Five poems by Leonard Gontarek
Jesus, Plants by Tom Hopkins
Study / Ice
Dusk acetylenes the leaves
& what comes after.
The armies slayed
in their drunken sleep.
Evening has come to
the surrounding environs. Ice-blue glow
of insect exterminator, television.
The light wets down the night grass.
I can remember to a time
when the train took you to a place
of wildflowers. People going, coming
from the platform.
She lifted her dress, he unzipped
his fly. She leaned over a chair, began singing
Stardust. Ah,thursdays, & then,
ah, fridays.
The trees cracked in the dark.
Privet pushed through restaurant
exhaust. Birds, chips, dawn
square, ostensibly light.
A little snow,
clumped lilies,
a pretty view, no one around.
Light, soon.
Two Philosophical Models
one
And I find a note in my meatloaf:
I don't want to be looked at by men,
I want to be felt by their hands.
I look around the restaurant. All of
the women, beautiful and smiling.
I think I have discovered Meaning.
The waitress wakes me from my reverie:
It is starting to rain, maybe
you should bring the baby in.
two
It was unusual, he had nothing to say.
God it was unusual, it seemed unusual.
After all, he was Wallace Stevens.
His thoughts were unfinished.
Some were just titles:
A Lecture On Philosophy. A Lecture On Poetry.
A Lecture On Seashells.
He wandered around the subjects,
a man with a perfect speech in his head
who through deep psychological fear
never gets around to asking the woman out.
Abruptly, he announced the reading over,
I guess I'll be taking off now.
His words:taking off,
making sounds like a motor starting and engaging,
spreading out his arms,
running down the aisle.
Study / Leaves
Lemons & light in a bowl. Leaves
outside tick down to tar.
Woman unbuttoning a blue top holding
a pitcher. The rest is left out.
The woman fingering cold buttons
as she would herself. Outline of
body, in one stroke, under robe.
Where are we going?
Leaves flake down
to glazed street. We have come
here, streets named for fruit
& trees. Sex is not what he meant
when he finished the painting
& light continued to stream
like insects in & out of windows,
until someone, from sadness, shot out the porch light.
Study / Water
Susan Sontag says, The pages of this book,
pine-scented, blood on hand, green water, a film
of cedar rising nude from a lit lake.
Ms, Sontag, photography? All life begins
with the algae on my arm. I salute them.
I could not choose myself. Landscape
or the human form: nudes, intimate
articles, underthings, unavoidable, shade
of evening, glimpsed on subway.
Ms, Sontag, illness? Do you mind
my wearing this witch's hat? I
like the way I look wearing it.
Do you think I look good in a witch's hat?
The leaves falling like sparks into fire.
This time of year, we have settled in,
ducks on a crumbly shore.
8:29:02
They torture me, go through my things.
First word, dark, circulated.
Asleep, dead deer in my arms, that is the case.
Chair, wall, porch, unusual antenna, this is what creaks.
Put a little make-up on her pubis.
Oyster-colored silt, leaf decay, insane wheat, this is thecase.
Swathed-in is the symbol. Now I am prepared.
Now she is ready. Kneel. Light, primitive.
Objects are closets.
Admit the dark, as in giacometti.
There is no light for you maybe.
Or if, inverted.
Added. From unknown source. This is the case.
Symbols, white shells. Bird fluttered before the branch.
Wish it were not the case.