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Desire Street
November, 1995
cyberspace chapbook of
The New Orleans Poetry Forum
established 1971
Yusef Komunyakaa
Commemorative Isssue
Desire, Cemeteries, Elysium
Listserv: DESIRE-Request@Sstar.Com
Email: Robert Menuet, Publisher
robmenuet@aol.com
Mail: Andrea S. Gereighty, President
New Orleans Poetry Forum
257 Bonnabel Blvd.
Metairie, La 70005
Programmer: Kevin R. Johnson
Copyright 1995, The New Orleans Poety Forum
(12 poems for November, 1995)
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Contents
Poems by Yusef Komunyakaa
from the NOPF archive and other
sources at Xavier University Library:
Antebellum Silhouette
The Brain's Ultimatum to the Heart
Ia Drang Valley: A Dream Returns
Netherworlds
Nude Study
Bar Beach
The Cool Third Week
Garbo, as you desire me
It comes down to this
Monstrous
October 6th
Wednesday Nights
--------------------------------------------
Nude Study
by Yusef Komunyakaa
Someone lightly brushed the penis
alive. Belief is almost
flesh. Wings beat,
dust trying to breathe, as if the figure
might rise from the oils
& flee the dead
artist's studio. For years
this piece of work was there
like a golden struggle
shadowing Thomas McKeller, a black
elevator operator at the Boston
Copely Plaza Hotel, a friend
of John Singer Sargent hidden
among sketches & drawings, a model
for Apollo & bas-relief
of Arion. So much taken
for granted & denied, only
grace & mutability
can complete this face belonging
to Greek bodies castrated
with a veil of dust.
--------------------------------------------
The Brain's Ultimatum to the Heart
by Yusef Komunyakaa
Stars tied to breath When days are strung together,
don't have to be there the hourglass fills
when you look with worm's dirt.
No more than drops What do you take
of blood on ginkgo the brain for? I know
leaves & inconsequential how hard you work
eggs & frog spittle in that dark place, but
clinging to damp grass. I can't be tied down
Sure, I've seen doubts to shadows of men
clustered like peacock in trenches you won't
eyes flash green fire. forget. You look at
So what? a mulberry leaf
like a silkworm does, with all your insides,
but please don't ask me to be responsible.
--------------------------------------------
Netherworlds
by Yusef Komunyakaa
The day hurts. Each leaf
scribbles crimsoned ocher
across the lousy
silence. Chocolate cherries
wrapped in silver foil
make my fillings ache.
I am pulled down to the bed.
Pages flip. Late October,
1989. Yes, I think
I know this house where
an off-duty cop says,
"You must be Robert
Lowell". That's in another city,
& please don't ask why I'm here
standing before this bronze heft
as the 54th marches past mansions
& clubs with drawn window shades.
A hundred threadbare boots
climb the sandy hills
of Fort Wagner, their gold cross
on a star still up there.
Maybe a few minutes
of the evening news,
& then a light dinner
downstairs. Something hot
& spicy. What's this?
A black man
did what, shot a pregnant
woman? The whole day
hurts. A skeleton key
shines like gunmetal
at the bottom of the Charles
River. I count roses
on the wall-paper till night
turns into snapdragons
around a casket.
I bet this is how Lowell felt
next to that crook Lepke.
I'm afraid to go
out into those Boston streets:
so many netherworlds drift
through each other,
dividing like cells. The cops
blackjack the whole night
till it confesses.
Stars on the ground
finger the woman's jewelry
& the gun in a paperbag.
The evidence pulls me back
into myself. In Durbarton
I'm in another county
of Christmas snow, across
from the old farmhouse.
The two faces holding
the picture in focus, who
knew your mother & father
when they were alive,
can you hurt them
with love? I hear you
say, "He's only a friend."
I stand beneath petals
falling from the wallpaper.
We have our arms
around each other, gazing
over a wrought-iron fence
at Lowell's grave.
