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Poems by Sonja A. Skarstedt
from In the House of the
Sun [2005]
Maniniholo (Dry) Cave
Its mouth a dark extended ribbon
ushers you under tidal wave hulks
of cliffs where primeval memories
dense as calcite drippings
float a drizzle of spectres
secret drawls of blue green yellow
do not disturb
between the salt-mist faces
of those who seek the fish-stealing akua
not even Maniniholo chief of fishermen
could entice by digging this grotto.
Your breath cool as the silt
heaved in by a 1957 tsunami
chills you past an entourage of stones
placed by teens on a midnight drunk
a sorcerer’s circle to catch the spirits
that may or may not linger here.
Crashes echo from Ha’ena Beach
across the road and jettison up the wall
to touch Makana and Pohaku-o-Kane
far above the Makana
where the ancients’ burning branches
flew like fireworks into the sky
from the site where Kane was turned to stone
his people warned that if The Rock of Kane
ever fell, Kaua’i would sink into the sea.
Below the two peaks where sea howls
send hurricane slams
a megalosaurian grotesque
pinecone-pricked gorse for orbs
tree stump teeth and moist sloughs
for the crag that forms the cheek
where bat-winged spiders
build their nests, pincers crouched
and back legs hinged for setting sail
on carnivals of silk past boulders
deep as long-buried grudges.
From the edge of its trollish world
its single eye a puckered coal
its breath dank as fungus
the akua twines its elbows
corpselike, toad-bellied around knees
as brittle as wizard fodder
and transmits its intentions
to invade your curiosity
to lavish you with terror.
Forty feet later its presence
eclipses your queasy soul
when it enters that hellish circle
and recalls the chosen teen
pale candle in her hand
its cold hypnotic blink
as she pressed the wax into the silt.
The akua whose one eye
you hoped would trigger your faith in the fantastic
leans back on inverted haunches
and devours your apprehension
with perfected gloom
while a trillion tons above you
the effigy’s cantankerous leer
follows you across the road
where whitecaps tread the sublime
like twilit amulets.
Polihale Soliloquy
The Na Pali cliffs cast their mana
from arid Kekaha to Polihale State Park
where hundred foot dunes
carry traces of ancient caves
grass huts and fishing camps
between pali and marshy kahakai
where rare waterbirds take shelter
in abandoned rice paddies
Hawai’i’s longest sandspan
gateway to the House of Po
its afterworld karma
extends beyond the dunes
to the tubular waste of sugar cane
whose ghostpickers’ prints
forget the sweet marrow
once locked in the chaff.
The undertow impounds the shore
with dictatorial finesse
proceed with caution
swimmers beware
perturbingly calm one minute
unbearably turbulent the next
each rigid excursion
scallops your city toes
while the waves wrap pahapaha
dark wet green around your ankles
and the wind whips the sand
into stinging chapters
of past present future
until you are compelled to
ascend
ascend
Kaua’i’s uncanny sublime
the higher its pali cloisters
the more profound your hunger
until you are at one with the ripe greens
of mossy gouges, the glow of terra cotta
boulders tumbled like time chasers
their totem eyes mute as gongs
caught on the brink of cerulean eternity
outmaneuver the waves far below
the ocean’s spine whose shimmering
contagious hues can cut the past in two
magnetizes the eye to distant channels
where whales’ silver tails
glide you through breakers
in the wake of passing tankers
beyond the sickly magma of their bilge.
Descend
yes descend
cry the waves at Polihale’s north end
where aged stone porticos
shrug off the burdens of the dead
and a heiau’s four deserted tables
recall when souls made their departures
from the tops of eight foot thick walls
their bodies aimed toward the setting sun
and far removed from Barking Sands
you cross the dunes to Queen’s Pond Beach
step between the sunburned wings
of yellow-faced bees
who come here to die.
Hanapepe Roadkill
A delirious mynah staggers from the middle
of Highway 50 but before you can turn back
your window fills with sixty-mile-an-hour dust
as you enter the “biggest little town on Kauai.”
