Things in Light Poetry Series 2015: Ardith L. Brown

That Kind of Discussion

In honest disagreements,

the blindfolded lady

always tips the scale.  

Justice, that nosy mouse,

will not stand still.

Rodents have a field-day

with ethics, their opinions

based on blank decisions.

How my quick appeals

are lost on tiny brains.

My sulky lips and kitten-eye

pounce forever stalk you.

Cats are killing machines.  

No matter that they purr

and cuddle up nicely.

Words are broken ladders

where you vanish into self.

I navigate the rungs upward,

but the discussion is sealed

in a sarcophagus, in a lung.

Our arguments stick

like honey crystallized

in a milky glass jar.

Close the lid. Go home.
The sweetness is done.

For a Man

My poems screech like waterbirds diving for stale bread on the shore.

Forget seagulls.  Phoenix feathers rise from crumbling towers, endless ash,

a campfire smoldering with sacred tobacco. You didn't believe in new age

paraphernalia, but you sat on a wobbly stump that September and threw

dried flakes into the fire, smoke blowing quilt patterns on your face.

Can I stitch to you a sonnet, suffering the page's blank space to force

your lines out?  My spreader of numbers, keeper of trees, oh enigma.

I can write the sound of seasons: crackle of leaf-fires, winter's silent

glare. Black bridges divide the river ice in two.  A wet train moans.

But words scour the loneliness of eyes.  And I should quit definitions;

denotation is shallow.  Rhyme won't sound, meter won't count, and black

ink is sentimental. Take up the sky and split it. Witness ice-white supernovas,

a mass implosion cutting through frozen whorls of galaxy glass.  Melt it.

Drink it down. Crack the star like a walnut, but please, leave the core to me.

Revival

We are not born

complicated.

Our needs are few:

mothers, small blankets,

milk. And then what happens?

If you ever go to a treatment center--

of any kind-- you will learn

many useless things.

They will complicate matters

with suggestions, and advice

on ways to simplify your life.

They will tell you to approach

your enemy and tell them

thank you for making me

so angry, and I love you.

The Old Testament guy

standing on the corner

with his signs and verses,

he knows more than

I do of gentle hands

and spent grace.

He believes in salvation,

and for a dollar

he will touch his greasy

hair and say thank you

for making God so

available, and don't

you know He loves you.

***

Ardith L. Brown currently resides in Flannery O'Connor's hometown of Milledgeville, GA, but she doesn't forget New Mexico.  When she is not wrangling family or grading papers, she writes poems.  She has a B.A. in Poetry from UNM, an M.A. in Literature from the University of Houston, and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Georgia College & State University. She misses green chile, mountains, and liberals.

Continue Reading..

Things in Light Poetry Series 2014: The Cast and Crew

The Things in Light Poetry Series continues to be a totally bitchin' phenomena; readers dig the hell out it. As we sift through submissions in order to bring you the best in new work from humanity's poetic representatives, we thought tonight's post should be a celebration of the amazing work we've already received. With that in mind, here are two new poems each by Ardith Brown and Albino Carrillo.

"Why this combination?" one might well ask. Well, as our managing editor explains it, the poets mentioned above and published below all had the same Shakespeare class together at UNM as undergrads. Our managing editor was there, too. The group of them performed a scene from Othello as an alternative to writing a midterm essay for the notoriously rigorous professor MacPherson. Those were halcyon days, a place to begin thinking about the power of words.

Tomorrow we begin the second chapter of the 2014 series with the poetry of Rebecca Aronson. Stay tuned.

Snake Farm

by Ardith Brown

Off an alley near the University

the dealer's younger brother says

my name sounds like a clipper

ship sailing away from the desert.   

He says Albuquerque needs more

boats, and I pretend to laugh when

he offers me a bump. His cocaine

eyes, wild and glassy-green, flitter

and pierce me like two snake fangs.

He grabs the twenty dollar bill

rolled up near the ashtray, licking

his tongue to rid his sticky

mouth of loose tobacco.

I am not the only girl surrounded

by snakes. Posters of boas adorn

airbrushed blonds, their huge breasts

weighing down the beige wallpaper.

Harley models writhe, their serpentine

guile strangled by itchy scales on waxy

lipstick smiles. Do you like snakes,

the dealer sneers as his brother

notices my brand new tan line.

He says I look sexy in turquoise.

I could run you up, if you want,

says the dealer on my next visit,

pointing toward a coiled up rubber

band next to his nudie magazines.

Instead I ask about the silver chopper

in the parched yard.  A large pit bull

is barking--its red eyes mad and bright--

at the new addition in his dusty,

weed-filled lot. The brother yells

shut up and asks if I want to ride.

Birds, San Antonio, 1992
by Ardith Brown

The wedding was not the apocalypse she imagined.  

Endtime, dystopia--call it what you will, but her dress

did not explode or combust. Late October was still hot in Texas.

Sweating through itchy lace, she could barely stand up for the vodka.

A marching band and jet fighters competed for the minister's voice,

but she wasn't interested in the Bible.  It was mostly exposition;  

anyway, she didn't quite believe. All the crystal and glitter

reminded her of discotheques on LSD, of tragic infernos,

sad Victorian women trapped in a muted Renoir.

She thought it unwise to get drunk at weddings,

but it was eighty degrees and the pressure was outrageous.

Booze wasn't sufficient to still the jackhammers fragmenting

her head; instead, she focused on the Virgin of Guadalupe

surrounded by roses and pink aura. Unusual to feel so totally clean.  

There would be friends and children, death and monsters,

days of confusion and depression, yet God would lower

her down soon, crush the hibiscus petals beneath her feet.

She wished for great flocks of grackles, their iridescent

bodies, black and shiny, whistling sharply to settle, settle.

But there were no birds. Silence wrecked her flight.  

Grass sparkled, but she wanted to forget the lawn,

how this night softened her own feathers, clipped her wings.

Married. Until today, time had worked against her--

distorted biological clocks. Grandmothers and aunts

hovered over the cake; small children danced.  

Odors of perfume and coffee smelled of hospitals

and unbearable civilization.  Now the bridesmaids

were poised, squirrels twitching, heart rates heightened,

each vying to catch the throwaway bouquet.

Momentarily she leaned toward the coast,

toward Corpus Christi and Galveston,

slouching a gray posture past the border all the way

down to the Gulf of Mexico where the water opened up,

a whale's mouth swallowing her delight.  Smells of salt

corrupted the reception, and out on the beaches the hotel lights

twinkled and blinked, calling her like diamonds on a neckline.

I lost hope.

I wanted do die right there.

I wanted to swim away and laugh,

an atheist at the coming of the Lord.

***

You Don't

by Albino Carrillo

You don't
Listen to the
Darkness eating
Me alive.  When
My bones shake
In the night.  When
The terror of my own
Death echoes like
A police baton
On my skull.  Even
The sun knows
My pain, why don't
You.  The easiest
Task is falling
Away into the
Antigravity that'll
Spin me away
Like a lousy planet.
The most difficult
Being just the
Utterance of one
Word.  Whether
I can dance
I'm the morning.

On the Death of Childhood Friends

by Albino Carrillo

There was one time we were all
Gathered around a campfire
In the sandias, when it used to rain
And march was cold still in the lower
Passes between the high desert
And the ponderosa forests.

Chris was there, and Darrell-
We'd walked up with a keg
Of beer, made a fire in a
Dried out riverbed.  You
Never think you'll die
Then, when the class

Has gone away and
All you have to do is climb.
I think of Kenneth next,
Singing to Wagner
As he swung between
Love-boys, declaring

That even the pennies
On his eyes should be
Melted down when
The time came.  When
His brain stopped working
One day on stage

We He knew he'd be gone--
So afterwards we feasted
With money he left us--
Besides the food and
Booze, he left us each
A bottle of morphine

Tablets, dilaudid, and Xanax
To play with.
His parents told
Us they loved us for
Him, and only in death
Accepted that he was gay.

If you think
I have more to stay, listen--
Times I've been to
Funerals an carried caskets
Put money in baskets
And taken the Host.  Which

Is eating a part that
Reminds you most of death,
What's next.  Then there was
Countdown-- a prelude to what
Comes next besides
The lazy sun who knows its

Turn day after day without
Completion.  I give to you
The ultimate quantum
Of days:  hallway visits
Those transient times

When bells are really
Ringing outside, in the spring.

Continue Reading..

Things in Light Poetry Series 2014: Ardith Brown

Midwestern

She treats coffee filters

like new inventions; her percolating

days are over now, and she's never

seen a dolphin, aching in gray

dappled rows.

Outside her window

is the chicken-free yard

where she counts sheds,

brass padlocks.  In this land-

locked state it's hard;

blue herons, turtles,

limestone rocks,

all of them earth

and none of them sea.

Two thousand miles away

her husband longs for land

and sips chardonnay,

holds grapes and apricots

in his hands.

The boat sways. 

She craves the luster

of waves, not deciduous trees,

not peace to attend her beads

and record the drops

of thermometers. 

