Poems From Providence - The Poet's Press

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He draws them in. Together, they push aside a stone sarcophagus lid. They make a sickened groan, spit epithets in a language I do not recognize. They lift, drag something heavy along the floor, lift into pickup, cover with tarp. One man bends over, heaves gobbets of puke at the road’s edge. The other just laughs, moves to the yew shrubs to relieve himself. He trembles, though, as he sprays the leaves. Inches away, I hold my breath. He staggers back, oblivious. The truck pulls forward, headlights doused. The three men, packed tight in the truck cab, share a whisky bottle, light one another’s cigarettes, wipe their hands on their red plaid hunting jackets.
They watch for a long time, wait for an interval when no headlight is visible anywhere, then race for the gate and the streets beyond. The door is left open, the crypt a shambles: the open hole, wood fragments, what might be someone’s blood, the broken lock. I read the woman’s name, Hungarian, I think, and her chronology — oh, a ripe one! — ten years dead, ten years to the day. RETURN TO TABLE OF CONTENTS.
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POEMS FROM PROVIDENCE by BRETT RUTH
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CONTENTS AUTUMN POEMS 13 October Is
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184 The McWilliams’ Coffee Table
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POEMS FROM PROVIDENCE
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drifting ghostlike and invisible on
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3 Listen! October is coming! It wil
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THE STATE VERSUS AUTUMN RESOLVED: F
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NOT YEARS ENOUGH How many autumns m
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THE SAILOR AND THE OAK NYMPHS Oak w
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then turning to mockery of his all
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END OF THE WORLD Not with a trumpet
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Stockbrokers adjusted their power t
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THE OUTSIDER Some say that spring i
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oll in this new moon blanket with m
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waiting for the bat, the creeping m
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I waited, I waited — He never arr
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THE ARGUMENT “Two decades ago tha
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AVOIDING THE MUSE Silent this voice
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The clouds make way, open a blue do
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WRITER’S BLOCK For Barbara A. Hol
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This state of things will never do!
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BOARD GAME It is a game that never
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CREATION REVISITED 1 According to U
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But now the horizon rages with whir
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Is it invisible, this imago of Wint
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(the fathers knowingly, in jest, th
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The does take bubble baths. At dusk
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ECLIPSE How like the moon, that sul
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EDGAR AND HELEN Edgar Allan Poe and
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2 Moon and the flames of candled gl
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3 Coffined in his sleepless rooms,
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One truck hurtling toward gates lik
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These crows are not informers. A sh
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eside him, “Comrade, what if I cr
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And then he will send them away, do
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You have become an allergy, an anti
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IVAN GROZNI Ivan Grozni Tyrant of t
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Yet who are these ghosts that crowd
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dust devil’s playground when all
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Winter is honest, at least, the bui
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all now are only names in peeling p
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PLAGUE It is a plague — an epidem
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JUST REWARDS WELCOME TO HEVIN a sig
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Stalinists and Maoists, Progressive
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THE EVANGELICALS ARE COMING! Who ne
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BLUMENSTÜCKE The parlor frowned wi
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The combinations were shocking as s
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ROADSIDE VIEWS It is the way of tra
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RUINS Passing the gutted neighborho
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WATER SPRITE Who made you, this ful
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It draws us, real and unreal mortal
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Time is an endless line wound in a
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A shaman sat here, useless for hunt
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AT THE COKE OVENS I wanted to see m
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I played here as a child, amid the
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Moving to field and orchard, Ben na
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THE CEMETERY BY THE LAKE Edinboro L
Page 123 and 124: I miss that tree. If one of the gra
Page 125 and 126: You did not know the gourd was holl
Page 127 and 128: who lured me with promises and sea-
Page 129 and 130: In the scant shade of his splintere
Page 131 and 132: It was you who raised the child in
Page 133 and 134: GANYMEDE 1 Night after night the pa
Page 135 and 136: 2 The boy felt the tense of lightni
Page 137 and 138: Beauty too soft for marble, subtle
Page 139 and 140: 5 He summons the troupe of ageless
Page 141 and 142: The boy did not resist, but let his
Page 143 and 144: 8 Ganymede thinks only of Zeus. No
Page 145 and 146: 10 I like to think of the gods stil
Page 147 and 148: THE RANSOM OF GANYMEDE 1 THE TEMPLE
Page 149 and 150: 2 THE SIBYL AT DIDYMOS It is a plac
Page 151 and 152: “What would we shepherds want wit
Page 153 and 154: With this, the Sybil collapses unco
Page 155 and 156: enduring the seismic embrace of her
Page 157 and 158: Yet Hera hesitates. She knows the G
Page 159 and 160: and there, trembling and pale, the
Page 161 and 162: 3 GANYMEDE’S PLEA Ganymede offers
Page 163 and 164: a plaything, upstart and crude. Jea
Page 165 and 166: “It’s really a mercy I turn the
Page 167 and 168: T H I N G S S E E N I N G R A V E Y
Page 169 and 170: 2 SACRIFICE Before a cenotaph in ci
Page 171 and 172: (Silt, fish, flotsam flow from Youg
Page 173: 4 NIGHT SHIFT At two in the morning
Page 177 and 178: An ectoplasmic virgin blushes, aver
Page 179 and 180: for this night of nights, summer’
Page 181 and 182: 8 SALEM At Salem the burying ground
Page 183 and 184: 9 THE FORGOTTEN GRAVESTONE At Swan
Page 185 and 186: THE McWILLIAMS’ COFFEE TABLE So t
Page 187 and 188: SCENES FROM A MEXICAN VAMPIRE MOVIE
Page 189 and 190: 3 Things go wrong at the American b
Page 191 and 192: Never knew what hit them or how a b
Page 193 and 194: Who wrote the note? The blonde on t
Page 195 and 196: T H U N D E R P U S S: I N M E M O
Page 197 and 198: We keep our vigil against the time
Page 199 and 200: yet terrified, into the hands of th
Page 201 and 202: nothing would daunt your interest i
Page 203 and 204: I watched you dreaming: the twitch
Page 205 and 206: 7 We became one person, shards of t
Page 207 and 208: It was not done in a daze. The sun
Page 209 and 210: A T L O V E C R A F T ’S G R A V
Page 211 and 212: 2 We stand about, a handful swellin
Page 213 and 214: Earth reels beneath our feet into t
Page 215 and 216: 5 Later a golden moon lifts up, swo
Page 217 and 218: LOW TIDE “The tide was flowing ou
Page 219 and 220: Then why should a fireball plummet
Page 221 and 222: In the stillness of museum night, t
Page 223 and 224: And there, the steeple on distant F
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prisoners un-decapitated, toxins un
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a literary man, to be sure, a lawye
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“I fear the wine speaks now. Perh
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Here Pabodie would say no more, but
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unquenchable, to fall into her arms
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and flying across the parlor to him
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so that these seeds transcend to se
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HERE AT THE POINT Secret transcript
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Those Lovecraft fans are the worst.
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TO THE ARC OF THE SUBLIME In nights
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We are the scourge of entropy. We s
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ABOUT THE POEMS The following notes
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DEER HUNTERS was inspired by a trip
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INDIAN ROCK SHELTER recounts an eve
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SCENES FROM A MEXICAN VAMPIRE MOVIE
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ABOUT THE POET Brett Rutherford, bo
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