is devoted to balance, attentive
to lurch and sway of bodies' secondhand.
Who has not been defeated in the nights
of slow-motion falls, the thuds on green rugs
never soft like being knocked asunder
on grass, the field turned into sod by cleats
of impresarios, the grid's masters . . .
(3-6, 18 June 2014)
copyright 2014 by Floyce Alexander
Thursday, June 5, 2014
Immaculate Concepcion
This girl comes down the block they are climbing,
hunting for somewhere to stop and kill time
before tonight's first set. His clarinet
Bobby cradles in its case as he greets
the girl, who smiles. He stops, turns. She keeps on,
he walks beside her, descending with her
where he wants to take her back to, with him.
He knows she will go where she wants to go.
She guesses he wants inside her panties.
Time passes they spend in a coffee shop
with a bar hidden under the counter.
Concepcion is her padre's surname,
and her mother named her Immaculate.
She's from the Mexico that disappears
into Guatemala. She left her child
with her latest lover, not the father.
She likes Seattle in the rain. She buys
a round. Not coffee, pulque with no worm.
Between Oaxaca and Guatemala
City, Bobby knows, may be where God lives.
He wonders aloud if she sees angels.
She laughs: Didn't you know I'm an angel?
He asks, Do angels make babies?
then adds: I thought only God could do that.
He's my brother, Concepcion declares,
He makes me Immaculate.
Incest? Bobby thinks, then asks.
You don't know, hombre, I have bones of steel
and I have no need to fuck my father!
She would like to ask Bobby when he's hard
in bed, does he come quickly, go flaccid?
She knows he would be what she'd have him be.
He's no more a man than all the others.
She says she has to go now. Bobby coos:
Imma, come up the hill and hear us play,
afterward we'll go upstairs, to my church.
(15 May-6 June 2014: II)
copyright 2014 by Floyce Alexander
hunting for somewhere to stop and kill time
before tonight's first set. His clarinet
Bobby cradles in its case as he greets
the girl, who smiles. He stops, turns. She keeps on,
he walks beside her, descending with her
where he wants to take her back to, with him.
He knows she will go where she wants to go.
She guesses he wants inside her panties.
Time passes they spend in a coffee shop
with a bar hidden under the counter.
Concepcion is her padre's surname,
and her mother named her Immaculate.
She's from the Mexico that disappears
into Guatemala. She left her child
with her latest lover, not the father.
She likes Seattle in the rain. She buys
a round. Not coffee, pulque with no worm.
Between Oaxaca and Guatemala
City, Bobby knows, may be where God lives.
He wonders aloud if she sees angels.
She laughs: Didn't you know I'm an angel?
He asks, Do angels make babies?
then adds: I thought only God could do that.
He's my brother, Concepcion declares,
He makes me Immaculate.
Incest? Bobby thinks, then asks.
You don't know, hombre, I have bones of steel
and I have no need to fuck my father!
She would like to ask Bobby when he's hard
in bed, does he come quickly, go flaccid?
She knows he would be what she'd have him be.
He's no more a man than all the others.
She says she has to go now. Bobby coos:
Imma, come up the hill and hear us play,
afterward we'll go upstairs, to my church.
(15 May-6 June 2014: II)
copyright 2014 by Floyce Alexander
Stroll
Next door to the cardiac patients,
Bobby throws his weight around
without falling. At least that's what
floycealexander says in Bobby's behalf.
Noon gets them nowhere,
Bobby included.
Bobby wants to find a store and beer to go.
Clark knows a place near Hotel Congress.
But Bobby goes down the street, not up.
Three hookers to every block,
one on each end and one in the middle,
Bobby shines them on,
he's that well known. So he says.
floycealexander thinks: Bobby knows
the day as well as the night,
La Iglesia de La Puta knows only the night.
(15 May-6 June 2014)
copyright 2014 by Floyce Alexander
Bobby throws his weight around
without falling. At least that's what
floycealexander says in Bobby's behalf.
Noon gets them nowhere,
Bobby included.
Bobby wants to find a store and beer to go.
Clark knows a place near Hotel Congress.
But Bobby goes down the street, not up.
Three hookers to every block,
one on each end and one in the middle,
Bobby shines them on,
he's that well known. So he says.
floycealexander thinks: Bobby knows
the day as well as the night,
La Iglesia de La Puta knows only the night.
