Elizabeth Barbato
4 poems
**
Pupa
Slap niche bark;
nerves ache, on rise,
legs or teeth or hair
hooked in this tree,
all my skin so taut,
acrobatic, webbed.
Wholly dark, no wind,
and owl, wishing for
his life to be a poem,
taps, taps…then shriek
and he’s gone, to tell
the moon to dim a shun.
Rained, I bank dew,
hoarding my thirst, fry
and warp: only idea now,
no shaft, no cloud, no
leaf, no barren mind,
enameled kin of mine
flex when heat and lamb
spill in green. Long over:
my taste for the blood
in my daring ears as shun
and my only music. Then
will burst me open.
**
How Meticulous
Originally, back when deer
referred to any land animal with four legs
and we were gay when we saw them gamboling,
before chilly Cardigan fought or Lord Sandwich
got hungry while he was gambling,
girls were those malefemale urchins
with bowl cuts, silent and stolid, bent
in the fields of the king. The serf’s life
was short and hard, like fuck, which
as we all know is not true Anglo-Saxon,
but the droit de seigneur, all sorts of
girls passing over the lap of the ruler
or who felt the smack of the ruler
on their sad little thighs. Childhood
was brief, noncommittal. This was
a thousand years ago, before
a computer, first in rank of new oracles
paid in sulfur dust pumped constant
through plug after plug—even though we were
warned about vampire electronics—
would tell us that in 2007
the most-used words were
hybrid
surge
and bubble.
We lost ourselves in climate change,
we faded to black,
and we altered meticulous
so far from its original meaning
of timid; fearful that our best workers
in this shiny millennium
are described so,
are rewarded with a good gesundheit,
a safe border, a troop surge, a house
protected from a bubble by a bubble,
and can drive to their pharmaceutical jobs
in slow.................silent................fuel-efficient cars.
**
In Sleep, That Good Soil
The roots of all goodness lie in the soil of appreciation for goodness.
.......................-His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama
This is such a fine dog, I say,
sliding my hand along her shepherd’s nose
and low under her black jaw
hewn from God’s good imagination.
You press your forehead to hers,
snuggling in, eye to eye with her thirteen years.
You told me this while we chewed leftover beef
that clung to green curry I had stirred the night before.
Everything is so ordinary, my husband,
so seemingly easily done: easier than chasing
the last grains of rice around my bowl, or the pot.
You do things because they should be done:
you don’t seem to fear much at all,
or hide many secrets under rocks.
It is truly sufficient, this good work of yours,
and your certainty is enough for me, for now:
just as a prodigy curves
in the darkness of the empty concert hall
to the smooth love of her instrument,
or the dog pulls at the leash once she realizes
where we are headed, or my feet find yours
under the blanket, and press, heel to arcing sole,
so am I discovering this skill of happiness,
near you, with you, in soft solitude,
and in this fertile soil: our sleep.
**
Gaff
A tuna swallowed my brother’s phone,
or, rather, was found in the belly
of a tuna he’d been weighing
long after its body sighed to the deck,
slick against the vang. The phone’s
an old one; he can’t bother to find
something smaller, more stylish. He knows
he’d only lose it anyway. But at least
when something like that is lost,
you know it’s usually gone forever, unlike
the waves of sand that rustle and shift
behind the frontal lobes of all his days.
He was sent to the sand by the ants that fell
from the broken blocks. Armed
with that spill of ardor, their chitinous
ranks polished his boots, swarmed
over his chest, left ribbons
with tiny hooks, as if for tiny fish,
so that now he holds his palms to his ears,
willing them to pray away the quiet
insistence of a sound like slow tanks
driving up a highway he should no longer see.
Perhaps the phone belonged to the fish,
like each flower belongs to its stem, and much
like the way I brush through hawthorn,
and they give themselves to my hands
and the ground. And when I smell the rain
coming through the open window
I know they are falling, little white
eyelash-petals like a thousand wishes
in the rain, which is the glimpse
of the water for which we all long,
the last deep-sea dive
that will curl us back home,
out of the arched reach of the gaff
made of oxygen, made of the war
between what we know we cannot do
and what we are asked to do,
that which must be shouldered, must be borne.
**
return to sawbuck 4.1
**
Elizabeth Barbato lives in NJ with her husband and dog; they like to garden, and she likes to eat the fruits of their labors. Her first chapbook will most likely be published in early 2010 by Dancing Girl Press. She's been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes, as well as for Best of the Net, and her most recent acceptances have come from elimae, Main Street Rag, and Little Red Leaves.
