hashtag #poetrymatters. For more about the chat, check out the events page.

Weekend Print Sale!
Autographed poem prints are on sale! Normally $5.99, prints are just $3.99 each all weekend. These prints look great framed, and you can request a print of any poem on the website or from one of my books.

Autographed Poem Print$5.99Add to cart