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For this, the penultimate day of Poetry Month, we offer you a grand finale before the last farewell, a trio of unique voices that spark like summer fireworks: Amy Clampitt, May Swenson, and Sandra Cisneros. Scroll down and enjoy! Also, remember that today is Friday, the day for you to vote for the Poem-of-the-Week on the Knopf Poetry Forum. See below for further instructions. ***************************************
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Two from THE COLLECTED POEMS OF AMY CLAMPITT: The Waterfall Orb-weaver shivering among the filaments: how many fibers generated from within transect the air? How many hirsute, sightless gropings anchor these redwood trees, suffuse the flowery traceries of the oxalis? The veining in this hand, these eyeballs, the circuitous and scintillating leap within the brain— the synapse, the waterfall, the black- thread mane of fern beside it—all, all suspend, here: everywhere, existences hang by a hair. *** Portola Valley A dense ravine, no inch of which was level until some architect niched in this shimmer of partition, fishpond and flowerbed, these fording- stones' unwalled steep staircase down to where (speak softly) you take off your shoes, step onto guest-house tatami matting, learn to be Japanese. There will be red wine, artichokes, and California politics for dinner; a mocking- bird may whisper, a frog rasp and go kerplunk, the shifting inlay of goldfish in the court- yard floor add to your vertigo; and deer look in, the velvet thrust of pansy faces and vast violet petal ears, inquiring, stun you without a blow ****************** One from IN OTHER WORDS by May Swenson: Strawberrying My hands are murder-red. Many a plump head drops on the heap in the basket. Or, ripe to bursting, they might be hearts, matching the blackbirds's wing-fleck. Gripped to a reed he shrieks his ko-ka-ree in the next field. He's left his peck in some juicy cheeks, when at first blush and mostly white, they showed streaks of sweetness to the marauder. We're picking near the shore, the morning sunny, a slight wind moving rough-veined leaves our hands rumple among. Fingers find by feel the ready fruit in clusters. Here and there, their squishy wounds....Flesh was perfect yesterday....June was for gorging.... sweet hearts young and firm before decay. "Take only the biggest and not too ripe," a mother calls to her girl and boy, barefoot in the furrows. "Don't step on any. Don't change rows. Don't eat too many." Mesmerized by the largesse, the children squat and pull and pick handfuls of rich scarlets, half for the baskets, half for avid mouths. Soon, whole faces are stained. A crop this big begs for plunder. Ripeness wants to be ravished, as udders of cow when hard, the blue-veined bags distended, ache to be stripped. Hunkered in mud between the rows, sun burning the backs of our necks, we grope for, and rip loose soft nippled heads. If they bleed—too soft— let them stay. Let them rot in the heat. When, hidden away in a damp hollow under moldy leaves, I come upon a clump of heart-shapes once red, now spiderspit-gray, intact but empty, still attached to their dead stems— families smothered as at Pompeii—I rise and stretch. I eat one more big ripe lopped head. Red-handed, I leave the field. ****************** Two from LOOSE WOMAN by Sandra Cisneros: Little Clown, My Heart Little clown, my heart, Spangled again and lopsided, Handstands and Peking pirouettes, Backflips snapping open like A carpenter's hinged ruler, Little gimp-footed hurray, Paper parasol of pleasures, Fleshy undertounge of sorrows, Sweet potato plant of my additions, Acapulco cliff-diver corazón, Fine as an obsidian dagger, Alley-oop and here we go Into the froth, my life, Into the flames! *** You Like to Give and Watch Me My Pleasure You like to give and watch me my pleasure. Machete me in two. Take for the taking what is yours. This is how you like to have me. I'm as naked as a field of cane, as along as all of Cuba before you. You could descend like rain, destroy like fire if you chose to. If you chose to. I could rise like huracán. I could erupt as sudden as a coup d'état of trumpets, the sleepless eye of the ocean, a sky of black urracas. If I chose to. I don't choose to. I let myself me taken. This power is my gift to you.
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About THE COLLECTED POEMS OF AMY CLAMPITT:
About Amy Clampitt:
Discuss today's poems on the Knopf Poetry Forum: