tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-277058422024-03-13T14:21:26.715-07:00Up a ChimneyPoetryEsme B J Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06446475311509544684noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27705842.post-59743118762993038452008-12-24T11:09:00.000-08:002008-12-24T11:11:37.741-08:00<div align="center"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3dTZPBfLduHAIvforE2baciuL0AheonfXtu-w6HKtyoDV_6e-Xx2H-5s5iIUVXt8v-NTeTT3E0FXSty1EaHOOcUkPtD1yoPaTH7Bh_r4yd5VHoJzXE6_Di-diDYvVgwqJku0Qvw/s1600-h/Merry-Christmas-all.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5283436282853911650" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 210px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3dTZPBfLduHAIvforE2baciuL0AheonfXtu-w6HKtyoDV_6e-Xx2H-5s5iIUVXt8v-NTeTT3E0FXSty1EaHOOcUkPtD1yoPaTH7Bh_r4yd5VHoJzXE6_Di-diDYvVgwqJku0Qvw/s320/Merry-Christmas-all.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /></div><div align="center"></div>Esme B J Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06446475311509544684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27705842.post-63030288621623941482008-10-01T16:55:00.013-07:002008-10-01T18:25:26.824-07:00<span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span style="font-size:78%;"><strong>Blind Painting the Nude</strong><br /><br /></span></span><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span style="font-size:78%;"><em>I've been the naked woman in the window<br />while light pattered over bed sheets.<br />My hair was upturned and just a slip<br />fell around an ear where a pearl—</em><br /><br />I've been the naked woman sewing<br />with <em>almost noon</em> hammered over my<br />cuttings. </span></span><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span style="font-size:78%;"><em>I've been a naked woman<br /><br />slung to the dark town, spun visible<br />as the rain sloughed from my torso.<br />I've wished for umbrellas,<br />armour against the thousands of wet<br />cameras. At the same time, coveted<br />devotion, a discus shot back upon the lens.</em><br /><br />Modelled in the bondage of drape, they languish<br />on beds, couches, under lamplight.<br /><span style="color:#ffffff;">...................................</span><em>I've seen a woman </em><br /><br /></span></span><span style="font-size:78%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><em>blighted in daybreak pinks and backdropped<br />by the bluest of walls.</em> This morning, shutter<br />cords twist in my palm while light roughs </span></span><br /><span style="font-size:78%;"><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">the outline of a mark. A brand, a mole<br />on my shoulder. Maybe a cancer, a pea<br /><em>I've been a woman with one hand on the blinds </em><br />shuttled back and forth under thimbles, <em>his </em>brushes</span>.</span><br /><br /><span style="color:#ffffff;">.............................................................................</span>Esme B J Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06446475311509544684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27705842.post-52605031711385320992008-02-02T10:24:00.000-08:002008-02-02T10:45:48.675-08:00Back From the EtherI have been offline for some months writing and trying to figure out what computer to buy.<br /><br />Taking a break from poetry boards has always worked for me to re-energize and make me consider my perspective. It's like the person at a party who speaks too soon without consideration because - well, the party is going on and they want to charge ahead. But only reading and not posting makes me think and think again about what happens to the reader while they read a poem. And, does what is happening have some value?<br /><br />Then the next knotty issue: if it has value, can we adequately say what it is if we critique? That part is the hard part.<br /><br />I often feel like I am attempting Casaubon's <em>Key to all Mythologies</em> when I am struck by a good poem and try to say what makes it good. I find myself trying to explain why a line, word or whole poem is good based on its parts but have difficulty to find the language that expresses how the magic of all those parts work together.<br /><br />As I considered the enigma of the good poem's resistance to definition, I began to think of the good writer as illusionist, a trickster who plays with our perceptions in just the right way. One of the pleasures of the text seems to be the pleasure of being tricked along the path of content.<br /><br />Poetry boards are rife with critiques that state what makes a particular poem lousy, or what part of a good poem is lousy.<br /><br />This year, I want to go looking for better ways to notice the illusory <em>how</em> of good poems<em>.</em>Esme B J Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06446475311509544684noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27705842.post-62440905888539132402007-08-04T13:33:00.000-07:002007-08-04T17:11:26.703-07:00An Event Otherwise KnownSome things must not be known, not likened<br />—tales muddle in clocks, in time. Report:<br /><em>Baleen Swims into Mouth of Fraser</em><br />Watchers point, <em>Look! Look!</em><br /><br />While the whale devours krill, radio waves<br />form and reform in the ear. Before the story<br />finishes it slips into a text, grows<br />great, grows small. Ten minutes, the hours<br />pass—or fifty years—an indent or paraphrase.