This Autumn’s Featured Poet: Matthew G. Lara

About himself, he writes:

Born in Mesilla New Mexico. Spent my summers “truchando” (trout fishing) in the rivers and streams of northern New Mexico.  Worked the chile harvest in the Mesilla Valley every August and September (Hatch is over rated, trust me).  I’m sure that there is poetry in chile picking, I just havent sat down to write it yet.  Graduated in 2007 from Western New Mexico University with a BA in English, minor in History.  I love to read and write, and talk about literature with anyone willing to do the same!  My father’s favorite saying when I was growing up was, “Son, always remember, timid salesmen raise skinny children”.  I weighed 102 pounds when I graduated high school.  I think poetry should make you laugh, cry, and think.  I hope you enjoy my poems.

On the Train Between Albuquerque and Santa Fe by Matthew G. Lara

 

Coyote lopes away from the tracks

Looking back over his shoulder

He recognizes roadrunner’s outline.

Every fiber of his being

Compels him to:

Hunt

Chase

His coyote thoughts:

 “A.C.M.E. doesn’t make rocket skates big enough to catch that son-of-a-bitch!”

Little Boy in the Park by Matthew G. Lara

Issa would have written a poem for you

Friend to the forgotten among us

Perhaps Seamus, upon seeing your shoe

and recalling his flaxen-haired maiden,

 would have asked,

Who tied your laces in double knots,

dressed you in black jeans, red shirt

And left you in the park?

 

Dedicated to the memory of Tyrus Toribio found in Alvarado Park, May 15, 2009 Albuquerque NM.

Poet Envy by Matthew G. Lara

 

I envy the poets

And their ability to stack words

Into rickety columns

And from their precarious perch,

To stand

And tickle the feet of the Gods

Church is for the Birds by Matthew G. Lara

Sunday Morning cafecito on the deck

A Pinion Jay in his blue feathered frock

Preaches fire and brimstone from his pulpit

high in a juniper tree.

I am drawn into the sermon.

His God is not one of forgiveness

There is no warble from the cricket choir

No “HALELUIA” from the insect congregation.

They listen silently from the shadows         

Lest the preacher have them for breakfast.

Summer Issue’s Featured Poet: MARY LEEN

Mary Leen is an artist: a poet, a quilter, a photographer, a painter, a designer, a musician. She teaches literature and composition at WNMU.   She loves her husband, her son, her dogs, her cat, and her garden.

THE PALACE POEM by Mary Leen

He walks deliberately up the hundred steps to his palace
doors. They swing open silently, glinting like crystal dishes,
studded with jewels in the high light of noon in this lush valley.
I can’t see his eyes. His hair hangs long and black. He doesn’t have to face
me — or anyone. I can’t imagine how he has risen to high, like water
over the river banks in a powerful flood. He used to be shy and angry, unnoticed and ignored.
Now his subjects shyaway from his glance. His raised hand can cause chaos in the palace
and across the countryside. He’s a father, I’m sure. But like water,
he has not stopped moving long enough to marry. A servant carries a dish
to his table. He, comma, the emperor, hopes the food is not poisoned. He can’t face
the possibility and sets the plate on the floor for his pack of dogs. This valley

needed a leader. He inherited the kingdom. On his horse, he rides around the valley
having men beheaded. He injects the women with venom in his shy
approach to rape. I thought he wouldn’t want to face
me, but he doesn’t remember me. The place where he raped me was not a palace.
It was a dark, empty room with one table and a cement floor. I heard dishes
being washed in the kitchen. I heard my friends demanding beer and water. My own
mouth was stuffed with a stinking sock. The only water
I knew was the baptism of tears on my skin. I walked through the valley
of the shadow, and now it’s time to dethrone the emperor. I dish
out my pain carefully. I wait outside his stable. His horse shies.
away from me. The emperor looks down at me from his mount, glances at the palace
sentimentally, and sighs. “Who are you?” he demands. From his face,

it sounds like, “How dare you?” and I answer, “A face
from your past. Remember college in New Mexico?” His eyes water.
He cocks his head to the left, studying me. A groom approaches from the palace.
“Shall I have her removed, your honor?” “Yes, but before she leaves the valley,
she may have a lock of my hair.” The servant is not shy.
He slips a pair of gold scissors from his pocket, cuts the black hair, and drips a loose curl
in a convenient dish. The emperor-rapist rides away. The servant offers me the dish. I
stare, open-mouthed. “He considers it a gift, as welll as a dismissal,” the servant faces me
without expression. I snatch the hair and tuck it away like s shy girl who has stolen a
cookie. I ask for a drink of water,
and the groom takes me to the well where the horses drink. I can’t wait to leave this
valley, its white light and heavy air, the manicured lawn, and the stone palace.

