L.S. Klatt
Three poems
CRETE
Cast-iron block & tackle
look for light in an orange boat
hooks, delphinium
nets drying in a golden pile
The marina is open
it takes Braille to read the cargo
A supermodel sculls in the harbor
her high heels dry-docked
as is the schooner
The fisherman takes apart his propeller in the shade
both hot & cold the way light treats him
I said look at the way she treats him
CORTONA
My halo attracts lightning
& so I am dead
or possibly there's a dead man
in my mouth
though I'm blowing blowing
a pigeon to life
& if not pigeons
an Etruscan named Dardano
my city is lit with the snow
of his groin
FRANCESCO*
Little bronze door where lead you?
I smell an ape or a gory fanatic
anvil head in his hairshirt lap
a bust of pleurisy
Out of the quarried travertine stones
a church of comic superheroes
*yet he walked with the underclass
& capitalized our failures
Cortona is probably the best of this cryptic triptych if for no other reason than it does more than be oblique. Cortona does manage to pull slightly less obvious results from such oddities of language. Clearly the pleasure here is in the oddity of tongue twist and image shift. But only Cortona amounts to more than a pile of oddities and obviousnesses. Cortona has that resultant twinge of both discomfort and grit that comes from being nasty.
ReplyDelete