h o m e........

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s u b m i s s i o n s....

l i n k s

CHRISTINA MURPHY

DANCING WITH SUZIE ASADO

Ah Susie Asado, that sweet tea of Ms. Gertrude Stein’s dreams
a flamenco dancer of divine intention with a grand
and musical sense of form, how could she not be a poem
and a passion, how could she not be the dream of words spinning
and capturing the flame, how could she not be and become
all that language and soul envisioned?

The ancient light is silver and grey, the newest form is pearl
we can ask only so much of the dancer and of the beholder
who looks with modern eyes and sees substance is malleable
just like the heart, and who would not want to dance with Susie Asado,
who would not want to know the pulse, the spirit, the soul—who?

Drink pups the sweet tea of images aflame against the simple background
of loving alphabets and the treasure of the baubles and the bobolinks,
that both know the pleasure of the ancient unison of the heart’s longing
with perfect form, perfect beauty, and the love of the dancing with Susie.

POETIC COLLABORATIONS

At a gathering of poets, long planned, 

Dylan Thomas and Wallace Stevens co-author a poem:

“Do Not Go Gentle into Sunday Morning”

T.S. Eliot and Gertrude Stein decide to give it a try:

“Tender Buttons in The Wasteland”

Meanwhile, Dante has located Walt Whitman, and they create:

“Song of Myself in Hell”

Yeats has his eye on Sylvia Plath, and they write:

“Sailing to Daddy”

All of this makes Keats irritated, who says it is
not in the truly Romantic spirit. Robert Frost agrees:

“Tender is the Night on The Road Not Taken”

Stein says Romanticism is dead and therefore
nothing is Tender. No one agrees. Stein sets out
to prove them wrong. She begins by rearranging the pieces:

“Do Not Go Gentle into The Wasteland, Daddy”

“Tender Buttons are Tender Buttons are Tender Buttons”

Eliot objects: “Don’t think I don’t know what you are
up to, Gertrude.”

“What’s that, Tom?”

“Semiotics.”

“Ha, what a laugh, you old signifier, you.”

Plath is depressed, Keats is coughing, Frost is looking out
the window at the Birches.

“Pretty trees, eh Robbie?” Stein says.

“Yes, someone should write a poem about them,” Frost says.

“Shall we?” Stein says.

Together they write:
“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”

“That’s a dumb title,” Yeats says.

“I like it,” Keats says.

“It makes me want to put my head in the oven,” Plath says.

“All right, all right,” Stein says. “Robbie and I will revise it.”

“Snowy Stopping: Evening Woods”

They all applauded, and postmodernism was born.

REFLECTIONS IN ABSENTIA

one day, you will watch a springtime blue sky cascade down a springtime green hill and 
expand into infinite space where the sun is in perpetual flames

nothing will seem to move—not the sun, the earth, the sky  

at some point, petals from a flower will roll down the green hill and will feel the contours 
of the rocks and stones and the heat aflame in the midday sun 

perhaps you will be standing at the bottom of the hill when the petals roll down, and you
will see its truth—not a flower but a universe within an eternity of energies

and in that moment, as you watch the petals falling, a door in that universe will open for 
you into the again and again of infinite space as the sun continues to flame and amidst the 
blueness of the heavens, saying this is what is—as the rotating earth seeks to find its way 
around the sun and relocate itself in light and heat after the long dark winter

the earth, the blueness, and you—in timeless space and wondering where you might be 
going and where you will be if you stop, if you ever can stop, in the midst of the endless 
motion that makes up you, the springtime blue sky, and the questions you have

you have a heart, you know, but are uncertain of a soul—you have a desire to know and a 
need as hard as metal, and time was when you did not fear passages and felt the moon 
was a chariot you rode to dreams

now dreams break to bitter lessons and the door that your heart longs to open into blue 
space will not be your door, only your emptiness where you will hear the sound of the 
blue sky as darkness echoing

and your heart will break in the absence of meaning, just as you will know that the door 
and the emptiness are the same and will never close on the blue expanse of time and loss 
that grief defines; welcome home, you