Eating sardines she tastes sand

monsters stalking the beach,

but finds only dirt, locust wings,

her own dry lips.  The salt

disintegrates in her mouth

like silky dusk

and the lowing of cows.

Easter Sunday, 1982

Chellie arrived before dawn,

lightly tapping on the glass.

Her boyfriend dead one year,

his last drug deal gone wrong,

a wire fence breaking his neck

as he ran through that idyll

Missouri pasture.

When she giggled bright

bursts of noise woke the morning

birds.  Mascara tears pooled

beneath her eyes, now smudged,

the artifice of her mask, removed.

Later, we fired up the Country Squire

wagon, all avocado green and fake wood

panels launching us toward the river's mighty,

brown weight.  We headed south, down

to the floodplain where purple wild

flowers stained the fallow fields,

and the dark earth underneath

still smelled of winter and frost.

She took me to church 

where services were starting,

ancient and young parishioners

climbing up the Baptist steps.

Beside the sanctuary, the cemetery

sprouted brittle plastic bouquets. 

She yanked the dead red tulips

from the vase on his grave,

replacing them with yellow roses. 

His favorite color, she said.

I love to surprise him.

For My Father With His Head In the Stars

Georgia doves court in the yard

where the stink of pear trees stop.

Anxious birds scatter pearlized feathers

of iridescent grey in waxy leaves.

Dogwoods glow as April stands cruelly on.     

Back in Missouri my father balances on one foot,

brushing his teeth. He watches the aging corgi

pee again on the floor.  “Throw her out,”

his wife says, while in the bathroom mirror

he envisions sundials, azimuths, and stars. 

In his mind, Latin American altars wait

for him to map their penitent saints.

Stations in suffering dazzle, gilded gold

dissected in one radiant solar shaft.

Amber-pulsing lasers crack the cathedral.

At least I like to think of it that way.

The archaeologist and his calculations,

cigar smoke coalescing with frankincense

and myrrh in one miraculous connection,

where sun arrows shoot holy rays in tandem.

Or not.  Perhaps the solstice is too hard

on his agnosticism.  While incense burns

believers' eyes, doubtful priests carry on

their search for mysterious candles.

And I cannot interpret the point of light

like he can. But I remember the New World.

Chocolate rain and murderous chile await

Conquistadores who beguile Moctezuma.

Spanish forces ride in on hot horses

from ships where steel swords announce

the red beard of Cortez.  I think of natives

sweating in the glittered valley.  Their bodies

hew churches and convents; their mind's blue

eye replaced by biblical law, a bloody crucifix,

the coming of dark and splitting of rocks.

In Georgia, I wait for my father to speak

of astral matters and spring zodiacs in the night.

The phone clicks. When will I stare into his ocean

gaze and wonder if I’ll I ever get the math,

the raw wonder, the angles of his face?

***

Ardith L. Brown currently resides in Flannery O'Connor's hometown of Milledgeville, GA, but she doesn't forget New Mexico.  When she is not wrangling family or grading papers, she writes poems.  She has a B.A. in Poetry from UNM, an M.A. in Literature from the University of Houston, and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Georgia College & State University. She misses green chile, mountains, and liberals.

Continue Reading..

Things in Light Poetry Series 2013: Ardith L. Brown

Here's some poetry for you to read this Sunday, now and into the future. Today's contributor to TiL is Ardith L. Brown.

Heart's Desire

  

I never want to desire death.

Or motion zombies to speak of love. You in a spider-lit coma:

hosting ringless crackles of cell phone lines. No dial tone

or the undead to answer. The numbers never change.

In fact I would devour death.

Incessant corrupter of life, it sheds no coat

of heavenly piles, no flash of mind-spraying light,

anti-matter dancing, heart-attack like, on Christmas Eve.

If I could neutralize the end,

my dimple-wry smile would slyly whisk

your scattered moment, sweep up the bones

remaining in the bed, photo-stilled and cold.

The mask I wear now watches death

with starving eyes and stains.

But the scenery--its wealth of information--

gets lost in my desire, and,

once again, death reshapes me.

Sunset Matter

If the priest called her Louise instead of

Luisa, if he didn't confuse her

story with another dead person'a life,

if he would just go ahead and say God

when he means it: not light, not love or faith

but some word to require awe and longing

from the mourners in the chapel, perhaps

then there would be room for celebration.

Today is not the birthday of the world.

And although there was an open casket

I did not touch the body like the rest

of the family, did not say goodbye;

all I could remember was the last thing

she ever ate. Strawberries, ripe and cold.

