Four New Poems by Andy Stallings

To Nico Alvarado

It isn't like

you find your

way in rooms

your friends have

left still cresting

with their laughter

years ago it

isn't like in a

backyard filled

with mint &

children you

think you see

(someone has

died) what you

might still call

god or a ghost

or illusion but

it isn't

like you can

ever understand

what fills your

willing arms

outside of money

with no regret

& outside there's

rain so it isn't

like you see

through trees

dark & close the

girl's face

in the train

window passing

lit & looking

out it isn't like

that not now

but anyhow

again you flood

with longing

with love you

always will lifting

from the garden

a radish from its

coil the hose

from its mirror

the radiant

night & all

the melancholy

songs you sing

to your

children hush

Cecilia your son's

alright it isn't like

there's nothing

pure as death to

give repair & we

fall to sleep the

sound of rain &

radio decay grown

clear around

the edges of our

lives it's not

repair though

you know I

think it's there

we acquire

music

To Zoë Clements

Last night

together with

you I

rode an open trolley

between the wharves &

worn-out strip malls of

some foreign distant

city

you described

the golden rooms

& mint groves of

Tennessee I heard

music in it &

anymore there isn't

a thing to mourn for

not an absent

hand not a name

withdrawn

everyone sees

the sky sliced up

before us

the more I am

distracted mid-

sentence by this dream

the more I drift

past storybook Eiffel

Towers into the day

the more I

meet you on this hopeless

tarmac in steady rain

& call where we stand death

& speak openly of

the dead &

weep

today's the white

tunnel through a furled

flower's stem & outside

the moon &

inside the moon

&

here's the brilliant

hairdo brilliantly

clean &

here's your

asking of the city

whatever it will not give

in this case

forever

there's a passenger

across the aisle as quickly

gone you

want them back

more than you want

your index finger

say –

hey

Zoë the children

are sleeping still

& it's Christmas

morning generous

dust-lovely Budapest must

feel so fresh

today the decent

cafes occupied

by good-looking

middle-aged women

learning chess &

I have named

this tarmac death &

somehow really do

believe in ghosts

& leave the doors

unlocked

& sing to

keep them near a

song though

Zoë it can't

hold us all

home around me

sings an elegant

boundary & here

with the children I

take ordinary

walks full of

language

outside the wide

reflectivity

of night

To Hunter Deely

What consoles me

what causes me

even now

to be hopeful

is the image

of Earth's final

enduring silence:

the reddening

planet

mostly metallic

floes in magma

quiet & flush

with speed as it is

absorbed by

the chromosphere

first ablation

of the crust

then the mantle

vaporized then

a last push

to the heart

of the world

& all music

& all weather

& all love I

harbor &

distribute at last

will have been

properly

without meaning

at most

a brief expansion

of light from

a dying star

& yet

among all of

you

to have been

without meaning

To Jay Thompson

I've just set down

The Astonished Man

& come inside

where I feel

less alive

& can write

my shadow

out there soared

over the lawn &

the driveway

out to the sea

the sea already

darkening in

late sun &

it will rain

tonight

my shadow soared

tremendously

I had to give up

reading

things like that

always turn me

around

distortions

recognitions

gestures &

things once

meant

to be seen &

to know

the story

as soon as I've

seen a tugboat

roll its engines &

speed ahead

of an oil tanker

on the river

while a sailor

walks like it's

nothing across

the deck it's

enough

for me

I don't need

to watch him

haul up the ropes

or shut the hatches

to know

the shape of his work

sometimes

it's as though the

dream of open

ocean is

more perfect than

open ocean

it's not

a story can

make it feel

that way

but even when

you come to

The Astonished

Man I'd rather

sit silently with

Manolo Secco at

some desolate

Brazilian filling

station than read

about it in prose

I'd rather read

a diary than

a book of poems

I'd rather take

a walk with you

than either

we won't have to

go far to feel

the good air all

around us crashing

blossoms fooled by

false spring who

cares how

brief I'd give

anything to get

fooled for awhile

like that

to poke an anthill

with a branch the

last storm dropped

watch a kite

in the rain

& not to stand

for even a minute

in place

it is the character

of thought to share

when you find you are

stopped & looking out

at the sea it's time

to move on

to say hello I'm

walking here

to the distant

ships sliding ahead

to never look

aside or

behind because

what was

with you is

with you always

& requires no

amplification it

simply moves

the danger is

thinking too

clearly or

too long

Jennifer showed me

how to pronounce

profond aujourd'hui

Abi explained

what it meant

Melissa & I

stood in the kitchen

& I wanted only

to stand in

the kitchen an

hour longer not

quite understanding

or able to say

knowing the

language just

keeps it from you

right?

