pulverized diamonds

A quirky group of poems each relating to rain in some way. Because I got pretty wet coming home in the rain today. So there.



Mary Szybist

On Wanting to Tell [ ] about a Girl Eating Fish Eyes

—how her loose curls float
above each silver fish as she leans in
to pluck its eyes—

You died just hours ago.
Not suddenly, no. You'd been dying so long
nothing looked like itself: from your window,
fishermen swirled sequins;
fishnets entangled the moon.

Now the dark rain
looks like dark rain. Only the wine
shimmers with candlelight. I refill the glasses
and we raise a toast to you
as so and so's daughter—elfin, jittery as a sparrow—
slides into another lap
to eat another pair of slippery eyes
with her soft fingers, fingers rosier each time,
for being chewed a little.

If only I could go to you, revive you.
You must be a little alive still.
I'd like to put this girl in your lap.
She's almost feverishly warm and she weighs
hardly anything. I want to show you how
she relishes each eye, to show you
her greed for them.

She is placing one on her tongue,
bright as a polished coin—

What do they taste like? I ask.
Twisting in my lap, she leans back
sleepily. They taste like eyes, she says.



Etheridge Knight

No Moon Floods the Memory of That Night
 
No moon floods the memory of that night
only the rain I remember the cold rain
against our faces and mixing with your tears
only the rain I remember the cold rain
and your mouth soft and warm
no moon no stars no jagged pain
of lightning only my impotent tongue
and the red rage within my brain
knowing that the chilling rain was our forever
even as I tried to explain:

“A revolutionary is a doomed man
with no certainties but love and history.”
“But our children must grow up with certainties
and they will make the revolution.”
“By example we must show the way so plain
that our children can go neither right
no left but straight to freedom.”
“No,” you said. And you left.

No moon floods the memory of that night
only the rain I remember the cold rain
and praying that like the rain
returns to the sky you would return to me again.



Kristen Tracy

Rain at the Zoo

A giraffe presented its head to me, tilting it
sideways, reaching out its long gray tongue.
I gave it my wheat cracker while small drops
of rain pounded us both.   Lightning cracked open
the sky.   Zebras zipped across the field.
It was springtime in Michigan.   I watched
the giraffe shuffle itself backwards, toward
the herd, its bone- and rust-colored fur beading
with water.   The entire mix of animals stood
away from the trees.   A lone emu shook
its round body hard and squawked.   It ran
along the fence line, jerking open its wings.
Perhaps it was trying to shake away the burden
of water or indulging an urge to fly.   I can’t know.
I have no idea what about their lives these animals
love or abhor.   They are captured or born here for us,
and we come.   It’s true.   This is my favorite field.



Wendell Berry

October 10

Now constantly there is the sound,
quieter than rain,
of the leaves falling.

Under their loosening bright
gold, the sycamore limbs
bleach whiter.

Now the only flowers
are beeweed and aster, spray
of their white and lavender
over the brown leaves.

The calling of a crow sounds
loud—a landmark—now
that the life of summer falls
silent, and the nights grow.



Hilda Raz

Narrative Without People
 
The soaked books lip open in piles.
The shelves stoop, slough paint.
The doors, their locks sprung, hinge air
open to weather, gulp rain.
Something here enters the trees.

If we believe in ghosts, white pearl
shadows the batten and boards. Rust
runs on the shelves. The sounds on air
wail, a nail in the thumb. Stickers
underfoot poke holes.

In rafters, wings or the suggestion of wings
rend air, whoosh of rubbish, burnt rubber
hooks for skeleton elbows. Ash,
dry sift through moist fingers
in a room where everything's mold.



A little rain is good for you.

All Good Things - Jobe

jamesleejobe@gmail.com

Emily Berry

Communication



That day we didn’t speak and ate sandwiches swiftly.
I have always struggled with the roaring woman within
who might emerge and say her piece, impossible to understand.
I tried to convey this to you:

I have pinned her down with a series of pegs
so she lies flat like a wire against a wall.
This way all her anger is channelled into a phone that rings;
I pick it up: “Hello?”

You said you were peopled with other personalities; I knew them all as one,
like coloured sections of an umbrella that meet at the spike.
Under the shade of your muted colours, I stand in the rain,
talking to myself on the phone.



Emily Berry lives in London, where she works for a small publishing company. Her work has been published by Brittle Star, Nthposition, and Ambit. Emily Berry is also one of 21 poets included in the new Bloodaxe anthology of young poets, VOICE RECOGNITION (ed. James Byrne & Clare Pollard, published in September 2009).


Feel free to email me poems, poetry reading announcements, or poetry links.

jamesleejobe@gmail.com

ALL GOOD THINGS - JOBE

Wendell Berry



 The Rejected Husband

After the storm and the new
stillness of the snow, he returns
to the graveyard, as though
he might lift the white coverlet,
slip in beside her as he used to do,
and again feel, beneath his hand,
her flesh quicken and turn warm.
But he is not her husband now.
To participate in resurrection, one
first must be dead. And he goes
back into the whitened world, alive.



From Berry's 2005 collection, Given (Shoemaker, Hoard). I was re-reading this today on the bus. Just an incredible collection.



ALL GOOD THINGS - JOBE

jamesleejobe@gmail.com