USA

magdalena@poetic.com 

Love your Vowels

A is for adder, asp, and ache.  A is for abstract and absurd.
A is the alibi of altruism, the almanac of ambition,
A is an amazon.
A should be pan-fried in an adobe, under an azure sky.
Love your As.  Play with them.  Teach them games.

E is the sound of incipient ideas.
E is for epiphany and echo.
E is for eureka, effrontery, and effluvium.
E is Promethean, shaking its E fist.
E is for ellipsis…also for epilogue:  E is for evolution.
Love your Es.  Take them to excess.

I is inebriated with itself.  In America, I is its own poem.

I is for the Immaculate Conception
I is for the Inquisition.  I is for idolatry.

Love the incubus of your I into submission
For every I was born in innocence.
Teach your I the lotus position.

O is the cipher of desire:  round shocked mouth long moan.
O is for October and a witch’s eye
O is oblation and waiting to die.  O is for obelisk which glorifies.
O is the glue of love.  Love your Os.
Notice them.  Stroke them.  Bask and soak in them.
Treat your Os like warm rolls.
Butter them and eat them whole.

U is ubiquitous.  U is for ungulate.  U is for horseshoe.
U is the barnyard vowel, the circus vowel,
The prostitute of the alphabet,
With the communal values.
Love your Us.  Amuse them.
Teach them to write haiku.
Buy them smell-good shampoo.

Poem for Her 29th Birthday

I used to be growing up.  Now I’m dying   she said

Just as if her round basin hat wasn’t lavender.

I used to be growing up   she said   though
She has yet   to raise orchids
or learn the tango
Though there is Paris and
comparative literature

I’m dying   she said
As if we’d never yelled at each other
And made peace over lasagna.
As if the mirror could refuse or thwart her.
As if she was not water and death
Was not the breast stroke.

I used to be growing up   she said  as if
Letting go each day did  not
Stitch us to the wind mote by mote.

As if it might not be nice to go
Shuck this flesh suit and
Slide oily past the boiling stars
Becoming   at last   one necessary spark.

I’m dying   she said
Though death is a convection and
We   unformed  are waiting to rise.

To an Aspiring 
Thought from a Verb

I am a verb.
I am the secret a
Black lace slip whispers to the floor.

If you were a thought, you would be in:

Galileo’s mind, a dog on a choke chain
I am barking
Einstein’s mind, a fish hooked through the mouth
I soar, I am gasping
Malcolm X’s mind barbed wire draped with silk
I billow, I have arranged
Gandhi’s mind piano wire
I am taut, I vibrate
Mozart’s mind a din of scrap symphony
I frame the silences
Picasso’s mind overexposed film, in color
I bleed blue in a flat world
Yeats’s mind an interpenetrating gyre
I break down, I am formed
Elvis’s mind a hula hoop, sweat drop, barbiturate
My hip rounds the air

As verb, I am the honey
In this bloom of muscle and skin.

As thought, you would be
Unable to eat fruit unless
Enacted by me:  to eat, eating, to have eaten.

© All Copyright,  Magdalena Alagna.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.