Martha King
The Month of January
Tuesday/January 14
Dear Mother:
They do not feed us well
I fear the fleas
Without my glasses they
Have feathered horns, parrot beaks
Toothless, implacable
They are older than emotions
Thursday/January 16
Carry slam back
Wednesday lost Bury noises
These are sea turtles with leather
shells
Carry slam back Carry whammy
These are sea turtles with brilliant shells
Thursday laps to Friday
It ain’t so strange, sucker,
Not so carry slam back whammy
Saturday/January 18
Cold, we
Lost our skates
On icemere pond
We went on anyway
Hoping cold
past
would
Sunday/January 19
Seems deep. As if 19
holds more more
than can be told by adding units
A
Cusp
An
Edge
Thrillingly blue
Monday/January 20
Is it this long to move through January?
I was halfway thru
When I began
Stately Measures, I
Reading Gibbon is like hearing Handel – never mind
Gibbon and Handel that mind, perhaps, that brought us here
only abundant confidence
supports such measures
Watching faces opposite who watch
sunset over New York
Harbor out train windows
at my back
Stately measures
on the bridge tracks
One sleeps, one reads and has eyes of different sizes,
One pulls her chain tight on her cheeks
Stately Measures, II, The Goat Tower
The tallest building in Brooklyn
Why goat?
I’m always sure that’s the name
The lady-like phallus
Empire State’s a
Big machine lady, pin-head momma
With no grin
Brooklyn has the Goat, neo, zig-zo gothic
Fat clock rounds on four sides
All doctors all dentists all offices down narrow halls
all windows view a city with
squalor gone
The rag-stuffed broken frames
the broken faces in Grand Time Hotel
gutter litters spittles shreds
vanish into cornered sections from up here
the grid blocks fit like the cells in a maple leaf
A stately pattern dances
There’s a thin bridge of dazzle
a gray-white glowing
The long view
The lion cats
And celtic knots
Stately Measures, III
only abundant confidence
supports
the bridge rocks slowly
we all trust the train
I have the harbor sunset at my back
being private in public
a big city joy
Handel swings his stately measures always fit for city life
salute to the god of kings
on Fishamble Street
salute with bawdy castrati dishing the Haymarket swells
The Essence of All That Use
The thing
The thing
The thing
Look at what it holds embedded in or of it
One can be certain sure of
what’s not me
The thing
The thing
The thing holds what’s happened to it
The concrete soaks up sweat
Whole wads of bubble gum
Beer spilled
Grape drink
Thousands of pop bottle tops slowly sinking
Through the hard surface
Becoming silky shoulders
Pocking the space where a candy store used to be
Care for the endings always
Let the ye, always let th
Don’t let – like experiencing anger for its healthful side effects
A clean rush of sanity sure to follow!
We’re boiling an old upholstered couch
The gum burns black, stays
“forever”
years anyway
resisting purges, solvent, bleach
applied intermittantly by subway crews
Do make a lucid and useful English sentence:
They never wash the work trains
From Rome in Early March
Everywhere small spring green is
Everywhere white chrysanthemums
half the size of a dime
coming up where pavements meet building edges
piercing crevasses between huge paving stones
Wild in empty lots scattered red poppies
Wisteria, trained on trellises, in manic bloom
Redbud trees all over the Forum, redbud, Flowering Judas,
I thought a Southern U.S. native
Did they become invasive after being introduced?
And from which world?
Why haven’t the great Roman umbrella pines
been planted wholesale in Southern California?
Or did they fail to flourish?
Orange trees everywhere ditto street palms
neither are native
must have been tenderly planted once
now have spread ad libitum,
happy as Mollucan ailanthus trees in Queens
My guidebook claims Rome’s first orange tree, brought
from the Middle East 1200 years ago, is still alive in a monastery garden
You may peer at it though a hole in the wall
We didn't
But we did see the cedar,
supposedly planted by Michelangelo
in a cloister garden
like a giant bonsai, half dead, twisted, held upright with wires
The insistence makes us think
of home of brilliant anger streaming in our wake
Old Rome, new world
Is the snow melting yet?
Martha King, born Martha Winston Davis in Virginia in 1937, attended Black Mountain College briefly as a teenager, and married the painter Basil King in 1958. They have lived in Brooklyn since 1969. Her recent books are Imperfect Fit:Selected Poems, Marsh Hawk, 2004, and North & South, a collection of short stories, Spuyten Duyvil, 2006.
