Greetings from the dead of night, my friends. Tonight, I have an old poem to share, for those of you who may have an interest in readings such things. It just occurred to me that I haven’t shared original work in ages, and I know that some of you are subscribed here because of my poems. This one’s for you! (And you, and you, and you.)

I wrote this short poem in 2002.

Eve, Less One Decision

She looked to see if her reflection was chance.

But the stillness was there –
she bent to take a drink.
Above the agitated circles of his vision
there was the sleek tube of scales
sliding near, and she, the skeptic,

named this for her own doubting mind,
said, Viper, return us as leaf shadows
on tin awnings, crisp and certain;
or as the sky in rust, defined as the cracked
blood on the ground. Return us
as rain.

Such precision could cast us back in.
It could revolutionize everything.

(the end.)

Happy Friday Eve, my friends.

I write poems when I’m speechless, or otherwise at a loss for words whether spoken or not. This one is a re-write. I’ll just leave it here.

Fallen Meditation

I sit down to write a letter.

What I know from experience,
comfort a step off O Luxurious
a posteriori
where the realm of having-done
remarks to the inner sensibility
sensible enough to ask,

How is this known. How is that known.

– what was known before.

The door may offer possibilities:
it may swing open, or shut, or it may
start to close, then stop,
fall off its hinges into the “room of things known”

open for inspection, analysis,
asking what is this. An answer
tearing quietly through the air we breathe
toward how is this known, how is that known.

Other things coming through the doorway:
A nudge of ants.
A file of drizzle.
Second-hand smoke.

I sit down to write a letter.

What I know from experience:
Train. Open window. Night.
Unconscious and literal, the answer might be
my desk next to the window, a railroad
track going past, which I’ve come to expect,
love, the shaking of its rails
east, west –

What I mean to tell you is this:
when I sit down at my desk,
the window next to me is already open,
already the cool and dark star-glint, and since
I’m in some state of undress when writing at night,
all flickering finds my skin
open to gusts passing
probably to Quartzsite.

Anyway a train
stirs the air and the three become sublime –
train, open window, night – and then
I know why

and what I wanted to say.

What I do know.
What the aperture in the wall excludes from oblivions
more realized and independent of anyone’s
search for answers.
Nothing some particular.
Nothing some concept,
what kindred body of problem – what
passes through here, what filled the room before passing,
no longer known.

Look at it looking at itself –

then the phenomenon losing interest,
wandering out,
leaving muddy footprints where rain
moistened the tile.

(collage I made c. 2003)

I re-wrote an older poem of mine and thought I’d share it here today.

Let me re-phrase: I didn’t “re-write” this poem. I added two words… two words that I’d originally included, then removed at the suggestion of one of my MFA committee members. Reading it decades later, I wondered why I’d acquiesced. In most cases, I saw the light when a professor brought it to my attention. In other cases, I resisted. Acquiescing after resisting doesn’t mean that you want to do it. It means that you do it even though you don’t want to. You finally just do it. It’s the path of least resistance. Years later, you might look back and feel exactly the way you did before you acquiesced.

Especially if the matter was something profound, like two words. If it’s just giving in to Chinese food when you wanted Mexican, not so much.

Here’s the restored poem. The pic beneath it shows the printed version minus the line… the line missing its words.

The Beast of Romance

The camel fills what she emptied by lifting
a hoof, sand leveling the prints
across the dune to a vanishing –
the risk on the left with the right’s deflection.

When I decided to remove
myself from all of your embraces,
the sky wore its palm-stricken eclipse,
the circular ghost breaking into song, lunatique,
pallid Clouds of Eleven
careening to our old green and white names.

Weighing-in takes precedence:
readable things stowed away like water
in her bony satchel of a hump.

There is always this necessity.

She relinquishes what
she has stored. She comes to court
with all the evidence
locked tight in the file of her flesh.

[The Beast of Romance 1st version, Kristi Garboushian, early oughts]

The End.

This one is from 2011.

“…Nor There”

…Nor There

Mid-morning, the groom waits for the arborist
while gifts begin to arrive.
Two days ahead, the wedding sways the house,

the green sputter of early spring
draping the tree.

He knew he’d get caught in the scrolls of rain
running down to the roots. He wants the tree scraped clean.
He’ll ask the arborist
(if he ever shows up)
to make a quick peel of the bark
before everything dries.

