And here is Installment #2 of our National Poetry Month (NPM) event “Crossing the Country Line by Line,” starting with Mark Prudowsky of North Carolina. Cool note: We had TWO poems branch off from Karen Llagas’s “Pantoum,” and we’ll be sharing the second of those chains next week. So stay tuned to Facebook and Twitter!
Mark Prudowsky (North Carolina)
Crossing the Desert, No Destination
Don’t trouble yourself with thought,
no. Be the horizon and exhale
clear across the plain to the compass point
directly opposed; a coyote howl
rising slow and with purpose, bent
like a blue note in the dark pricked with stars;
a spire of sandstone, red with the sun rise;
the lizard on the hard-pan, among salt bush
and mesquite
quick and with purpose;
the donkey with its burdens—
flies round its head, snake at its hooves; or
if it is in your nature, worry
the driver behind the four wheels,
into the wind, towards the horizon
that always approaches and never arrives.
Karen Llagas (California)
Pantoum
I waited by Wal-Mart, among rows of lit houses.
Your face tired, expectant.
Friday, so we drove to Blockbuster, lingered
silent by old movies for a long time.
Your face tired, expectant—
It was clear I couldn’t have made you happy.
Silent by old movies for a long time,
is a line in a poem that keeps repeating.
It was clear I couldn’t have made you happy.
In the suburbs, in their formulaic simplicity,
is a line in a poem that keeps repeating.
Americais big enough for love, too big for tenderness.
In the suburbs, in their formulaic simplicity,
Slant of fluorescence and a bright requirement coming back.
Americais big enough for love, too big for tenderness.
We tried, but we couldn’t believe.
Slant of fluorescence and a bright requirement coming back.
The car door unstuck, catching us in tears.
We tried, but we couldn’t believe.
Everything I said I was saying to myself.
The car door unstuck, catching us in tears.
I waited by Wal-Mart, among rows of lit houses.
Everything I said I was saying to myself.
Friday, so we drove to Blockbuster, lingered.
Angela Narciso Torres (Illinois)
To Do
Call Adolfo about broken refrigerator gasket,
find model number first. Buy chicken-flavored
toothpaste for Lilli. Consult vet about lump
in her eyelid. Ask Jade if she can pick up Timmy from band.
Yoga class tonight. Write Ian’s letter for camp. Search
in basement for Bishop’s Collected Prose, read the one
about her mother getting fitted for a purple dress in Nova Scotia.
Buy folder with metal prongs for Matt’s book report. Schedule
the boys’ dental check-ups, mammogram for me. Thank Irene
for birthday present, choose hers—spring bulbs? mystery novel?
even though she writes, Please do not shop for me! There’s nothing
more welcome than your new work. Whereas you are young
and can always use things. Write poem about the boy with the faux-hawk
wearing good shoes on the train from Chicago, reading a Bible
from a zippered case. Note the elderly couple and their two-year-old
grandson, how the grandfather clutched the boy when the train
lurched, then picked him up as though lifting a brittle
Chinese urn from the mantle. When the boy wriggled
into his grandmother’s lap, how she, so unconcerned and vast,
kept her eyes on a paperback held open with one hand,
her other arm around the boy whose body draped over her chest
like a favorite sweater, his cheek pillowed by her shoulder
so he could look out the window. The grandfather watched the boy
with utter concentration, no—amazement—at the small face, smooth
as cream and lit as from within, watched him with the kind of awe
for the young that only intensifies as one grows older.
How we grow older. How I tracked the boy’s sleepy gaze
to the smokestacks, the skeletal trees, the towering church spires,
the leaning warehouses painted with signs he could
not yet read: Glass Block Factory, Art’s
Body Shop, Bright Metals Finishing.
Brandi Gentry (Oklahoma)
Dogwood Winter Glass
If, from this window, I
point out a moss, will you
remember a web?
I get cold, and yes,
too wet for walking with you
among Oklahoma’s exploding
Redbuds today, although
nothing’s frozen. Further rain
holds back its palm. It has left us
the clouds’ shadows like dark vines
across Cypressand Sassafras,
Gaura Lindhermeri, Fruitless Sweetgum,
Pin Oak, Creeping Euonymus.
What is it you want to see?
The apple blossoms like puffs of breath?
The cupped hands of the Azalea?
That’s all still out there
beside the bull calves.
For the moment, from
the house, you could just
tell me what you know of this
double-paned glass, all
about the working Labradors
flooding the heels of the sheep.
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