Hanapepe’s farming and bar brawl past
is as fast asleep as the Kukui Grove Mall
a wane of coffee shops and galleries
where the cerulean backsides of Wyland whales
evoke a Disneyesque rapture
all the way down Lokokai Road.
When the sun goes down on Salt Pond Beach
Hawai’ians pan for salt along two lava ledges
in the thick of mosquitoes near park benches
where parents watch toddlers
and dream of Poipu sunsets
over cocktails at Brennecke’s.
As you leave the town behind Hanapepe Valley
unrolls a lushness reminiscent of Jurassic Park
the making of that movie locked in a time capsule
with Humehume’s last battle dusty and forgotten
as the discarded sugar mill where the wind
rattles cane heaped like broken asparagus.
Back at the asphalt streak the dead mynah’s feathers
form a stiff artillery whose tranquil spears
are incompatible with mutilation—
even at this juncture its still-smiling beak
reflects the genius of paradise.
from Beautiful
Chaos [2000]
Arizona Circumstances
I) Wheels/Mining
Under the dusty sun the spokes of a wagon wheel
pry at the air, its once fragrant wood
time-eaten, its metal rim croaks
in the rut it made a century ago
when townsfolk swished along in calicoes
or banged leather boots over fresh-sawed boardwalks
whistled and murmured of raw gold
and tavern life as chapel bells trembled
ubiquitous as tumbleweed through Tombstone
every Sunday—Monday morning
back to mining, when the town madame’s
celebrity was packed back down the stairwells
of certain inns and women with names like Lizette
watched cleancut citizens parade past her picture window
all remnants of sin shaved from their soap-
and soda- and fresh resolution-kissed mouths.
Lizette might have laughed and pulled
her curtains shut in order to proceed
with her Monday morning chores
washing the smoke and sweat from poker
tables and chairs as all the decent women
watch from their scrubbed porches
sweeping their children inside
whenever Lizette or her decadent counterparts
dared to rustle outside. Indecent their hisses
would make Lizette smile while hiding her face
behind a hand-lacquered Chinese fan
tightly gripping the silk and peacock feather
parasol that matched her dress and,
protected from all that raw sun
her eyes would cajole them
wouldn’t you rather really
be me?
II) Sedona
All the local mystics will tell you
that this is the only place to come
and clean your soul
make a wish, maybe even
transform the universe
commune with the spirit
of a Hopi boy who died
long before the white world
could dig its corrupting claws
into his being or seed its way in
through his grave: yes this
is the place where you can hope
to achieve once in a lifetime
cosmic awareness, see
the red cliffs hover
bouldering, skull like
prehistoric as fossils
yet eerily futuristic
right here is where time itself
books passage for escape—
you can almost observe it
nesting between that conglomeration
of sepia clay hills, winking up into
the hazeless sky where pueblos
appear like horizontal portholes
from which the other world
is constantly watching, blind
cubbyholes that constantly hunger
for the sun, blink higher
than any human eye
can climb and when the sun sets
one rock protrudes, its three-dimensional
neanderthal monkey-mouthed squat brow
and jut-jaw with a defiance that plays on
our primeval reasoning; if the mystics still
reside up there can they taste the scorch
of the sun the same we we do, the intensity
with which it floats and sears our dry tongues
until we attempt to record it
in parched adjectives—
not possible the silence hisses back
parting secrets from the hills that burn
so ominously black.
III) The Bird cage Theatre
The December Arizona wind rubs the white names
from wood plaques placed on piles of stones
shaped into precarious rocky heaps:
chapel bells rustle softly as ghosts
through the sagebrush,
disoriented as the souls of dance hall women
who crouched in boes faced away
from the Bird Cage Theatre stage
their seasoned legs cramped
beneath French crinoline
tattered and tired
as the imported Paris wallpaper
(specially ordered way back when
it now droops and shrivels
offers no festive clues
only blurred careless imprints of elbows
and hands macabre as horror story smudges;
one former private box remains curtained off
reserved for Czar Nicholas’ brother it appears
weirdly uneventful, its rotted satin drape
hides nothing more than a fall-through floor
(“best not go up there,” warns the guide);
one thin floor away, deteriorated as their lust
and their gold filigree the festering fingers
of ghost men slap up against the phantom
dancers’ legs, hungry to fathom
beneath the silver stocking silk.
