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Blazon
after Andre Breton and Cecilia Wooloch
My love with his shoulders of whiskey and sloe gin
and eyes like parachutes that lift me
on wild currents and strong arms to catch.
My love with his compass of ligaments
for flinging us toward islands of paradise.
My love with his knowledgeable fingers trailing starlight,
his mouth a coral hibiscus.
My love with his chest a palisades
and his sinews under me the seismic
shifting of tectonic plates.
My love with his musical hands and his back a palisades,
his clavicle a high escarpment and a rookery of eagles.
My love with his scent of fragrant woodsmoke
and fish just caught in his silver nets.
My love with his quick senses of one alert
to the manifold worlds of mercury and salt
which he travels on two strong feet
like capable pontoons and the side of him is a sail
and his lungs two bellows for catapulting us aloft.
The current holder of the South Carolina Arts Commission poetry fellowship, Barbara G.S. Hagerty (website) is also the author of The Guest House (Finishing Line, 2009). Her work has appeared in such journals as The Greensboro Review, The Sun, Kakalak, and others.
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Father at Night
after Louise Glück
How can I tell you anything
that can be put into words?
It’s not that you can’t hear.
A stone can hear the rain,
the sea’s murmur still fills the tympanum
the way cupped leaves on this bromeliad
capture their thimble of rain.
What is the work of daughters to come to,
bringing a loaf of bread to the bedside,
a bunch of wild Queen Anne cut from the ditch?
Night comes, and the moon is silent,
stamping flower and weed, indifferently.
The current holder of the South Carolina Arts Commission poetry fellowship, Barbara G.S. Hagerty (website) is also the author of The Guest House (Finishing Line, 2009). Her work has appeared in such journals as The Greensboro Review, The Sun, Kakalak, and others.
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A Week of Kindness
What do you see?
A woman falling into water.
What color is the water?
The color of Monday.
A woman falling into water.
She is naked — stark — her hair
the color of Monday.
She, like Ophelia, needs flowers.
She is naked — stark — her hair
nothing like leaves in spring.
She, like Ophelia, needs flowers.
Buds refusing to open
nothing like leaves in spring
Stems on her seashell hat
with buds refusing to open.
Her Fredricks of Hollywood corset
pokes out from under her seashell vest.
The naked water polo was a bust, she said.
Her Fredricks of Hollywood corset —
too much mercury, unwanted guests.
The naked water polo was a bust, she said.
Drowning on Thursday, she scolds the dogs.
Too much mercury, unwanted guests.
Resigned to headaches, like an angel she dives in.
Drowning on Thursday, she scolds the dogs.
Victoria’s Secret hottie wears a clamshell teddy.
Resigned to headaches, like an angel she dives in.
Goldfish swirl around her day-of-the-week panties.
Victoria’s Secret hottie wears a clamshell teddy.
Lace laps at the shores of her hedge fund.
Goldfish swirl around her day-of-the-week panties.
What color is the water? The color of Monday.
by the Long Table Poets: Helen Brandenburg, Richard Garcia, Barbara Hagerty, Kit Loney, Susan Meyers, Deborah Lawson Scott, Katherine Williams, and Joe Zealberg
Process notes
Richard Garcia writes:
This pantoum was composed at a class one evening at my house. Each student had a page from a collage novel by Max Ernst, A Week of Kindness. We also wrote the pantoum as a kind of exquisite corpse. The paper was folded so each student could only see the preceding stanza. To keep busy while each student worked on their section they were also writing a separate draft of their poem in any style they wished.
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