Laura Dumm

FEEDING FRENZY

there's always a feeding frenzy in this city
always a no way out let me tell you
about the jacob bean seller
inside the waterfall limelight
where children hear dumpsters coughing
the lady inside the booth asks me
to cross my palm with silver no
i says i am silver she says oh
you will meet
i say i know i already have done
the clown reeks of soot
his dog smells of candy the cat hooks
its claws into the bedouin tent and the knights
of st columba knock on my door
i have nothing to give them
last night was interrupted
by the long range weather forecast
inside my bed ants live
i don't mind
their fire lights up my sheets.

Geraldine Green

 

THE PHYSICS OF JACKSON POLLOCK

I sit upon the front porch.
Grandfather’s old knife in my hand.
A beer upon the rail.
The silent painter brings with him my brushes and an old issue of The New York Times.
It was summer…1956.
The peonies were in bloom.
Neighborhood dogs bark.
Dad’s car is parked beneath the shade tree.
Mom is not yet stricken with terminal cancer.
She hangs the week’s linen upon the line.
Blowing in the July winds.
I have my stenographer’s notebook in my hand.
Poems, like old subway tickets, are flowing through the quiet summer songs of my hand
      stitched heart.
I receive the newsprint filled with death notices.
Death does notice…doesn’t it?
I fold back the pages and look up the captain of the guards.
He had fallen upon the concrete floor of the old Ford factory.
Now an institute of art.
They said he slipped on some sawdust in the sculpture dept..
Fractured his poor skull on the unforgiving concrete poured in 1889.
Tom tells me he went into a coma and then a heart attack followed.
Yvonne, who guards us still like a wing-ed Nike, told me he fell because of a massive heart
       attack.
I don’t really know how.
I just know he is dead.

Now there is a great big sign size greeting card handmade from the sculpture dept. on the
     door of the captain’s office.
It said “We love you Ken! It was great to be with you! We’ll miss you” signed the sculpture dept..
(Or something like that.)

Ken is dead now and I sit upon the summer porch.
An old New York Times in my hands.
A cold beer upon the wooden rail.
Mom hanging the clean linens on the line.
Blowing in the backyard filled with rich memories of The Captain.
His friendly smile.
Always a kind word to share.

That was Ken.
Lying dead upon the concrete floor.
Where young artists gather for a spiritual moment…together.
Where an unfinished sculpture rises from the old Ford factory.
He was only 64.

I sit upon the summer porch in the cold July winds.
I guess I won’t be hearing words spoken from Ken’s kind mouth…not for awhile.
I guess.
On that old summer porch where this poet flips slowly through the smoking pages of The New
         York Times.
In the comfort knowing Ken was, after all, rising through the old photographs of fatherhood and          the developmental portraits of marriage.
That was Ken.
Where the sunlit peonies blossomed.
The Captain… of The Guards.

Peter Leon