Imitations: attempts to emulate the voices and styles of some of the poets I most admire.

Transcription

1 Imitations: attempts to emulate the voices and styles of some of the poets I most admire. 1. Day s End After a Snowstorm Robert Frost December almost always finds me here Since no one else comes by this time of year To listen to the full-flaked snow descend. The ice-encumbered fir limbs slope and bend, While I, a little lost, decide to pause And lie down at the water s edge on stone, Listening to something s little claws Across the river s surface, thick as bone. And looking up into the dome of trees It seems that heaven s boundary floated down To crystallize each silhouette of leaves: In cold and burnished stillness. Back in town, The snow day s charms are waning with the light. At sunset, boys return to dinner, house, Their proud snow angels outlines barely bright; Garage doors close like great and silenced mouths. But here, there is no promising of rest. The snow has swallowed sound with eerie grace. The swallows set about rebuilding nests; The fish beneath are slowed in frozen space. 2. What The Comedian Knows Philip Larkin I mean, we were just fuckin kids! The man s last joke begins, Thirty-eight years old And some kind of laughter rolls up From the floor seats: spotless men

2 In blazers and Burberry Who paid for their lady s ticket. It s all so quick, you wonder if They heard the gag at all. While up here, in the top-tier Some of us really couldn t Make out the words, deafened By the rustling of all the degenerate Latecomers. It s darker, no kidding, With no cameras allowed. As he moves through the joke, I know That this, now, is the most alone I ll ever get to feel. A room of us united In not caring about one man s misfortune, Laughing, ignoring, respectively. Funny to be so dismissive of heartbreak, Like we wouldn t recognize it on the street. I picture him rehearsing in the mirror Searching for the face that s best to tell This one about the woman he divorced. A big, toothy smile, then a smaller one They ll buy it, it ll do, he thinks, But we, in the back row of balcony seats Feel no obligation to clap, even quietly To look at him. Even to stir. 3. City Park After School Dylan Thomas The sun-burnt children crowded Round the swing-set springing Out of graveled ground will wait their turns To sweep up, like their mothers taught With pumping back and forth of arms. But, tethered still to metal, they will wonder What the sky s beguiling blue would feel like Rushing past with no swing back

3 By gravity s agenda. And the mothers, From a park bench distance, count the golden Heads, again, again, to make sure everyone Is safe as coins accounted for; They do not dare to think Of when they swung in air themselves, Scared to polish, wordlessly, With practiced hand, each small gem Memory of youth, and how it used to be, Til shined so lustrous that the Now Has no choice but be blinded. The careless clouds are thickening with rain. Just a bit longer, the children cry. The mothers say, Time to go home. Selected Originals Snow Day Mom wasn t there. It took me stretching, tongue out on big brother s shoulders to unhook the blue plastic sled from the ceiling. We trod to the top of our neighborhood hill - the one that I m (even now) too scared to bike down. I scanned the street for some merry whistler not knowing it was only my ears ringing with the steeped-in silence of everything covered. I listened to the way the next-door dog s bark didn t echo.

4 You re sitting up front. You re small, said my brother, face lit from the sun on the flakes, his smile a blind whiteness as he ruffled my hair with his fingers. He did all the work, his little heaving breaths pushing us both toward the downcurve. My eyes gleamed. Til, in a burst of speed, we caught ice; careened the old, giant oak set straight for my face, growing wider, wider, I remember my brother, foot thrust as a makeshift brake. His leg to the tree, his six-month cast. My face like nothing had happened. The 2:15, Nonstop In the head, there s a man pressing buttons, but he, too, is a visitor here. The motionless wings bear the weight of 34 bored-to-death business trips, two old women with the New York Times crossword, the sweaty-necked first classer nursing his gin, and Mother in back, nursing too.

5 The tail of the beast is deliberate, directional, beginning our final descent but no such thing as destination. Always bound for somewhere else. The metal and mass of the body breathe with the breath of the engines, the vastness of exhale, unyielding, condensing, to leave two ribboning white vapor tracks in the sky.