<br />Details blur. Fresh water fungi or lichens<br />attack the baleen’s skin and, after three weeks,<br /><br />it beaches.<br /><br />That is the fantastical, the hook the hearer dreams<br />of, the mysterious whys. Tugboats in lines give<br />chase to drive the grey from the channel.<br />But it comes upriver with wisdom, a purpose.<br /><br />At least we wish it to be true—for we must<br />make <em>Mysticeti </em>familial tales, myths of centric<br />matter. <em>There! There!</em> It swims<br />upon this page, beaches<br />in a margin. Now we know the reason<br />it flings fin and tail, submerges in the white.Esme B J Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06446475311509544684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27705842.post-84412218229862022562007-08-03T13:12:00.000-07:002007-08-28T19:09:18.763-07:00Portrait of the Reader as a Man in His Kitchen<em><span style="font-family:times new roman;">"We read to know we are not alone."</span></em><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">Spoken by the C.S Lewis character in<em> Shadowlands.</em></span><br /><br />Mouth at odds with countenance, he reads aloud.<br />His lips toss a pinch of salt, thrice sifted flour,<br />sprinkles of marjoram. Yet the body’s tilt, the crease<br />of brow, his internal thrust, pleads <em>Holy Mary </em><br /><em>Mother of God </em><em>pray for us now and at the hour— </em><br />cinnamon. Every good receipt should have it.<br />And nutmeg too. <em>Thou preparest —</em> he's intent<br />upon a mirror. Upon the nuance of the cup.<br />But this slim vessel cannot contain fervent<br />utterance. He leans to recess, takes books sweet<br />as biscuits and breaks the bread of spines.<br />Eyes search for magical correlation, the obelisks<br />of feeling. He picks words from the rows and drops<br />them blindly into the shopping cart of his mouth.<br />While he works, his head bows to a wailing wall<br />of kitchen cupboards. Somewhere in the stacks<br />of <em>Betty Crocker</em>, somewhere there must be<br />the fit glove of incantation, its vesper<br />suffusing drawers of spoons, the hidden nook.<br />Roll the dough into the shape of this man. Let him<br />rise. Let him rise with a face, a body spiced.Esme B J Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06446475311509544684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27705842.post-44957384111827783542007-06-13T17:46:00.000-07:002007-06-13T17:53:09.253-07:001944When the pigeons flew startled into the air<br /><br /><em>sounds like flap we say<br />sounds like what we cannot say<br />a mouth cannot form wing, say many wings beating<br /><br /></em>he ran. They always knew where the bombs<br />would land, could hear the whistle high above.<br />Like they knew the hawk, how predators<br /><br />swooped from the cover of clouds.<br />When the bomb exploded in the square<br />he was far enough away, he was<br />saved. Now he walks slowly<br />on the flagstones, sits on a bench with his hands<br /><br />overflowing with seed. Pigeons<em> coo coo</em><br />at his feet or perch and peck on the bench rail.<br />Sometimes they fly up in a body, startled<br />by something he cannot hear or see.<br /><br /><em>sounds like flap we say<br />sounds like what we cannot say<br />a mouth cannot form wing, say many wings beating</em><br /><br />He comes here every morning.<br />He comes here every morning.Esme B J Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06446475311509544684noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27705842.post-19097427543451848492007-05-13T08:49:00.001-07:002007-05-17T19:25:30.340-07:0052-Pick Up May - Week 3<strong>Reading Backwards, Pilgrims Happen Upon The Secret Map</strong><br /><br />This is how we read. Divining the miscreant,<br />slipping the knots of chronology. There and there—<br /><em>in conversations with the dead<br />in sparks of bolt and wrench<br /></em>above a moon keel-hauled by thievish company,<br />we dally. Become turncoats to order as a leaf falls<br />where it will. Long ago, we killed the navigators<br />of precise means and let <em>caprice</em>, the backward ghost<br />of slant, gather in the seams. As seer, it tells us,<br />tell us stories in bits and strings, gives us<br />tooth and tumbler, the wild figuring of <em>sing.</em><br />So our caravan travels happily with the masked<br />bandits of sense. Cartographers affix small<br />dots of worship and pilgrims follow, discover far-<br />flung continents of <em>pêche</em>, orchards of bloom—a man<br />sobbing at the flicks. We lead him. We lead him right<br />to left. We sing him to the peach.Esme B J Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06446475311509544684noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27705842.post-33455414146770142982007-05-09T18:53:00.000-07:002007-05-26T13:32:28.755-07:0052 Pick-Up May - Week 2<strong>Footlights</strong><br /><br />I’ve been inhabited, spooked and haunted many<br />times. I know it when I walk the boardwalk<br />in the fog. Late at night. And see a white<br />rose, which I was given by those who came<br />before me, by the silent audience restless<br />in row seats at <em>The Swan</em>. They say it is an<br />echo. They said it is not yours. That you are a night<br />princess in your tiara—a little tyrant primping<br />before you sleep. As soon as you pluck a stem,<br />the blood beads on your finger. This slight pain.