Michael Gessner Verse-Virtual 2019 February

February 2019

I live in Tucson with my wife Jane, a watercolorist. Our son Chris writes for screen in L.A. My more recent work has appeared in Ekphrastic Review, Juniper, (Toronto,) New Oxford Review, North American Review, Verse Daily, Innisfree Poetry Journal, and others. My most recent collections are Transversales (BlazeVOX, 2013,) Selected Poems (FutureCycle, 2016,) from which The Poetry Foundation selected several for its online archives. I enjoy writing articles and reviews and these may be found in Jacket2, The Edgar Allan Poe Review, NAR, The Kenyon Review, C. V. Mosby, Times-Mirror, and Allyn & Bacon Composition Series.

CIGAR RINGS


Even now they are evidence of paradise,
paper bands kept in a favorite drawer,
fathers once gave their children to be worn
as rings, a convenient source of early
mythology, the Dutch Masters in their best
black puritan hats gathered around
a table discussing art, no doubt,
the Da Vinci brand for creative men,
Pleides, with a smoke destined
for the stars, & the royal bands
of American Indians holding clumps
of tawny leaf on either side
of an earthly globe over which Indian
Tabac ruled, & other myths too, Excalibur,
Romeo y Julieta, Montecristo, White Owl,
& promising a smoke affectionate
& amusing, Sancho Panza Extra Fuerte.

These exist in a pure state,
free of toxins, cancer, grief,
calmed, hand-rolled, leaf by leaf
chaste as the flower-women framed
in circles of gold foil, Flor de This
& Flor de That, Flor de Fantasie,
Flor de Forever, Athena of the Cameroon
wrapper & spicy ligero filler,
a smoke for the wise, & on the walls
of cigar bars, floating with his silken harem,
the sultan of smoke moves in clouds
from the best puros, judiciously holds
his Cubano Pilato, & the whole ensemble,
vessel & feathered fans, everything
carries the odor of rich exotic flowers,
& the women, Flor de Murias, dark
beauty with ringlets staring at her one
flower, pining for her lover,
the big-breasted Belinda
of the full-bodied double corona,
& her opposite, the pasty ingénue
who would date anyone, up for sale
on every Gloria Cubana, could be
married for an hour or two, rescued
from a cellophaned life
by sliding money over a glass
countertop, transformed to wreathes
of smoke, sandalwood, burnt cherry,
notes of butternut & leather, on back
porches, & on summer evenings,
in the rings fathers blew for their children.

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