IV) Tombstone
“In Tombstone one cannot really bury the dead,
so one piles stones into small memorial hills.”
—Tombstone resident, 1990
Far across town the rumble of Boot Hill
surrounded by sagebrush and stumbling saguaros
contributes to the embalming ambience
are there corpses fast asleep beneath
each impermanent layer, and if
we could see them would they walk
as upright as those shadows glimpsed
in old westerns, would they live up
to all the stale curses?
Church bells and silence conspire
with the afternoon breezes with a clarity
that induces shudders: under each mound
of loose-packed stones a jumble of dead heels
ravaged skirts, Sunday best, skulls and femurs
full of holes— for an instant living flesh
communes with legends’ faded bones.
Are their skeletons still there
or have they long stince turned to minerals
as stripped, as expired as the once thriving mine.
The corner where Virgil Earp was caved in
by a bullet and Tom McLaury played his part
are marked with an eerie tidy precision:
was the roulette wheel spinning when
he dropped, did patrons gulp down
their bourbons and did their hard soles
bang against the wooden walk
as they hurried outside just in time
to catch Billy Claiborne’s blood
fly into Main Street’s powdery dirt?
V) Jerome
How did the first miners
accomplish survival here?
First the altitude, its air-less vaccuum
with the power to pull all residual strength
from their lungs and secondly,
the sheer isolation?
This town no longer exists
except in the occasional flow
of invisible squatters and old hippies
the ghosts leave their dust
incandescent whispers
in each broken window
each delapidated door.
The desert sun continues to consume
even in this colder air
its dry wind’s tendency to stack
tumbleweed into rondelles of kindling
brushes our visiting faces
tenderly as mothwings
or freezedried feathers
implorations against this infinite vacuum.
VI) Cacti, Christmas, Coyotes
On a December afternoon outside Phoenix
Jingle Bells jangles from the car radio
its unintentional hilarity
jostles under clouds as demure
as a quaff of Cointreau
and propels our brains higher than high
to where the stars are more distant
than we could dream them
faraway cliffs haunted by dreamers
and Navajos whose bodies converge
into human blankets of prayer
stretched taut on the hot Sonoran floor
the very thought drapes us in dry heat
rides us over the tops of hills
where pickle saguaros compete
with black telephone poles
against an indefinite sky.
the car radio jives us incessantly onward
its confusion of reindeer and santa
in lieu of coyotes, mistletoe
in lieu of mescal or peyote
each snowy crescendo
each package of frost
each plum pudding ho-ho-humming
who wouldn’t succumb? We gaze
into sagebrush meditative as the ancients
until our eyes burn turn and tune in
to visible vistas of prickly pear
ticklish as the worm in the dregs of Tequila.
from A Demolition Symphony [1995]
Incident in the Charlevoix Métro
based on what the poet witnessed in the Atwater Métro station, Montreal, 1985
Solid the first thud, the mesmerizing grind
of subway wheels, rubber engulfing noise:
guardian irrepressible saviour I watched crawl
from your infinite tunnel
counting each second
the impervious yellow tracks
my leap a contemplative link
I, sacrificially unprepared
catch the driver's face
its clean-etched shock
his eyes a revelation
their irises ripped white open
I sense his impotence as he grinds the monster's brakes
his frozen hysteria matches mine
as its blue hulk howl over me
I am deliriously obscured blotted out
can they see the tips of my sneakers
the angle
of my schoolbag, my twisted spine
crammed between concrete and yellow tracks
the downhum of electricity
somebody has turned off the world
for me
I hear their claustrophobic voices
combing the blackened station
the overhead croak of emergency doors
the monster's cadaverous blue
bombards my view
my braincells' flicker on-off
am I intact?
did my monster disengage a leg
am I lodged in the white volts
of its teeth?
