FOX CRY VARIATIONS
X.
jostles nagging drapery
muffles foaming raft
briny constellations
humility=s sequence as
XI.
the nook up
to bite of
at knocked empty
aside blurred
shadowed
out
XXIII.
Crescent drag edge
quilt window music
monkey hour puts
jingles the bony
under for early
ankles eyes if
will perhaps another
an already Monet
turn
night knocking
CRAB ORCHARD VARIATIONS
Her face was a clump like the hand of
an enormous child’s, held brimming
with a kind of shortcut afterlife, where
seaweed drapes the rocks to skim shallow
furrows over the tidal green, where Julia
shouted in muffled Spanish. The bus left us
off by a filigreed bandstand, each of its bones
a prism refracting wet lips of stars
drop by drop to radiate beneath their
shimmering weight, revealing Earth’s
damaged breastbone of granite, rising
in an uneasy slope like a shattered diorama,
holding cheekbones shaped like crescents,
the indigo of the obsolete sea a heartbeat
beyond the edge of earshot.
WATERS, BUT NO OCEAN
Blue Unicorn Variations
He fumbles crumbs into her
cupped hands
a horn she never plays, held
like a dustpan.
We, like pigeons on a sculpture,
like hawk or bee or meadowlark,
spotting browns & reds & yellows
in a field, looked on
like that vexed god
of free will
smelling of melted wax
some potion, like a latch—
the leafless trees like pews
thoughts from novels, or a play
just like a café in Paris,
in Montreal, or Marseille
without wind, waters
but no ocean—red-faced
as Apollo’s memorial
hyacinth.
WOMEN ENCIRCLED BY THE FLIGHT OF A BIRD
Jean Miró, 1941
These are the stars of night
scratched into a clam shell by Homo erectus.
This is the strength we derive
from the ground we walk on—just as a tree is fed
through its roots. They are women
who skirt the trauma of having broken away & the bird
that announces their departure.
These are the vivisections of shapes & fragments
discovered on wrappings of
mummies & my voice a staging of appearance
as disappearance.
***
About Four Poems: These are collage pieces. What I’ve done is picked out arresting words, sounds, images from poems collected in issues of the small press magazines referenced. Hence “Variations.” I should thank the original poets for their masterful creativity. The exception is the fourth poem, which is inspired by the Miro Painting.
A Buffalo native, Peter Grieco earned his Ph.D. in English from SUNY Buffalo. His dissertation takes a socio-linguistics approach to the study of working-class poetry. He’s taught at universities in Ankara and Seoul and has taught first year composition as an adjunct at local colleges for many years. Over 150 of his poems have been published in print and electronic journals. His WordPress blog, “At the Musarium,” archives his ongoing series of semi-procedural verse based on word frequency lists. In addition, Peter is a prolific song writer.
Peter Grieco on the Buffalo River
Sliver of Stone Magazine 