Posts for June 17, 2022 (page 7)

Thank you for telling me I
am not a poet
I think I know it
Your snarky remarks
sure hit their marks
So, thank you

thank you for reminding me
For Poetry, literature, art
You must be MFA smart
Mere mortals need not apply
No, here my PhD won’t fly

Get me gone, Get me gone,
me and my improper rhyming
My unorthodox timing  

My random stanzas
No flounce or organza

Thank you for telling me I
am not a poet I think I know it
But at least I am kind
not so much blind to your admonition
I should abandon my position

I’ll continue my fun
My thirty-day run
And at the end
I’ll put up my pen
and mend from your cruel remarks

they have no sense of the catastrophe:
they don’t turn to face Icarus
nor me

and don’t perceive us as different

Author: Marin Bodakov
Translator: Katerina Stoykova

Lawzie, it’s been hot here
I have a friend who’s visiting Vegas
I know this because of Facebook
It was 106 degrees at the airport
The town’s name there is Paradise
He also checked in from Death Valley
A town called Furnace Creek
The temp there was 116
It may have been hotter at Furnace Creek
But at least they’re honest about it
Truth in advertising
Unlike 106 in Paradise
Forget what I said
About it being hot here

Don’t come knocking 
on my door in this heat
without calling

first. You might find me
wearing less than
necessary-—in flagrante

delicto, romancing
a tall drink of water
on ice. 

Heat is a walrus
Ungainly waddle through air
Clapping just for fun  

Stomping out bodhrans and tablas splashing
Dancing lily shapes into the rain
Voices, meant for interplay,
Echoing through silence
Is it carved cuneiform
Or erasable pencil marks?
Craving permanence
Observing ephemeral
We are shimmers of unbearable light:
An agonizing beauty
And then  – (blow) – gone

There’s a quiet circling of turkey
vultures hushed by songs
of mockingbird & cardinal. We stop

to listen to a finch, walk deeper
into the glade, chatter
while red trees creak in the rolling

wind. We read about threatened
species. Only in this shallow
soil & on this fragile

bedrock, grow buttonweed
& meadow garlic. Prairie
clover, scorpion

weed & the endangered
coneflower. I ask about his largest
tattoo, a dragon big

as a fawn that wraps
around him—chest
to back. He divulges,

“My brother OD’d. I was numb,
but I could feel the blue
ink needle.” He drives me home

in his cargo van, radio
blaring BB King. At home
I research finches & find out

the male sings often
during courtship—excitedly
& continuously. While the female

dances he puffs his feathers
like a shirtless Mick
Jagger. If she accepts

she’ll sleep next to him, nest
build & coo. Male & female
are known to sing

the same song — but only
while in flight & only
during spring

mating. At midnight my cell
phone buzzes & it’s him. We flirt
until first light.

(after Li Bai)

stately sailing ships
of morning light
glide above the place
of the garden’s circle
and artichokes planted
yesterday at dark

past the climbing vines
of ruby moon hyacinth
past the unmade bed
of tall asparagus 
a single soul goes
along the further row

Crystalline blues and green
Seaglass perfect, fizz and spray
My watercolors, dipped in pale
emeralds sketch my soul from the waves
And the breezes carry me across to you