Zawinski Poetry Sampler

Andrena.zawinski@att.net

 

From TRAVELING IN REFLECTED LIGHT

 

Chiaroscuro for Reflected Light

--inspired by Louis MacNeice's “Snow”

                  

Sometimes the way the light moves in and spins

the chime of porcelain gulls to streak across

the drawn and muted shade, I'm taken back

beneath a tinsel rain on waves that ebb out

to the sea.  Sometimes the way the light slips

through a crack inside the frame before a freeze,

all arms and legs, I forage angels in the snow

and laugh out loud at winter running wild again. 

 

Sometimes when light ruffles edges of paper slips,

notices of  half-done things, it travels dream in all

things touched and yet to be.  Sometimes so dazzling

brilliant resplendent, the mere delight in light will

swell the room, and I can see there is more than this

squint of  glass between the sun and the shade.

 

 

 

From TAKING THE ROAD WHERE IT LEADS

 

Taking the Road Where It Leads

 

The city is banging around again inside my head,

skyline a glare of lights in a blare of amped-up speakers.

And the news is so noisy--there is a war going on

somewhere, over there, this time in Fallujah,

bodies hung like charred rag dolls above the Euphrates.

And that is why I am speeding onto the freeway ramp,

and turning all my thoughts to you: 

 

Let’s take the road where it leads

out to the blonde grasses and wind bent cyprus,

gulls a blur in blossoms of gossamer clouds,

egrets padding along ice flowers at water’s edge,

lighthouse steady in its quiet coastal warning,

everything bowing down to an order of things.

 

Let’s make promises, as if we can keep them,

string them like beads into a necklace windswept

by sunset, as shadows grow long and light cuts short.

Let’s reach up, see if we can touch that sky so close,

or spark a wildfire on a lightning burst,

or on a wind shift kick up a storm,

or like some comet, let’s really light up this sky.

 

 

 

From  ZAWINSKI’S GREATEST HITS 1991-2001

 

You Get the Picture, America

I have a sorrow not wholly mine but another’s.

--Hayden Carruth, “On a Certain Engagement South of Seoul.”

 

In this movie, you’ll revel in the opening effect--

            the good soldier genuflects at the Wall,

            his reflection cast brighter than he is

            before it, focus blurred in a glint off

            medals of merit of honor of valor washed

            in upon the narcotic Memorial Day sun.

 

The camera’s long shot will pull you in

            on a close-up, as he runs fingers along

            the trail light of inscripted names.

            In a black and white still, he will read one

            as if touching blind in brail.

 

There will be this slight diversion in the roll

            of muffled drums and bleat of mournful horns,

            other monuments sprawling off in the backdrop.

 

You’ll watch him stroke in stroboscope the name

            with charcoal onto onionskin.  He’ll lay

            down at the base a wreath of sweet gardenia

            tinted orange from where hollow-eyed

            a pinned bronzed eagle stares.

 

In this part you will get to think, to invent

heroes big-as-life on the screen’s theater of war.

 

But just then in comes an ill-played comic relief,

            a post-revolutionary hipster hawking from his

            banner buttons to the tourist trade that read,

            I’m not Fonda Jane.  The audience will nervously

            chuckle, but this won’t do just about when

            you’re supposed to be getting serious.

 

Enter the special effects.  You’ll need 3-D glasses

            for flashbacks. The good soldier will take an

            about-face into a trench showered by mortar fire,

            dreaming a firecracker sky,

            peachy curtains flirting the frame.

 

This is the point where you will expect the plot to unfurl,

            but this screenplay is designed with Cannes in mind,

            so the good soldier delivers only a fractured line:

            Did anyone ever ask me, America?

 

Here you will be directed to think.  You will think

you’ll catch on as the montage reels by for

the unknown soldiers:                                                            

 

            One wheels marbled lobbies, legal briefs flagging

            his cut off knees.  One free-bastes cities

            with a thumb stump hand taken by a bad grenade.

