Poems by 2010 Frost Place Faculty

I Feel Good About My Neck
(for Nora Ephron, author of the bestseller,
I Feel Bad About My Neck)
by Lesléa Newman

I feel good about my neck
that sturdy weathered lamppost
holding up the beacon
of my heavy head
for more than fifty years
and never once complaining

I feel good about my neck
which became a verb
when I became a teen
and wore garlands of amethyst
colored hickies underneath slippery silky scarves stolen from my mother

I feel good about my neck
Where else would I hang
the antique gold locket
that belonged to my bubbe
and boasts an old photo
of my young grandfather
the man I was named for
the man I look like
the man I never met

I feel good about my neck
which harbors my throat
source of all sounds
starting with my first
raspy gasp as I barreled
into the world choking
on the umbilical cord
wrapped around me like a noose
until a doctor cut me loose
and I unleashed a loud indignant cry

I feel good about my neck
no longer swan-like
with its crepe papery
puckering wattle
that begins beneath my flaccid chin
and ends at the hollow
keyhole carved between my collarbones

I feel good about my neck
and let us not forget
the shy cashmere nape
hiding behind a thick
velvet drape of hair that parts
when my lover seeks a special treat:
the sweet tender meat
of a blushing fuzzy peach

©2008 Lesléa Newman from NOBODY'S MOTHER © 2008 by Lesléa Newman (Orchard House Books, Pt. Orchard,, WA)

BODY AND SOUL
by Sharon Bryan

They grow up together
but they aren't even fraternal


twins, they quarrel a lot
about where to go and what


to do, the body complains
about having to carry


the soul everywhere as if
it were some helpless cripple,


and the soul snipes that it can go
places the body never dreamed of,


then they quarrel over which one of them
does the dreaming, but the truth is,


they can't live without each other and
they both know it, anima, animosity,


the diaphragm pumps like a bellows
and the soul pulls out all the stops—


sings at the top of its lungs, laughs
at its little jokes, it would like


to think it has the upper hand
and can leave whenever it wants—


but only as long as it knows
the door will be unlocked


when it sneaks back home before
the sun comes up, and when the body


says where have you been, the soul
says, with a smirk, I was at the end

of my tether, and it was, like a diver
on the ocean floor or an astronaut


admiring the view from outside
the mother ship, and like them


it would be lost without its air
supply and protective clothing,


the body knows that and begins
to hum, I get along without you


very well, and the soul says, Listen
to that, you can't sing worth a lick


without me, they'll go on bickering
like this until death do them part--


and then, even if the soul seems
to float above the body for a moment,


like a flame above a candle, once
the wick is pinched it disappears.

Why I Didn't Finish Reading David Copperfield

Bus three's eight-track tape player chunks into gear,
it's Frank Zappa again, crooning huskies and snow,
and down the back of my neck, a couple of bad boys

chant, "Mescaline, peyote, LSD." I've got this book
splayed on my lap, poor Mr. Peggotty, it's not like
I don't feel for him, I just can't keep my mind off

those bony elbows and white hands, those tender,
spotty faces. Glance up in study hall, sure enough,
beautiful bad boys are scrawling "Skynyrd"

all over the chalkboard, the teacher's slipped off
to the supply closet, everyone knows he's got
Mrs. Kay jammed up against a stack of manila paper,

but where is my true love? I worry all the time
I'll end up with nothing, even Barkis-is-willin' won't save me
a smile, I'll be stuck on the bus with Miss Murdstone,

driver shrieking she'll play The Sound of Music twice a day
for the rest of the year if those tramps in the back seat
don't keep their hands where she can see them.

I could lay my head on this vinyl seat and cry,
even Little Em'ly has more fun than I do, not one bad boy
in the whole world wants me, I'll never brush my clumsy

lips against his open mouth, taste his sweet smoky breath,
and every time I pick up this book, my mind starts wandering
in circles like an old dog that can't find a good spot to sleep,

you hear his nails clacking back and forth across the kitchen floor,
and it just makes me so sad, sitting here on the bus wishing
I was holding hands with a boy in a Kiss t-shirt, my own wild Steerforth.

I don't care if he dumps me after a week . . . I don't care.
All I want is to give him everything he asks for, I'd lay myself down
in the falling snow to feel the weight of his heart,

and Little Em'ly, if you really needed me, I swear I'd finish your story.
Maybe you've floated too long in the cold, or the wind's wrong,

from How the Crimes Happened (CavanKerry Press, 2010

Loose Horses
by Adam Halbur

 

Busting through a 30 below wind-chill,
they stretch the distance,
hooves throwing snow, nostrils
flaring, manes shaking loose. Until
at the abandoned road, they brake:
fences nowhere.

