Five Fetish Poems by Lisa Russ Spaar
Swallow Fetish
I want to join their
sagittal muster
sculling summer’s muslin sky,
capsized now from air to sea
& back again by motions
broadcast, cant, & infidel –
my earthbound body,
sleave of shadow,
nothing but a scree of cloud
& all distance between us
turned into this plural force,
seminal & fleet,
a sum of thirsty sound
held, mouthed,
& sewn by wings.
Cicada Fetish
I want to join their
sagittal muster
sculling summer’s muslin sky,
capsized now from air to sea
& back again by motions
broadcast, cant, & infidel –
my earthbound body,
sleave of shadow,
nothing but a scree of cloud
& all distance between us
turned into this plural force,
seminal & fleet,
a sum of thirsty sound
held, mouthed,
& sewn by wings.
Cicada Fetish
If bliss be fleet, how then
this weird undressed exhilaration
in tree arcade above, this fermata
isiration, this stretto, this aria?
How such trussing, nacreous,
now so strenuous in jet-trailed striae
of scroop, of tesselated sustain?
How this high torching duration
of filament, of summer metabolizing
in incessant minus, in valance of vanishing?
Rose of Sharon Fetish
In trance, lovesick,
I travel the bosk suburban vale
of hedge, curb, cul-de-sac
for glimpse, beyond fence
or carport, of your chaliced,
scar-leafed wicker
flocked with crimpled
chaste pleatings & claret-lipped
bells, each corolla throat igniting
the edges of my love’s absence
& offering one wet pistil
to this historic, toxic heat.
Russian Olive Fetish
Tree caparisoned with lush,
verdigris flosses,
orioles, titmice, bladed stems
beaded with black, crimped fruits
until the hush
of pre-storm fervor
stammers your plural mantles,
weird embroideries
silvering with torque,
wind divorcing leaf from under-
leaf – dressed,
then undressed –
smote tongues imbrued
with nacreous, tidal foam,
devouring our history,
our lost home –
Sumac Fetish
Fields folding into winter’s sallow diptych,
pallid shuck scut under a scleral sky,
then, in rutting ambush, anarchic as let blood,
this crimson pinnated & purple-druped drag saint
of the ditches – tatter-sleeved mendicant
bearing scarred antler crown, an empty cup
on fire, a retinal burn against which, now,
a barbed starling flock lifts its roweled shroud.
this weird undressed exhilaration
in tree arcade above, this fermata
isiration, this stretto, this aria?
How such trussing, nacreous,
now so strenuous in jet-trailed striae
of scroop, of tesselated sustain?
How this high torching duration
of filament, of summer metabolizing
in incessant minus, in valance of vanishing?
Rose of Sharon Fetish
In trance, lovesick,
I travel the bosk suburban vale
of hedge, curb, cul-de-sac
for glimpse, beyond fence
or carport, of your chaliced,
scar-leafed wicker
flocked with crimpled
chaste pleatings & claret-lipped
bells, each corolla throat igniting
the edges of my love’s absence
& offering one wet pistil
to this historic, toxic heat.
Russian Olive Fetish
Tree caparisoned with lush,
verdigris flosses,
orioles, titmice, bladed stems
beaded with black, crimped fruits
until the hush
of pre-storm fervor
stammers your plural mantles,
weird embroideries
silvering with torque,
wind divorcing leaf from under-
leaf – dressed,
then undressed –
smote tongues imbrued
with nacreous, tidal foam,
devouring our history,
our lost home –
Sumac Fetish
Fields folding into winter’s sallow diptych,
pallid shuck scut under a scleral sky,
then, in rutting ambush, anarchic as let blood,
this crimson pinnated & purple-druped drag saint
of the ditches – tatter-sleeved mendicant
bearing scarred antler crown, an empty cup
on fire, a retinal burn against which, now,
a barbed starling flock lifts its roweled shroud.
