Three Poems: John Casquarelli
Tribute to an Upper West Side Evening
somewhere there must be a road that
leads away from muffled voices &
buses blowing smoke a place where
we hear the ocean’s whisper & the
rustle of palm trees whether from
lust or imaginable tomorrows
becoming new with the waves
she coaxes eyes that lead a
moonlit chorus though happy now
life is brief ask the dragonfly
yielding its purple wings to autumn
beneath a veil of frost & fire
ascending with tenors or laughing
children who grasp shadows
dressed in gypsy petals
explorers etched in moments of
release in the hollow of violins
measuring time under stars & branches
though it feels like forever such days
are resisted only momentarily
slow raptures of now that outline her smile
drowning in its desire to be everywhere
at once in its endless variations of
pre-war homes & urban renewal
vertigo
primal backtrack though not too subtle hands wash
footstool where brokers eat tuna sandwiches & yell
at migrating ducks to duck from that little crumb of
bread I paid for with my student loans disparity old
friend burst the bubble hypoglycemic with antennae
mouthpiece to replace words with particle waterspout
nervously forming the fire in the silhouette in some
earlier orbit non-duality sienna side street bookstore
where the story went on & on & on & on & outward
to solitude antidote ripple years past though still
recognizable plankton origin avoid the waning gibbous
at all costs & break the redundancy hitch-hiking giraffe
in Alachua County lemon juice acorn plastic bucket
blossom softens the blow of continuity cathedral object
on magnolia tree floating in the ether thinking of the
women we would marry & divorce white nightgown
staircase mid-afternoon sunlight bookmarking days
that ever-eluding hour popcorn seed terrain wireless
remote with a channel for everything except my sanity
oblique Neolithic tool for dampening our imaginations
a funny joke Chris left on the kitchen counter next to
the pepper shaker glorious yesterday of our brotherhood
laughter & mischievous longings link longitudes that we
felt deep in our bellies roaring mastodons of another age
when it was possible to stand on rooftops & greet the
horizon with a sigh
Windmill Dialogue MCMLXIII
for Luis
Dijo el insigne Cervantes Saavedra
“Quien no habla bien el español
Es sin duda terco como piedra
O es mas baturro que el sol”
though the attempt may be difficult
full of imagination surprises & blunt
instruments rhythm takes him to another
country to greens & summer evenings
La Real Academia con gusto censura
A aquellos que sólo dialectos hablan
Y parace que tan sólo hablan basura
Sin lógica o fundamento o ladran
he remembers the child who tried to arrange
words outside the margins against his
previous patterns of blotched business
suits & endless rituals by quasi-maniacs
Pero todos olvidan la realidad
Sobre lo cierto y sus razones
Con que España apunta la verdad
Siendo la Madre Patria un mosaico de naciones
a bay where boats sit on mud & jagged rocks near
churchyard benches amid twilight shallow impressions
where drifters grieve knowing nothing more
than their own will to understand language
John Casquarelli is the author of two full-length collections, On Equilibrium of Song (Overpass Books 2011) and Lavender (Authorspress 2014). He is an English Instructor at CUNY Kingsborough. In addition to teaching, John serves as Editor for Otter Magazine (http://ottermagazine.com/). He was awarded the 2010 Esther Hyneman Award for Poetry and the 2015 Petite Kafka Award. His work has appeared in the International Higher Education Teaching and Learning Association’s (HETL) anthology, Teaching as a Human Experience (Cambridge Scholars Publishing). Other publishing credits include Storm Cycle: Best of Kind of a Hurricane Press, Suisun Valley Review, Ginosko Literary Journal, Pyrokinection, Visceral Brooklyn, Flatbush Review, and Kinship of Rivers.
Copyright © John Casquarelli, 2015. Banner image © Jo Mazelis, 2015.