**
Pupa
Slap niche bark;
nerves ache, on rise,
legs or teeth or hair
hooked in this tree,
all my skin so taut,
acrobatic, webbed.
Wholly dark, no wind,
and owl, wishing for
his life to be a poem,
taps, taps…then shriek
and he’s gone, to tell
the moon to dim a shun.
Rained, I bank dew,
hoarding my thirst, fry
and warp: only idea now,
no shaft, no cloud, no
leaf, no barren mind,
enameled kin of mine
flex when heat and lamb
spill in green. Long over:
my taste for the blood
in my daring ears as shun
and my only music. Then
will burst me open.
**
How Meticulous
Originally, back when deer
referred to any land animal with four legs
and we were gay when we saw them gamboling,
before chilly Cardigan fought or Lord Sandwich
got hungry while he was gambling,
girls were those malefemale urchins
with bowl cuts, silent and stolid, bent
in the fields of the king. The serf’s life
was short and hard, like fuck, which
as we all know is not true Anglo-Saxon,
but the droit de seigneur, all sorts of
girls passing over the lap of the ruler
or who felt the smack of the ruler
on their sad little thighs. Childhood
was brief, noncommittal. This was
a thousand years ago, before
a computer, first in rank of new oracles
paid in sulfur dust pumped constant
through plug after plug—even though we were
warned about vampire electronics—
would tell us that in 2007
the most-used words were
hybrid
surge
and bubble.
We lost ourselves in climate change,
we faded to black,
and we altered meticulous
so far from its original meaning
of timid; fearful that our best workers
in this shiny millennium
are described so,
are rewarded with a good gesundheit,
a safe border, a troop surge, a house
protected from a bubble by a bubble,
and can drive to their pharmaceutical jobs
in slow.................silent................fuel-efficient cars.
**
In Sleep, That Good Soil
The roots of all goodness lie in the soil of appreciation for goodness.
.......................-His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama
This is such a fine dog, I say,
sliding my hand along her shepherd’s nose
and low under her black jaw
hewn from God’s good imagination.
You press your forehead to hers,
snuggling in, eye to eye with her thirteen years.
You told me this while we chewed leftover beef
that clung to green curry I had stirred the night before.
Everything is so ordinary, my husband,
so seemingly easily done: easier than chasing
the last grains of rice around my bowl, or the pot.
You do things because they should be done:
you don’t seem to fear much at all,
or hide many secrets under rocks.
It is truly sufficient, this good work of yours,
and your certainty is enough for me, for now:
just as a prodigy curves
in the darkness of the empty concert hall
to the smooth love of her instrument,
or the dog pulls at the leash once she realizes
where we are headed, or my feet find yours
under the blanket, and press, heel to arcing sole,
so am I discovering this skill of happiness,
near you, with you, in soft solitude,
and in this fertile soil: our sleep.
**
Gaff
A tuna swallowed my brother’s phone,
or, rather, was found in the belly
of a tuna he’d been weighing
long after its body sighed to the deck,
slick against the vang. The phone’s
an old one; he can’t bother to find
something smaller, more stylish. He knows
he’d only lose it anyway. But at least
when something like that is lost,
you know it’s usually gone forever, unlike
the waves of sand that rustle and shift
behind the frontal lobes of all his days.
He was sent to the sand by the ants that fell
from the broken blocks. Armed
with that spill of ardor, their chitinous
ranks polished his boots, swarmed
over his chest, left ribbons
with tiny hooks, as if for tiny fish,
so that now he holds his palms to his ears,
willing them to pray away the quiet
insistence of a sound like slow tanks
driving up a highway he should no longer see.
Perhaps the phone belonged to the fish,
like each flower belongs to its stem, and much
like the way I brush through hawthorn,
and they give themselves to my hands
and the ground. And when I smell the rain
coming through the open window
I know they are falling, little white
eyelash-petals like a thousand wishes
in the rain, which is the glimpse
of the water for which we all long,
the last deep-sea dive
that will curl us back home,
out of the arched reach of the gaff
made of oxygen, made of the war
between what we know we cannot do
and what we are asked to do,
that which must be shouldered, must be borne.
**
return to sawbuck 4.1
**
Elizabeth Barbato lives in NJ with her husband and dog; they like to garden, and she likes to eat the fruits of their labors. Her first chapbook will most likely be published in early 2010 by Dancing Girl Press. She's been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes, as well as for Best of the Net, and her most recent acceptances have come from elimae, Main Street Rag, and Little Red Leaves.
Labels: 4.1, elizabeth barbato, spring 2010