A grackle& red bird
flit among icy sumac
branches, shaking berries
till they're like silent
bullet holes in the white,
funereal air,
& I wonder if his ghost
is angry about our bodies
aflame under the trees.
____________________________________________
Ia Drang Valley: A Dream Returns
by Yusef Komunyakaa
To sleep here, I play dead.
My mind takes me over the Pacific
to my best friend's wife nude
on a bed. September blue
fills the room. I lean over & kiss her.
Sometimes the spleen decides
for the brain, what it takes
to get me through another night.
The picture dissolves into gray
& I fight in my sleep,
cursing the jump cut that pulls me back
to the men in a white tunic,
where I'm shoved against the wall
with the rest of the mute hostages.
The church spire hides under dusk
in the background, & my outflung arms
shadow the corpse in the dirt.
I close my eyes but Goya's
Third of May holds steady,
growing sharper. Now, I stand
before the bright rifles,
nailed to this moment.
--------------------------------------------
Wednesday Nights
by Athena O. Kildegaard
Around the curve
of Fontainebleau to Broad
I arrive in January dark
to see lights in the sun room
someone already in a wicker chair
copies of her poem balanced
on her knees. Three of us
step from our cars
onto the pavement,
the curbs swinging against grass
lit by streetlights. No moon yet.
We come with words typed
and copied, words falling
around us into the shadows,
words clinging to the seams
of our clothes like dust.
The words shake out as we walk,
shake out and mingle,
press up against one another
until whole lines and stanzas
form in what must be a hymn
of exultation and discovery.
-------------------------------------------
The Cool Third Week
by Andrea Saunders Gereighty
Trees sway in the force of sullen rain
Bonnabel, Brockenbraugh, the square block turns
Again: It holds ten trees.
In each yard the dry fruit different
In shape, size and texture.
In a hard drizzle, the fattest nuts drop
From the giant pecan in my father's yard.
He is dead: stopped, who taught me
The difference: ripe, hollow or
Rotten to the core.
His fence, in a sheen of red and white reflected sun
Outlives him.
The grilling rain lays down again
A patina on the hulls in disarray.
I nudge the days closer to mid-month, wait once more.
White maggots, narrow as needles, suck the nuts.
Squirrels on the take toss kernels to earth.
"The ones you pick in September will be small,"
Hooded tight in husk; rotted with the wormy
Musk of birth. Hold on: Stay your hand.
"Prepare for October, the cool third week."
October, the month of ripe pecans.
I am in collusion with your whims.
I stalk trees, await the third week
Of your span to harvest seeds
Of one person
The man who gave me life.
Here, near the remnants of his life
I search out the swollen, black-striated nuts
Dad gave instructions
Clear as October rain: Patience.
By month's end, they'll fall again.
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Garbo, as you desire me
by Robert Menuet
I go down,
trenchcoat, scarf, raybans.
One of you I think the doorman
exacts his Nod,
My smile.
I've looked down
into puddles as I stroll
(their forbearances are free)
but today into
Faces.
It made me tired to be down
where it's clear the air
and the hunger there
are killing
Many.
--------------------------------------------
Antebellum Silhouettes
by Yusef Komunyakaa
...and that this penalty of death was dealt them by their
own husband or father or brother as the case might be.
--LILLIAN SMITH, Killers of the Dream
The war's over. Daddy's dead
beneath a hero's white oak,
& I'm left with this
gimpy leg, a Yankee's
bullet in a bone
finer than Grecian
porcelain. The cotton flowers
are gone. Voices stolen
from the air, days
left like mud eels
after the river's receded
gone up north & down
to the devil. Carpetbaggers
everywhere, talking out of both
sides of their mouths
& putting puppet niggers
in high places. Dixie's
in the canebrake
like a corn-shuck doll.
Mother's dressed up
in lace & taffeta,
sitting upstairs, playing
solitaire. The silos
are empty, & the edge
of the field bound with
come-along vines & kudzu.