From Poor Manners with permission from the author. All rights reserved.

A Place at the Table
by Fred Marchant

It means you can face your accusers.

It means there is no place to hide.

It means you will not drift off to sleep,

or carve your name on your arm.

Or give anyone here the finger.

It means you do not have to wave your hand as if you were drowning.

It means there is nothing here that will drown you.

It means you really do not have to have the answer.

Since there are only a few of you left, sitting across from you,

it means you can study their faces as you would the clouds outside.

You will not totally forget them.

It means you are now, roughly, for a while, just about equal.

In the center before you there is nothing unless someone gives it.

It means that when you are gone, everyone feels it.

It means that when you leave, you feel as if you haven’t.

That you still have a place at the table.

Later in your life this moment will return to you as a mote

of dust that floats in on the spars of sunlight.

It will search every room until it finds you.

from The Looking House, Graywolf Press, 2009
Used with permission. All rights reserved.

Word-Birds
By Gray Jacobik

for Pit Pinegar

Most likely it was the Jabberwocky’s
Acquaintances first stirred my affection

For rhyming compounds––the tumtum
And the jubjub––although it may have been

The bear, Fuzzy-Wuzzy, taught my tongue
Their savory flavor––or Hurly and Burly,

The names Honeybun, in South Pacific,
Gave each coconut breast. Perhaps

Hoi poloi with its classical ring, a favorite
Locution of my father’s, hooked me,

And later, that itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny . . . .
It’s the echolalia, the la-di-da! of such

Combos I’m a canoodle-poodle for––
Hoity-toity, topsy-turvy, roly-poly––

Plus these congeries are efficient and
Often onomatopoetical––hanky-panky,

Fiddle-faddle, hustle-bustle––soundplay’s
Transcendent hurdy-gurdy that protracts

Time by going faster (a magician’s hocus-
Pocus, a witchdoctor ’s mumbo-jumbo).

I could go on willy-nilly, niddle-nodding
Lines, stumbling off higglely-piggledy. . . .

Used with permission. All rights reserved.

THE ANESTHESIOLOGIST’S KISS
by Tom Healy

He was the first
man I knew

with hair on his face.
I remember his beard

almost covering
his lips, then mine.

I remember
white cotton.

He held my chin
and pressed gently.

I tasted tobacco
and rain trickling

past the soft fears
of a five-year old

into the sturdy home
secrets become.

Oh, little rose,
he said.

Drift away.

Used with permission of the author.

Marginalia
by Gregory Pardlo

I recently friended my brother on a
social networking website.
It is possible we will never
have to speak again. Why speak
when we have a crystal ball
of software through which
to judge one another’s lives?
I imagine this is what
the afterlife will be like.
I’m ghost, we say
instead of goodbye.

Excerpt from “Marginalia” with permission of the author. All rights reserved.

Hubble's Law
by Blas Falconer

Before dawn, fishermen motor far into the open sea.
The bay long dead. Their lanterns lit.

Meanwhile, in the plaza, the manicured trees
strung with lights, the fountain and its expanding rings.
The steeple. The brown, plaster Christ.
Yellow mountains rise in the background,

and the houses are sleeping. I sit at the window
and think of a dock stretching in darkness,
my hands, a net cast: it opens and opens wider,
the weights never breaking the surface, never sinking.

Beyond the pier, the lights disperse,
each a star beneath the stars, a boat, a man drifting out.

(re)printed with permission of the author. all rights reserved.

As If Nothing Happened
by Jeanne Marie Beaumont

for Joe Bolton 1961-1990           

Twilight now and on a crooked deck, a boy-
man handles his scotch, the burn of its amber
entrapping what bugs him, what squirms then stops
squirming in the scrutinizing heat.

The ribbed glass presses wetly to his palm,
sweat of languor, of in-between, and he smokes
as a siren slices the traffic down
its middle, shoulders bulging to make way.

It's not hard to imagine a body
rocked on a stretcher, hearing fading out,
because he's long practiced, to imagine
the self all gone, or everything else ---that

swift passage through the yielded corridor--
then cars merged back in lines and driven away.

Originally published in Colorado Review, reprinted by permission of the author.
All rights reserved.