BAY AREA POETS REVIEW 

Two Poems by Ed Coletti

Assimilation

Eat your eyes for breakfast every morning.
This differs from Dali and Buñuel
slicing the eyeball to see differently.
This is ingesting the tools of vision,
eyes ceasing their work as portals,
begin to labor subject to digestion’s churning.

Fully mixed with urgent acids,
eyes transformed to soup
release nutrition into blood which, rising to the brain,
resumes its seeing newly
charged with matter from assimilation.

Kiki Smith Takes On Politics

If the sculptor or print maker
recreating the body perfectly
as pain, as pain the body is,
could apply the same chisel
to any politician’s cardiovascular
digestive and nervous systems,
she would attempt to capture only
that deep clenched grimace under
lying all that cheshire-grinning
hyper extended artifice.

Ed Coletti was educated at San Francisco State University Creative Writing program under poet Robert Creeley. He lives in Santa Rosa with his wife Joyce, and runs the Poetry Azul Readings Series.

TEACH ME

(For William Stafford)

He wrote a poem every day,
allowing what would to rise,
and if the work didn’t go as planned,
“I lower my expectations,” he said;
this man was too strong-hearted to go to war,
found vaulted mansions in clods of earth.
Meeting him only in print,
I long to say, teach me,
teach me that daily advent:
words bubbling up,
humble, strong, surprising,
dreaming as they rise
a steady hand receiving them,
guiding them to a spacious page,
musing over them, attending them
until, in gratitude,
they become still music.

Sherri Rose-Walker (Pacifica)
***

That poet like a clove of garlic
Plugged into some juicy pork
Sat where the pilgrims sat
Resting on their way, and to them
He told the old stories--stories so old
They didn’t even have authors.

He gave to the heroes of these tales
The names of Saint John of the Lake,
Saints Milan, Theobalda, and Margaret,
But the stories were as old as the rocks
On which they sat. Maybe older.

And the saints he subscribed to them
Gave them a useful challenge.
As he spoke, though, the rocks moved, unbeknownst
Under them as though the saints had entered them,
Being summoned. At any rate, the deep good
Of the rocks entered them.

And when the travelers went on their way,
They thought the strange change in them
Had come from the poet, not the stories.
They didn’t know the rocks had given them
That good. And as for the poet,

He knew the rocks had done it.
He knew he had the power to move stone.
But he never told a soul. He took no credit.
It’s my job to do that for him. In Spain
He is already a legend. Gladly: no word of his survives.
                         -Bruce Moody (Crockett)

After Midsummer’s Night

wine grapes on the table
thanks to Jane I know better than to eat them
one of the grapefruits was not so lucky
scattered peels like an exploded nebula
small comets of seeds around the rim of the clear glass plate
silver and gold starbursts on the beige formica
dinette you grew up with
which your parents gave you after college
it looks almost new though the matching chairs are gone
did your parents think they were modern when they bought it
and what about now
it is night but a bagel and grapefruit
is what I want and strong coffee
an encroaching town lurks outside the window
I imagine a person looking out from behind each light
what can I tell them
nothing on the table is local and neither am I
better to sit in the dark
above us the northern lights
a silent score that plays itself out
who is the composer and where are the musicians
curtains drawn back and forth across the sky
I don’t know how or why
something something electro magnetic particles
how can I keep getting older and know so little
I put my head down on the table just for a moment
when I look up again the sun has risen
so this is what the future looks like

          --Ken Saffran (San Francisco)

After Rumi

If a nightingale sings
& pleases you
it is only fair

that one night
you sing
for the nightingale.
           Claire J. Baker (Pinole)

TWO POEMS BY

SUSAN TERRIS

(SAN FRANCISCO)

DRY HEILIGENSCHEIN

Halo and shadow
ring the surface of winter wheat.
Instead of blinking, I scan the day,
avoid stagnant pools. If I
told you what I know, you'd question
my solutions. The morning chimes.
Bees waver in sunlight. This is
a dream field with vapor trails pinned
against the sky. An old dog
chases his tail before he will sit.
He worries his bone.
Once as a girl I ran through
fields like these a sheep dog
at my heels or cantered bareback
through blistered furrows.
But chaos has strange attractors,
and now a low-grade fever
beats behind my eyes until I adjust
my stance, until I begin to see
dog shadows fade and a bright
spot reemerge.

POSSIBILITY OF INNISFREE

In some lost universe where Innisfree
had a rock with an iron handle,

before e. coli or giardia,
they knelt at the edge of streams,

cupped clear water in their hands
and drank to quench their thirst.

Then, lake isles were still safe havens
for the young and unmoored.

Then, they roasted stolen horse corn,
baked berry pies in a campfire oven.

They didn’t know embers could grow cool,
or that the waxed moon would wane.

How careless they’ve become yet careful.
They drink now from plastic bottles,

But have lost the path to Innisfree.
The moon is dark. The fire is out.

Disease and dis-ease. What they have
Taken, must all be returned.
                                   Susan Terris

Resurrection

When we stand on a hilltop
and face a sunrise, we harbor

no concern over what or who else
we may become, or when, or if.

Every sunrise is a Great Now
metaphoring

that we, too, have risen
many times before -- that

rising again and again is
what life is all about.

--Claire J. Baker (Pinole)