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respective owner.
Nothing may be
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POEMS
The Pen & the Plough
“I travel forward, I have many scars” (The Plough, old English)
worden wrixen
(varied words)
Traveling with many scars
with mercy, Lord, we neede Ure Help. Come.
My back is tired I am sick of locks & brakes
I never filled a church pew Sunday.
Oysters & weathercocks
St Botolphe & Woolmouth street
wordun wrixen” vary your words.
Mean men breake up nests on a slate roof
roses grow where temple bells rescued from pillage places of sacrifice set on fire
are buried.
“I write with a feather” I am a pen.
Peen and plough
the doctor never waxed ecclesiastical when he called me “A girl with two useless limb.’
I have gone forth with them
conquered mountains
redressing wounds. Re-dressed, resplendent, rising.
Shadowlands
poems sunbreaking out on them, chequred pattern:
Men breaking up herons nests in the heronry brown branches war's calligraphy on bleak white winter sky.
and unearthing buried
monastery bells war shoved under like the soul into darkness when it goes:
roses were planted on to indicate location. A marker
Who is curator of Paradise
this old man who comes, pressed in his shirt the shadow of warheads & pens for poems? trowels for gardens?
War of the Stars (sisters)
We were two stars
at odds, sister
yanking on black stockings
wrapping manuscript of poems or violin
trudging out moving forward, carrying many dreams, scars, portfolios of skripts & music:
into new York City’s gritty winter afternoon
We were the lettering
on our tombs:
“Star dies”
“Landmark poet violin player prodigy”
We were having our first menstruation
our moods dark
as the chiaroscuros
revolving like planets over Rembrandt's “Anatomy Lesson.”
God ure helpe
I would not have imagined such a mother
tragedy at the end
thruout woven into fabric of her faith
her breathing
pain visualized
that winter cloud of white marble.
No Norse goddess bronzing in sun.
Eastern European
clusters of curls, like scrolls of a violin, a miniature ocean
born to be torn in half
as she claimed of me.
Might well have been the wild Caitlin
living with Dylan
drinking up a slope from the Welsh sea, bearing babies, he
drinking
down
the rope slope. Maniacal like our mam.
Rooted in hope
I rose from my hospital bed
at age twelve trailing white garments
bride of esperance:
Riding a soul elevator up & down
a lift
turning into wooden escalator.
Rowanberry.
Surrounded by children on stretchers
summertime
who wanted be inside by the stove as though it was winter.
Mother wanting to talk only about the relevant:
two girls pulling it all in for a landing with a baroque cadence:
temper
striking
like a cat
the velvet glove with iron paw.
Tipping the balance:
stimulus & compliment.
A shoe fitting tight
a stocking
existence
braced
hugged me.
You would live on to have aids you hated
while your daughters
struggled thru streets of Prague, Paris, Berlin
their talent
the golden cubbyhole
you taught them
forced them in self defense to build.
“some linger as thorns under all the nails of our feet and hands,
loved in hatred.
What do they expect of their lives” (Jim Le Cuyer)
A military mother might have died:
you fled
the dumb waiters
the playing fields
the orthopitcks clinic
where you took your kid
your brilliant
kid.
I am made of a bird & scratch parchment
I am the pen.
All the trips I took from nowhere to nowhere
a family album
open on my knees:
sepia photos of mother holding her first baby, me, for the first kiss
ecstatic open to knife-thrust of bliss.
We wear our dreams stacked on our head
like African pottery
like laundry to the Magdalene Bakery.
High on no narcotic.
Darling
you gave me goodnights, from a popup book
no orgasms.
Yet I came
and came back
whispering
“Mother, are you angry with me?”
I sensed she was:
“Wait till somebody kisses you on the nape of the neck one day”
she said.
I’m still waiting
Iron boats:
meteorite
mineral stars. Stone ships.
The background
found prose:
traveling
far like a star
& with many scars.
It’s the perfect night for a fire
one that will light the world
with sheeptallow.
Region & circle.
Mad John Clare.
Geoffrey & his cat.
The madhouse
that always hovered
an outline around our mother’s body.
We two girls
carried
this paperdoll cutout nimbus like radiation from room to room:
There was no way, no matter what window we went to
what winter we courted opening the organdy window:
to shake this radioactivity lodged, shimmering out of our own boy-long, girl-slim bones.