(15 May-6 June 2014)
copyright 2014 by Floyce Alexander
From Seattle to Appalachia, and Her Letter Back
Rosemary, having returned to her Blue Ridge roots,
writes, "Dear Bobby: I cannot help but tell you
my heart broke leaving Seattle,
sorrowful, abandoning La Iglesia de La Puta,
knowing full well I too was puta,
but not your Henrietta Murphy
in your story of her youth in Mexico City.
Over where I sold my body, I could hear hoot owls hoot.
"I think my cunt is growing its hymen back.
I want you to tell me how to get out of hell
now that my swollen tits are dripping milk.
I am alone in the cabin my daddy bequeathed to me.
You first saw me naked in La Iglesia
where you entered my body
to make a baby in Seattle.
Loving in La Puta, we made our luck.
"I only want to love you where you are,
but better that you come to live with me.
I have suffered nothing that you have been through
and out the other side. Here I am poor
like my folks, like I was in your city,
where the night gave us paradise. What did I need?
the shrieks of the panther deep in these woods,
the sun filtering through trees among trees."
1 June-18 July 2014
copyright 2014 by Floyce Alexander
writes, "Dear Bobby: I cannot help but tell you
my heart broke leaving Seattle,
sorrowful, abandoning La Iglesia de La Puta,
knowing full well I too was puta,
but not your Henrietta Murphy
in your story of her youth in Mexico City.
Over where I sold my body, I could hear hoot owls hoot.
"I think my cunt is growing its hymen back.
I want you to tell me how to get out of hell
now that my swollen tits are dripping milk.
I am alone in the cabin my daddy bequeathed to me.
You first saw me naked in La Iglesia
where you entered my body
to make a baby in Seattle.
Loving in La Puta, we made our luck.
"I only want to love you where you are,
but better that you come to live with me.
I have suffered nothing that you have been through
and out the other side. Here I am poor
like my folks, like I was in your city,
where the night gave us paradise. What did I need?
the shrieks of the panther deep in these woods,
the sun filtering through trees among trees."
1 June-18 July 2014
copyright 2014 by Floyce Alexander
Saturday, May 3, 2014
Hope
Soon he will be a child again.
You can see it happening
in his book of dogs and cats
and his luckless fate with women.
He begins and ends with nothing
but the only woman who loved
discoveries, even each of his lies.
He loved to watch the light in her child’s face.
And Minerva and Sam, which one is
eagle, which one turtle, female and male,
sky god or goddess, which one earth mover
turning up nothing that is not itself . . .
To accompany the child, the sinner.
Who needs to be good once you are happy,
or saintlike to rid yourself of evil . . .
Her name meant hope, but he never knew why.
In hope something exists that is not here,
where a man thinks he can know when love ends,
as for Emily Dickinson life ends
to give her transport to the other sphere.
(3 May 2014)
copyright 2014 by Floyce Alexander
You can see it happening
in his book of dogs and cats
and his luckless fate with women.
He begins and ends with nothing
but the only woman who loved
discoveries, even each of his lies.
He loved to watch the light in her child’s face.
And Minerva and Sam, which one is
eagle, which one turtle, female and male,
sky god or goddess, which one earth mover
turning up nothing that is not itself . . .
To accompany the child, the sinner.
Who needs to be good once you are happy,
or saintlike to rid yourself of evil . . .
Her name meant hope, but he never knew why.
In hope something exists that is not here,
where a man thinks he can know when love ends,
as for Emily Dickinson life ends
to give her transport to the other sphere.
(3 May 2014)
copyright 2014 by Floyce Alexander
Friday, May 2, 2014
He Talks to Her, I Talk to You, or Did, Reading Dostoyevsky
1. I don’t know what to say, he said.
She said nothing.
He went away and stayed.
She saw him on special occasions.
When he was exhausted,
when he wanted to love her
which must have meant
he wanted her to love him.
She did, he worked in his office,
stayed out night after night.
Endless. Remorseless. Crazed,
he brought the ex-nun home
to meet her. You’re like a man
possessed, she said. I am?
Demons rode in the saddle of his soul.
The ex-nun read books for a living
now. She should know.
2. You came in, lover. Angry, forlorn.
You wanted me to give you time
away. You stayed. I called,
you said, I’m not coming back.
You were adamant. I left myself here.
You came back. You slept
on top of the bed. Clothes on.
You must have feared me.
I thought of many reasons.
I would write to you,
and did, from far away,
but never mailed the letter.
I went farther away.
Thinking. Loving.
Going off and staying.
Don't dwell on the dying or the dead.
Give the horse its head.
