Vasiliki's July poem

Hi Dargie and Claire--
I was in Greece for a few weeks, and just now catching up with everything.
Dargie, will comment on your poem shortly...

Blue Sky with Teeth

It was after dark in Athens, inside the taxi
we moved into a darker night
soon to be early morning after a full moon
skirting the Acropolis and its dark runes
whose workers-in-arms had locked the gates
betrayed by a promise to access Europe’s rooftop
and this latest wave of dear invaders-
Venetians, Ottomans, Germans, Americans-
marble paths glow slick with the tread of a thousand years
gripping the wheel, the toothless driver sighs
people only believe what they see and hear
though born on this Earth
I am 30% from here and 70% from the stars--
we are each tripartite, a compound of body, soul, and mind
the Devil owns the organs
but not the Soul,
from the Soul he can be barred,
exiled through prayer--
My room at home is barely larger than this taxi
I lie awake alone and try to imagine Him
the Christ who came to earth
for a little August vacation, just like you--
He cast no shadow even at noon on the hottest day
because he is Light
Here and Nowhere and Everywhere at once,
had He been weighed then, He would have weighed nothing
being lighter, being Light itself--
Our sleep is a practice death
our sleep makes life possible
just as death does--
and as the Encephalos combines
signals from all organs simultaneously
so does the Greater Power align all and everyone--
seven billion signals of the Universe into one

We sped along a corridor
that had just opened--
was I conversing with my dead father,
with a toothless taxi driver, who was taking me where--
I didn’t know

  

(Encephalos is Greek word for mind)

Dargie's June poem

ALMOST TO TONGANOXIE

The herd on the north side of the highway—

I noticed to my minor shock last week—

has calved.  Where before it consisted

of uniformly-sized brown beasts,

sometimes all facing the same direction,

sometimes chest-deep in the cattle pond

or curving around to stay in the shade,

the herd is now made of unlike elements—

half the grown ladies, and half 

knob-kneed calves who tend to stay close.  

I can’t help but imagine

the ladies are feeling unweighted

and more like themselves. I can’t

stop enjoying the sight of calf and mother,

familiar from Arkansas days—

heaving their heads

into their mothers’ udders just before nursing—

it's like when I see a child close in age

to one of my own children

and certain gestures are from a script I know.

Meanwhile the herd on the south side

of the interstate is still pregnant.

The big ladies lumber, and I can’t help imagining

how their feet must hurt.   Calve, we say,

of a glacier, when pieces break off into the ocean,

and it is like that with the cows, as if

a brown shard of their own flesh

has dropped free to run on its own. 

The still-pregnant herd gets moved, the pasture

is empty, weeks go by. 

Then one day, the herd is back:

mamas and babies,

large and small, all in a lovely,

mutually-resembling shade of brown. 

August Poetry Postcard Fest Anyone?

Hi Dargie and Claire and Shannon,

I've heard about this August Poetry Postcard Fest for several years now, but never in time to participate. But this may be the year...I think it would be challenging in a very inspiring way!  Here are the guidelines.  Have a wonderful summer and see you back here whenever your schedule allows.  XO, Vasiliki

Vasiliki's (Feb.) Poem

My Father Was a Quality Control Engineer



1.

My father was a quality control engineer
he searched for flaws, even at home

my brother and I met his eagle eye, dark brow,
beaked nose, but sometimes we evaded

What I studied in college
was how to make meaning, to make meaning

to make, to make
out of material given

Home or Homer, human or numen.
To mean, to mean.

Continue on.
Make meaning, search for flaws.
Make meaning, search for flaws.

Until the flaws are what remain
of meaning made.

My father was a quality control engineer,
together we raised a superstructure

made of meaningful flaws.

2.

After he left us
he turned to the golden eagle

that led my Subaru down the road
and in that dream

from behind a mask, he told me
you, you are eagles

haltingly, as if to say
you don’t need to worry

What I studied then
made no sense to him

What I sensed
made no sense either

Continue on.
Human not numen.

Until the flaws are remade,
are what remake us.

Claire's February Poem

RED DAHLIAS

because their colors called me from the roadside—

dahlias—bright and huge at summer’s height

because their violets and reds yelled my name from galvanized pails

because the faded flag with the black serpent drooped in mid-day heat

because his heirloom tomatoes statuesque sunflowers his gladioli cockscomb early sweet corn

because I did not bite when his talk pivoted from potatoes to politics

because I did not flinch when he spit the name Hillary

You must be one of those Liberals

because had he known I was a Communist he never would have sold me his flowers! 

I did not demand my $8 back because I dug instead into his soil-dark eyes furrowed face 

so deep were the tubers of his intolerance I did not ask for my money back

because we both knew didn’t we that for those brief moments, beauty bound us.

***

MORNING COMMUTE, SUBZERO


Minus two on the car thermometer.
Out the window, it’s Kansas, as usual,

except the hawk over the river
is puffed up to twice its normal size

and is perched above a white rubble field
where the river used to be.

Minus two on the car thermometer.
The roads are dry, traffic sparse, not unusual,

except I come across a wrecker
tilting a banged-up Nissan onto its bed,

and ten miles later another, cranking up a Ford.
Had the cold itself pulled each car off its line?

Minus two on the car thermometer.
I’m fine, there’s nothing unusual,

except it’s clear, the world’s subtracted,
drained, an absence of something we depend on—

ruddiness, moisture. The air catches at my throat.
It’s the kind of day there’s someone on the local news

who, having dragged out an old space heater
to stay warm, plugged it into bad wiring

and ends up standing in the front yard
wrapped in a blanket agape as everything burns down.

Minus two on the car thermometer. There’s no disaster. 

The world appears in almost every way the same.

Resume?

