Poetry Magazine, Feature Poet: Karren LaLonde Alenier, May 2002

Poetry Magazine

Karren LaLonde
Alenier

USA

Karren LaLonde Alenier is a poet and fiction writer. She is author of four books of poetry, including her latest Looking for Divine Transportation. She is co-editor of Winners: A Retrospective of the Washington Prize. Her work has been published in such magazines as: the Mississippi Review, Poet Lore, WordWrights!, and Jewish Currents. She is the first winner of the Billee Murray Denny Award.

Her three act verse play and libretto Gertrude Stein Invents a Jump Early On about the life and work of Gertrude Stein is being developed as an opera by composer William Banfield with artistic direction by Nancy Rhodes of Encompass New Opera Theatre of New York City. Visit www.steinopera.com for more information.

Ms. Alenier, an innovator of numerous public literary programs, is president of the Word Works, a literary organization publishing contemporary poetry in collector's editions and presenting public programs both in the United States and in Europe.

SONG AFTER LILITH

She was not a woman
born of bone, the earth
was her maker. In the market-

place, she could converse
with any man. She needed no
perfume, no pearls. Her crown

of hair proclaimed her
dangerous. Let the butcher
sell her unkosher meat

and her eyes like arson
burned through all men
who craved the missing rib.

Published in Jewish Currents (New York, NY).

LEO ON SEESAW
for the pleasure
of Gertrude Stein

Little Buddha little brooder
Kleiner Bruder tiny brother
bitty bother sitting baldly
in the butter in the batter
shaking philosophic digits
in the kitchen
for the Kuchen
has been eaten
by the kitten
wearing mittens in the winter
hiding splinters in his fingers
finding spiders
in the cracks
of the plaster
So we laughed
twenty HA HA HA HA HA
in metered breathing
something close
to the day
he was born

Published first in The Monacacy Valley Review (Frederick Arts Council, MD) and then in Looking for Divine Transportation (DC: The Bunny & Crocodile Press) by Karren LaLonde Alenier. This poem appears in Act I of the libretto Gertrude Stein Invents A Jump Early On by Karren LaLonde Alenier.

DESPERATE STEPS
"Think hard before you take this step."
from "Pensalo Bien," a tango

First one
then the next
third,
fourth,
fifth familial
risers in the birth
order even a sixth
sister
our depressed mother
grew child after child. Now
ferns weed through cement,
congregate on the landing,
sexless spores argue
what is man-
made, what is
natural -- the way
light, transparent and
warm, steals audience
at the top of the stairs
from the brooding dark.

Published first in Potomac Review (Port Tobacco, MD) and then in Winners: A Retrospective of the Washington Prize, edited by Karren LaLonde Alenier, Hilary Tham, and Miles David Moore
(The Word Works: Washington, DC)

WHITE

Swan, pearl, chalk, sheet in snow, bones on desert sand. The
ghostly lady, alabaster white, from head to toe wanders the uneven walks of
foggy San Francisco like clockwork. Blond bimbo turned hoary milkmaid, she
frightens all men; she startles all women. With crooked teeth and quivering
lips, the white lady flashes a smile. It fleeces the men in one glimpse.
Throw down your coats, let a lily float.
The women whitewash the interplay between her and their men.
Bleach, cream, foam, maggot among eggshells. Drawn to her albino eyes, the
women freeze, recognizing a grizzly prophecy. Virgin, spinster, old maid,
nun, celibate, eccentric, freak. She is bride without groom, wife without
husband, mother without child. What she does not have comes out of the hides
of other women.
Salt without pepper, aftershock without quake, death without birth.

Published in Always the Beautiful Answer: A Prose Poem Primer edited by Ruth Moon Kempher (Kings Estate Press: St. Augustine, FL)

WAKE
after Finnegans

In the yard Jambutree stands, umbrella
to the planet -- neighborhood
of my birth.
Father-Mother
Worldtree, I shake the roosting
Four-o'clocks from your celestial
branches, signal the noisy
birds to get back under: No sound
sleep, I shout.
Do not roost
here.
So little sand
in the hourglass before sun
sets and Bigdream unfolds,
before family shaking
old rattles picks ourselves
up, before Jambutree lit
and leafed is again
Timber!

Published first in Minimus (Arlington, VA) ) and then in Looking for Divine Transportation (DC: The Bunny & Crocodile Press) by Karren LaLonde Alenier.