In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Prairie Schooner 79.3 (2005) 132-135



[Access article in PDF]

Four Poems

Saintly Success

We think, outsiders to Heaven, that a saint,
perhaps, is someone whom love has led into
soul alleys until they're lost in a purlieu
of goodness, or else sentimentally
suppose the saint is naturally glued to
"the good," a peanut-butter-jelly treat
of sticky sacred intimacy. But
at Mother Teresa's I thought good might be
an ambition – scoring A in Botany –
particularly if you're an Albanian
girl born into a stifling closet – all
the world's doors locked but for marriage and the veil –
good's lustrous portal out of suffocation
would lead to the open air of at least the world.

Fifth Avenue

On the West, trees fringe the Avenue with green.
On the East, the buildings line a grey militia.
Down the center cruise the lemon lozenges
of taxis through the summer air as lazy
as a slow plucked blues bass. Polar bears are lying
on their heaps of melting ice cubes, monkeys doze,
the seals slip round and round their rocky island. [End Page 132]

I'm in first love again, ten, scurrying
to dance, piano class, my eyes, moons bigger
than my mind, a greedy well of admiring envy
that wants just everything from snake-skin shoes
to that woman's life, the one in the asymmetric
hat flipped up over her precise brunette
curls and a drop pearl earring's swing and sway.

I'm still sure her life's more exciting, though
I live here now, own an asymmetric hat,
no longer travel homeward watching, from
trains' soot-streaked windows, the lights – those candles of
lives, stories I desire still like a lover.
The park seal, turning moonlit flanks to slow
plucked blues, slips round and round her rocky island.

An Obit of Crows for the Dorset Hotel

In Sunday morning midtown quiet,
among grey corporate suited buildings
which flash sun-signals from sealed windows
the crows glide on furled wing-tip shine
into deconstructed hotel rooms
their ceilings shorn, walls half dismantled,
these chambers indecently exposed
by sun as a blousy archeology
of paints' exfoliate colors,
intestinal snarls of wire and pipes. [End Page 133]
Winging down in rainbow oil
slick of their mourning suits, these drifters
among jack-hammers jettisoned
til Monday, once could only strut
the terraces but now they bounce
between unlidded rooms, they're in
possession, and browse
as solemnly as funeral
directors pricing cemetery
plots. With no caw, no strut, they lift
on requiem wings above destruction.

Epiphany in a Tent

Aimless, I walk by the tent's black peak.
With an open hand she gestures me in.
With my hand, I gesture fear of the mastiffs
galloping toward my strangeness, growling as though
they've rocks in their throats. She stones them to quiet.

The tent is booby trapped with dirty cups,
a broken watch and harnesses. We drink tea
sitting by the hearth. We talk by hands,
by my measly hoard of Tibetan words. By
touch, we discourse through the other's things.

Gold-brocade new hat with ear-flaps, the two
lenses of my camera, her coral
ring, my green eyes are our conversation. [End Page 134]
There's a ruckus outside of snorts and barks.
She knows, leaps out of the tent into the sounds.

Waiting in the open folds of the tent,
wearing it, a huge skirt billowing
black behind me, I look to the vast
treeless, green lap of her world that moves with
animals in the custody of mountains.

She returns, asks, using sun and road,
when I'll leave tomorrow. Morning, out
the Cruiser's window I see woman, tent,
and hand silhouetted dark against
horizon's rising fire. I raise my hand.

Karen Swenson is a professor and a travel guide to Tibet. Her latest book, A Daughter's Latitude, is available from Copper Canyon Press.


...

pdf

Share