CALL TO POETS Original poetry wi

CALL TO POETS
Original poetry with strong imagery; poems of cultural flux and interactions; personal translation of favorite works from the world's verse---these can be submitted at alyguy@hotmail.com. As can commentary on poem eating. So folks, send it on in.

read past poems:
LOLA HASKINS VACANA POETRY THREE ARAB POETS ELISAVIETTA RITCHIE RAY FREED TIA BALLANTINE BARRY ROHRBACH

Lola Haskins

Good and gentle readers, we go to Florida for this entry, land of sun and water, tar balls and stone crabs, underwater finances and the Everglades. I say, read Carl Hiaasen for some fun and environmentally oriented drollery but I digress from Lola Haskins' slim incisive volume of poems, Forty-four Ambitions for the Piano. Published in 1990 by the University of Central Florida Press/Orlando Contemporary Poetry Series. So savor summer days, sweet sharp words and that margarita...

To Play Pianissimo

       Does not mean silence.
       The absence of moon in the day sky
       for example.

       Does not mean barely to speak,
       the way a child's whisper
       makes only warm air
       on his mother's right ear.

       To play pianissimo
       is to carry sweet words
       to the old woman in the last dark row
       who cannot hear anything else,
       and to lay them across her lap like a shawl.

Octave

         It is what happens
         when you spread the feathers of one hand.

         It is the shadow
         the bell's deep swing casts
         on the desert, the round sound
         of Ishi's mouth.

         It is the sun
         and her sister moon, slow-dancing.

         It is what returns
         when you are most alone,
         calling across some dark orange dawn
         to the farthest rim of rock.

Fortissimo

       To play fortissimo
       hold something back.

       It is what the father does not say
       that turns the son.

       The fact that the summit cannot be seen
       that drives the climber on.

       Consider the graceless ones.
       The painter who adds one more brush stroke.

       The poet of least resistance
       who writes past the end of his poem.

The Rest

          An unpainted sky crossed by branches.
          The exact time it takes a bird of hands
          to fly between trees.

          The moment in sleep when a man stops
          breathing. A loss, as of a dream:
          four small red horses that gallop away.

The Pianist Who Keeps a Loaded Gun
on Her Piano When She Practices

            The children know not to knock.
            Double-sexed, I use both hands.
            I tease seriously. The notes
            tantalize, approach explosion,
            fall back. It is the brink
            that thrills when the high
            walker sets her pink foot
            on the rope.
                              The children know
            I would shoot, but not at whom.
            I am not certain I know myself,
            only that this deep readying,
            this fierce first step over
            air, is worth dying for.