The OrphanAGE, Vol. 1.17

First Lines

Do I dare / Disturb the universe? —T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Poetry Month

We ducked out on April Fools here at the OrphanAGE, beset on all sides as we are, by legion(s) of them. BUT we’re taking one more swing before Poetry Month ambles off stage for yet another year.

Buried, ironically, within the 12,000-ish lines of Homer’s Odyssey there are bards that go on for days reciting poetry. Early performances could go a week — a week! — with performers delivering 400-500 line (4 to 5 hour) segments (…and you thought some open mics could be tedious…practically TED Talks in comparison).

POETRY — Luv it / Hate it

A prof once let slip that the word Poetry could be translated as to connect, as in to reveal connections that otherwise would sail past unnoticed. I misplaced those notes and have spent the last 46 years trying to scrounge up what language he was even talking about. A recent AI deep-dive turned up some interesting (if not exactly what I was looking for) leads:

In Sanskrit, kavya (काव्य) traces etymologically to crafting and joining. A poet being one who joins beautiful things [that root is remains in play today : band, bond, bind, bundle…]. Then there’s Vakrokti (वक्रोक्ति) literally crooked speech — poetic language getting at things sideways, revealing angles you’d never see coming. The crookedness is the whole point.

Classical Arabic gives us Takhyil (تخييل) — almost a technical term for the cognitive act of spotting hidden relationships between things.

The Greeks, ever reliable, offered Metaphora (μεταφορά) — to carry across, shuttling meaning across the gap between unlike things. Meta (between/across) + pherein (to carry) — making poetry a smuggler’s art.

But, perhaps, the most elegant (dare I say ‘poetic’) example can be found in Welsh. Cynghanedd. A system of sound-echoes and consonant patterns that force unlikely words into harmony — no metaphor required: just sonic pressure til something cracks open.

Whatever its linguistic origins, poetry’s component parts:

Sound —the musicality of words: rhyme, meter, repetition, words doing something in your mouth before your brain catches up; Compression —more packed into less space than any other lit form, each word and phrase pulling double or triple duty; The full literary toolkit: sensory detail, simile, metaphor…; Form — from the locked-room precision of sonnets and haiku to free verse, where even how the thing sits on the page can mean something. Ambiguity — the productive kind where imprecision isn’t a bug, it’s load-bearing.

The same prof had a theory re literary forms as a lifespan arc: long-form fiction/nonfiction for the young with time to burn; essays & short fiction for the middle-life’d juggling responsibilities; and poetry — the culmination! What you arrive at when you’ve finally runout of patience for filler, and want your literary art stripped to its most distilled, ruthlessly eloquent self.

Peace,
Dante

In this Issue

• Connie Dover
• Jason Vaughn
• Shawn Pavey
• Linzi Garcia
• Joseph Anthony Davis
• Jesse Kates
• Kara Werner
• Jose Faus

Note: Works by these poets (not necessarily these poems) can be purchased at Prospero's Bookstore or by clicking the cover images below.

Connie Dover

Self-improvement #2

A good friend once told me:
you think you’re a nice person, but actually,
you’re a people pleaser.

You act nice
so people will like you.

Thank you, Good Friend!
for seeing through me
You know me better than I know myself!
And guess what?
Your insight has inspired me

Starting now, I promise to manifest a super-truthful,
plain-spoken, no-nonsense, more authentic ME
I will drop the mask and tell it like it is -
no fakery, no charm, no trying to impress.

and the first thing to go will be
kale
followed by kefir, kombucha, kimchee
cassava, avocado toast and free-trade anything

As a born-again flexitarian
I’ll dine on veal,
drink from red solo cups,
and eat eggs from tormented chickens
I would try paté, but it’s French

My new self-care mantra will be Survival of the Fittest
My God, this is freeing . . .

I will invest in Venezuelan oil and beachfront condominiums in Gaza
I'll pull the plug on Mother Jones, Doctors without Borders
and the Free Handout Food Bank

My PBS pledge days are over
because we now know that public television is operated by Elites
whose mission is to squander our War Department budget
on Sesame Street, sex change operations for Honduran child pornographers
and that maniac, Ken Burns,
so when Denmark invades, we won’t be ready.