Is it any wonder
I drink morning, noon,
& night? Yes, now
this damn burden
passed down from father
to son, in the blood's
first howl from cave
to Stonehenge, this
scalawag's oath & naked
privilege. Can I
do it? Daddy would have
if he'd seen only half
of what I've witnessed.
He would've killed
them both by now. If
Sister is so smart,
doesn't she know Big Carl
is Daddy's bastard son?
What am I
saying? The house niggers
laugh behind their hands.
When I first came back
I held my sister
in my arms, but couldn't stop
trembling. She wasn't
a little girl anymore.
Everything here was sad
except her. The fields
languished between yellow
& brown. The corn mash
better than ever;
its old bite just as deep.
Someone was there
like a ghost
from the battlefields
she was in the room
peering at me. Nude
beneath lamp-lit
cloth. Did she think
I was drunk?
I saw her
ease down the stairs
& out the side door.
Big Carl's shadow
was tall as the oak
they stood beneath;
his arms around her waist
& her moving against him
as if to climb a hill
or swim upstream. They won't be
laughing behind their hands
when a horse bucks
& her right foot tangles
in the runaway's stirrup
when she trips
on the top step
& falls to the bottom
with a broken neck,
& me there rocking
her back & forth
in my drunken arms.
--------------------------------------------
October 6th
by Kerry Poree
for Mrs. Williams
H.S. Elementary
My son came from school with
(in his left foot) a will-less tapping,
so we slid our hands to feel
the close grain finish on a new wall.
We looked under secrets, under emblems,
under inky cap mushrooms for something creeping,
some small creature to call an itty-bitty something.
We found a two winged leaf-miner, who began
immediately lawyering for a weasel word why
he should not be captured and poem-ed.
We went fishing for Hemispheres, Aspirations, and Asparagus
(So what? They sound like fish names)
We sat like seers.
We talked about the feeling of having
only a lanyard for webbing on a high structure,
but not about days I don't secure it, or the capacity to feel.
We sat like seers.
Smiled with dimples, (Though mine were faked with magnolia leaves)
he liked the effort, and that our hands are alike.
Then that will-less tapping.
I told him, "It's Mrs. Williams, ya know?
She had the same effect on your sister.
"Betcha she's a jazz singer after school.
Betcha she can speak cat and sing scat words too.
Betcha that's not just a tapping, but a timing that
you'll always have in your corner.
A concertized pencil in your pocket.
A slightly raspy whisper counting (one, two, three)
A calf muscle that pulses standing ...standing ...standing
A muffled ...unmuffled ...muffled trumpet"
Here ...hook us another worm,
and tell her I said
"Happy Birthday Mrs. Williams, Happy!"
--------------------------------------------
Monstrous
by kevin R. johnson
Your eyes smell
perfumed sheets, a bed shedding its skin
suppose... no.
I am intoxicated.
Though the soft fuzz on your legs whispers "touch me":
a gang of angels hoot & howl in irony; your mind is delicious.
Having seen things come together in reverse,
I know the possibilities of falling
gravity is the least of my concerns.
Terrible, this ache. Would you kiss it?
When I say things, I hope you taste apples:
good & sweet, red, with soft white meat inside that barely
protects the center
Compared to come here, saying good night is easy
monstrous, a knife cutting warm butter
--------------------------------------------
It comes down to this
by Christine Trimbo
Ice slides down my throat, a
lit cigarette, small torch in
the fading light, smoke curls
around the mirror, wisps
around a neck.
I have parcelled my heart and
sent it in envelopes across this
country, to Oregon, California,
the North. My words real as bullets.
But I do no damage, the dissection
uncovers nothing.
What I am left with is a cocktail,
the lowlit room;
I think you can't begin until you
rip the phone from the wall and
hold your head in your hands.
Love your pain like a daughter.
Sit with her. Remain tender,
curse slowly those who
make you feel...
--------------------------------------------
BAR BEACH
by Barbara Lamont
(for Isak Dinesen)
"I had a farm in Africa", she wrote
the cadence quiet, erotic.