Copyright 2006 Lisa Russ Spaar
Lisa Russ Spaar is the author of Blue Venus: Poems (Persea Books, 2004) and Glass Town: Poems (Red Hen Press, 1999), for which she received a Rona Jaffe Award for Emerging Women Writers in 2000. Twelve of her new poems appear in Exquisite History: The Land of Wandering: Poems & Prints (The Printmakers Left, University of Virginia Press, 2005). She is also the author of two chapbooks of poems, Blind Boy on Skates (Trilobite/University of North Texas Press, 1988) and Cellar (Alderman Press/University of Virginia, 1983), and is the editor of Acquainted With the Night: Insomnia Poems (Columbia UP, 1999). She is editing an anthology of London poems, forthcoming from the University of Virginia Press in 2007. Her work has appeared in many literary quarterlies and journals, including Poetry, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Ploughshares, The Kenyon Review, Denver Quarterly, Image, Shenandoah, The Yale Review, and elsewhere. The recipient of awards from the Academy of American Poets and the Virginia Commission for the Arts, Spaar is the director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Virginia, where she is an associate professor of English.
***
Three Poems by Ken Pobo
Soften
In the Iraq War,
women, kids,
killed,
whole faces
scraped off—
in living rooms
across “the greatest country
in the world,”
TV beams
gadgets, creams,
ways to soften
wrinkles.
Let Me Get This Straight
Friends ask me to write
and read a poem. Their wedding.
How to write encouraging words
from behind wire—
wish them well as they do
what we can’t. You’ll be sitting
in a pew, alone, while I’m up
at a stand, the bride and groom
hand in hand. My poem
for friends who marry
while we risk our lives
on most streets, or worse,
in a church like this.
Blue State Blues
Pennsylvania is a drag—
a red state
in blue clothes.
One Senator stabs gays.
The other shrugs,
money-eyed, blank. Fire ant
churches poison. Family values
carry concealed weapons
in a Reading mall. I’m blue--
blood seeps past my ankles,
reddens my knees. Soon
I won’t be able to breathe.
Kenneth Pobo teaches Creative Writing and English at Widener University in Pennsylvania. His book Introductions came out from Pearl's Book'Em Press in Atlanta in 2003. He enjoys gardening and collecting obscure 1960s music. Starting in September, his "Obscure Oldies" radio program can be heard online at WDNR.com each Saturday from 6-8pm EDT.
***
Two Poems by J. Fisher
under seige in the Garden City
she asks
“why do you always drink so much?”
as she crosses those
$70.00 legs like
closing the gate
on a local hot-spot
where i’m no longer welcome.
the spit bubbles plunge southward in my pint
as i struggle against lust
and the light pollution
of an afternoon drunk
to form a hot answer
this hustler will believe
to keep her buying.
‘ ... well, it’s simple really
the local dealers don’t carry any Algren
or Nowlan
you’ll never find ’em used
so, i’m off to suffer
the indignation of retail
and everytime i ask
someone who should know
they send me
somewhere else
where another book geek
regrets to tell me
they don’t keep stock
’cause the copies don’t sell
and then i freak out, i mean
what the fuck is going on
in these oversized book warehouses
when there’s not a thing
worth reading?
and it gets me down, so
i make my way back home
and there’s always
a pub, always
a cold beer store
on one corner
or the other ... ’
it’s no good.
her eyes glaze
and she crosses those
heavy paying legs
even higher.
the bolt is thrown.
the waitress comes by
says "...well Eden, you wanna notha round, Hon?”
Eden points at me and says
“na, i’m fine
but bring this bum another
he’s no good for much else
can’t even tell tales like he used to.”
i grin down at my glass
and rate the battle
that just cost me
the war.
skyrocket pocket blues
ass rashes mix
with mysterious blisters
lesions on the skin-contact dermititis
egged-on from the heat
like making out
in the back of a blue van
spewing licks of flame.
it makes no sense
to open the mail
so i kick out the glass
and fall forward
down the concrete reminder
to the liquor store coolers
struggle thru the plastic
people and aluminum vessels
to extract the pretty yellow liquid.
sweat-soaked and moaning
ringed around the pits, making
bouillabaisse in the loins i
command no respect
like a modern Boris
or Ivich with
none of the incestous overtones, parting
the shit broth crowd
stumbling back
towards the heartless apartment
i fake a smile
and a swollen skyrocket
to keep the Angel from guessing
the full extent
of our impending
depression.
J. Fisher's first collection, Death Day Erection, was published by Frontenac House in 2004. He lives in downtown Victoria, Canada.