Happy Valentine's Day, infinity poets!  I hope love is taking shape where you are.  Somehow it's mid-February already.  I'm in a better position to contribute to the workshop these days.  Anyone else out there?  I did go back and comment on the poems posted from this fall.

All the best,

Dargie

Infinity Poets on Hiatus until 2019

Dear Friends,

I've loved being online with you this past year on Infinity Poets. Many of us feel this exchange is so valuable, but fewer and fewer of us have the time to participate. 

I suggest we officially suspend our blog until 2019 -- until Jan. 31, let's say-- or until we can redevelop the critical mass we had when we started.

Wishing you all health and joy and peace this holiday season--

xoxo

Vasiliki

Apologies!

Hi Everyone,

I'm so sorry that I've been absent. I have to admit that this fall has been overwhelming in both joyous and stressful ways. I've taken on too much and teaching is wonderful but intense. I'm going to have to take a hiatus, but promise I'll be back at some point. Thanks for your support and wonderful feedback.

Wishing you happy holidays!
Shannon

Vasiliki's November (also September) Poem

Hi Everyone, I'm reposting my poem from Sept. which Claire already responded to. I hope Shannon and Dargie, (& Kasey?) might send a few notes my way. How are we feeling about the monthly format? Do we need to change something? I value this group and hope we can keep it going despite the other commitments we all have. Happy Thanksgiving!

Tuscan
after centuries of raising
things out of rot,
wine and raisins

fraught promises, razed
soil and more work

what rage was wrought
of these sought promises?

to return to the soil
after centuries

what was sought and bought
left to rot

stunned wages--
amidst the wilds and thistles
of the Tuscan hills

epistles whose lines are written still

while the very ground unwinding 
by the windmill

and still and still

that with each drop, we shall return to the soil
amended

Claire's November Poem

Hi all! October got away from me...so here is a November poem. Hope everyone is doing well! <3

WILD ASTERS

In memory of Sylvie Semaan

Driving I-95 this morning, I spot them—

                  a frill at the edge of the woods, their stars

brightening the deep oak and maple shade—

and I can still see Sylvie that day, heading back to the City,

                  waving from the rented car stuffed

with her family and the galaxies of asters, blue and white, 

                  we gathered on the bluff above the harbor

(two weeks later, she had called to say

                  the wildflowers still lit their Manhattan rooms, 

and we’d spoken again of that rare, simple day:

the soft late-summer air, clear marine light!)

This morning I see her again  

(this time as an image preserved in brine)

as I never saw her in life, this time a vision: 

shaven head, alone on a frigid beach, salted edge

of her native Normandy, attuned

to something beyond the gun-metal ocean

frothing white at her feet.

Salt sprays the lenses of her glasses

                  dries there to a lace of stars, obscuring

this, her borrowed world, but not dimming

                  the magnitude of the next.

Shannon's October Poem

Hi Everyone!

I'm sorry for vanishing on you in September. My dog was diagnosed with an aggressive cancer and we were preparing for an intense last month with him. Fortunately for him (because he didn’t suffer) and unfortunately for us (because we miss him terribly), he went into failure just three days after his diagnosis... We had to say goodbye so quickly. I’m just now getting back to poetry and to my regular schedule.

Here is my October poem! I’ll comment on your poems soon! 

Sketches of Daydreaming

A musician hauls his piano into the open-air market to play his scales;

all around him, vendors balance fresh dates, mangoes, and pears on scales.

Hundreds of miles away, a woman stands by window reading old letters

on paper embossed with leaves that scale

the margins—the way dry leaves curl under a boy’s feet in a park

in Delaware. To him, they’re dragon scales.

At home, his sister sketches blueprints of her perfect city,

one with spiral staircases and glass elevators drawn to perfect scale.

The ink becomes oceans, streets and trees, becomes notes.
This is where the singing happens. It starts with the simplest scale.

Dargie's Sept/Oct poem

WHAT THE COWS ARE DOING

 A little bit of light

is better than no light at all.

Indoors you wouldn’t even know the light

had started; you’d be boiling water,

getting breakfast

under the overhead lights.

But out here there is the river’s incandescence.

The turf farm’s strange agriculture. 

What the cows are doing,

there in your favorite pasture just west of the tollbooth.  

Can you read an omen

in the cows’ formation this morning,

in whether they are massed together

or straggled out over the hillside—

or whether one, or several, are wading, chest-deep,

in the livestock pond,

or are brownly scattered up the drainage,

under scarce trees?

Did you catch it?

The landscape,

saying something,

here, under the Kansas sky. 

Claire's September Poem

Hi all! 

Hope you and yours are out of the path of Florence! Looking forward to your September poems!

RETURN

Palestinian teen activist Ahed Tamimi was released from an Israeli prison on July 29, 2018, after serving an eight-month sentence for slapping an IDF soldier. She had just learned that a soldier had shot her 15-year-old cousin in his mouth.

released from prison
into the wider captivity

on a blue and white day

she is swept

into the embraces
into the breezes of Nabi Salih

at the makeshift press conference:

bristling microphones
and IDF rifle barrels
(neither intimidate her)
take aim at her mouth

where the stories of her people live

she sits planted among the throng

with the patience of Jerusalem

unmovable as its shimmering dome

while her golden hair

the entire wheat field of it
caresses her father’s shoulder

there is resistance in the very
breezes of Nabi Salih

and Ahed’s hair waves and whips

now more recognizable

than the Palestinian flag

in every bold strand a demand

and the birthright

to live unleashed

her defiant curls
pale skin
reminiscent of another teenager

he, freed from a block

of veined white marble

his right hand cradled the fatal rock

hers opened flat in a slap

they were the same age
rooted in these same stone-strewn hills

when they confronted giants.