Now I wonder
what if Isak Dinesen
had lived
not in coffee rich hills
with dusty red clay
and small brown schoolgirls
all clad in navy blue?
But today.
how would she set it down,
here on Bar Beach,
watching these treacherous tides
where the continent curves?
Gaily colored vendors stroll the sand
hawking green machete-split coconuts, ivory bangles,
slaves in chains, and
fresh pineapple slices on a spit.
I had a German lover
who could not swim
the strong current tugging
at his ankles
he would stumble at my feet
with a cup of gin
Whisper of exotic pleasures
which turned my head
away from the line of small girls
in ankle chains
who could be bought
for one hundred US dollars;
carved ivory for two.
This month of African sundays,
I find him hard to understand
my German rusty, his wit too subtle,
insight keen. I think rather this
comes from eighteen gin tonics
(no ice blocks)
of an afternoon.
A pampered straw shelter
on the hot sand
the taste of desire ripe
in the lazy Sunday afternoon heat
I long for
words which taste of snow on Kilimanjaro
languid lions licking paws
after lunch,
wild boars circling baby elephants
and a thousand gazelles
across the Serengeti.
Instead, this blinding beach in Africa
with over-white sand
and navy blue sea
where the continent hooks and turns south
to meet the fat orange African sun,
its passions
like the lushness of blueberries
smothered with sugar and sour cream
devoured under a duvet fresh with down.
On the distant sand, a white pony gallops
past bright striped banners.
Bar Beach, a living marketplace, where
magenta rubbings live side by side with alligator bags
and beige water colors passing for oils.
This languid sense of fear and discovery
on Bar Beach
(last Sunday our neighbors' gardeners stoned a thief to death)
where rip tides tear
at what used to be and was.....
In accented tones
half Munchener, half Tanqueray
he whispers
"du, Liebchen...."
Barbara Lamont
Lagos, Nigeria
September 1995
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THE POETS OF DESIRE STREET
Yusef Komunyakaa, a native of Bogalusa, Louisiana, won the 1994
Pulitzer Prize for his book, Neon Vernacular. He currently lives in
Australia.
Andrea Saunders Gereighty owns and manages New Orleans Field Services
Associates, a public opinion polls business and iscurrently the president
of the New Orleans Poetry Forum. Her poetry has appeared in many journals,
as well as in her book, ILLUSIONS AND OTHER REALITIES.
Kevin Johnson, Piscean, enjoys Tequila under the stars and writes
about the physiology of nothingness.
Athena O. Kildegaard is a freelancer writer and mother and makes
time between for writing poetry.
Barbara Lamont writes about fear.
Robert Menuet is a psychotherapist, marital therapist, and clinical
supervisor. Previously he was a social planner.
Kerry Poree is an electrician from New Orleans.
Christine Trimbo lives in a house that once neighbored Degas' house.
She has two bicycles but no cats.
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ABOUT THE NEW ORLEANS POETRY FORUM
The New Orleans Poetry Forum, a non-profit organization, was founded
in 1971 to provide a structure for organized readings and workshops.
Poets meet weekly in a pleasant atmosphere to critique works presented
for the purpose of improving the writing skills of the presenters.
From its inception, the Forum has sponsored public readings, guest
teaching in local schools, and poetry workshops in prisons. For many
years the Forum sponsored the publication of the New Laurel Review,
underwritten by foundation and government grants. The New Orleans
Poetry Forum receives and administers grant funds for its activities
and the activities of individual poets.
Meetings are open to the public, and guest presenters are welcome.
The meetings generally average ten to 15 participants, with a core
of regulars. A format is followed which assures support for what is
good in each poem, as well as suggestions for improvement. In many
cases it is possible to trace a poet's developing skill from works
presented over time. The group is varied in age ranges, ethnic and
cultural backgrounds, and styles of writing and experience levels of
participants. This diversity provides a continuing liveliness and energy
in each workshop session. Many current and past participants are
published poets and experienced readers at universities and coffeehouses
worldwide. One member, Yusef Komunyakaa, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize
for Poetry for 1994. Members have won other distinguished prizes and
have taken advanced degrees in creative writing at local and national
universities.
