Talking
Not quite poems but more like the rind of poems, how your wine glass, raised right, coaxes a plump ruby from falling afternoon light. How we know the river scene, sun-dazed shock of blue and white to silver, could use a sailboat. What the boaters might say.
I love it when you say “marinara,” say anything at all, like “try some of this.” A waft of butter and garlic roams from your bowl to mine, mine to yours, as our words find a rhythm we might walk. We look from the canvas back to each other, touch glasses, let the silence breathe a while, then head on down that road.
Copyright (c) 1999 by Sunil Freeman. Talking first appeared in Wordwrights! and Surreal Freedom Blues, (Argonne Hotel Press, 1999).
Sunil Freeman is author of two books of poems, That Would Explain the Violinist (Gut Punch Press) and Surreal Freedom Blues (Argonne Hotel Press). He is assistant director of the Writer\’s Center, and has been a managing editor of Poet Lore, the nation\’s oldest continuously publishing poetry journal. He is the Washington, DC Branch Bureau editor of the Party for Socialism and Liberation\’s website, http://www.pslweb.org. His poems have appeared in several journals and anthologies, including Gargoyle, Bogg, Abbey, Minimus, Wordwrights, The Delaware Poetry Review, Beltway, Kiss the Sky: Fiction and Poetry Starring Jimi Hendrix, and Cabin Fever: Poets at Joaquin Miller\’s Cabin, 1984-2001.
To read more of his work, click on ArLiJo.com
Dreaming that Shaman, the Tongue
1 Because our tongues move us from one unknowing to the next, let nothing obscure the mystery of that thumb-deep vault my open mouth, the cave where Eurydice is lost where Orpheus, your tongue, enters only the ante-chamber.
2 Let our tongues meet midway like dragon and damsel flies crossing star-laced waters, one thimbleful.
3 A man leads a horned cow, morning, evening, across a square. Your tongue is that well-served cow and the man who shepherds him. My tongue is the breeze from the mountain that licks your sweating skin.
Across the square a white temple with gold framed arches, open door. Your mouth is that temple and my tongue waits to enter, a redbird losing color in captivity.
4 Your tongue whirls in one place like a Dervish of Damascus whose red gown tulips around his spinning knees. My tongue is your chanting enchanter.
5 Tonight I want to take you the glisten of your mouth relearned, reloved. Tonight I want to take that shaman of your soul drumming inside my mouth.
That wild clock spinning us backward: glass to sand, sand to freshwater pearl and forward into a universe of whirling.
Copyright 2009 by Mary Kay Rummel.
Mary Kay Rummel’s newest poetry book is Love in the End (Bright Hill Press, 2008). Other books of poetry are The Illuminations (Cherry Grove Collections 2006), Green Journey Red Bird (Loonfeather Press), The Long Journey Into North (Juniper Press) and This Body She’s Entered (a Minnesota Voices Award winner from New Rivers Press). Recent publications include: Nimrod (as an award finalist), Askew, Dust and Fire where she is the 2009 Diane Glancy Award winner, Lavanderia, the Irish journal—The SHOp and Poetic Voices Without Borders (Gival Press, 2005). Her short fiction is forthcoming in an anthology from Wising Up Press. She loves to collaborate with visual artists and musicians. She divides her time between Minneapolis and Ventura, CA where she teaches at California State University at Channel Islands. More information and poems at marykayrummel.com.
To read more of her work, click on ArLiJo.com