This by Judith Kerman, from "Poetry 180," edited by Billy Collins and part of the poetry 180 project.
In Tornado Weather
wet-ash light
blows across the road
I'm driving with my foot to the floor
sixty miles over flat midwestern highway
driving to hear poetry
the sky ready
to boil over, a lid clamped on
the pressure drops
flattens the landscape further
I watch the horizon for state troopers
think of the wind:
one hundred miles to the west it has
sliced the top off a hospital
smashed two miles of Kalamazoo
nothing anyone will read tonight
is wild enough
Sunday, December 09, 2012
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3 comments:
Heading towards the intersection of the driving experience and inclement weather. A building tension.
Interesting poetess; Reb Kugel, A translator of Spanish language poets, and Kerman edited the well-known scholarly anthology Retrofitting Blade Runner: Issues in Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner" and Philip K. Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" (Popular Press). Her scholarly research has often touched on the ontology and moral significance of "the fantastic." In addition to several papers on "Blade Runner," she has presented and published papers on virtual reality in film; uses of masks, puppets and clowning in folk tradition, religion and film; anthropology in science fiction; apocalyptic metafiction; computer art; technology as an aspect of culture. She had me at Retro Bladerunner.
Anyway; this is a remnant of last week's poetry posting;
Die Beskilderde Honde van der Nederlanders /
The Painted Dogs of the Dutch.
Slumbering hounds,
their dreams rebound
with whispered barks
On sheltered grounds
White knuckles pressed
to chatter brittle chalk
ghost outlines reaching traced
touch pale phantasms on the walk
Charred graphite flakes away
It lines the avenue, the crowds
it skips along on cobbles gray
Finds fettered flight beneath the clouds
Crinkled paper smoothed fair
tacked up in shadowed hall.
Canvas skins stretched square
Tight tense their back toward the wall
Resounds the rising breath
redraws damp exhaled air.
Heaves up again the barreled chest
and pauseless drifts down hair by hair.
Thumb smeared rose pastels
the river flows reflected light.
Afloat on petal colored stains
dark barges, flooded by the night
From brush, thinned ink runs out
Like outstretched paw it flails.
It shudders, flaps about
then tilts and tucks towards its tail
Let laying dogs their sleep
Best left alone; expressed
Tempura’s streaks and oil’s swirls.
Continued in their rest.
Great poetry selections this morning Ann and Alon, thank you!
I was in Michigan once (not Kalamazoo but Dearborn), when a tornado warning came over the radio. Very scary!!
Oooooh, scary, baby? Awwwwwwww. Duh.
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