I just put up a photography website:
http://www.raphematto.com/photos/
check it out -- crits/advice welcome. Please don't pass around the url -- it's just for friends/family :)
& here are some poems:
//--
to your elephant
my elephant is bigger than yours,
and all his parts are disproportionately Huge.
I've untied him; he's run amuck in your town.
his tail drags up pavement in folds.
men scream, children throw rocks,
and women fire guns into it.
my elephant absently railroads the mass.
reporters call him a terrorist and a pachyderm.
his ears listen at the highest windows,
to your executives and their plots.
he sniffs your scientists, screaming
from their wet laboratories
drags you thumping up the staircase,
out the locked door
and, handcuffed, into his trunk
where I will examine you.
my elephant is bigger than yours,
he grows when you talk about him,
or look at him, or think about him --
he will always be bigger than last time.
I've seen him stamp all the sugar out of a cabinet,
without disturbing the salt --
and when he slams into walls, photos
of unhappy people crack.
I call him "mine" because I raised him,
but I don't know where he came from.
my elephant is bigger than yours.
you can see ships far out at sea from his tip top, killing whales.
my elephant eats whales by the trunkfull and is full
of cannonballs.
my elephant accidentally sneezed a cannonball
seven miles.
you have no idea what my elephant would like to do
to your elephant.
we should race our elephants.
we should wrestle our elephants.
we should weigh our elephants,
and time our elephants,
and measure them
just to see HOW much bigger
mine is.
your elephant is cordially invited to a picnic
on top of my elephant. I'll show you the way up.
don't worry,
you'll know the magic word when you get there.
//--
her eyes are dry round bones
she takes out to tap the table with:
Grandma. and Rachel comes running
in her fine fiery dress, run Rachel,
Run Rachel, young, your fine dress flowing,
find fast the soundless light-drained pitch,
find fast the corkscrew, the plug,
we can't have her hungry, the way she points.
like the tablecloth is a shroud,
like the table is a body stabbed by eating:
the fork and knife operating carefully --
and our teeth sew it together with the heart beating,
how we laugh and sew and sing together by eating,
and by eating we're tugging at war (she points)
until the television starts scraping across the floor,
dragging it's eye at our eye.
//--
she hated the dog. it was her pet --
I hated the dog, for breakfast
when she served him in a bowl, hot.
I could see his paw marks
break snow near the doghouse; the broth
and steaming spirit hovered
while something with a smaller life than mine,
flashed its mirrors from the yard.
//--
the red cave is my home.
on warm mornings
I pull back the scrap aluminum door.
the migration of fire, vast bands,
and the wind dressed with dust
scratches the desert. I've switched off
my mechanical cat;
he looks asleep in the corner --
a poor, half charged pet.
I read from a children's Bible:
strange stories, so far away.
the sky: pure, a library of light,
and Earth quiet on her shelf.
//--
(after "The Martian Chronicles")
So this is Mars, he said, undressing.
he fumbled in his foil sack,
then held up a cigarette lighter and produced flame.
My voice is deep here, he said,
eyeing his genitals.
two fish jumped in a pond close to the rocket,
and a swing stirred beneath a tree.
After swimming, drying off,
eating the fish and their bones,
he crouched on all fours
and investigated the town in disguise.
it was afternoon before anything happened.
I've been waiting for you, said the Martian,
and said, I've been waiting for you
again. I've been waiting for you, until
the man, hypnotized, walked up the glass stairs
and into a glass kitchen.
You can't trick me, said the man from New York.
I'm not trying to trick you, said the Martian.
I've read books and am 84 years old,
said the Earth man, I am confident
I will never grasp the mysteries of the universe.
I am here to meet your wife, because I love her.
the two men looked at each other
and enjoyed the invigorating, long-felt hostility.
I mean to kill you with my gun full of golden bees.
Yes. Do you mind if I meet her first?
the man waited on the back porch, lit a cigarette,
and considered the lifeless town.
he could see Sara, his first wife, in her apartment,
practicing flute. And across the street,
the old playground. his sister, with their cat on a leash,
invented a game in the road.
it was organized, tidy, and perfectly built,
but he was only curious about love in this last place.
he fingered the pistol hidden on his back;
finally, the Martian returned with his wife.
she was exhausted and her hands were trembling.
I can't believe you're here, she said.
the man said, it's past our bedtime, and the stars
are getting cold on your plate.
the bees brought a full hot mystery,
and the space between them sealed tight.
//--
Jim polished the rocket with his underwear.
he was naked, except for heavy military sunglasses.
the silver hull fattened him in its reflection
while he watched a beautiful girl approaching from the rocks.
a pistol lay in the sand a few paces off,
with a fully charged battery.
Your machine does not flatter you, said the girl.
So this is Mars, Jim said, jumping down.
There were other movements behind the rocks --
small shimmerings, heat venting.
That weapon will not hurt me.
Jim picked up the pistol. Is that so?
He fired into her chest, and she screamed.
She stood there and looked at him, screaming.
Finally she fell backwards.
She did not look like a Martian. Just a beautiful, dead girl.
the rocket gleamed like a knife
from the first mountain rise -- he imagined its fleshy interior.
//--
I set bone in a keyhole
and grow flesh to fit the lock --
in the room, your dress stowed,
stuck to the shape of a wet woman,
toweled black hair
of the almost-drowned,
of the perfectly good heart --
it shoves you up the hill,
shoves you awake in the night;
dreams about holding a golden knife,
the light high on the house --
and congregation afraid for it.
and it's a real mess when the cat
tries to scrape off your makeup,
the ugly blue makeup you carry
and cast -- with a shout,
the tiny planet floats
in your mouth, like a fly.
like how I carry tied shoes
and your following with my feet,
and my lips with your skull --
the snake rattle and clutter
we carry and cast.
//--
stone girl
as a daughter, at the stone piano
(she still plays the soundless thing)
she'd say, "my fingers hurt"
to her stone mother at the harp.
but she'd play, each note different due
only to finger length, the muffled thumping
thumb, while her hair, a wheatfield of stone,
windless, brushed by sand,
cracked about her as she grew.
the moisture on her skin
turns to a fine dust she coughs at --
her eyelashes, nails, teeth
are black sore stone.
stone tears she can catch and throw
at windows all turned to stone,
as her father, on the dark staircase,
climbs, and her sturdy servants carry
buckets from the shed,
and her brother, a gaping sundial,
reaches between the hours to stop her.
the broken plate wings of crows
cut her feet
on the path to the pond;
the water in the pond is not stone,
nor is the spider, who she ate --
who her brother told her not to eat.
no matter how she kills it,
swallows, it is her constant companion --
it comes back. it crawls from under
a fingernail, or she finds it hanging like an earing.
this is how she stays alive --
eating the spider, its secret.
at night she lies beneath cold blankets
and dreams of things that talk.
No comments:
Post a Comment