Wednesday, January 26, 2005

NEW! L.S. Klatt poems

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

1 comment:

Unknown said...

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.