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Old Torso at the City Museum
(After Rilke’s Archaic Torso of Apollo)
by Paul Dickey
I do not know, sir, what happened to his head—
the eyes were turned to cash like market fruit?
And now the old hump glows in schemes of bread
to fool the pawnster who’d select profit
to art and light. If not, would I alone
be standing here and ogling the rock’s breast,
checking out the hips and thighs of yeah, a stone,
suppressing snickers at the dude at rest?
From what I see, the relic is damaged goods,
not worth a patron’s call to wake the mayor,
and not a thing they’d toss a dude in jail for.
Though shysters can bust you out with lies or knife,
these eyes know you. I slide to home and hoods,
before the heat arrives to change my life.
Paul Dickey’s full length poetry manuscript, They Say This is How Death Came Into the World, was published by Mayapple Press in 2011. His poetry has appeared recently in Verse Daily, Rattle, Sentence: A Journal of Prose Poetics, Mid-American Review, Midwest Quarterly, Crab Orchard Review and online at Linebreak, among other online and print publications. A poetry chapbook, What Wisconsin Took, was published by The Parallel Press in 2006. See his webpage for more information.
Walking on Water
Ripples slosh over your ankles, trying
to wash you up, say what can’t be done.
Those who love you do not want you
to take such risks. They are wrong.
There is no reason the color of water
cannot be the same as a skyway.
Do not be distracted if your image
drops below the surface. It is not you.
It is a shadow. Forget all the sounds
that have brought you here and now
leave. You have given up everything —
the ground under your feet. It is not
to be found now beneath this body
of water. Each day imagine yourself new.
Take one step before another, expect
dust to accumulate underfoot again,
slowly. Let whatever wants to be green
grow beneath you. Sometime in your life,
you may begin to walk with a pause,
but there is no reason to fall,
until you come to the end of your river.
by Paul Dickey
Omaha High School Poetics
The difference between reading a poem
and writing a poem is just not fair.
Like Miss Plath assigned this red
wheelbarrow poem for Friday. Like right,
I’m gonna see a red wheelbarrow?
Gramps maybe has one in his garage –
rusty, dented, & all scratched up.
Daddy doesn’t have a clue if to push it
or pull it, and glazed chickens? Come on,
gimme a break, you mean the glaze on
the sweet and sour at Wongs
in the mall? Will yum Car los Will yums.
It’s enough to make you hurl & this
T.S. Eliot. Don’t even get me started.
He wants a wasteland? Let him come
check out the nerds in my 5th hour.
So see, we have to bust butts reading
Modern Poetry just for a measly grade
to take home to mommy poo?
But take my best poem on my blog
where I have put in all the good stuff
& class weirdoes and even my best friend
never even get it that my boyfriend
in my poem is not my boyfriend
but is a metaphor for the great romance
of my life which may or may not
be happening now, or if you care, may not
ever happen. There. What’d I tell you?
You take off all your clothes and lie down
on a piece of virtual real estate like your
whole freaking life and nobody gives a rat’s
assets to say anything but oooh, gross. I say
the difference between reading a poem
and writing a poem is just not fair.
by Paul Dickey
qarrtsiluni 