3. The ranch is very quiet.
When I work I get work done.
I am loved again. Imagine.
The horses graze the canyon floor.
How far I have come. This deep.
Demons stare me down.
(2 May 2014)
copyright 2014 by Floyce Alexander
She said nothing.
He went away and stayed.
She saw him on special occasions.
When he was exhausted,
when he wanted to love her
which must have meant
he wanted her to love him.
She did, he worked in his office,
stayed out night after night.
Endless. Remorseless. Crazed,
he brought the ex-nun home
to meet her. You’re like a man
possessed, she said. I am?
Demons rode in the saddle of his soul.
The ex-nun read books for a living
now. She should know.
2. You came in, lover. Angry, forlorn.
You wanted me to give you time
away. You stayed. I called,
you said, I’m not coming back.
You were adamant. I left myself here.
You came back. You slept
on top of the bed. Clothes on.
You must have feared me.
I thought of many reasons.
I would write to you,
and did, from far away,
but never mailed the letter.
I went farther away.
Thinking. Loving.
Going off and staying.
Don't dwell on the dying or the dead.
Give the horse its head.
3. The ranch is very quiet.
When I work I get work done.
I am loved again. Imagine.
The horses graze the canyon floor.
How far I have come. This deep.
Demons stare me down.
(2 May 2014)
copyright 2014 by Floyce Alexander
Thursday, May 1, 2014
Outward Signs of Inward Grace
How many dawns, chill from his rippling rest
The seagull’s wings shall dip and pivot him,
Shedding white rings of tumult, building high
Over the chained bay waters Liberty–
Crossing Brooklyn Bridge, Katya from the Ukraine
is on her way to meet Amy, who’s waiting to sublet
her Williamsburg walk-up. Amy will summer in her
other home, the small but satisfying two-story
deep within the North Carolina woods,
. . . a stone, a leaf, an unfound door; of a stone, a leaf,
a door. And of all the forgotten faces.
. . . O lost, and by the wind grieved,
ghost, come back again. . . .
whereupon Katya saying goodbye recalls her pleasure
meeting the fiery-eyed lovely who tricked
to learn what it was to write a novel
based on being a businesswoman so young
she either forgot the man or enjoyed him . . .
Understand: we have
grown into one as we slept and
now I can’t jump
because I can’t let go your hand.
The pages are published and the words taped
that Katya’s reading, returning to the Ukraine,
and on the way to Italy, hears Amy reciting.
On her birthday, Katya writes: Amy, I have no car
with Venice so close I’m sad I cannot swim that far.
And the sun goes down in waves of ether
in such a way that I can’t tell
if the day is ending, or the world,
of if the secret of secrets is inside me again.
__________
(Italicized four-line passages are, consecutively, by Hart Crane; Thomas Wolfe;
Marina Tsvetayeva, trans. Elaine Feinstein; Anna Akhmatova, trans. Jane Kenyon.)
(1 May 2014)
copyright 2014 by Floyce Alexander
The seagull’s wings shall dip and pivot him,
Shedding white rings of tumult, building high
Over the chained bay waters Liberty–
Crossing Brooklyn Bridge, Katya from the Ukraine
is on her way to meet Amy, who’s waiting to sublet
her Williamsburg walk-up. Amy will summer in her
other home, the small but satisfying two-story
deep within the North Carolina woods,
. . . a stone, a leaf, an unfound door; of a stone, a leaf,
a door. And of all the forgotten faces.
. . . O lost, and by the wind grieved,
ghost, come back again. . . .
whereupon Katya saying goodbye recalls her pleasure
meeting the fiery-eyed lovely who tricked
to learn what it was to write a novel
based on being a businesswoman so young
she either forgot the man or enjoyed him . . .
Understand: we have
grown into one as we slept and
now I can’t jump
because I can’t let go your hand.
The pages are published and the words taped
that Katya’s reading, returning to the Ukraine,
and on the way to Italy, hears Amy reciting.
On her birthday, Katya writes: Amy, I have no car
with Venice so close I’m sad I cannot swim that far.
And the sun goes down in waves of ether
in such a way that I can’t tell
if the day is ending, or the world,
of if the secret of secrets is inside me again.
__________
(Italicized four-line passages are, consecutively, by Hart Crane; Thomas Wolfe;
Marina Tsvetayeva, trans. Elaine Feinstein; Anna Akhmatova, trans. Jane Kenyon.)
(1 May 2014)
copyright 2014 by Floyce Alexander
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