He spends the next day
turning from the rustic to prepare the wedding
ceremony, rinsing his shirt,
wringing it on the rail, because it’s all he can do.

There’s nothing to be done
about the brassiere, the lacy red one,
her last conversation with him
hooked around the handle of the remaining suitcase,
his…

at least she didn’t take all of her.
She left the halo of her voice,
her braided hair,
purple mouth, genitalia.

He thinks it happened
when she recognized the painted eggshell
as a favor.
He tries to take it back,

but she’s flown to the Himalayas
where she found ice reflecting a bride
poised with her soaked lungs
fueling the despondency of mountain goats.

In the crevasse, brindled in the cold,
she sets a lien on her bones
in the name of the groom
still waiting for the arborist’s call.
She separates her tendons,
weaves them into her shawl.

I woke up thinking of this poem I’d written several years ago, then thought I’d re-write it and share it with you. This is my day: go to the gym, re-write a poem, feed a tortoise, play with a cat, work on a novel. There could be worse days.

Oh, and look for February Favorites next week Tuesday! The month ended before I could prepare. (Read: my time-management game left much to be desired these last few weeks.)

On with the poem, then.

Scene from a Traveling Play

Imagining you as a child: happy, climbing
a tree where you sit above the campfire
where your mother stirs
sunrise into wood beneath the flames.

If I were to sit next to you, I’d find the branch
no heavier with your lean form,
the pause before you take off like hundreds of birds,
weightless as sparks from the fire.

Years later, you’ll remember the moment you recognized
punk undertones in an Eagles song.

Later yet, you’ll find yourself startled to see the narrative
you’d left – you thought it’d flown off,
too, but it came back
before the wind could tear away the part
describing the fullness of the voice
your mother tried to keep.

You might be as tired as the ribcage of a boy
reaching upward through water, or tired with your eyes
dry in the desert city,
dry like horses
wild as news from town, the last thing you saw
before your canine pierced your tongue-tip –

dry like the cracked tooth, the crusted blood, the scarce rain –

dry like sepia grit and blur of hooves kicking to dust.
Dry like the hands of the last generation.

One thing’s for sure: you’re not an ember
burning slowly from air into the blindness of earth.
You’re the smolder of an oar dipping beneath
the water you’ll never forget.

Revisiting some of my older work this morning, I came across a certain poem and decided to share it. I very rarely use this space to publish poetry previously unpublished, but for some reason, I wanted to share this one. This is for you who found me through poetry, you who enjoy poetry, and you who enjoy the art of words. I wrote “Harvest in Phases of Night” in 2011.

Harvest in Phases of Night

The old woman ought to be
guarding the flower beds,
not spilling from acres to plots
hawking for signs:
pumping blood, an earring of pulse,
a car in flame intersecting the right
passages of dark.

Later, flinging her tampered
sleep in the night, she opens
her eyes to the kettle detached,
spectators caught
overhanging the wood fire.

Before dawn, her three arms
have fallen asleep, the accidental one
blackened, smelling of gasoline;

she adjusts her blanket, keeps it close…
she waters the early
streets and telephone lines,
sparking fury and grail;

she says her crushed-metal
prayers at sunrise,
chewing breakfast of concrete
peeled from asphalt walks,
punishment for ignoring the grain,

her old shoe and its sole
gold for the wake,
nourishment boiling over.

The headline of the day passes
unnoticed by the draw,
by the brass shield clouding the tide –

the old woman’s spine a chain of goblets,
auric meningitis, dreadful error,
unfortunate ride down pitted roads.

By the time I get there
the next night,
she’s rid the yard of gawkers.
She’s doing penance,
threshing stalks, sugar cane,
wheat of heritable caution
under a half-moon.

She’s answering to the nobility
of chrysanthemums.
There are more ways than one
to crash an ending:

fitful meetings of burnt tire,
fragmented window, misfires of logic,
passion we’ve never imagined….

Ore and secrets. Who knows
what causes these accidents?

She sleeps while the killed
find their way to the sidewalk, stone above
sketches of lighting at midnight.

In the end, it’s garden
mower to traffic signal.
The moon makes the dying right.

by Kristi Garboushian, April 2011

[17 January 2018] [ETA: no filter… just weird lighting!]