She blogs irregularly at http://www.blog.basilking.net/ . For more information, see http://www.basilking.net/
The Month of January
Tuesday/January 14
Dear Mother:
They do not feed us well
I fear the fleas
Without my glasses they
Have feathered horns, parrot beaks
Toothless, implacable
They are older than emotions
Thursday/January 16
Carry slam back
Wednesday lost Bury noises
These are sea turtles with leather
shells
Carry slam back Carry whammy
These are sea turtles with brilliant shells
Thursday laps to Friday
It ain’t so strange, sucker,
Not so carry slam back whammy
Saturday/January 18
Cold, we
Lost our skates
On icemere pond
We went on anyway
Hoping cold
past
would
Sunday/January 19
Seems deep. As if 19
holds more more
than can be told by adding units
A
Cusp
An
Edge
Thrillingly blue
Monday/January 20
Is it this long to move through January?
I was halfway thru
When I began
Stately Measures, I
Reading Gibbon is like hearing Handel – never mind
Gibbon and Handel that mind, perhaps, that brought us here
only abundant confidence
supports such measures
Watching faces opposite who watch
sunset over New York
Harbor out train windows
at my back
Stately measures
on the bridge tracks
One sleeps, one reads and has eyes of different sizes,
One pulls her chain tight on her cheeks
Stately Measures, II, The Goat Tower
The tallest building in Brooklyn
Why goat?
I’m always sure that’s the name
The lady-like phallus
Empire State’s a
Big machine lady, pin-head momma
With no grin
Brooklyn has the Goat, neo, zig-zo gothic
Fat clock rounds on four sides
All doctors all dentists all offices down narrow halls
all windows view a city with
squalor gone
The rag-stuffed broken frames
the broken faces in Grand Time Hotel
gutter litters spittles shreds
vanish into cornered sections from up here
the grid blocks fit like the cells in a maple leaf
A stately pattern dances
There’s a thin bridge of dazzle
a gray-white glowing
The long view
The lion cats
And celtic knots
Stately Measures, III
only abundant confidence
supports
the bridge rocks slowly
we all trust the train
I have the harbor sunset at my back
being private in public
a big city joy
Handel swings his stately measures always fit for city life
salute to the god of kings
on Fishamble Street
salute with bawdy castrati dishing the Haymarket swells
The Essence of All That Use
The thing
The thing
The thing
Look at what it holds embedded in or of it
One can be certain sure of
what’s not me
The thing
The thing
The thing holds what’s happened to it
The concrete soaks up sweat
Whole wads of bubble gum
Beer spilled
Grape drink
Thousands of pop bottle tops slowly sinking
Through the hard surface
Becoming silky shoulders
Pocking the space where a candy store used to be
Care for the endings always
Let the ye, always let th
Don’t let – like experiencing anger for its healthful side effects
A clean rush of sanity sure to follow!
We’re boiling an old upholstered couch
The gum burns black, stays
“forever”
years anyway
resisting purges, solvent, bleach
applied intermittantly by subway crews
Do make a lucid and useful English sentence:
They never wash the work trains
From Rome in Early March
Everywhere small spring green is
Everywhere white chrysanthemums
half the size of a dime
coming up where pavements meet building edges
piercing crevasses between huge paving stones
Wild in empty lots scattered red poppies
Wisteria, trained on trellises, in manic bloom
Redbud trees all over the Forum, redbud, Flowering Judas,
I thought a Southern U.S. native
Did they become invasive after being introduced?
And from which world?
Why haven’t the great Roman umbrella pines
been planted wholesale in Southern California?
Or did they fail to flourish?
Orange trees everywhere ditto street palms
neither are native
must have been tenderly planted once
now have spread ad libitum,
happy as Mollucan ailanthus trees in Queens
My guidebook claims Rome’s first orange tree, brought
from the Middle East 1200 years ago, is still alive in a monastery garden
You may peer at it though a hole in the wall
We didn't
But we did see the cedar,
supposedly planted by Michelangelo
in a cloister garden
like a giant bonsai, half dead, twisted, held upright with wires
The insistence makes us think
of home of brilliant anger streaming in our wake
Old Rome, new world
Is the snow melting yet?
Martha King, born Martha Winston Davis in Virginia in 1937, attended Black Mountain College briefly as a teenager, and married the painter Basil King in 1958. They have lived in Brooklyn since 1969. Her recent books are Imperfect Fit:Selected Poems, Marsh Hawk, 2004, and North & South, a collection of short stories, Spuyten Duyvil, 2006.
She blogs irregularly at http://www.blog.basilking.net/ . For more information, see http://www.basilking.net/