Phoenician Poetry

On August 13, four friends and I gave a poetry reading at Arts Upstairs in Phoenicia, New York. The event became an impromptu benefit for Doctors Without Borders. Below is the letter I wrote to the organization, along with a check for $50.

 

Dear Doctors,

 

My friend Alan Fliegel has been asking me to do a poetry reading at his shop ("60 Main: A Community Store") here in Phoenicia, New York, for a few months. Finally we organized it, for last Saturday, the 13th. I asked my wife, Violet Snow, to read, and Anique Taylor. (The three of us met at a poetry workshop at the St. Mark's Church in the East Village of Manhattan, in 1985.) Then we added Marx Dorrity, the journalist, poet, novelist. And Paul McMahon, the legendary fluid, interstitial songwriter (and guitarist) agreed to sing.

 

A week before the reading, I ran into my friend Andrea, who told me about the Somalia crisis. "Maybe we can pass the hat," I thought. Last Saturday, at the reading, we had a jar for contributions -- we made exactly $49. ("That's a spiritual number, seven sevens," I thought, but at that moment, my old friend Jeffrey Gross gave me an extra dollar, to make an even 50.)

 

So I'm sending you the $50 we collected, in a hamlet in the Catskills, for the suffering people -- our sisters and brothers -- in Somalia.

 

My wife read this poem:

 

            Rouge Haiku

 

I fly my bike down Avenue B

   under a slice of moon.

It's September, my bike is in

   love. We two share love secrets

all through Chinatown, pass

   Feast Parking, Drown the Clown,

      Balloon Water Race,

then head back uptown,

   die happy on First,

      gorging on moon garbage.

 

 

This is a poem by Anique:

 

 

A LOVE POEM IN SPITE OF ITSELF

 

In the old, green beach chair on the roof above you

You, who offer up your stirring hazelness

Only often enough to keep me remembering

Mist streamers falling from clouds to the skyline

To the Cooper Union clock room

To St. George's Ukrainian Church

Dappled pigeons bathing in the rooftop puddles

     splattering ripple baths over the garage

The roof above your

     Yellow blanket windows

     Empty six-pack fortresses piled high by the door

     Wooden milk crate bookcases

     Paper bags folded by the cleaning fluids in the

    window gate

    Kamikaze kitten

   And sleeping munchkin daughter

in blanket pajamas.

(Your hands like nettles in my bed)

Rose, civet, patchouli, musk

Black tar dreams floating you far mellow away from me.

When I was three-years-old,

  they made a big fuss over Kathy Allen

The ceiling falling like eggshells, like us

A pasty-faced baby in a candy pink snowsuit

(Cobalt, alizarin, tahini, khona)

When she was five, she burned her hand

Her palm wrinkled up and shrunk in like sizzled bacon

          "How?" I asked my mother.

"She touched a hot, hot iron.

          So you remember.

          Don't you ever, ever touch..."

I nodded, big-eyed & solemn, "I'll keep safe," I lied

A baby, even then I knew a burning

     that never even shows, my love

And even fortyish now, on the damp, green morning roof chair

I think I have stayed so long that here is no exit free from fire

Patchouly, missing musk, and everybody burning somehow.

But others know this too, and they continue somehow

(Bitter rue, agrimony, tansy, ragwort)

Even as we sleep and burn,

On any warm morning

Young trees that line my street for the first time this year

May be thinking of blooming

(Even as you sleep and burn)

And even now

There are people walking up and down St. Marks Place

Carrying newborn babies in their arms

In warm bundles

Like secret fruit.

 

Here's one of the poems I read:

 

The Physics of Gaining Weight

 

By eating matter,

I got fatter.

 

 

Here is one of Marx Dorrity's poems:

 

Willow Tree

 

Friend, please

continue to hide

your feelings.

 

Emblem of light,

you outshine

temple gold.

 

Friend, stir.

Denude patiently

your wistful

 

crucifixion.

In your caves

of leaves, drink

 

amber shades,

the crushed wrapping,

on a reverend pond.

 

 

Love,

Sparrow