Journalism 101

WHO

Who spots the golden eye of the lynx
Or the mushroom nestled in the oak root.
Who posits the dictum I am, therefore I think
In a reverse Descartes, a sort of brute
Ideology mastering the animate nation.

Who envisions the way the lake
Ripples in the forenoon like a shed skin.
Who first praised the rattlesnake’s
Divinity, the way it can move in
And out of itself, a self creation.

Who took the maiden’s hand,
Who led her to the sacred well
Where bones bleached into a command
For rain that, for ages, never fell.
Who celebrated then, with what elation.


WHAT

What translates the language of the rain
On rooftops on a Tuesday morning.
What calculates the images of fame
Or billows with cumulonimbus warning
Like storms clenching right at the horizon.

What mimics the footfalls of the small
Creatures or the hoofbeats of the horses.
What can we learn from the terrible
Patterns of the wind or watercourses
Braiding to a portentous liaison.

What happens when the curtains start to sway
What luminosity can be affected
In a moment that’s an hour, then a day
So everything we knew is indirected
And diffuse, a kind of gauzy prison.



WHERE

Where did the footprints lead
Where was the forest path we sought
In the painting by Renoir. The seed
Of philosophy is withering and fraught
With bad desires, a pond of algae.

Where else can the storied gold be hid
Sacred mountains and rainbows are a child’s
Fantasy—a kettle with no lid
Where everything boils, tame and wild
A deafened ear, a defective eye.

Where is the church of the possible
The anteroom where everyone kneels
The voices raised in a spurious gospel
Where the statues bless and the bell peels
And the sacrament is merely a sigh


WHY

Why even ask this question
Or any question, answers are like mist
Over a river or the incessant
Reasons behind the Judas kiss.
Why betray ourselves or each other.

Why double back when the path is clear
Why second guess every second thought.
The wood is dark, the fox the deer
In silent bowers. Why calculate the cost
Of love, its aptitude to smother.

Why examine the nuance of each sentence
The breakbone evidence of plow on clod.
Why save a talisman for remembrance
Or speculate on if there is a god
How that could impact any lover.



WHEN

When all the barns have collapsed
When windfall apples rot in a gorge of bees
When hollow trees creak in every synapse
Of weather and splitting let the fence wires seize
The edges of the unoccupied pastures.

When fields rise up again in native grasses
And cultivation is an aborted birth
When buffalo emerge from mountain passes
Like ghostly dreams drummed out of the earth
Invisibly, spirits of vanquished textures

When rain falls constantly or not at all
When fires consume the prairies and the slopes
Of foothills where witchlike figures in a caul
Of ash stand like emblems of our various hopes
Making jagged vaguely obscene gestures.

When dark or light is now or never
And you and I are gone forever.

THE LUNAR YEAR

Hunger Moon

That’s when the food ran out. The stock

Depleted even the saved potatoes gone

Rotten at the eyes. Our savings cleft

By half, all love foreclosed, the doors

Of home padlocked, the windows boarded.

What else can happen? Weather broods

Over the bleak horizon. This moon is also known

As the snow moon.

Crow Moon

The raven invented the world, now the crow rules

Its lesser partitions. It encompasses

The slyness of politicians, the ruthlessness of love.

It waits for things to die or else it torments

Songbirds, those who can tongue

A harmony every crow despises.

Egg Moon

The lost wax process creates an egg

Of gorgeous dimensions, Byzantine

Geometrics suggesting a rage of contained

Passion. But another egg is pure.

Cool in the palm and distant

As that place where everything begins.

Milk Moon

It is this specialization that defines us.

How we link to every creature

That nurses its young. That

Baptismal drink the Orient refuses

After a certain age. What sort of wisdom

Clinks bottles on a stoop at dawn

Like earliest, beloved memories.

Strawberry Moon

You find them knitting the pasture

With rubies, the wild sort

Whose sweetness is so compact, so perfect

That cultivation seems a sort of sin

Original as the path that led us out

Of infancy to the bloody-hearted world

Wearing its seeds like a cloak.

Thunder Moon

Everything here depends on nitrogen

Of which thunder is merely the voice

As a slap is the sound of forked anger,

The sound angels made as they fell

Into the firmament, the first denial.

Sturgeon Moon

Producers of caviar and isinglass

One richly edible, the other a bonding agent

Like the lust that glues two lovers.

Flesh of temperate waters. The miracle

That feeds a jubilation

Of disbelievers. Cast your net. Have patience.

Barley Moon

All grains were once wild

Uncultivated, there for the reaping

There for the first lively spirits

Fermenting like every wish into

Something achievable, the malt

Of high ambition.

Harvest Moon

Every goddess walks

Under that parasol, her arms

A cornucopia of fulfillment.

No wonder we worship this

Unblemished guise. No wonder

We think no matter how many banks

Fail, how many ships break into pieces

In the coming gales, we’ll still

Have this: how we were blessed

Just as the good times ended.