I can get on board with saying The Gulf of America
and so should you,
because if it weren’t for America, you wouldn’t be here,
I don’t care where you are

I can’t say I enjoy rejoicing in the misfortunes of others, BUT
if you get sent back to your home country ...or someone else's,
or if you're enjoying a stay at Alligator Alcatraz,
maybe you shouldn’t have come here in the first place.
You don’t see ME strapping a sick baby on my back and sneaking into Sudan

The truth of the matter is,
I don’t need to “improve” myself – I just need a break.
It will be a relief to stop feigning interest in
white rhinos, grey wolves,
black-footed ferrets, polar bears, glaciers,
the rain forest, the gays, butterflies and other peoples’ children

And if I'm being honest,
God is not impressing me much either – I think he's weak.
If he’s too much of a pussy to rain down Armageddon
on refugees, amputees and the traitors who try to help them,
then I know an American President who can get the job done.

So, Heads Up, all you cerebral palsy, cystic fibrosis
ALS-whining, free-ride Domestic Terrorists,
the Hour is at hand.
Get ready to exit your vehicles and earn your keep,
cause Daddy’s Home

Strong men will hold down good jobs
Wives will be cherished by their husbands
as long as they mind,
and together they will raise families of boy and girl brother-sister children
who play football and the piano,
and they will like it.

I will be a Proud American Female Lady-Woman
God’s perfect creation
And if the Prez wants to give me a little locker room squeeze, well,
consider the luxury of lying back, gazing up at a popcorn ceiling
and just. giving. in.

The New Me will be swept away on a scented tide
of botox, barefoot moscato and sausage gravy.
No thinking no feeling no fretting no grieving
no petitions no donations no calls no tears
no guilt no pity no nothing.
And best of all, no more protests
(the pay was never that good, anyway)

A liberal once wrote,
The gravest sorrow comes from
closing our minds to the suffering of others
and feeling justified in doing so.

There was a verse like that in the Bible,
but my Thought Leader says it’s a typo

I will hold fast
I will shoot my dog
I will no longer allow compassion to cloud my judgement.

I'm gonna harden my heart till it cracks
and if the world catches fire, so be it.
That’s future Connie's problem

My friend would be so proud.

Jason Vaughn

Not Bliss

Hearing that faint burbling
and then a dancing hiss as fragrant coffee
trickles into the pot, the sounds
more rhythmic as the coffee rises, more like
gentle rain slanting against window glass,
a husky (and louder) gurgle coming in
just before a final rough sighhh, I am—
on this muggy August evening
in this lonesome townhouse—drawn back
to those winter-dark early mornings when,
saving up for my own first home, this ‘home,’
I lived for a time
(again) with my parents.

Dressed for work, I would enter the night-light kitchen on socked feet, kick up the thermostat a few degrees and then switch on the coffee pot (grounds and water put in by my mother the night before). As that coffee made, I’d sit down to the table but lean toward the yellow glow of a floor lamp instead of using the ceiling light, the vent wafting up sufficient warmth at my back as I began to read. And as I read, so near to those luxurious babblings and coos and the lovely dark aromas of almost-burning, I couldn’t feel any of this as happiness—it was merely the best part of a mostly-mind-numbing workday routine. When the coffee finished, I would rise and fill a cup. And maybe Lucy, sounding adorably pitiful, would mew down the laundry-room hall as Dad emerged there to portion out food for her, ringing the spoon on the bowl’s edge. Moving into the kitchen, he’d say good morning, then pour himself some coffee and sit opposite me as I set my book aside and started to tie on my shoes. We’d talk for a bit, random thoughts on weather and work and whatever, time not wanting to wait. Then sometimes Buddy (a good, good boy), having quitted the comfort of his bed to be closer to us, would enter and—with a dulled clatter of bones—abruptly collapse into another attempt at sleep on the linoleum, Mom shuffling in as I gathered up my shoulder bag, she hugging me, Dad telling me to have a good day.

Though getting ready to scroll through noxious web feeds now
instead of opening a book,
I earnestly blow into this cup
a wish that I wish could message back
through the steam of all those other brews:
Don’t be such a slave to the ignorance
that permits us to just go about
our hours unmindfully, with vain appeals and agonies
and self-satisfied social angers,
as if none of the truly great stuff
will ever change.