In 1995, The New Orleans Poetry Forum began to publish a monthly
electronic magazine, Desire Street, for distribution on the Internet
and computer bulletin boards. It is believed that Desire Street is
the first e-zine published by an established group of poets. Our
cyberspace chapbook contains poems that have been presented at the
weekly workshop meetings, and submitted by members for publication.
Publication will be in both message and file formats in various
locations in cyberspace. To subscribe to Desire Street via Listserv,
send an Email message to DESIRE-ST@BOURBON-ST.COM and put the word
SUBSCRIBE in the topic field of the message. You will receive an automated
confirmation of your enrollment. Subscription is free of charge.
Workshops are held every Wednesday from 8:00 PM until 10:30 at the
Broadmoor Branch of the New Orleans Public Library, 4300 South Broad,
at Napoleon. Annual dues of $10.00 include admission to Forum events
and a one-year subscription to the Forum newsletter, Lend Us An Ear.
To present, contact us for details and bring 15 copies of your poem
to the workshop.
The mailing address is as follows:
Andrea Saunders Gereighty, President
New Orleans Poetry Forum
257 Bonnabel Boulevard
Metairie, Louisiana 70005
Email: Robert Menuet
robmenuet@aol.com
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COPYRIGHT NOTICE
Desire Street, November, 1995, Copyright 1995, The New Orleans Poetry
Forum. 12 poems for November, 1995. Message format: 16 messages for
November, 1995. Various file formats.
Desire Street is a monthly electronic publication of the New Orleans
Poetry Forum. All poems published have been presented at weekly meetings
of the New Orleans Poetry Forum by members of the Forum.
The New Orleans Poetry Forum encourages widespread electronic
reproduction and distribution of its monthly magazine without cost,
subject to the few limitations described below. A request is made
to electronic publishers and bulletin board system operators that
they notify us by email when the publication is converted to
executable, text, or compressed file formats, or otherwise stored
for retrieval and download. This is not a requirement for publication,
but we would like to know who is reading us and where we are being
distributed. Email: robmenuet@aol.com (Robert Menuet). We also publish
this magazine in various file formats and in several locations in
cyberspace.
Copyright of individual poems is owned by the writer of each poem.
In addition, the monthly edition of Desire Street is copyright by
the New Orleans Poetry Forum. Individual copyright owners and the
New Orleans Poetry Forum hereby permit the reproduction of this
publication subject to the following limitations:
The entire monthly edition, consisting of the number of poems and/or
messages stated above for the current month, also shown above, may be
reproduced electronically in either message or file format for
distribution by computer bulletin boards, file transfer protocol,
other methods of file transfer, and in public conferences and
newsgroups. The entire monthly edition may be converted to executable,
text, or compressed file formats, and from one file format to another,
for the purpose of distribution. Reproduction of this publication must
be whole and intact, including this notice, the masthead, table of
contents, and other parts as originally published. Portions (i.e.,
individual poems) of this edition may not be excerpted and reproduced
except for the personal use of an individual.
Individual poems may be reproduced electronically only by express
paper-written permission of the author(s). To obtain express permission,
contact the publisher for details. Neither Desire Street nor the
individual poems may be reproduced on CD-ROM without the express
permission of The New Orleans Poetry Forum and the individual copyright
owners. Email robmenuet@aol.com (Robert Menuet) for details.
Hardcopy printouts are permitted for the personal use of a single
individual. Distribution of hardcopy printouts will be permitted
for educational purposes only, by express permission of the publisher;
such distribution must be of the entire contents of the edition
in question of Desire Street. This publication may not be sold in
either hardcopy or electronic forms without the express paper-written
permission of the copyright owners.
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