Saturday I watched them hoist her from the tracks
the snap of her spine like celery, her high-voltage hair
the monster's ritual gouges
creasing her rigid physique
as they ferried her away two boys
remarked on her body white
as the moon underwater
her breasts pinned offerings
quick feathers of blood
on her neck
her face medically veiled
an unmarked prophesy.
This morning, a medley of cogs and gears
plays in my ear
am I actually
here?
I am today's scourge
a thorn in your agendas
I've interrupted your daily schemes
I am this morning's incident
a rift, an intruder
I spoil the tidy crunch of workboots
rainboots sneakers
orderly as coffins
traipsing past my head
a faraway siren
braces my skull
my monster's roar is severed
they are rolling the beast away
the air of the living crawls past me
your frigid breath
the descent of cold clamps
two pairs of arms, four fat rubber boots
your fingernails ravenous pincers
your faces
more indifferent than any monster's
remind me I cannot succeed
your steel tube enters my veins
liquid brainwash
survival fluid
those whose lives I've interrupted are floating faraway
untouchable as gods
they decipher my death mask
trade suicide theories
seductive as campfire tales
there there, that will calm her down
I am melting, the sea around me is dead
a throng of eyes swims past
caught between fascination and disgust
they exit the station
I heard she cracked a femur
was that all?
a photographer closes his lens
the engines resume
their tactical humming
I won't disappoint them next time.
Plaza Alexis Nihon
—for Louis Dudek
Pews of faces applaud
le roi du souflaki as
solid as a god Dimitri
a spectacle in eggplant
olives and feta
unwraps the essence
of Greek vine leaves
a shriek of zucchini
in hot peanut oil
entrez s'il vous plaît
et mangez chez moi
c'est toujours régal
chez Dimitri!
in his brain a shepherd's bell
is stirring Elysian memories
a rumble from Mount Olympus
pomegranates and titans' graves
so faraway
Meanwhile Mahmoud's dagger
skewers a dead lamb's carcass
with ceremonial aplomb
packing pita around the morning's
second sacrifice as subtly
as a jinn
picture windows spilling sky
balloon permutations
overhanging crimson shrouds
crêpe simulations of lanterns
the permanent indoors.
Focusing on Lebanon
placidly as an axe Abri smiles
until his shift is over
out of view he twists
shish taouks into replicas
of guerrillas who blitzed
his family one year ago
today
eat this! eat this!
spitting salt with a plak!
on paper plates
as the incognito poet
half-dreaming under polyurethane palms
and loveless rubber trees, breaks his words
like daily bread, enduring
the innuendoes of Madame Securité
ne mettez-vous pas
au section non-fumeur.
At one p.m. the collegiates come
cutting classes, mudsoled and reeking
of apples and leather, brown-
leafed October revolving
the exit doors
hurry hurry Guillaume
parlez seulement Anglais ici
aujourd'hui!
their tongues mapped in ketchup
or mustard or tsaziki
where will we go this afternoon?
Teriaki Hambourgeoise
Thai Shrimp Poutiiné
Gauffres Belgiques Framboisées
Kafta Kabob Italienne
100% hormone-free beef
all junkfood tastes the same
still they crave authenticity
the Mediterranean served
on postcard platters
ceremony
the anointing of herbs
flawless
fat-marbled
hoisted high on a spit, the electric cackle
of embers enhancing the lamb's
stilted
mid-air prance
for the benefit of tourists
murmurs from the Ukraine
passing through
the overhead rustle of lanterns
like paper lungs
patient as a nun Marie-Claire
ignoring the hydro man's whistle
pretends to adjust her books
as she succumbs to Wokky's Feast
Number Seven: a photograph
of plum sauce, chicken wedges
on nut brown rice, snowpeas
and crispy spring roll
When she wonders why her paper plate
of just-thawed chicken, scarred rice,
grey peas and yellow freezer
eggroll doesn't match his ad
Wokky's face reflects
the Buddha buried under his cash:
how can I explain
Canadians don't have time
to enjoy pure Cantonese.
Dimitri crushes almonds
into Baklava diamonds
no time
my foreign friend, good food
is expensive—the question is necessity—
my new shepherd's bell
is the register's ring
who else around here
can serve up Dionysus
with the speed of Hermes?