Back home in Silver City, I enjoy a dish of mangoes and pray for water
from the sky. Monsoon season makes it easier to face the legacy of the ruler in the
valley.
I only wish his son were shy and unassuming. Who really lives in a palace?

THE BEAD FALLS by Mary Leen

9 May 2008

Some days I can’t find my way.
I gaze at celestial bodies for direction. Their wheeling circles
confuse me, and I lie on my back on warm wet earth
to get my bearings. With the sky on my face, I smell roses and lavender
growing in the garden. I hear music from the houses of heaven:
violins soar, cellos moan, and a piano carries a wild melody
to the sun. I dig my fingers into soil and press my feet against rock.
I soak up the planet’s energy.

And then the bead falls,
swings, and rests at plumb.
The bead falls – a glass globe, transparent and sapphire.
Like me, it longs to be a celestial body, but we’re both bound – tethered by gravity
and limited to the sun’s shadows made by mountains and trees and buildings.
Otherwise, untethered, I’m wheeling in circles, disoriented,
chasing lists and schedules,
paying bills, washing dishes, hoping for the best.

I often consider a transfusion from the houses of heaven. They could replace
my blood with music. Then the sky on the face of my piano would replace
the black & white notes I read when I play. I would depend on the sky.
On my face you’d see planets instead of the apples of my cheeks.

But the bead falls,
and I remember I cannot survive without my red, heavy blood.
The houses of heaven are blue, barely there, as tangible
as an opening blossom, celestial.
My body, on the other hand, is a motionless audience for the wheeling circles
in the sky. The sun warms me. The sun moves me toward the relief of water.
I slip into a mirror pond, the sky on the face of still water.
I hear raven wings beat in the black, wheeling circles above me.

And the bead falls.
I fall with it, following a stone down through dark water, away from celestial
bodies, away from the horizon, away from the gestalt of a solar eclipse,
away from occupied houses, away from the heaven of pizza and television
and electricity. Away from the sun.
If I cannot be a celestial body, at least I can float and fly here, weightless,
with the sky on the face of the surface above. I take flight in this wet world.

Until the bead falls and I awaken.
I wonder why awakenings are so encouraged and celebrated.
Wheeling circles of light pierce through tree branches and sting my eyes.
I suddenly recall my mother wheeling in circles around the kitchen,
dancing to my piano: Mozart or The Beatles or Buffy St. Marie, melodies
from the houses of heaven. Her eyes were closed, and she embraced
her own chest, her heart.

But always the bead falls.
The sun won’t let me dream. The sky on my face forces me back
to black soil, red blood, green grass, pink roses, purple lavender –
not the barely blue of those celestial bodies.
I don’t know how the heavens behave.
I wait for the unfolding of the sphere, the translation of wheeling circles,
prayer times determined by the sun. I could change my name to Luna
and claim my address as the houses of heaven. My mirror would reflect
the sky on its face.

But the bead falls.
I hear it hit the earth. It bumps and sways,
and I’m left with nothing but my desire to be a celestial body.

IF WE DON’T by Mary Leen

This place pulses with motion and growth, the morning golden,

showers beating my song’s rhythm, skies in turmoil seething with pearly light,

ocean waves banging lava rocks, bouquets of torch ginger to greet me each morning.

I pledge to develop a stout spine. 

 

Urchins wing around me:  Brazilian cardinals, laughing thrushes, saffron finches.

Dewy air wraps me like a blanket, or a lover saturated with liquid lust.

Red footed boobies were once greeted by monk seals.  I sing this song for them.