See U in the funny papers sparkling burgundy
writes my old flame sea-salt crystals
in his beard.
It was the music of the spheres.
Mother
has no power
but beomes a taunting little girl castrata
“none of your business.
You skunk.
You son of a gun.”
She used to mail me Little Lulus with their shiny claybased paper
rolled with a rubberband.
See you in the Preservation Hall Glass bright Brass band.
Expose, mother,
my fair skull
with your pointed painted fingernail hand:
riffle
my poetries
my vulnerabilities, stifle my orgasm.
The ecclesiastic
waxes words
with his tongue.
We had waxed apples
in our dimpled
silver bowl on the black lake mahogany dining table
the feathers
for quills
were tallow dipped. I made words burn.
Her look was gold plated.
Her angel
veneered with Johnson’s or Esquire”s take a match it would burn all in sight, her included.
O raised chalice, host & hoist
chain
shouldering my small childbody above the tub, dip me like candle being formed of hot tallow again. Again.
My sex, creamy as the buds of a flower
closes
at day’s end.
Rose
chrysanthemum?
In hothouse light all that glass.
Who is lawn-keeper of paradise? Who lawmaker
checks & balances
rights & wrongs
blue
like the indigo, the blaze of cobalt evening, of my songs.
Biography
In 1971, Lynn Strongin moved to Albuquerque to start her Doctoral studies at the University of New Mexico. In the
same year, she received a National Endowment of the Arts (NEA) Creative Writing grant; her first book, The Dwarf
Cycle, was published the next year. From 1971 to 1979, Strongin lived, studied, and taught in Albuquerque. Her
studies in 1977-78 were supported by an American Association of University Women (AAUW) Fellowship. During her
time in Albuquerque, her other six poetry books were published. The last book, Countrywoman/ Surgeon, was a
candidate for the 1979 Elliston Award. In 1979, Strongin moved to Canada for what was intended to be a short stay.
She remained, and now lives in her adopted land, British Columbia, Canada.
http://members.shaw.ca/stronginweb/Biog.html.
The Pen & the Plough
“I travel forward, I have many scars” (The Plough, old English)
worden wrixen
(varied words)
Traveling with many scars
with mercy, Lord, we neede Ure Help. Come.
My back is tired I am sick of locks & brakes
I never filled a church pew Sunday.
Oysters & weathercocks
St Botolphe & Woolmouth street
wordun wrixen” vary your words.
Mean men breake up nests on a slate roof
roses grow where temple bells rescued from pillage places of sacrifice set on fire
are buried.
“I write with a feather” I am a pen.
Peen and plough
the doctor never waxed ecclesiastical when he called me “A girl with two useless limb.’
I have gone forth with them
conquered mountains
redressing wounds. Re-dressed, resplendent, rising.
Shadowlands
poems sunbreaking out on them, chequred pattern:
Men breaking up herons nests in the heronry brown branches war's calligraphy on bleak white winter sky.
and unearthing buried
monastery bells war shoved under like the soul into darkness when it goes:
roses were planted on to indicate location. A marker
Who is curator of Paradise
this old man who comes, pressed in his shirt the shadow of warheads & pens for poems? trowels for gardens?
War of the Stars (sisters)
We were two stars
at odds, sister
yanking on black stockings
wrapping manuscript of poems or violin
trudging out moving forward, carrying many dreams, scars, portfolios of skripts & music:
into new York City’s gritty winter afternoon
We were the lettering
on our tombs:
“Star dies”
“Landmark poet violin player prodigy”
We were having our first menstruation
our moods dark
as the chiaroscuros
revolving like planets over Rembrandt's “Anatomy Lesson.”
God ure helpe
I would not have imagined such a mother
tragedy at the end
thruout woven into fabric of her faith
her breathing
pain visualized
that winter cloud of white marble.
No Norse goddess bronzing in sun.
Eastern European
clusters of curls, like scrolls of a violin, a miniature ocean
born to be torn in half
as she claimed of me.
Might well have been the wild Caitlin
living with Dylan
drinking up a slope from the Welsh sea, bearing babies, he
drinking
down
the rope slope. Maniacal like our mam.
