BSH1 MEMORIAL PROFiLE PiCK of the WEEK No. 25: FiSH are JUMPiN', COTTON is HIGH

Author: oromagi

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oromagi
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Summer Stars


Bend low again, night of summer stars.
So near you are, sky of summer stars,
So near, a long-arm man can pick off stars,
Pick off what he wants in the sky bowl,
So near you are, summer stars,
So near, strumming, strumming,
So lazy and hum-strumming.

-Carl Sandburg

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oromagi
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Summer in Winter in Summer

The bottom teeth of summer

in winter, braided into

whomever stood on the green green bridge watching her shadow lengthen.

Sun-pocket. Sunflower. Seedling, you

brittle blossoming something the room clears of dailyness.

Daily, the bottom teeth of summer

in winter, chewing through

ropes, raree show rapunzeled, which is realism

like this that there can be. These are really happened

tell me again stories I will. I will again against it.

Diving bell in a glass of water. Cacti atmosphere.

A perfect piece of pink cake

complicating perfection’s tendency to falter.

Who left it on the counter? Who walked through the room

as though through a composition? The speaker enters quietly,

closes a window, clearing dust from the chair

to sit in the center of the poem, invigorated

with inky awkward blankness.

The bottom teeth of summer

in winter chattering: here’s the moon. Here’s the moon

splashed over two dozen calendars. Here, the kids are grown.

The day is long. The bed, wide as a battleship, waits

in its buoyancy. Imagine a life and live in it. Imagine dead as ever

walking a cut lily back to water. Crazy epic crazier still trying

to put down roots. Summer in winter like a speaker

in water. The loudest electric sound is nothing compared

to the soundest perforation. My paper life. My paper doll.

Your paper boy. Sun sun sunflower seed summer you

can say you love in a poem’s inky blank awkwardness

your paper boy. Sun sun sunflower seed summer you

to the soundest perforation. My paper life. My paper doll

in water. The loudest electric sound is nothing compared

to put-down roots. Summer in winter like a speaker

walking a cut lily back to water. Crazy epic crazier still trying

in its buoyancy. Imagine a life and live in it. Imagine dead as ever

the day is long. The bed, wide as a battleship, waits,

splashed over two dozen calendars. Here, the kids are grown

in winter chattering: here’s the moon. Here’s the moon.

The bottom teeth of summer

with inky awkward blankness

to sit in the center of the poem, invigorated,

closes a window, clearing dust from the chair.

As though through a composition, the speaker enters. Quietly,

who left it on the counter? Who walked through the room

complicating perfection’s tendency to falter.

A perfect piece of pink cake.

Diving bell in a glass of water. Cacti atmosphere,

tell me again stories I will I will. Again, against it

like this that there can be. These are really happened

ropes, raree show rapunzeled. Which is realism

in winter: Chewing through

daily the bottom teeth of summer?

Brittle blossoming something the room clears of dailyness?

Sun-pocket. Sunflower. Seedling, you

whomever stood on the green green bridge watching her shadow lengthen

in winter, braided into

the bottom teeth of summer.

-Noah Eli Gordon
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oromagi
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Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
   So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
   So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

-William Shakespeare

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oromagi
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FIREFLIES in the GARDEN

Here come real stars to fill the upper skies,
That though they never equal stars in size,
(And they were never really stars at heart)
Achieve at times a very star-like start.
Only, of course, they can't sustain the part.

-Robert Frost

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Just to avoid a one-on-none conversation:

Because it's too hot, even for summer in June:

On October nights the nights rise on slowly sundown
Skies of deep blue, red; the scattered whites appear
And drift in night by some great solar wind.
Orion, the great hunter, goes a-crunching for his prey.
Here, the night of soft advance, the wind turns on itself
In sudden sighs to know all ways: the shiver of trees
And how the leaves will wither in their time
And fall away.  The great Fall comes of wrinkled fruit.
And one man crunches long to know the roots of reason;
What is, once was, once was and will become.
Is it so cruel that nature keeps her secrets well?
 
Near the edge of the wood
The grass is keen to every sigh
And leans to me, loves me.
On October nights, the nights rise
On old leaves steeped like dying stars;
They wait as a faithful beaten path
To guide me to my prey.
In one sound of one leaf under foot
Is told all secrets of the wood.
 
I go crunching in October nights
And dead leaves break into their voice
And whisper of warriors, wanderers and me,
Of Orion crunching through his stars,
Of Adam, hungry at the tree.

©1972 by fauxlax
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oromagi
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Chinatown Diptych

 I.
 
The face of Chinatown returns its color,
plucked from July's industrial steamer.
 
Dry the cup!
So we do.
 
Four noodle shops on East Broadway release their belches collectively.
They breed in me a hankering for family life.
 
Here, there's no logic to melons and spring onions exchanging hands.
No rhythm to men's briefs clothes-pinned to the fire escape.
 
Retirees beneath the Manhattan Bridge leak hearsay.
 
The woman in Apartment #18 on Bayard washes her feet in pot of boiled
water each evening before bedtime. But every handful of weeks she lapses.
 
I lean into the throat of summer.
 
Perched above these streets with whom I share verbs and adjectives.
 
II.
 
Faces knotted, bangs softened with grease.
The East River pulls along a thread of sun.
 
While Sunday slides in. Again, in those plain trousers.
 
How the heat is driven off course.
How one can make out the clarified vowels of bridges.
 
Who’s keeping count of what’s given against what’s stolen?
 
There's nothing I can't trace back to my coarse immigrant blood.
 
Uncles tipple wine on the streets of Mott and Bayard.
Night shifts meet day shifts in passing.
 
Sweat seasons the body that labors.
 
And in each noodle shop, bowls dusted with salt.

-Jenny Xie
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oromagi
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A Parking Lot in West Houston

Angels are unthinkable
in hot weather
 
except in some tropical locales, where
from time to time, the women catch one in their nets,
 
hang it dry, and fashion it into a lantern
that will burn forever on its own inexhaustible oils.
 
But here—shins smocked with heat rash,
the supersaturated air. We no longer believe
 
in energies pure enough not to carry heat,
nor in connections—the thought of someone
 
somewhere warming the air we breathe
that one degree more . . . .
 
In a packed pub during the World Cup final,
a bony redhead woman gripped my arm
 
too hard. I could see how a bloke might fancy you.
Like a child’s perfect outline in fast-melting snow,
 
her wet handprint on my skin, disappearing.
The crowd boiling over, a steam jet: Brrra-zil!
 
And Paris—a heroin addict
who put her hypodermic
 
to my throat: Je suis malade.
J’ai besoin de medicaments.
 
Grabbing her wrist, I saw
her forearm’s tight net sleeve of drying blood.
 
I don’t like to be touched.
I stand in this mammoth parking lot,
 
car doors open, letting the air conditioner
run for a while before getting in.
 
The heat presses down equally
everywhere. It wants to focus itself,
 
to vaporize something instantaneously,
efficiently—that shopping cart, maybe,
 
or that half-crushed brown-glass bottle—
but can’t quite. Asphalt softens in the sun.
 
Nothing’s detachable.
The silvery zigzag line
 
stitching the tarmac to the sky around the edges
is no breeze, just a trick of heat.
 
My splayed-out compact car half-sunk
in the tar pit of its own shadow—
 
strong-shouldered, straining
to lift its vestigial wings.

-Monica Youn
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What is the victory of a cat on a hot tin roof?—I wish I knew... Just staying on it, I guess, as long as she can...

-Tennessee Williams