Battery Park

New York City

I swell in your ashes.

1989 and the Bowery

was lit up, Hannukah lights

so fake and soft, each window

glowing pipes.

No longer a dead beatnik

gorged on Monk or

adrenaline

dawn.

No tenement downtown,

needle-gun, lopped

off, the right knee

bone.

Oh unstable universe--

We were walking to Battery Park.

From the West Village, my patent

boots splitting at the root of our feet,

we floated, toes in ecstasy

fingers in flesh.

We didn't speak.

You held my hand

and all the twinkling stopped.

The Statue of Liberty, gone.

The harbor floor, deep green,

sated in murk with dowager eyes.

How unladylike, cutting, cold

and wet, the sea clinging

to a marble, to black lace.

The vertical fabric

of girder, steel, and glass

swallowing the night sky,

rendering it harmless.

You were listing capitols,

baseball teams and wines

and I said what for?

The water has a ceiling

we stumble across.

Dilapidated streets,

drops of frozen juniper,

sparkle of soot--

you aren't as smart

as I am-- you're hooked.

Try to answer

the other question, the smell

of rotten corn on pavement.

There isn't a microphone

at the bottom. Listen.

I can't hear you.

Speak louder planets

pretty moon so dangerously

quiet. Speak louder

so I can hear

the purring of earthquakes

the rumble of riots.

Remind me again how to call,

the phone's face, blank

the buttons, raw

cancerous and new

like a wormhole

I no longer bite in two.

Time is wasted there,

unholy lips too taut

to explain.

Don't tell me I'm old.

Forty six or not.

Memory like a card

catalog, middle age

like a thumb.

Don't be a fool;

it's quiet down here

at the end of the line.

Fingersnap

Mockingbirds mock

and talkingbirds talk.

I blame both,

feathers and beak,

when spring spoils

the quiet, the dawn;

winter's turn lost

in the hard sound.

We hear noise

like whales do,

like a fist through glass

or thunder clap.

That crash of light hits hard,

blames the hand for its fingers,

lets loose a yowl so open

it wakes me up, hungover,

in a foreign country,

the language, forgotten;

the newspaper

the billboards

the television shows

the taxis and buses,

what we read

what we believe

all white lies.

Would I rather be lost

in the approaching

storm at noon,

when the sky darkens

to pieces and the leaves

stand so still,

than stay here,

with my headache

my papers to grade,

my aspirin and hot tea,

my bubblegum breath

and blasphemous needs?

I ripen on the branch

and spill down

to the earth.

Such is the longing.

Stop wasting time.

Walk backwards

to face the dull truth

that we are spinning

while the planet folds

lepers into false graves,

and who am I to say

oh follow, please follow--

it's never too late for saving,

never wrong to confess

the good deeds with the bad.

The hope of rationalized kisses,

lit upon a face

so somber, so gone.

Look me in the eye,

birds, and show me your

tears. I remember now

my parents, their mothers

and fathers all collapsed

into a timeline of future

and mysterious grace

where we no longer exist.

The twisted clock says wait:

here are numbers now.

And glowing sparingly,

like the fading bulb

in an EXIT sign,

a green dress shrinks

around my figure

while I grow smaller,

lighter, invisible.

You can't see me;

my hair's on fire,

the timber's bursting

through the flame.

Spray me with water

so I can get back to work.

Traveler

Thank you, mercy, for your pseudo altruism.

A lot of geniuses out there need your help and I can't

do it alone. Stand still. Knock me down with silence.

Thank you also for adrenaline. Like a cat slips

past the fence, twisting and writhing, you bring

slivers of relief when Monday growls mad teeth.

While he goes off to South America,

fear never fails to undermine my senses,

creep into my black coffee, relax the facts

until I'm certain the plane will crash.

Grace, your slinking limbs grease through

garden gates and willow trees twitch elastic

while my two hearts race. Wink with rage,

defy my age like Garbo or Bacall, stately

as a mansion straps its formal roses in place,

never being plucked but dying nonetheless.

Each day I maintain; it's the months I can't deny.

Mercy vanish me with fingertips, your obliterating kiss.

***

Ardith L. Brown currently resides in Flannery O'Connor's hometown of Milledgeville, GA, but she doesn't forget New Mexico.  When she is not wrangling family or grading papers, she writes poems.  She has a B.A. in Poetry from UNM, an M.A. in Literature from the University of Houston, and an M.F.A in Creative Writing from Georgia College & State University. She misses green chile, mountains, and liberals.

Continue Reading..