October 2016
Joan Colby
JoanMC@aol.com
JoanMC@aol.com
I have written poetry and short fiction all my life and published a lot of it. My day job is editor of a trade publication Illinois Racing News. I live on a small horse farm in northern Illinois with my husband and various animals. My latest book, "Ribcage," (from Glass Lyre Press) recently won the 2015 Kithara Book Prize. I also am an associate editor of FutureCycle Press and Kentucky Review.
Crazy Rain
Twilight.
The dull insanity of rain.
Your mother is telling ghost stories
to the wind. Her words are lost
like indulgences that caused the great split of faith.
You remember for the first time in years
the act of contrition you repeated like a charm
before sleeping. You were a child then
with nothing to be sorry for. The rain
taps the glass, its black fingers
burgling your dreams. It is the stranger
at the door asking directions.
You shoot the bolt. Trust was the first thing
you were missing. Then love saying its name
against the crack in the window.
But it sounded wrong. It sounded
like a scheme. Someone was trying to get in.
You nailed the boards
over those openings. Only the rain
swiveled through the fish-scale roof
taking the way
of least resistance. Now it draws
a silhouette of loss on the ceiling
over your bed. Those four posts,
the evangelists. You slept in their
care under the guardian wings
of angels plucked
for your comforter.
You're no child any longer.
The child you were
cringes from this sentence and grows small
as a comma.
Each impersonation of the mirror
frightens you. The bone and ash
of your ancestors. The name you sign.
The ghost
in your head who suddenly remembers.
The rain is unfeeling. It pits the earth.
The earth is unfeeling too.
What are you doing here
expecting to be loved.
It rains, it rains
like crazy.
from Blue Woman Dancing in the Nerve
Cygnus
On earth, a bevy.
In flight, a wedge.
In The Wild Swans eleven
Banished brothers are transformed
To infect the skies with a presence
Like the five flying swans that symbolize
The Nordic countries. Whoever kills a swan
Will perish.
And what of those killed by swans
Like the kayaker who came too close
To the nesting place. Battered,
Overturned and drowned..
Or Leda whose rape became
A harbinger of erotic art.
In a local park, a plump woman
Of middle years is being pursued
By an angry black-masked cob
With a terrifying ten-foot wingspread.
She totters past on high heels
Wide-eyed as Leda must have been.
Big River Review
Hammering
My neighbor has been roofing his barn
For the last several weeks,
Down to the bare beams,
He’s replacing the ruined wood,
His hammer ratchets the morning
Out of the sycamores. It’s taking
Him too long, I think, a job
For more than one man. But he’s
industrious. I can see the sheets
of plywood bright as toffee.
He’s got the squares of shingles stacked
Every night he stretches a blue tarp
Over his handiwork in case of rain.
Every daylight hour, I hear the knock
Of his nails, arcing the planes,
And if I walk along the roadside thick
With chicory and wild carrot, I see him
Kneeling at noontide, his muscled forearm
Upraised, about to strike.
Nimrod
Giving Thanks
Thanks to Jehovah for the manna
In the desert. Thanks to the weir tree
For protection, to the fox for cunning,
To the wolf for loyalty. And thanks
To Chac for trading rains for virgins,
To Zeus for propagation, Aphrodite
For beauty, Mars for valor, Atalanta
For good hunting, to coyote for trickery.
Thanks to Poseidon for the oceans, to the moon
And the sun, the goddesses of flowers,
To Kali armed with death, to Bee Man Krishna,
And Buddha who never wished to be a deity.
To the Mother of Wiccans, to the Lord of the
Pilgrims, to Allah the One and Jesus of
Nazareth. To the saints and madonnas,
The spirits of the waters, to all who may
Listen and to those who turn their heads.
And thanks most of all
To the scale of the tragicomic
God of fifty-fifty.
Sweet Lord of Luck.
Dead Snakes
Kindergarten — Chernobyl
Hundreds of child-sized gas masks
So they always feared the
Melt-down. Living in the maw
Of power. The huge chimneys
Their white plumes saluting
The dinge of sky. Now it’s all
Wordless blackboards in an empty
Room where a headless doll becomes
The icon of those destined
To evacuate at the wheel of a toy car
Stalled, a small blue wreck
With a painted drum dropped
On its hood when someone fled
Or fell. The photos moldering
On the walls show the children
Earnestly performing calisthenics.
Ghost of a stuffed rabbit and now
Years later, the animals return.