Abri contemplating
his ancestors' intentions
lobs spuds like grenades
into fonts of fatty soy
there are times my friend Dionysus
when myth must be left behind
do not compare me to Aladdin
every night all I see is my village
rebuilt and reconsumed
by mountains shaped like rockets
dressed like trees—
excusez-moi
bonjooo!
Hymie at Le Bagel who knows
he and Abri will never be friends
drops an extra latke
on a college boy's plate
go on eat up
I had a son once
who looked just like you.
The poet writing all about Madame Securité
wonders how she came to be
je dite encore—
ne fumez pas ici!
Marie-Claire's moonstruck tray
catches the hydro man's eye
as he pretends to make love
to his souflaki the overhead flutter
of paper lanterns
magenta and manganese
segments rifting the end of day
reminds him of kites
back home in Lac Saint Jean.
When the afternoon empties Mahmoud
is feasting on leftover lamb
this second floor is a Mecca
something out of the Arabian Nights
Madame Securité guffawing
lighting a cigar under the no smoking sign
her Cuban breath stalking
the poet's vacant chair
Abri clears his rented altar
preparing for tomorrow
more than suitable for the gods
this Mecca of gristle
chicken bones and styrofoam
as Mahmoud wipes
the day's slaughter away.
Celestial Questing
(in celebration of Ralph Gustafson's birthday, August 14th, 1993)
Gondolas of sun carry morning
the weight of Eden rifts the sky, extra-
terrestrial sonatas
of water
its secluded thrum
its microscopic peering through tamaracks
pine
and boulders of snow
the brain's quest—
find me the celestial today
Offerings of maple and oak
spread out like windy carpets
conduct breezes
on the whispering solstices
tambourines track
time's rhythms
the occasional
piercing
of evolution
en route your shoes mark the mud
at the foot of the mountain
upside-down horseshoes
behind you hills of nimbus
give chase
in the key of Strauss!
Let Us
for Leonard Cohen
Slow motion conjurings of oranges
like suns in a surrealist's dream
we offer our ears to a shepherd's song
down to a valley where the enemy deposits
all weapons in a river turning acid
to crystal violet, their once-barbarous hands
sculpting wildflowers from debris
come they call
let us waltz a mending waltz
let us celebrate this cactus earth
let us infiltrate organization
with sensuous intentions
in unison we pull down
conduits of wind
silk flags shaped
from the stalks of tattered countries
wind them over our imperfect
bodies
all sizzle all fusion
to saturate the cosmos
creating an alpha
in these trembling ruins
the human palm
examining
its manifold creases
we shut our eyes and ears
into roselike
omegas
leaving only the mouth
its subconscious
cinematic
amplifications.
from Mythographies [1990]
Hallucinatory Tiger
(an invisible dialogue taking place inside this Salvador Dali painting)
Maddest of them all Mister Mad
am I—
the twenntieth century’s
centrifugal myth.
I begin with a potion
of flies and date syrup
applied to the hairs
under my nose
and voilà—
two s-curves
two classical snakes
uproariously setting off
the boiled eggs
of my eyes.
Ah, purpose.
With my platter
of cadmiums, smigeons
of sepia, aged umbers
and ultramarines.
The void becomes me.
I filter it via my canvas:
enter, brave public
its desolate dimensions—
for you
the ripped-out legs of trees
the burning backs of giraffes
swans’ trunks and elephants’ necks
violence? no, I only insist
on reality turned inside out!