living is living

& no one

ever needs to

plot it out?

there's a story

about a man who

arrives by boat it's

not a small town

it's a city but

one impressed by

news of itself

so that anything

heard on one street

echoes everywhere

secretively but

fast the man

must be some

kind of marvel

a minor king of

business entirely

modern or maybe

he works in movies

it's said he'll

stay a week &

there are others

traveling behind

his trunks his

cameras his people

he walks into the city

carrying nothing

he's looking for

some secret some

essential truth

of the city the way

it regards itself

when men like him

aren't around with

the promise of

movies reflecting

back a face as blank

as the one it gives

to strangers

but the city is not

so closed he discovers

though its smile as well

may be a kind of guard

when he gets that far

the man sits down

for lunch

& for days the city

thinks only of

his lunches

at first he orders

only the local foods

anemones shellfish snails

hot broths & oyster

sauces alcohols

but soon he asks

for spitted wrens

roasted turtle different

African brush fowl

the proprietor

orders each & each

is delivered by lunch

next day at exorbitant

expense but the man

pays for everything

in advance there's

nothing he will not

order nothing he

will not eat

it gets so

the schoolboys

walk past

the bistro as soon

as they're let out

each day

they lean across

the low iron fence

to ask what he's

ordered & remain

nearby to learn

how he eats the thing

the lawyers stroll past

twice a day leaving

for & returning

from siesta even

the judges & council

members pass that

way & turn as they

pass to watch the

man in movies

take his lunch

only the port workers

maintain their distance

either they know

there have been delays

or that there could

never have been

delays & that either

way the man will

stay on alone

what could they say

at this time

that would alter

the story

is there more

anyhow

that I need

to tell of course

he meets an

important woman she's

married to the mayor

or runs a gambling

den she'll do

anything he asks &

he knows how to

handle that

no one knows

where they sleep

or if they sleep they

couldn't possibly sleep

just as the city

begins to lose itself

to enter once &

for all the script

writing itself

a woman arrives by

sea in the dead

of night few people

see her but it's

said she's an

African queen or the

heiress to

an oil or tobacco

fortune in the

States she

finds him in

the bistro or on

the outskirts it

doesn't matter which

he leaves with her

maybe before

he leaves he

says to someone

“you do

what the moment

requires but

the moment &

what it requires

is never the same”

& that's that

there's no more

the schoolboys go

back to their lessons

the mayor's wife

returns to her home

the proprietor of

the bistro sits down

with his cronies again

to play dominoes

maybe one day

a boat arrives &

unloads some trunks

& a camera nobody

comes to claim

the dock workers

tuck them away

in a warehouse

& the city that is

nothing but motion

continues to move

Andy Stallings lives in New Orleans, but will soon move to Deerfield, MA. His first book of poems, To the Heart of the World, will come out with Rescue Press in the fall. These poems are from that book.

SEVEN NEW POEMS from Lauren Haldeman

TEAM KEEP SLEEP

                                                                                                           

This is my first draft and I join team ‘Keep Sleep.’ 

My number is behind me on my uniform.

On occasion I feel the iron-on plastic’s curve

and it feels like a eight. I might be an eight.

Our jerseys are off-white; our symbol is a pile

of fingernail clippings, slightly turned

to the right. A lawsuit requires this.

If shown from above, the pile too closely

resembles the symbol for ‘breath.’

Our colors are tooth-white & brain-

white and diamond. Our cheer goes

like gin down our followers throats.

Tomorrow, we play the team ‘Recall of Elephants.’

They supposedly compete with their eyes fully closed.

On their uniforms they’ve scribbled

the text of team movements in layers of grey pencil

on light parchment gear.  It is said

they remember. It is said if shucked open

their brains are not ‘whiteness’ but instead

slung with ink. For practice, we ambush

some trainers that scamper

in an elephant costume all over the field.

I do not understand this. I forget where I am. If

my tackle is blank, I fill it in with a blur.

This is my first draft. It is game day, and now past

the populace a comment on my athletics

is flashed. I’m so dominant an extreme

in my complex of living that each day begins

backwards from each hit I divvy.

So I join up team Keep Sleep. My back has a digit.

In a minute, I’ll witness the wipe of my tackle. 