Hunters Moon

That’s what we do when everything

We counted on has collapsed

And all coffers are empty, all drawers

Divested of silk, all trigger fingers

Reinvested with darkness. Walk

Silently in the tracks of the dispossessed

Ensuring it will not be you.

Cold Moon

Hunker down. Survival is now the key

To your heart, the tone-deaf song.

If you make a fire it is certain

To go out while you’re asleep

You’ll wake with your feet frozen

In a crossroad of bad choices.

Shaking is the way your body

Fights cold like this. Huddle together.

Wolf Moon

They have come back, those predators

Of the prairie, the steppe, the open range.

Protected as a parliament

Of oligarchs. Their guard hairs rising

As they sight you, out there

In your unarmed villages.

North American Review

Poetry magazine well-versed in criticism

Poetry magazine well-versed in criticism

Artists of Exactitude

ARTISTS OF EXACTITUDE: AUDUBON AND STUBBS

The bird that Audubon depicted

With such scrutiny was compelled to fly

Into the static existence of the portfolio.

Stunned out of the bayou,

Each feather a perfection of detail.

Its inanimate spirit a paradox.

The horse that Stubbs bled dry

Pumped full of tallow to investigate

Its arterial and venous expressways,

Strung up on hooks and skinned

Exposing the armature of muscle and bone

Exact as chilled rage defenestrated

Upon the page of science and art.

Obermeisters of observation

Threading the needle of particulars—

Why foil the imagination with diffuse mists

Of oriental peaks or pointillist

Picknickers or watercolored wetlands.

These two seized

The heart of passion, that bloody industry.

To get it right, the object

Has to die

So we can see its

Utterness, its suspended miracle.

Rockhurst Review

Rose Red to Snow White

A dark wind batters the door,
our minds unchink as
the chimney roars and the eaves
shriek in their rusty dreams.

Huddle by the fire, sister,
something is snapping in the applewood
and sparks ignite our nightgowns.
let us save each other.
Let us marry these ashes.

Don't leave the comfort we've found
for that rap on the doorjamb.
God knows who'd be out
on such a night in a blizzard
like this one. Have no pity
on travelers far from town
in this fierce weather.

But you've unlatched us,
let a whirlwind of white flakes
confuse our destinies
and succored a brute of fur
whose snout embeds
in your fabulous hair.

A thorn stabs
my red heart
as you lie down
with the great bear
bringing him to life
with your white body.

How can you be sure
he'll turn at last into something
noble, that he won't always
raid your breasts for honey
or sleep grunting all winter?

Wisconsin Review. Collected in The Lonely Hearts Killers by Joan Colby. Spoon River Poetry Press. Also anthologized in Disenchantments: An Anthology of Modern Fairytale Poetry.

White Lilacs

The white lilac has a hundred ghostly fingers.
It points at the first stars.
It points at me
standing in a May twilight
with barbed wire hooking the darkness where
barbs of stars bloom astonishingly.
The cones of the white lilac
shake in a dark wind from the south.
Fragrance rattles
into air, odor of sweet
bones, night-mouths.

All night the lilacs will shudder here
at the edge of the meadow while
stars dazzle the sky's bush.
That black bush of menace.

A ghost
walks over my grave as my flesh rises.
The roots of the lilacs
strive through my skull discovering the holes
I gaze out of. Existence
is terrible. The white lilacs
tremble as I tremble
departing into themselves,
into their clusters of oneness,
refusing to be a symbol,
admitting nothing.

from Blue Woman Dancing in the Nerve by Joan Colby
Alembic Press

A HEARTBREAK IS A SIMPLE FRACTURE

Nothing ever heals without a mark

The bone thickens

Over the hairline crack

And the skin bunches itself

Like a garment secured with a safety pin

Over the site of a wound.

Fire leaves its red blaze

On the wilderness of the body,

You follow those signs to pain

That ancient thickening

Whose memory makes you wince

Like a scar bereft of sensation

But hideous to look at.

It’s said when a fracture mends

The broken place is stronger

Than ever before. But remember

The stiffening, the inevitable loss

Of flexion,

Small deformities located only

By feeling.

You might seem whole as a vase

Carefully cemented by an expert

In the repair of

Rare vessels

Yet the weather will compound

Old injuries

Auditioning in each sprain

Or broken femur

Whistling along the nerve

Like a northerly.

Examine the eye transfixed

By awful visions.

The lover vanishing down the stairs

For the last time,

The child disappearing

In deep water,

A building on fire with every window

Orange as a marigold

Blooming with screams.

Examine lips

How they blossom with small roses,

How the thorns of language fall

From them like hooks,

How they open dark and sudden

Like the crevice

In which eels lurk

Vicious as tongues.

Examine the heart

How it is pierced with an arrow

In all the depictions of love.

It is a prisoner

In a jail of bone knowing

It can never escape alive.

You can die of

Its breaking. You can die of the callus

That forms when there is no response

To its assiduous knocking

the new renaissance