Rooted in hope
I rose from my hospital bed
at age twelve trailing white garments
bride of esperance:
Riding a soul elevator up & down
a lift
turning into wooden escalator.
Rowanberry.
Surrounded by children on stretchers
summertime
who wanted be inside by the stove as though it was winter.
Mother wanting to talk only about the relevant:
two girls pulling it all in for a landing with a baroque cadence:
temper
striking
like a cat
the velvet glove with iron paw.
Tipping the balance:
stimulus & compliment.
A shoe fitting tight
a stocking
existence
braced
hugged me.
You would live on to have aids you hated
while your daughters
struggled thru streets of Prague, Paris, Berlin
their talent
the golden cubbyhole
you taught them
forced them in self defense to build.
“some linger as thorns under all the nails of our feet and hands,
loved in hatred.
What do they expect of their lives” (Jim Le Cuyer)
A military mother might have died:
you fled
the dumb waiters
the playing fields
the orthopitcks clinic
where you took your kid
your brilliant
kid.
I am made of a bird & scratch parchment
I am the pen.
All the trips I took from nowhere to nowhere
a family album
open on my knees:
sepia photos of mother holding her first baby, me, for the first kiss
ecstatic open to knife-thrust of bliss.
We wear our dreams stacked on our head
like African pottery
like laundry to the Magdalene Bakery.
High on no narcotic.
Darling
you gave me goodnights, from a popup book
no orgasms.
Yet I came
and came back
whispering
“Mother, are you angry with me?”
I sensed she was:
“Wait till somebody kisses you on the nape of the neck one day”
she said.
I’m still waiting
Iron boats:
meteorite
mineral stars. Stone ships.
The background
found prose:
traveling
far like a star
& with many scars.
It’s the perfect night for a fire
one that will light the world
with sheeptallow.
Region & circle.
Mad John Clare.
Geoffrey & his cat.
The madhouse
that always hovered
an outline around our mother’s body.
We two girls
carried
this paperdoll cutout nimbus like radiation from room to room:
There was no way, no matter what window we went to
what winter we courted opening the organdy window:
to shake this radioactivity lodged, shimmering out of our own boy-long, girl-slim bones.
See U in the funny papers sparkling burgundy
writes my old flame sea-salt crystals
in his beard.
It was the music of the spheres.
Mother
has no power
but beomes a taunting little girl castrata
“none of your business.
You skunk.
You son of a gun.”
She used to mail me Little Lulus with their shiny claybased paper
rolled with a rubberband.
See you in the Preservation Hall Glass bright Brass band.
Expose, mother,
my fair skull
with your pointed painted fingernail hand:
riffle
my poetries
my vulnerabilities, stifle my orgasm.
The ecclesiastic
waxes words
with his tongue.
We had waxed apples
in our dimpled
silver bowl on the black lake mahogany dining table
the feathers
for quills
were tallow dipped. I made words burn.
Her look was gold plated.
Her angel
veneered with Johnson’s or Esquire”s take a match it would burn all in sight, her included.
O raised chalice, host & hoist
chain
shouldering my small childbody above the tub, dip me like candle being formed of hot tallow again. Again.
My sex, creamy as the buds of a flower
closes
at day’s end.
Rose
chrysanthemum?
In hothouse light all that glass.
Who is lawn-keeper of paradise? Who lawmaker
checks & balances
rights & wrongs
blue
like the indigo, the blaze of cobalt evening, of my songs.
Biography
In 1971, Lynn Strongin moved to Albuquerque to start her Doctoral studies at the University of New Mexico. In the
same year, she received a National Endowment of the Arts (NEA) Creative Writing grant; her first book, The Dwarf
Cycle, was published the next year. From 1971 to 1979, Strongin lived, studied, and taught in Albuquerque. Her
studies in 1977-78 were supported by an American Association of University Women (AAUW) Fellowship. During her
time in Albuquerque, her other six poetry books were published. The last book, Countrywoman/ Surgeon, was a
candidate for the 1979 Elliston Award. In 1979, Strongin moved to Canada for what was intended to be a short stay.
She remained, and now lives in her adopted land, British Columbia, Canada.
http://members.shaw.ca/stronginweb/Biog.html.
| April 2007 Issue 11 |