Shawn Pavey

Erasure
(of "Lady" by Lionel Richie as sung by Kenny Rogers)

Erasure

(of "The Gambler" by Don Schlitz as sung by Kenny Rogers)

Linzi Garcia

Your Wholeness

The scar that splits your left eyebrow
into two uneven parts
makes me jealous
of the hand, the fingernail
or claw, that took a part of you.
The scar makes me protective
of you and your wholeness,
and I finally understand
your mother’s intensity
and her mighty, mighty love.
It’s just flesh
and the sign of this life’s
possession of us.

She's a Poem

A little girl
sitting on the open attic window sill
having a smoke, drinking a Coke,
looking out on the street,
oblivious that she’s a poem.

Joseph Anthony Davis

Summer Magic

All along the circumference of this swirling curl of
lonesome, the evening’s humidity colludes with fireflies
alighting on my aching aliveness. I swat idly at a
wandering moth of some kind with my right hand.
My left hand is clenched, fist-tight, as if holding a Cracker
Jack prize, but I am holding nothing but ennui and desire.
Denny Matthews narrates another Royals abysmal loss,
while I contemplate the word evening: that is, a balancing,
a leveling. Slowly, a nascent indigo shifts the equilibrium
of twilight into night, its patient silence broken by the
giddy laughter of a skateboarding kid speeding under the
brightening beams of the streetlight across the street
and just to the left of our front porch, which is dark.
A night that yearns for hammock laziness, and I am
sitting pensively, like coils on a discarded bed frame.

But then I sense the silent swing of our screen door
opening as Lulu sneaks out in bare feet. I turn too late to
prevent the ice cube sliding down the back of my tank top.
Her giggles thwart the the silence of my solitude.
Wet and welcome in its dripping cold surprise,
I unclench my fist to swat away her other hand,
formed in the puckish claw of trying to tickle me.
I stand up from our front porch steps, pulling her to me
with a desperation I no longer conceal when I am around her.
Silently, I dare to laugh that laugh again, so I can halt it in her
throat with the kind of kiss that Summer double-dog dares
lovers give one another. Heatwaves give
way and rise to the stars adding luster to night’s
canopy of sky: deepening, reveling, welcoming.

Whatcha thinkin’ ‘bout? Lulu asks, clasping her hands
underneath my tank top, not minding the perspiration
On me while I sit brooding. We begin this subtle sway,
invisible to anyone who’d see us. I say nothing for
almost a minute, content to rest my chin on her head,
before i say,

Not a damn thing, babe. Just lettin’ summer work its magic,
just lettin’ the summer work its magic.

Closure

At the first peel of the Angelus, at the first beckoning
tones of the Islamic Call to Prayer, we sat cross-legged
and composed, our eyes resolutely closed in remorse
and contemplation, our breasts heaving and our spirits
grieving all these victims, living and dead, of our wars
and our greed:

        Hiroshima, Nagasaki, the Middle Passage,
    Phnom Pen, Chiapas, Kabul, Grenada, Baghdad,
Tiananmen Square, Jasper Texas, Aceh,
Wounded Knee, the Philippines …the self-inflicted
terror of September 11, its aftermath of permanent war
— suddenly, like the collective breath of the dead
Singing, a wind rose up, comforting, warm, bracing …
did you hear that? Did you feel that? Are we healed?
You there! Please … did you get healed?

Then, on this new day of atonement and rapture,
at the first peel of the Angelus,
at the first reeling tones of the Islamic Call to Prayer,
at the first zeal of these newly found tears of joy shed at
the Wailing Wall, on this new day, in this new Jerusalem,
on this renewed and newly forgiving terra firma,
while the sun dances, and the tides and moon
rejoice and sigh:

Let there be imagination without tyranny.
Let there be creativity without malice.
In our toils and our labors, in our leisure and our rest,
let there be a singular human excellence without
perfection, and its strident need to control.
Compassion and mercy will serve as the bricks, and
reconciliation will make and excellent mortar, as we
build a bridge across this embattled and bellicose breach.
Let us find communion in a radical Justice,
a radical Freedom,
a radial Peace.

And so, in the pulse n pulchritude of morning,
we persevered on the human, sacred bridge,
and all of the singing spirits who preceded us
in genocides, famine or programs:
their music bathed our work in warmth and wonder.

