All Poems

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Night In Iowa

© Deborah Ager

Nimbus clouds erasing stars above Lamoni.
Jaundiced lights. Silos. Loose dogs. Cows
whose stench infuses the handful of homes,
whose sad voices storm the plains with longing.

Dear Deborah

© Deborah Ager

They tell me that your heart
has been found in Iowa,
pumping along Interstate 35.
Do you want it back?

The Lake

© Deborah Ager

The yard half a yard,
half a lake blue as a corpse.
The lake will tell things you long to hear:
get away from here.
Three o'clock. Dry leaves rat-tat like maracas.

Morning

© Deborah Ager

You know how it is waking
from a dream certain you can fly
and that someone, long gone, returned

Alone

© Deborah Ager

Over the fence, the dead settle in
for a journey. Nine o'clock.
You are alone for the first time
today. Boys asleep. Husband out.

Summer Nights

© Deborah Ager

The factory siren tells workers time to go home
tells them the evening has begun.
When living with the tall man

Seaport

© Arthur Seymour John Tessimond

Green sea-tarnished copper
And sea-tarnished gold
Of cupolas.

Architects plant their imagination, weld their poems on rock,
Clamp them to the skidding rim of the world and anchor them down to its core;
Leave more than the painter's or poet's snail-bright trail on a friable leaf;
Can build their chrysalis round them - stand in their sculpture's belly.

Chaplin

© Arthur Seymour John Tessimond

The sun, a heavy spider, spins in the thirsty sky.
The wind hides under cactus leaves, in doorway corners. Only the wrySmall shadow accompanies Hamlet-Petrouchka's march - the slight
Wry sniggering shadow in front of the morning, turning at noon, behind towards night.The plumed cavalcade has passed to tomorrow, is lost again;
But the wisecrack-mask, the quick-flick-fanfare of the cane remain.Diminuendo of footsteps even is done:

Epitaph On A Disturber Of His Times

© Arthur Seymour John Tessimond

We expected the violin's finger on the upturned nerve;
Its importunate cry, too laxly curved:
And you drew us an oboe-outline, clean and acute;
Unadorned statement, accurately carved.

Tube Station

© Arthur Seymour John Tessimond

The tube lift mounts,
sap in a stem,
And blossoms its load,
a black, untidy rose.

Epilogue

© Arthur Seymour John Tessimond

"Why can't you say what you mean straight out in prose?"
Well, say it yourself: then say "It's that, but more,
Or less perhaps, or not that way, or not
That after all." The meaning of a song

Last Word To Childhood

© Arthur Seymour John Tessimond

Ice-cold fear has slowly decreased
As my bones have grown, my height increased.
Though I shiver in snow of dreams, I shall never
Freeze again in a noonday terror.

Quickstep

© Arthur Seymour John Tessimond

Acknowledge the drum's whisper.
Yield to its velvet
Nudge. Cut a slow air-
Curve. Then dip (hip to hip):

Music

This shape without space,
This pattern without stuff,
This stream without dimension
Surrounds us, flows through us,
But leaves no mark.

Night Piece

Climb, claim your shelf-room, far
Packed from inquisitive moon
And cold contagious stars.

Bells, Pool And Sleep

Bells overbrim with sound
And spread from cupolas
Out through the shaking air
Endless unbreaking circles
Cool and clear as water.

Wet City Night

Light drunkenly reels into shadow;
Blurs, slurs uneasily;
Slides off the eyeballs:
The segments shatter.

Don Juan

Am I a darkness all your flames must light?
A mirror all your eyes must look into -
That dares not yet reflect the neutral sky,
The empty eye of the sky?

Any Man Speaks

I, after difficult entry through my mother's blood
And stumbling childhood (hitting my head against the world);
I, intricate, easily unshipped, untracked, unaligned;
Cut off in my communications; stammering; speaking