11/23

             

I’m your mom. I step up. I attach a papier-mâché wolf head to my head, 

I tie fur to my back; I am your mom now,

a pine tree carved into a bantam,
a strong wind holding up an animal. I am your mom.

You don’t have to test your hold --
you can use the vines, you can pull yourself up by my teeth. I am your mom,

a heliotrope & plasma pile, steady, weather passing me;
this is my job, I’m your mom, I am

astronaut, helmeted raven; I am neutrons, plum-pits, core-mantle metallurgy. Baby,
you can pull yourself up by my teeth. 

LES QUARTRE CENT FLYING BUTTRESS

First, an icy tundra where

our parents build a chandelier. A gallery
portrait: one has bubble eyes.
Mom says, see the trees
through the crystal: it is
like a festival. We are watching

multiple headlocks and the myriad forms
of evening, immersing
slowly in our heirlooms. Here
at the most perfect location
for a pyramid --
my wrist. You can peek through the

upper spatial window: inside it,
the spider and inside it: a hive.
Know that the spider is mathematics
alive. & Out from
each of us runs a star-proof. In our flesh-shape,
a wake of multiple rabbits

spiral through the tubular field. This is nice:
a Zippo lights up
in the ginkgo. A box of breeze unravels
the window. Bubbles
of voice and data bluster by
in this ice cave where we’re made

as small as we like. For instance,
a curve could pass us in
two directions. From our ambient manifold
we gather ourselves. This cavernous air
filled with geodesic loops.
And those -- The friendly tubes!

CROATOAN

  

When the hypnotism lifted,

I was unusually alone. Hungry.

Knelling. Taciturn. Strange

smelling. Your plank boat on the bank

was replaced with dark leaves

in the shape of a boat. Heavy fog,

hickory. There was always some

consternation among the birds.

There was always a letter, blood-

streaked, in a bottle.

But this time, it seems, it is very

real. I’ve called for the monitors,

but hear only hissing. A new

word is written all over the trees.

 I’ve considered the thicket,

but only the dogs will go in it,

and they always come out

acting strange. Even Manteo. Very

slow. Leaning, as though

to tell a secret. But nothing. He seems to

know nothing at all. And nothing

erases the way your face blanked

when they came up speaking

with flags. Nothing fogs

how you smiled and nodded as they

slowly coddled you down. When

the hypnotism lifted, I lay prostrate

among catamounts, charcoal

and fluttering shapes

on the stage of a new century. Kudzu

luggage filled the lark’s fort. Half of

us wandered the courtyard,

whispering.

FUNERAL INVITATION

Watch as my funeral becomes very calm.

It happens beneath the third lamp on the street.

I was a lamp once,

inside this big life --

An epistolary record

that scattered the leaves.

Now a shadow and a mailman pass the procession,

both of them mixing up each other’s lines.

I pet the purring

gnat on my chest.

I bite the light-bulb

inside the gnat’s mind.

As always a motor sings in the distance.

Somewhere, a bike makes continual leaps.

Under the sky,

flanked by cats on all sides,

I notice my skull --

it devours the breeze.

This gravel is gorgeous. It’s so wild and contained.

There are enormous projections of friendship today.

I put on this coat of

unavoidable feelings.

I walk to the fire-pit

and take off my head.

THE POSTBELLUM OFFICE

Six huskies will be hitched along by dawn;

Embroidered on my coat, the village heads.

In perfect composition, one by one,

The townsmen knot their wishes to my sled.

They have no right to place their trust in me

For I have been ignored until, now sick,

They come to me as to them came disease --

So in that waft, my un-picked hand they pick.

I’ll say of course that I am coming back

To harvest boon with any skull that’s left;

But as I tie the Wolf’s Bane to my neck,

I take both traitor-breath, then hero-breath.

Departing past their patron eyes, I think:

“I’m running through these woods, choosing these things…”

12/30

While the smaller human sleeps, 

observe its forehead: 

a glowing cord reaches to connect

to the mom-skull. This is how the pair

will integrate sleep patterns.

You can tell by the bright-green dashes flowing through

that a dream about mares

in liquid-dark has been shared.

The infant world is, in fact, liquid-dark.

Infant arms push

electric outer-space water. Watch it through

these goggles of emerald night-vision: the child bends,

syncing, toward the loading mom-skull.

People here call this

the 'neon whisper.'

Lauren Haldeman’s first poetry collection, Team Photograph, is forthcoming from Rescue Press in Fall 2014. Also: she’s a mom and makes paintings.