I’ve captured you
with my legions
my pancakes of flabby time
(note their limpid mysteries)
run run
I warn you
my hallucinatory
public, my phallic
jungle beasts
I’ve predicted
The Twilight Zone
the demise of demise
itself
my skies are cauterized lava
the arms of petrified trees
are squiggling
umbilical chords
tying earth to her invisible
twin
I dream not in flesh
but illusions
enter Gala
my obsession
my glacial muse
whose torso I immediately transmute
into oilspun machinations
her spine is a pinnacle
of stairs
climb her please
I climbed her once
safely blinded I
turned instantly
to granite
O Gala how
you control me, hoist
my cuckhold heart
from its foundation
my clocks become puddles
to quench your feet
I concoct greedy
gargoyles to amuse you
their jealousy a gambit
they watch
unable to catch
the turquoise streams
I spill from your
alabaster thighs
behold my burning tiger
buried segments
triangular prisms
this schozoid order
bravo I cry
how she gathers those Catalan fishermen
like flounders in her net
how painfully they succumb
to her Medusan charms
my Catalan castle consumes me
I snooze like a leopard
licked clean as time
more flies
more date syrup
(please)
my uproarious s-curves wither
I grow slack, one eye visible
resists the sun, watches it glimmer
over my muse’s petrified beauty
gratefully I continue
to perfect her
her spine is a whip
all the more tactile
her breasts the sharpest
pinnacles
inedibly puncture
my nightmares
O Gala whose eyes
so curiously passive
your mobile fingers
hard as snow
cage me till I
no longer breathe.
I paint I paint
my voyeur’s hunger
her visage
bends my heart
I am truculent, lucid
as jelly—
lie down on that vision, dear
offer the vultures
your unattainable attention!
Louder please the cuckhold’s chirp
I am a symphony of shrieks
I am tortured, deliciously
rapturously so!
I do not see
what the fishermen see
she is old
she is old—
no more, they cry.
I can only reply:
feed me the gloomy portals
of her gaze, more ice
more control!
When they heard the report of her demise
the fishermen smiled, relieved of their hand-
maiden’s duty, her emaciated poise.
Meanwhile I, Dali—
my s-curves matted
my boiled eggs frantic
permit the vultures to feast on me
I feel their teeth fasten tight
as they plunder every coin
from my paralysed shell
I shut down my corpse
and fly into the void
following the icy ripples
of her trail.
Raven
On late October afternoons the wind
has a witch’s fingers, hurries
over our heads, displaces
pampas and unrolling
predictions—
the thrill of ghosts
the chill of blizzards.
The ravens linger, scavenge crab-
apple, pumpkin seed, slivers
of poison cherry and skirt
the opened earth, winging
past the lonelier graves.
Our toes summer soldiers
huddle in their sandals
like children.
When it gets dark the stars intrude
disproportionate bits of glass
that cut the sky.
The moon a cool crystal ball
freezes our future in its eye,
while the night, a giant’s palate
gulps us slowly
but with certainty.
The Roomer
Albert’s infallible eyes are framed
between the tent-flap curtains
of his window, his Lookout
a bus-stop where the people stand
in their prison of waiting
across the busy street.
From the mindful chaos of war
his ordered voice commands
Come in! Come in!
until you obey
the trembling beacon of his body.
With daily pride he weaves his hand
through four essential rows
of corrugated kitchen shelves—
food tins, fry pan, scrub powder,
cutlery. . .”Have some?”
His whisper protrudes
past old enemy stakes/
a well-planned shoulder glance
snatch behind a shaving mirror
and he’s got it, secret ration
of tobacco-tinned tea.
“Have some?” his frantic whisper
forced by fear—
oh no, maybe next time—
your casual tone bewilders him
and he fills the single mug with indignation.
Lovetrade
for Milton Acorn [appeared in The Northern Red Oak, 1987]
Wildcat
furtive as the shadows
you dispel by the leap
of your mission.
Fists
emotional wounds swinging
blades for bloody
knuckles,
the sweat of your words
mated to academic
disdain.
Bruise
to catch the bruises
in a lovetrade
for the people,
tasting the wind
you drip in
our ears.
White
hot serpent in the cerebrum
of sound.
The Hot Sake Poet
for Peter van Toorn
You mander into Chinatown
toting a pouch of words—
to rattle our bamboo ribs
tick on our tongues like a waitresses’ tips
or flutter like brown rice on our chins
the mentor with a metaphorical mint,
Man!
Skip the study sheaves
convention bedamned
‘cept for maybe a dash
of Shakespeare
a pound of Pound
or a spot of Samuel Johnson
Sir!
Seeking the muses in a cup of hot sake
you shift the stars and set the evening adrift
on a stream of Jamaican blue words.
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