- One Art Poetry

This morning we read haikus.

Not just Basho, whose name

means “plantain tree,” and Issa,

whose name means “cup of tea,”

but also Richard Wright,

born in Mississippi, who later moved

to France and wrote thousands

of haikus in his final years.

When I said Wright followed

the strict syllable count,

Leon asked, “What are syllables?”

I began to count the sounds

on my fingers: The crow flew so fast/

that he left his lonely caw

Two people liked this one by Issa –

“Once in the box

every one of them is equal –

the chess pieces.”

Eugenia wrote about three women,

regulars here, who died from drugs

in the past few weeks.

“Now in a box,” she wrote,

naming each of them in her poem.

Alessandro, responding to Basho,

wrote about constellations of stars.

And for the first time this year

Robert, tattooed up and down his arms,

was awake and sublimely alert.

He liked Issa’s The distant mountains/

are reflected in the eye/of the dragonfly.

In his eyes I saw myself reflected too,

and over the lonely fields, the crow.

-Project MUSE, Tampa Review

The time has come for their comments 

on my poem; I'm the last of four.  

"We don't know what the father does 

for a living," says Fran. How odd, 

I think.  Why should she even care?  

Her poem had a whale in her bed; 

I never asked how it got there.
Joan asks me something, but I look 

down and don't respond.  It's the rule: 

when your poem's being scrutinized, 

just listen.   For this, I'm grateful.  

"What does 'sort of' mean," someone asks. 

"Like he didn't mean to, but it 

happened anyway?"  They argue.  

I take a drink from my latte.  

"We don't know if he ever came back.  

Did he simply disappear?

Unsatisfying,"  Fran concludes.  

"A mystery!"  Joyce nods her head.  

I want to reply that the poem 

means something else.  Stella comments, 

"These folks are viable, but odd.  

The intensity, "she goes on," 

dims towards the end.  Is that what needs 

to happen here?  "Responding to 

her own rhetorical question, 

she says she's not quite sure yet but 

it may not be the way to end.  

Now it's my turn to speak.  I say

"My poem's in eight-syllable lines." 

Nobody noticed.  Joan tells me, 

"Now I know why your poem looks odd."

- JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association)

This is how I lost her. First, she begged

to see her father again, long dead. Or turned

to me at dusk, fretful—Let's go home now.

Then, she filled up her fridge with half-eaten

plums, withered grapes. On her bed I found

mango peels, wrapped in her hanky.

To bring her home but keep on working, I lied

to get her into daycare, said she could hold

her own. But she failed their test—

Folding paper four ways, leaning over.

Too many confusing things to do.

She cried—I would never do this to you.

Gone, the repeated jokes, the terrible anxiety.

With an awful look, she opened her mouth

for the spoon when I fed her baby food.

No more trips to the dentist now,

nor face crèmes for wrinkles. Her hair,

dyed in the basin, grew white, fell out.

Feet swelled, ivory toenails thickened.

She forgot to sip from the straw, neglected

to swallow, to move. How long,

while bedsores gaped and bled,

it lasted, asleep, awake, propped up,

or lying mute on the bed. O my mother

lovely, frail of mind, you used to sing

your plaintive off-key aria—I am weary

unto death, O my rose with jasmine breath.

- One Art: a journal of poetry

A man in Japan, in a phone booth

he built overlooking the Pacific,

holds the receiver

of a disconnected rotary phone

and calls into the wind.

He is talking to his dead cousin,

whom he misses terribly and who

died before the tsunami arrived.

Now he shares his phone booth

with the relatives of all who are dead

or missing out there somewhere.

People come from all over.

I can’t hear him, but he heard me,

a woman said of her son, who died

in a fire. I can go on living now.

-Anderbo

In her peignoir with Belgian lace, ragged

and torn at the hem, Mother sits alone

in our back yard. Hair caught in her woven

rattan chair, she stares at her crescent-shaped

garden and points where I must shovel

to plant her favorite roses: Etoile

de Holland, dark, crimson and thorny;

Cecil Bruner, pale yellow, fragrant,

thickly petaled. Mother sips Darjeeling,

wipes tea leaves and sweat from her lips,

bites melba toast. She rarely moves or speaks.

I change into my swimsuit, walk barefoot

in the heat over the tar-bubbling road

to the public pool, buy candy for lunch.

In the sun, I lie down on cement,

skin drying and cracked. My mildewed

braids, seldom washed or combed, begin

to smell. Walking to the deep end,

I dive in, hold my breath, and explode

just under the surface, as if I could break

through, darkly fragrant, with a gasp for air.