Author: Wayne L. Miller

Red Wheelbarrow Poets
Poem of the Week 9/27/2016

Mark Fogarty

Waiting to Cross the Water near the San Juan Islands

At Port Townshend, Washington,
I saw the best sunset there ever was.
Fire red, rippled by clouds
That made the reds dance like northern lights.

Now I’m ready to die.

But the skin doctor has taken a divot
From my hand, and I’d like to see it heal.
So, maybe not just yet.

There was time, waiting for the ferry,
To eat a meal by the waterside,
Scan the margins of the bay for riprap.

Georgia went ahead
To see about the car. We’d driven
Around the whole peninsula,
Seen the rain clouds in the rain forest,
Dipped a toe into the Pacific like Lewis and Clark.

I wish I’d valued her as much as she deserved.

There was time to see the sunset
Amid the riprap of bouncing thoughts
As we waited, becalmed, in the line of cars.

The San Juan Islands, bruited as
The loveliest on earth,
Do not start there, but they’re not far.

Georgia was killed by a drunk driver,
Some riffraff who walked away untouched.
I never think anyone will die.

If you take a divot from the land,
You must replace it. That’s the rule.

So I’d like to return to the bay,
Add a stone or two
To buttress the wall that holds back the sea.

Most times the most beautiful islands on earth
Are right where you are.

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Red Wheelbarrow Poets
Poem of the Week 9/14/2016

Janet Kolstein

Pound of Poems

I wish the piano
could gun the engine
under the hood,
and the choir could
raise the roof on
a fortress of words.

I wish the drums
could pound out
a pound of poems
without spilling
a drop of blood.

Let the theremin
quiver in my hands,
shaping a heart
with a dagger
written in it.

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Red Wheelbarrow Poets
Poem of the Week 8/31/2016

Mark Fogarty

Thin Blooded

I don’t know if I’m thin skinned or not
But there isn’t any doubt I’m thin blooded.
In the hospital once the CNA roused me
As I was lying in a puddle of blood.
I’d slept on the IV works
And enough blood had started out
I thought someone had stabbed me,
Or put a horse’s head in my narrow bed.

The thin blood keeps the clots in place
So they don’t break away like Baltic republics
And steer for your heart, brain or lungs.
I netted two out of three, and it wasn’t good.

No razors on me, I tell the barber.
Be careful if you floss your teeth.
That blood bubble on your hand, beware.

I need to be more thick skinned,
If just to keep the allotted blood in.

Here’s my song on the internet:
I’m thin blooded, check it and see
I’ve got a fever of a hundred and three.

I’ve had a fever every day for three months
As my body wrestles down the invaders.
It’s nothing to sing about, really.

In narrow sleep I dream of Lara, and Zhivago,
Writing poetry with the wolves at the door,
The commies not far behind.
The wolf came to my door, growled a couple of times,
And settled for a bowl of blood.

My God, says the father.
They’ve killed the Czar and his family.
I think of the Czarevich, who bled
At every fall, and his sexy madman monk,
Whose blood was so thick they had to poison,
Shoot and drown him. Son, it doesn’t do
To be thinblooded in this world,
Where night brings the night horses,
The bloody sheets, the empty wells.

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Red Wheelbarrow Poets
Poem of the Week 8/17/2016

Arthur Russell

Summer Solstice, 1974

On West 36th Street,
in the strange, back apartment
over the wholesale button shop
you took me home to,
and pissed with the bathroom door open,
and returned to bed when we
should have been dressing to go,
the dirty window blurred
the crazy view up the air shaft
to the top of the Empire State Building,
while the radio insisted
that its love was like a ship on the ocean,
and my cheek lay on your thigh.

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Red Wheelbarrow Poets
Poem of the Week 8/10/2016

Janet Kolstein

Zarafa

In captivity, she sailed down the Nile
far, far away from her home
and across the Mediterranean Sea,
Africa behind her, Marseille ahead,
the first giraffe ever seen in France.

A sight of wonder and delight
the moment her hooves touched land,
she walked to Paris to be
another jeune fille
in the king’s menagerie
in the Jardin des Plantes.

A star, an oddity, an obsession,
alone in her sphere,
she would live out her life
in solitude
among the hundreds of thousands
who came to stare
and buy wares with her likeness.

Was there a man, woman, or child
who pitied her plight,
looked into her unguarded gaze and wondered
if giraffes can dream of herds on savannas
and other long necks to nibble
and twine?

(A gift from Muhammed Ali Pasha to King Charles X, Zarafa (“lovely one”) landed in Marseille on October 1826 and inspired “giraffemania” until becoming passe. She died in 1845.)

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