Nominated for the National Book Award, the Eric Hoffer Book Award, and nominated three times for the Pulitzer Prize, J.R. Solonche is the author of 38 books of poetry and coauthor of another. He lives in the Hudson Valley.
AFTERGLOW
I asked the poet what her poem
was about because at first I thought
it was about sex, and then I thought it
was about a nuclear war, and then I thought
it was about sex again. I thought it was about
sex because of the lightning and the tides
ebbing and flowing and the crater and,
of course, because of the title, “Afterglow,”
but then I changed my mind and thought
it was about a nuclear war because of
the lightning and the tides ebbing and
flowing and the crater and especially because
the stuff that filled the crater was green
which I took to be new grass growing
after the nuclear war and semen is yellow,
not green, and because of the title, “Afterglow,”
and I changed my mind and thought it was
really about sex after all because of the ending
with its Ah and Oh, aftermath and afterglow,
which so reminded me of the lovely light
of Edna Millay’s both-ends-burning candle,
which is about sex. So I asked the poet
what her poem was about, and she stared
at me and said, It’s self-evident, and I said,
You’re right, I said. It is, I said, How
stupid of me to ask, and she stared at me
and said, That, too, is self-evident, and she
turned away to talk to someone else, and
I was left there in the corner, alone in
the afterglow of the sex of our nuclear war.
THE RAIN
Driving in the rain this morning,
I saw just how miraculous a thing
water is, hydrogen and oxygen, neither
of which is liquid at room temperature,
two atoms of one plus one atom of the other,
that’s all it is, that’s all water is, our water,
and here it was streaming down from the sky,
this liquid of liquids, this miracle of miracles,
filling the room of the world from my window
at room temperature, flooding each of those
forty minutes with as much a miracle
as one of forty days and forty nights was,
or one that was a sea parted down the middle
to become a door opened on the opposite side
to the opposing miracle of forty years
of wandering in a place without water.
SELF-PORTRAIT WITH GARDEN HOSE
It is dusk.
The sun notices you through the branches.
It shows no interest in you beyond
adding your shadow to the shadows.
You water the new plants:
Day lily, spirea, boxwood, knockout rose, barberry, sage.
You hold the garden hose straight up.
The water leaps straight up.
The water is a fountain leaping straight up.
Then the water falls.
The water is cascades of silvery bows.
It is dusk.
You are the god of rain,
pornographer of plenitude.
You are the god of rain,
masturbator of multitudes.
You are fecundity.
You are father of flowers.
SIX TIMES I PASSED THE DEAD SKUNK ON THE ROAD
Six times I passed the dead skunk on the road.
Six times I thought the same black thoughts.
Six times I thought the same white thoughts.
Six times I felt the breeze through the window.
Six times I wondered what you were doing.
Six times I noticed the reddening of the maples.
Six times I smelled the black smell of skunk.
Six times I smelled the white smell of skunk.
Six times I remembered where I was going.
Six times I decided on cremation.
Six times I turned up the volume of the radio.
Six times I glanced up at the sky to see the gathering clouds.
Six times I reminded myself sixty-one really is not old.
Six times I cursed my stupidity for wasting gas.
Six times I tried to remember the first line of that poem by Lowell.
Six times I wondered if the crows would be first.
Six times I wondered if the vultures would be first.
Six times I scratched the back of my hand.
Six times I said the word skunk six times.
UNTITLED POEM WRITTEN UNDER AN UNTITLED MOBILE BY ALEXANDER CALDER
Alexander, do we create
from the little we possess
in order to possess more?
Or do we create from
our overabundance
in order to possess less?
Sometimes you want to lose your balance.
Sometimes you need to lose your mind. Hate
it even. O serene, O silver cloud afloat
in this domed ceiling of sky,
whose body do you balance?
Whose mind are you? Or is this poise
of yours forever nothing more than pose, pure
pose facing one way, then facing another?
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