Beverly Burch: California Poets Part 8, Five Poems
January 8th, 2025
California Poets: Part VIII
Beverly Burch
Five Poems
The Leaving
No day’s grief rolls out like another’s.
Knockdown, a brute of a companion today.
Gusting in a windblown forest tomorrow.
It staggers, trots, impales. Then it goes missing.
Talk back, and the disappeared reprimand you.
They sit on your bed, ensure
you dream of them. Morning takes them off
and you look around for the clearing where they went,
dream’s lost and found department.
Recite a prayer, light a candle. You can’t hush
yourself enough to hear their messages.
No help that you practiced weeping beforehand.
There’s a rumor of progression, stages of relief,
but wobbly wheels skew
in all directions as you begin to turn.
If sadness wears out, keep it close,
beloved cloak, moth holes and all. The lost don’t forget.
If you shed its heavy weight,
they rouse the rumbling velocity of absence.
Nothing stops it
careening down its dark slope.
Alms
Baby suppleness stiffened, toe joints
tightened then skewed after a surgeon’s knife failed
to fix them. Smooth skin, once kissed and stroked,
callused to roughness and needed a file.
The whole crew complains about standing
up straight. You live in a body, you know robbery.
Long ago hair lost its pigment to that thief.
Bit by fleshy bit, pieces of Self disappeared.
Memory drooped. The thief whispers:
I took what I wanted. But look, you have freedom.
No frenzy in the datebook, no duties to observe,
no ambition. You have a wide angle lens for life now
and a soundtrack, interior music like a child’s.
I gave you lightness into the dark.
City on the Down Low
Down you go, down concrete stairs to chambered tunnels, platforms of up and coming trains, down and out riders. There, beautiful boys, feral with rage. Girls pinked out whose hands spark as they talk. World of brouhaha and hubbub, the late run’s loco motion. Across the aisle, a disheveled woman, just a girl poorly disguised by age. She once believed doing without was righteous. Back up the stairs, past a guy sprawled on the landing. Dead drunk, someone mutters. No, shadowy afflictions of the street found him. The night is mottled grey, slurred echoes, rhythm of lost languages. The homeless with their hands cupped have eyes that take you down. A lame woman collects cans in an alley while her cat hisses at intruders. Go home, wherever that is. You’ve met the city. It rattles your windows, snakes its destitute air under your door.
Free Sonnet
I speed-dialed you again before I remembered.
Another nick on my stone calendar of loss.
Talked anyway, you maybe listening now.
Always I wanted you to listen. Not to hear your
twang twang, country choir calling in the faithless.
Just wanted devout silence. But storms shattered trees
in our town and you didn’t call. Silence was lead
in the ribs. When I was sick and heard nothing
I knew, I was on my own. Pivoting to freedom,
a deep crack at myself. O August—glad not to visit
in summer. December, go away. I’ll travel elsewhere
for holidays, no stupid present, no postcards to send.
Silence, the only carol. Who can grasp silence?
That great hand muffling you in the void.
August Haikus
Morning scroll, down note.
Morning stroll, dog, neighbor, child,
sun, blossoms, trees, cat.
Heat on the pavement
radiates, underfloor furnace
of the damaged world.
Long silence gathers
like wingless bees in the air
everything aloft.
Mock orange summer.
Feet on the ground, scent transports,
fifty years topple off.
Saturday alarm
before cool air gives relief
blood and body calm.
Sleep and dreams, foggy.
A mood, a face, voice lingers
I don’t know myself.
Red sunset from fires.
Red moon on horizon fiery,
house lights on the hills.
Author Bio:
Beverly Burch has four poetry collections, most recently Leave Me a Little Want (Terrapin Books), and two nonfiction books. Her work won the John Ciardi Prize, a Lambda Literary Award, and a Gival Poetry Prize and was a finalist for Audre Lorde Award. Her prose and poetry have appeared in New England Review, Gulf Coast, Southern Review, Denver Quarterly, and Los Angeles Review. www.beverlyburch.com
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