Melange Magazine

Poetry

Five Poems
By richard stevenson

Moth Koan # 1
for Robin Blaser

Above me: a shaded, incandescent bulb.
One end of the serpent: its tungsten tongue.

On/off, the mind sorts through its records.
The needle comes up, drops precisely into song.

So with the moth: not attracted to the light.
Foiled by non-parallel rays, a local source.

Words crystalline, multi-faceted, track the light
by keeping it at a constant angle to the I.

Truth, manifest, leaves its shards in the globe.
I poke pins through the penumbra of its shadow.

Moth Koan # 2

Rush hour: each office window glazed with intent.
Tall plinths, rods and cones, lean into the light.

A pointillist dream expends itself in kilowatt hours:
so much dust required to keep the wings aloft.

Sleeves brush against the day. Each flaps,
spreads the light into the wing of a five-fingered hand.

Pens scratch, bend forward into the strong
headwind of mind. Many antennae twitch.

We cling to a patch of blue ink.
The moon is splayed flat between double panes.

The Pointer and the Apple
for Irving Layton

What draws a man to any shape?
His thoughts scramble to that
richest of fruits beyond the vine.

Pulsing, yellow-jacketed,
the sun, a swarm of wasps,
collapses like a lung.

Her lips quiver like petals.
Say so. No one could resist
the quick bloom of her sex.

No one would admonish
who would not light
upon that honeyed flower.

Turn over this word or the next.
Tell me the apple is not soft,
words do not buzz or hum.

If the trouser worm
daren't lift its head,
you know the earthworm will!

Relief Janitor's Lament

You get used to cleaning up girls washrooms,
and fewer "ladies" leave "powder rooms"
than come in to take a powder, I can tell you.

They forget to flush as often as the boys do,
write graffiti on the cubicle walls,
and plug up the sinks with paper towels.

Small wonder they call these biffies bogs:
you need a pair of hip waders
as well as a snake to unplug the drains --

and, yes, the girls play the games the boys do:
they write you notes: who to call for a good time,
and what she'll do to you when you do.

You develop a prurient interest in these things.
They're like the soaps: you scrub off the walls,
but stay tuned to the next in-stall-ment.

Today the female lead's exit bit's writ large,
emblazoned in tampon script across the mirror:
"Put your hairy snake in my hairy hole."

I'm more amazed at the reference to pubic hair
than I am by the lewdness of the message
or the crude cool medium, as McLuhan would put it.

I mean, most girls this age
try to hide the evidence of the way
nature has betrayed them. They blush and flush.

This girl's writing bloody eye-ku
that cannot be erased! Whose daughter is she,
whose girl that she should express such rage,

such brazen defiance of all the dirty Ernies
of this world who would sit her on their laps
or look for reflections in her patent leather shoes?

Is it a telling detail that she used
the tampon receptacle for an ash tray?
What stub burns to the quick of her heart?

What fish did she think to play out
by feeding toilet paper straight off the spool
into the loo? Who did she expect to land it?

Me! Without hip waders, a gaff, or a net --
and now without even a fine reticulated net of emotions
to catch her falling. Sweetheart, what happened to you?

Substitute Teacher's Lament

8:00 a.m. the call comes:
Do you want to substitute teach
two blocks each of English 8 and 9,
one of Social Studies 10?

A Mr. Reeves is off
for a Communications workshop,
has left lesson plans and register
with the secretary in the office.

"Sure," you say, you'd be glad to,
then take down the particulars
of a rural school; calculate
the speed necessary for an 8:30 ETA.

What else can you say when you're lucky
to get a run of two or three weeks,
usually work two, three days a week
for three teachers in three separate schools?

To hell with snow tires; you can't afford them.
The rock collection you intended to bequeath
to the science department of your old high school
functions as lumpy ballast in the trunk.

You get there. No parking; have to hoof it
from the street in dress shoes and slacks.
One shoe has a hole in it, so your shoes
squelch as you make your fated entrance.

The secretary's busy; five minutes pass.
Standing in a puddle of melted snow,
you recall the time you couldn't hold it
and pissed yourself back in grade two.

Another five minutes. The discipline kids
eye you up from their rookery,
until you feel you're one of them,
waiting to see the principal too.

Big smile now. Yes sir, here's the file.
Nothing in it; you've got five minutes
for coffee and impromptu lesson plan.
Read them a story? Regale them with your wit?

You head for the staff room to decide.
Shake hands while the gears turn, and smile.
One of these tenured turkeys could be
next week's meal ticket, but who?