never lose track
of your shoe-
laces in the
hand securing
the knot guided
by the eye
from above.
chris woodhull
Category Archives: poem
on the surface of things
I In my room, the world is beyond my understanding; But when I walk I see that it consists of three or four hills and a cloud. II From my balcony, I survey the yellow air, Reading where I have written, “The spring is like a belle undressing.” III The gold tree is blue, The singer has pulled his cloak over his head. The moon is in the folds of the cloak. poem by Wallace Stevens / art by Danielle van Ark
Apollo
We pull off
to a road shack
in Massachusetts
to watch men walk
on the moon. We did
the same thing
for three two one
blast off, and now
we watch the same men
bounce in and out
of craters. I want
a Coke and a hamburger.
Because the men
are walking on the moon
which is now irrefutably
not green, not cheese,
not a shiny dime floating
in a cold blue,
the way I’d thought,
the road shack people don’t
notice we are a black
family not from there,
the way it mostly goes.
This talking through
static, bounces in space-
boots, tethered
to cords is much
stranger, stranger
even than we are.
by Elizabeth Alexander
je suis
you
the invisible
who-ness
is present, bidden or
not bidden, so
i admit to feeling
(you prefer
lower case i’m guessing?
i do)
your nearness,
much more
than God – is that your father:
enormous, cliff-
like, unknowable shore line
everywhere and nowhere
or did i make him up? – and
you remain unseen yet noticeable
and quiet, as a young
girl, painfully shy
supine?
and here:
are you the swing? are you the hush?
are you the dusk
light, and why is your name such
a problem? i admit to feeling un-
comfortable with it
in public,
aloud
i don’t mind thinking it
je suis is as close as i get
why do you keep
showing up discernibly concealed?
what did you learn as a human? and
what do you continue to learn as a
God-formerly-human-yet-still-human-but-waiting-
for-something-i-don’t-understand-to-happen?
you are
the missing
person who
i look for
everywhere
in a stadium
crowd, far off,
other side of field
eye contact
we locate each
other, impossible
to talk, we wave,
sort of, our
gaze in a
pause
held in that
small holiness
just seeing you is
seeing me
you are the being in
a person without a
body, right? though in a
body, is that it?
that certain near-thing
we know is distinct
and unique
in me
here
like being in your own car, your own pew,
your own bed
how am i
doing so
far
stop me if
i’m going
to
fast
poem by chris woodhull / photograph by kumiko ishigaki
for days now
for days now
i awake in
emptiness —
not unlike
fear, a kind of
vacancy
as if
flying
above an ocean
with no map or
navigation, only
fuel enough for
the remainder of
life and
the silent sclaffing
sound of the
propellor
the sea, a flat
horizontal of mottled
filigree, blue in green
spread between
air and floor
why remain in flight?
what is this in me that wants
to wait and see?
chris woodhull
wonder
sometimes in the day,
sometimes at night
I walk outside and in,
all around the wooded property
not looking for anything
in particular, nothing really
but this and that, hoping,
no, not hoping: wondering
if the incessant searching
or hunting or waiting
for something to happen,
to move, from beneath
the thing I call my life,
will give it buoyancy.
chris woodhull
The Red Poppy
The great thing
is not having
a mind. Feelings:
oh, I have those; they
govern me. I have
a lord in heaven
called the sun, and open
for him, showing him
the fire of my own heart, fire
like his presence.
What could such glory be
if not a heart? Oh my brothers and sisters,
were you like me once, long ago,
before you were human? Did you
permit yourselves
to open once, who would never
open again? Because in truth
I am speaking now
the way you do. I speak
because I am shattered.
Louise Glück, 1943
glance
glance:
she looks my way
and i look hers
eyes open
as windows
without a word
we think —
who are you?
windows open
eyes turning elsewhere,
mind moving
into privacy
where we
sit and
think about such
things as meeting
strangers, new
friends we
may enjoy —
i sip coffee, she reads
wondering and wondering,
we both
return home.
chris woodhull
all this
the bank of trees, in still wintery
nakedness, a closet
nothing open, waiting
all hidden, yet awake
each tree a finger, distending
holding something within
sleeves of snow scatter,
disappearing, ground breathing
listening
all this, soulful knowing
past and future
all of this, nothing alive and
yet alive
how?
how did this road get here?
I have been walking
this lane for hours,
cut between the wide stand
of poplars and pines
all this roadside
solemnity suggesting someone?
they say a baby
is the essence of a human
where did the baby go?
everything within me
whispers
here!
by chris woodhull
Monks & Mannequins 