            Some bagman, the can-you-spare-a-dime-man,

            catwalks New York alleys, boxes in the

            up and coming doorways.  Grabbing his dick

            hard on a Telegraph corner in Berkeley,

            another swears in living color the name

            “America” as pussy, whore, cunt beneath

            the tie-dyed sunset.  Christ-plain and simple

            one more forges survival crossbows and missals

            of catechismal poetry from Oregon wilderness

            trails.  One more takes the Pulitzer, then

            blows his brains out across the stage.

 

Here comes the sun in a hazy freeze-frame,

holding back its light, everything inside out.

 

            You’ll watch surf side in Malibu, as high tide smacks

up against Ha Noi, Da Nang, My Lai, onto the sea wall

liberty fashioned without foundation.

 

            You will be returned to the black and white,

to the good soldier.  He will neither rally nor protest.

 

            You will think you are really getting it. You will

predict the others will burn, in a theater absurd

on the stage their collective draft cards.  You will

eat your popcorn with a fervor, draw in

the last sips of your Coke through a noisy straw,

ready for an upright conflict and a slowly satisfying

denouement, when suddenly,

 

            you will be fed this French existential finale,

left there a little dumbfounded, bushwhacked by

all the warriors lined up at the wall,

only some of them graffiti in

the art of memoria, only some of them

raised in credits at the end.

 

 

From TURNING A TRAIN OF THOUGHT UPSIDE DOWN

 

Turning a Train of Thought Upside Down

(or What We Learn)

...as a woman, I have no country. As a woman I want no country.

As a woman, my country is the whole world...--Virginia Woolf

 

Under the bottle brush tree

the lovers sit, circled in each other’s

arms, all alone right in front of us all

on our walks around the city lake,

their kisses blind to the afternoon

breathing down on them and us.

 

I think of my own first love,

how a woman can learn not to take

but to give, how not to gain a self

but to lose one inside another--

natural as breathing, to be in exile

under her own skin, colonized

without knowing she was occupied.

 

Long ago, women in my family carried

bundles of wash on their backs

down to the creek bed to scrub it clean,

later balanced books on their heads

for good posture and the possibility

of a cover shot on a fashion magazine,

having been fed a diet of Cinderella,

Sleeping Beauty, the Snow White tales.

 

Just look at the statistics--how many

of us have sported the split lips,

bruised eyes, broken limbs,

how many assaulted and betrayed,

how many isolated and afraid,

our homes gone up in flames

from so many hearts on fire.

 

Yet we have resisted and rebelled,

conquered enemies, negotiated peace.

We have also had our feet bound,

bodies girdled and gagged, some buried

beneath layers of cloth. We have been

overthrown, dispossessed, imprisoned,

enslaved, burned wholesale at the stake.

 

And we have been venerated and feared

as Congolese leading warriors into battle

with shields and spears, as Mongolians

riding steeds armed with bows and arrows,

as Seneca ruling the land and the clan,

drumming and healing, as Balkans singing

in the company of women, just for the song.

 

Some of us now build muscles in our legs

and take to running for the thrill of the race,

work them in our arms wielding swords

and wrestling whatever might confront us.

We grow strong enough to carry ourselves

to a shade tree, rest beside the fairy dusters

in the kiss of our own breath, learn to love

first ourselves, deeply, and with great abandon.

 

 

From SOMETHING ABOUT: Selected Ars Poetica & Ekphrasis

 

Something About

A Winged Sonnet

 

Something about these little song sparrows,

their avian tongues and throaty chortles,

the buzzy twittering floundering air

just outside the steamy bedroom window.                

 

Something about the rain, the way it clucks

its testy tongue against the glass a blur

with the setting sun’s seductive passion.

Something about these sprightly singers.

 

Something about the way they tuck themselves

inside their wing bars devoted to feathers.

Something about the heart here pinned inside,

the tick of it, sky so blue, nimbus moon. 

 

Something about this perch beside the pane

to watch day nestle in a moody moonlight.