Wolves, wild boars, herds of feral
Horses. The little varmints
From the storybooks
That litter the forest floor
In a half life. The teacher’s final note:
Our nature walk has been cancelled.
Earth’s Daughters
Twilight.
The dull insanity of rain.
Your mother is telling ghost stories
to the wind. Her words are lost
like indulgences that caused the great split of faith.
You remember for the first time in years
the act of contrition you repeated like a charm
before sleeping. You were a child then
with nothing to be sorry for. The rain
taps the glass, its black fingers
burgling your dreams. It is the stranger
at the door asking directions.
You shoot the bolt. Trust was the first thing
you were missing. Then love saying its name
against the crack in the window.
But it sounded wrong. It sounded
like a scheme. Someone was trying to get in.
You nailed the boards
over those openings. Only the rain
swiveled through the fish-scale roof
taking the way
of least resistance. Now it draws
a silhouette of loss on the ceiling
over your bed. Those four posts,
the evangelists. You slept in their
care under the guardian wings
of angels plucked
for your comforter.
You're no child any longer.
The child you were
cringes from this sentence and grows small
as a comma.
Each impersonation of the mirror
frightens you. The bone and ash
of your ancestors. The name you sign.
The ghost
in your head who suddenly remembers.
The rain is unfeeling. It pits the earth.
The earth is unfeeling too.
What are you doing here
expecting to be loved.
It rains, it rains
like crazy.
from Blue Woman Dancing in the Nerve
Cygnus
On earth, a bevy.
In flight, a wedge.
In The Wild Swans eleven
Banished brothers are transformed
To infect the skies with a presence
Like the five flying swans that symbolize
The Nordic countries. Whoever kills a swan
Will perish.
And what of those killed by swans
Like the kayaker who came too close
To the nesting place. Battered,
Overturned and drowned..
Or Leda whose rape became
A harbinger of erotic art.
In a local park, a plump woman
Of middle years is being pursued
By an angry black-masked cob
With a terrifying ten-foot wingspread.
She totters past on high heels
Wide-eyed as Leda must have been.
Big River Review
Hammering
My neighbor has been roofing his barn
For the last several weeks,
Down to the bare beams,
He’s replacing the ruined wood,
His hammer ratchets the morning
Out of the sycamores. It’s taking
Him too long, I think, a job
For more than one man. But he’s
industrious. I can see the sheets
of plywood bright as toffee.
He’s got the squares of shingles stacked
Every night he stretches a blue tarp
Over his handiwork in case of rain.
Every daylight hour, I hear the knock
Of his nails, arcing the planes,
And if I walk along the roadside thick
With chicory and wild carrot, I see him
Kneeling at noontide, his muscled forearm
Upraised, about to strike.
Nimrod
Giving Thanks
Thanks to Jehovah for the manna
In the desert. Thanks to the weir tree
For protection, to the fox for cunning,
To the wolf for loyalty. And thanks
To Chac for trading rains for virgins,
To Zeus for propagation, Aphrodite
For beauty, Mars for valor, Atalanta
For good hunting, to coyote for trickery.
Thanks to Poseidon for the oceans, to the moon
And the sun, the goddesses of flowers,
To Kali armed with death, to Bee Man Krishna,
And Buddha who never wished to be a deity.
To the Mother of Wiccans, to the Lord of the
Pilgrims, to Allah the One and Jesus of
Nazareth. To the saints and madonnas,
The spirits of the waters, to all who may
Listen and to those who turn their heads.
And thanks most of all
To the scale of the tragicomic
God of fifty-fifty.
Sweet Lord of Luck.
Dead Snakes
Kindergarten — Chernobyl
Hundreds of child-sized gas masks
So they always feared the
Melt-down. Living in the maw
Of power. The huge chimneys
Their white plumes saluting
The dinge of sky. Now it’s all
Wordless blackboards in an empty
Room where a headless doll becomes
The icon of those destined
To evacuate at the wheel of a toy car
Stalled, a small blue wreck
With a painted drum dropped
On its hood when someone fled
Or fell. The photos moldering
On the walls show the children
Earnestly performing calisthenics.
Ghost of a stuffed rabbit and now
Years later, the animals return.
Wolves, wild boars, herds of feral
Horses. The little varmints
From the storybooks
That litter the forest floor
In a half life. The teacher’s final note:
Our nature walk has been cancelled.
Earth’s Daughters
©2016 Joan Colby
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