On this new day of atonement and rapture, we need you!
And you! And yes, you too …the meek and shy one.
You can lay the cornerstone…you! Over there,
With your knowledge and insight, we shall need you.

We need you too.

    for as surely as this poet knows Saint Francis heaped
heaven’s blessings on that long-forsaken sow, I know
we cannot begin this work without you. So, let us begin;
yes, let there be psalms and songs to fill the air!

Now, EVERYBODY!

Jesse Kates

Two Scoops

An ice cream truck
rolls slow doling We Wish
You A Merry Christmas
in bleeps and bloops.
Sun showers today.
My first fell atop a slide
in churchyard playground,
preschool teachers calling
look, look! A former girlfriend
exits a restaurant, looks,
stumbles, gives a small wave.
I’ve piggy-back carried her naked
around town for months, curls
spilling down my shoulders,
soft breath in my ear.

Manifesto Rain Delay

Underground speakeasy. Dimly lit drinks.
Your glasses glint. Red lipstick parts a smile.
Excuse me, host interrupts. We’re taking
on water. Downward glance: dark waves
lapping our stools. Spouts of rain spelunk
from dark limestone walls. We plunge
the lake-smell pool to stone stairs. Outside,
bar’s alley now a shining torrent. Our shoes
sopped, you leap to scale chain link
to a dumpster lid. We dash across carless
streets in soaked clothes, feet clapping
into water. We pause to kiss as on stones,
tributaries streaming from wet hair. We blur
towards neon.
        Town Topic drips us dry:
coffee, hash browns. Bathroom a tiny
polygon. My fingers tap the chrome bar,
fine tuning to your station

Kara Joy Werner

the way they'll lose their minds

the way they'll lose their minds
after they ban every
drag queen story hour,
every book that says you matter because you are you.

after they white-out history
burn stonewall to the ground
after they haul every last
nonwhite non-cishet non-so-called-christian soul away
to die in a tent or a prison camp you need a plane to get to.

how they’ll praise god and that sickest joke of a leader
every sunday morning
send them all the money that they
haven't stolen yet.

when they see
you can't change who someone is.
you can't legislate existence.
when their kids are still gay. still trans. still defy the binary
how kids grow up and they won't call on the weekends
because you tried to erase them
and called it love

even i'm praying to your jesus now,

even i’m praying to your jesus now,
to make another comeback
but you’re so far in,
i doubt he could
convince you, either.

up is down.

you’re setting the table for dinner
only the fancy tariff china and french-canadian tariff silver will do…
but it’s the table
jesus would’ve flipped.

you’ll scoff at empathy over appetizers,
laugh about ripping families apart and deporting american citizens over salad, stealing
healthcare from you parents over the main course,
clear cutting our national parks over dessert,
taking every freedom away and calling it freedom over nightcaps.

down is up.

every sunday (and maybe wednesday)
you’ll sit in the first row, middle.
everyone knows it’s your seat.
you’ll sing every hymn with your whole heart.
you’ll hear the pulpit balloon words of god’s love and grace
    (the new testament one, not the old)
and twist them into fascist monsters, unleash them in the streets.
you will say to your child,
“i love you. i hate the sin and not the sinner,”
and it will sting over
and over and over
because love has become intertwined with hate.

you’ll drop racist one-liners. you’ll own the libs.
you’ll report your neighbor for maybe being undocumented.
or just for being brown.
you’ll wonder why your child won’t talk to you anymore
    while you clean your guns,
waiting to start the civil war, or world war III, whichever comes first.

you pulled the voting booth curtain closed behind you,
filled in the circles by the names of rapists and criminals and smiled triumphantly.
you will die on this hill, this is all for the best, hoping for a spot on mars and
that donald will smile down at you, lovingly. put his arm around you.
tell you he’s proud of you, like you always wished your father would have.
you’ll pray that elon thinks you’re cool.

the hill will swallow you.

you return the nazi salute these days, take every opportunity to remind me you’re the moral one.
the righteous, unselfish one.
the loving one, that does not kill or steal.
the one who loves thy neighbor.
the one i should be more like,
or i’ll burn in hell.
your cross isn’t fooling anyone.

And to take us out, we're going to turn to the sonorous timbres of

Jose Faus