| InterBoard Poetry Competition | |
KARMIC DEBT Guy Kettelhack (GuyBlakeKett) WITHDRAWAL Sam Packard (Ilalex) READING TRANSLATIONS OF CAPRONI D. Ouellet
Paid your karmic debt?
Perhaps there is a quid pro
quo of cause, effect at work in every
cell which makes the fantasy of heaven – hell –
reality in this incarnate realm: perhaps whoever’s
at the helm exacts a toll for every peccadillo and illicit
roll-in-hay you stumble into on your way from when your
mama’s ovum split: perhaps that’s it: perhaps that’s why
the one you’ve ventured to surmise you might just
be in love with will not meet your eye. Another
sigh – and reason for regret – enough
to make you want to go out and
incur another karmic debt.
it was hiding in the hall closet (dark,
as if smoke from smoldering mahogany chips
hung in blankets from the tips of hangers
that silently lined the wall.) the imaginary smell
would unravel in silkenly salty tears,
years before I’d come to find
why they insisted on my cheeks for travel
(assuming that time would ever come at all)
chasing pigeons on philadelphia cobblestone
cooing; syrupy resonations inflating
bubbles in my mind, my heart
joyfully drumming as I parted the clouds of their community.
the intoxication of childhood is only apparent
in 20/20 head in toilet hindsight sobriety
under orange moons, clouds that smell of
“turn your lights down low
and pull shut your window curtains”
submissively begotten sheep of lamb
there damn well should be a twelve step program
Sparrows sing in lavender,
while crows chatter.
Slouch of rust-red tractor.
Green and stone. Post and stream.
Catfish splash. Robin surprise.
Wind skating water.
Tea sipped—book warm;
I read translations of Caproni.
Solitary. Forsaken. Enraged.
(They have burned everything.)
Bench—black and weathered
as Giorgio’s despair.
For a quarter and handful
of grain, I watch fish dance.
Leap. Swarm in speckled bullion.
Tangerine rainbows.
Geese lounge in sun’s warm hand.
Reeds nod. Mallards paddle.
Tree skeleton—bones scorched
and picked clean.
(The tavern also burned.
The mail train too.)
A beautiful mourning madness—
Caproni curses his absent God.
While crows chatter, and
sparrows sing in lavender.
(quotations, italicized in the text of the poem,
are from ‘Everything’ by Giorgio Caproni,
translated from Italian by Pasquale Verdicchio)
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