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sartrenause

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Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
Fleda Brown (1944 )
I Write My Mother a Poem
Sometimes I feel her easing further into her grave,
resigned, as always, and I have to come to her rescue.
Like now, when I have so much else to do. Not that
she'd want a poem. She would have been proud, of course,
of all its mystery, involving her, but scared a little.
Her eyes would have filled with tears. It always comes
to that, I don't know why I bother. One gesture
and she's gone down a well of raw feeling, and I'm left
alone again. I avert my eyes, to keep from scaring her.
On her dresser is one of those old glass bottles
of Jergen's Lotion with the black label, a little round
bottle of Mum deodorant, a white plastic tray
with Avon necklaces and earrings, pennies, paper clips,
and a large black coat button. I appear to be very
interested in these objects, even interested in the sun
through the blinds. It falls across her face, and not,
as she changes the bed. She would rather have clean sheets
than my poem, but as long as I don't bother her, she's glad
to know I care. She's talked my father into taking
a drive later, stopping for an A & W root beer.
She is dreaming of foam on the glass, the tray propped
on the car window. And trees, farmhouses, the expanse
of the world as seen from inside the car. It is no
use to try to get her out to watch airplanes
take off, or walk a trail, or hear this poem
and offer anything more than "Isn't that sweet!"
Right now bombs are exploding in Kosovo, students
shot in Colorado, and my mother is wearing a root beer
mustache. Her eyes are unfocused, everything's root beer.
I write root beer, root beer, to make her happy.
Fleda Brown (1944 )
The Women Who Loved Elvis All Their Lives
She reads, of course, what he's doing, shaking Nixon's hand,
dating this starlet or that, while he is faithful to her
like a stone in her belly, like the actual love child,
its bills and diapers. Once he had kissed her
and time had stood still, at least some point seems to
remain back there as a place to return to, to wait for.
What is she waiting for? He will not marry her, nor will he
stop very often. Desireé will grow up to say her father is dead.
Desireé will imagine him standing on a timeless street,
hungry for his child. She will wait for him, not in the original,
but in a gesture copied to whatever lover she takes.
He will fracture and change to landscape, to the Pope, maybe,
or President Kennedy, or to a pain that darkens her eyes.
"Once," she will say, as if she remembers,
and the memory will stick like a fishbone. She knows
how easily she will comply when a man puts his hand
on the back of her neck and gently steers her.
She knows how long she will wait for rescue, how the world
will go on expanding outside. She will see her mother's photo
of Elvis shaking hands with Nixon, the terrifying conjunction.
A whole war with Asia will begin slowly,
in her lifetime, out of such irreconcilable urges.
The Pill will become available to the general public,
starting up a new waiting in that other depth.
The egg will have to keep believing in its timeless moment
of completion without any proof except in the longing
of its own body. Maris will break Babe Ruth's record
while Orbison will have his first major hit with
"Only the Lonely," trying his best to sound like Elvis.
Gary Fincke (1945 )
The Billion Heartbeats of the Mammal
 Feel this, my father says, guiding my hand
To the simple Braille of his pacemaker.
 Sixty, he tells me,  over and over
Like a clock, and I mention the billion
Heartbeats of the mammal, how the life span
Can be rough-guessed by the 800 beats
Per minute of the shrew, the 200
Of the house cat, speeding through their billion
In three years, in twelve. How slowly we act,
According to our pets. How we are stone
To the frantic insects.  Not slow enough,
He answers, summing up the math, citing
His two billion heartbeats of punched-in work,
The one billion my mother beat to do
The daily double-shift of housekeeper
And clerk until her heart softened to mush.
He s busy, now, with wiping down his floors
The way he swirled a mop through locker rooms
Before striding the push broom up and down
The grain of gym sweep, repeating the moves
Of twenty kinds of cleaning between ten
And six-thirty in the high school I used [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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