These open-eyed creatures inspire me toward a new world.  A breadfruit tree

graces me with the relief of shade in which I can breathe my way into a practice

that soars over the blazing blossoms of African tulip trees and beyond the sapphire

slippage with sand at low tide.  A roadside-Maria fuels my journey with mango juice

and a prayer for patience.  This stretch of my intuition involves ache and injury,

loss of hair, and rotting teeth.  I button up a mango-colored gown, slip

off my shoes, and unfold my wings.  I’m ready to lift away, out the open window

and into golden showers of talent.  I’ll color-in Beethoven’s outline, add shadows

and perspective.  I’ll enlarge the Taj Mahal and multiply African tulip trees

until they paint the universe edges with crimson petals. 

I’ll fill the air paradoxically and quixotically

with stout-spined urchins floating around albatross fledglings.

Old men will build iron bridges that stop progress until breadfruit

causes mutiny and we all protest until peace rules the planet’s economy

and children watch red footed boobies instead of Nick at Nite.

 

These islands are sisters, their grass so short that their skin looks smooth.

Red footed boobies don’t hide here;

they lift their colorful landing gear as they soar from cliff to cliff,

from cleavage to cleavage.  Bamboo orchids and mangoes hang pendulous

in this space, jewelry for the sister islands.  I bump against the flora-beads

as I pluck lychees and photograph horses glowing in dawn light.  I balance

under breadfruit’s yin and yang until I remember my wings and coast

with fairy terns among beach hibiscus and golden showers.

A mist lifts me into racing clouds.  From here, people and cars are small

and impermanent. 

 

A stout-spined urchin enjoys a very different view of things:

blue-eyed damselfish drifting by in turquoise liquid

with the shade of an African tulip tree cooling the water

in a rocky pool, and Indonesian jungle fowl holding court

over the kingdom.  The rocket-red crown of the African tulip  tree

trumpets the arrival of a wise buddha-man who emerges, sunbaked and bald,

from a quiet lagoon.  Red footed booby tracks lead him across wet sand to my throne

built of firebird heliconia and king proteas.  A stout-spined urchin applauds

our union from under his lacy clarity of salt water.  This smiling bald man

offers mango juice in a crystal bowl.  I drink, blush, and lick my lips.

I fall into a honeyed blindness under golden shower trees.  To his lips

I lift a blue cup of coconut water.  He swallows, moans, and rests

his forehead on my tattooed chest.  Breadfruit leaves and gardenia petals invite

us to lie down.  We nap silently in sand.  I dream of tiny ponies and giant

rabbits, breadfruit, and poisonous angel’s trumpets from the Andes Mountains.

In my dreams I bake layer cakes with African tulip tree blossoms and white

plumeria star flowers planted in the frosting.  My new partner bows

to my sleeping form, and golden showers tremble in late light, whispering secrets

only we can hear.  This man waits for my eyes to open.  Red footed booby

wings fluff me into dusk on the beach.  I leave behind, in my dreams, escaped

wild dogs and pineapple hats. 

 

Mangoes greet me with a promise of long life

for our jewel of a planet floating in black space.  Stout-spined urchins

will smile and thrive in a wealth of consciousness.  Cattle egrets

and Hawaiian owls will have stout spines.  Urchins on the street wink

and smile wide with generosity and joy.  We revel in volcanic consequences

and the dappled light under breadfruit trees.  We stroll toward gentle

waves in a royal cove and remember the fire throwers as we suck

on mangoes and swim with sea turtles.  The air is tangible, a presence

nestled against me and fluttering at the top of an African tulip tree.

 

I flutter, too, around this man.  I land on his shoulders and test

his backbone.  He’s as solid as a red footed booby nesting on a cliff

near the lighthouse.  I can count on him.  We pray to the cave gods

where the river becomes the ocean, and golden showers spray

yellow light on us.  Palm trees and waterfalls bless us, and we kneel

in reverence.

 

If we don’t,

stout-spined-urchin corpses may haunt us, and the African

tulip tree may disappear.  We’ll count the fingers on breadfruit leaves

so we won’t forget them.  We’ll blow farewell kisses to red footed boobies

and buy mango-scented candles to burn in memory of dripping

golden showers.

Winter’s Featured Poet: Joanie Connors

Joanie Connors is an untrained poet who writes from her perspectives as a psychologist, nature lover and human being looking for answers. She lives in Silver City and teaches at WNMU.