USA/INDONESIA

PeaceLines: Poems at
www.puddinghouse.com/peacelines.htm

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PERNE IN A GYRE

NEWS OF A DAY IN THE THIRD MILLENNIUM

A skull
found in New York
where it had rolled
unnoticed
amidst gray bones for decades
in a fossil shop
near the Natural History Museum
authorities say is a Java hominid
with news of our evolution
perhaps one
million years old
in his late twenties
crushed at its base
from a rock perhaps
or a club that killed
him whose skull this was.

The skull
wanting now its jaws
authorities will remove with care
to its home in Indonesia

where skulls
with larger brains
no less crushed
on posts round pyres
of the afterbirth
of civilization's newest
nation swaddled suddenly
by its authorities
who had watched timorously a generation's labor
til the water broke

and jaws dropped.

Yet all may not be lost
for the dead
of thirty years
and more:

with the sperm
preserved these many thousand years
inside the iced corpus
of a Siberian mammoth
just found beneath a hush of snow
authorities will inseminate
an eager female elephant

one from Sumatra perhaps
in fertile Indonesia
whence a living fossil
mammoth inphant will be born
to return to Russia where
authorities make room
even now
for the undead.

THE SPELL OF THAUMATURGY
"The moment the focus is reached the object is epiphanized."
--Stephen Hero by James Joyce

I can smell it
the soft-bound primer
with cubby-hole must about it
pressed in fifties techniwatercolors
thumbed and scumbled by boomers before me
but regimented still within black outlines Alice and Jerry dare not cross
even after Spot
who runs and runs
and runs
in place.

I can see it
and I can hear them,
my teachers' big New York nasals . . . first
Miss King's or second
Mrs. Bell's or third
Mrs. Tate's whose puckered lips sweep whitened cilia
across my blush
one birthday I want therefore to be my last . . .
absent only religiously on their high and holy days--
presently unseen and palpable
as the best of my parents' 78s
"God Bless the Child"
this most high and most holy day of my young life:

The pupil's eyes
gape only at the printed lines and curves vibrating sympathetically
finally and firstly

the beginning

like the Victrola speaker to his master's voice
enunciating

was the word

the letters coruscating now the miraculously else:

tree
green
see
I
can
read
this leaf,
Mrs. Teacher
Miss Magus
One
Two
Three
who make me make as magicians
and gods do
by definition
out of nothing
something.

The above poem was previously published in Thema.

SON OF BORNEO

The Dayak chief
asked for a Marlboro
and my religion.

"I too am Roman Catholic,
the first in Rukun Damai.
Before the missionaries,
we believed alone
in our own magic.
That a man turns
into bread
wonders us not.
I saw my father wriggle
by the Mahakam,
strike the intruder
and eat him.
Not only when my father was a cobra,
but when he tipped his darts
with snake water
and sang them to the Dutch,
he devoured them,
drank blood."

The relic he laid in my palm
my fingers uplifted
to gaze.
From my flesh the white thorn
paled and tanned
slenderly toward the point.

"Now I hunt monkeys
and in the city
I set a dart in my wallet,
an offering
for the thieves."

VANESSA

My daughter
Vanessa
five years stuck
now
not so perky of course
true
she's stuck
like a tack
in hospital bed
where the point
of all this escapes her:
She believes
if she eats her food,
if she takes
her medicine,
if
the leg
lost in a car
bomb blast
last
month will grow back.
I have
yet
to tell Vanessa the truth,
to tell the truth,
to tell
the truth

I tell her, "You will have more beauty
and strength than before the war
reduced--
you will dance with greater grace
the dying swan on stage
at the opera house
and oh how you will
find love and riches and fame,
a good home
and children."

Vanessa cries remembered agony,
invisible pain.

"Does it hurt, Princess?
Good, it grows. Shall I tell the tale
of the bean
that once a princess tortured
in her bed
or of the exquisite spasms
that gave you life?"

A mother does not lie
to feed a child
food of fancy,
air.

The above poem was previously published in Tributary.

ON SEEING FRED ASTAIRE ENTER A K-MART
THROUGH A PAIR OF ELECTRICALLY-OPERATED DOORS
NOT OUT OF ORDER

At the lightest touch of the tip of the toe
of his black patent leather pump
he felt the surge of power
and she arced
gracefully
back from nine to noon. She
paused, quivered, waited.
"I sing the body electric," he said but sang
instead "A Fine Romance."
As he
retreated,
bounced ahead, accelerated,
slowed
to
the
poco meno mossa, stepped
from side to side
in three quarter
swing time,
she responded with
Adele's fondness,
Ginger's starlight,
Barrie's ardor,
the strength of Cyd,
steel and glass.
"Welcome shoppers!" He was trapped.
She nestled in her jamb.

The above poem was previously published in Milkweed Chronicle, Salomé,
and the Little Theatre Press anthology Movieworks.


 

© All Copyright, James Penha.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.