<br />It’s only the light. It’s only the light dribbling<br />at your feet. It’s only the plastic<br />chrysanthemums left in your dressing room—<br />a late sashay under the flashbulb of the moon.Esme B J Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06446475311509544684noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27705842.post-47164299158580805362007-05-08T20:54:00.000-07:002007-05-08T22:08:06.436-07:00Now We Sleep in Double BedsEven the <em>Thin Man</em> in dapper robe leered<br />at his wife from his twin bed. We imagine<br /><br />him getting up in the night and crossing over,<br />crossing this great divide dotted in bed<br /><br />slippers. <em>Nora, Nora,</em> he would pipe, <em>you<br />are far away and the moon rises, champagne <br /><br />chills on the nightstand.</em> She is coy. And we<br />only imagine the unbuttoning, the layers<br /><br />of frothy negligee disappearing off screen.<br />We grew up in black and white, separated<br /><br />from our father’s desires, our mother’s <br />cloaked sighs. Her apron was spotless all <br /><br />day. Each night she posed before her mirrored <br />armoire. A mock rehearsal. Brushing, brushing<br /><br />—one hundred strokes until her hair shone like Troy’s <br />Helen. But he lay an aisle away and knew her tresses<br /><br />were a trick, that he would not transgress. <br />Her hand, as always, hovers on the lamp <br /><br />switch. <em>Good night,</em> she says. There is everlastingly <br /><em>The Kiss</em>. A quick fumble, the camera’s pan.Esme B J Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06446475311509544684noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27705842.post-8307276220816254402007-05-06T20:32:00.000-07:002007-05-06T20:33:24.914-07:00Letters to One Who May or May Not Be in Jiangsu ProvinceHenrys, Margarets and Sophias, one grave<br />marked Theodore. Before the noisy rustle,<br />a fall in choral suite, I did not know this rasp. <br />How my voice would go as you have gone. So soon.<br /><br />Or where, which latitude—or was it north <br />to south? Now excavating, my planchettes<br />—a shovel, a brush and pen—point<br />east to China seas. Through the core,<br /><br />I dig. Exhume ash and old woods petrified.<br />Along the banks of Qin Huai the forests<br />grow lush though blue amid a hapless stirring.<br />My trowel brushes a desiccated <br /><br />onion, a skin. I quarry the red heart <br />and spade toward this or another day.<br />Kneeling low, feet almost shy and propped <br />in tidy furrows, I write of famine— <br /><br />on the page’s throat, on a parched fold.<br />When you see the mulch crumble in the light, look<br />for the mute who bears a foot, a palm, a conch <br />as offering. Like the woman in Jiangsu who listens, <br /><br />an ear to the earth, this shell holds the other<br />chamber, where green sounds shush east and west. <br />Between, the lines criss-cross, invigilate<br />which way, on what meridian we rest.Esme B J Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06446475311509544684noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27705842.post-19175772148093724762007-05-06T15:57:00.000-07:002007-09-01T14:15:38.204-07:0052 Pick-Up May - Week 1<strong>Blindfolded into Sleep </strong><br /><br />Consider Lady Jane, how Delaroche painted her<br />with eyes bound in white silk. In a white<br />dress, with so much gloss upon her, she shines.<br />She shines like an optic blight. Cover your eyes.<br />Morning comes with shots, with blows.<br /><br />The black hood the executioner wears at beheadings,<br />the mumbled petition for forgiveness,<br />the fall of the axe— whose eyes, face, lip in its down<br />turning should be masked? At dawn,<br /><br />they line up spies, blindfold and tie them to a post,<br />as if their eyes would capture the report. Smoke-<br />blurred, the faces of the firing squad fix on first light's<br />mark. Like a daguerreotype, the dead reflect the faces<br />of their executioners. As I slip silk over my eyes to blot<br /><br />out the leaking brightness— all gleam, all stars, the moon,<br />its glimmer— I wonder<br /><br />what hood goes on what head.<br />How death has so many protocols.<br />How the victim's eyes staring into the barrel<br />bend bullets into the air. Or so it seems.Esme B J Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06446475311509544684noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27705842.post-75323599687672737222007-05-06T13:29:00.000-07:002007-05-06T14:13:32.240-07:0052 Pick - upRecently I participated in <a href="http://www.everypoet.org/pffa/showthread.php?t=53379">NaPo</a>. I found that forcing myself to write so quickly freed me in many respects from worrying about the audience. You know those pesky birds that seem to perch on your shoulder like the devil and block you from writing.<br /><br />In keeping with that experience, I intend to continue to write often by writing and posting at least one poem a week. 52 weeks, 52 poems! I will be removing the poems as I sub them as editors are getting very persnickety: if they google and find your poem, they may not publish it.<br /><br /><a href="http://verylikeawhale.wordpress.com/">Nic</a>, <a href="http://juliecarter.wordpress.com/blank-verse-challenge/">Julie</a> and <a href="http://scavella.wordpress.com/poetry/#_2">Scavella</a> are up to no good with a different kind of writing twisty. Write 1000 lines in IP!<br /><a href="http://www.everypoet.org/pffa/showthread.php?t=53379"></a>Esme B J Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06446475311509544684noreply@blogger.com2