Poems From Providence - The Poet's Press

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The men and boys don their flannel coats, their furlined caps, lace up their boots, check pockets for matches and shells, the silver flask of whiskey, the knife, the map, the compass. They cram into the big-tire pickups, roar off toward the mountains. 3 The Deer The town is comatose. It is the wolf watch, the turning time before sun-up, too soon for clatter of milk and bakery trucks, too cold for anyone to be about to see the single-file march of the deer, their stately parade down Church Street, hoof-clattering echoes as they turn down Main, their antlers a spindly Burnham Wood, their eyes and muzzles surreal in streetlight. They pause to glance in the dark shop windows, white tails wagging in puzzlement at the show of useless merchandise. They file into the hotel, the waiting lobby. The signs have been changed. Now they read: DEER WELCOME. Baskets of apples have been prepared for them. Some sleep till noon in their cozy rooms. Others watch game shows and situation comedies. Hooves dance behind DO NOT DISTURB placards. Yearlings order exotic salads and apple cobblers, view rock and porno videos with astonishment, Bucks sharpen their racks on mahogany bedsteads. Fawns flush the toilets and run in terror.
The does take bubble baths. At dusk they burst through the lobby again, startling the guests and chambermaids, bolt up side street to a vacant lot, herding to woods at wolf-chase speed, following the stream bed upward to the brown palace of primal forest. The downcast hunters return in silence, the fathers morose, the sons resentful, their manhood blood unproven as if past hunts had been empty lies. 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
Page 10 and 11: 184 The McWilliams’ Coffee Table
Page 12: POEMS FROM PROVIDENCE
Page 15 and 16: drifting ghostlike and invisible on
Page 17 and 18: 3 Listen! October is coming! It wil
Page 19 and 20: THE STATE VERSUS AUTUMN RESOLVED: F
Page 21 and 22: NOT YEARS ENOUGH How many autumns m
Page 23 and 24: THE SAILOR AND THE OAK NYMPHS Oak w
Page 25 and 26: then turning to mockery of his all
Page 28 and 29: END OF THE WORLD Not with a trumpet
Page 30 and 31: Stockbrokers adjusted their power t
Page 32: THE OUTSIDER Some say that spring i
Page 35 and 36: oll in this new moon blanket with m
Page 37 and 38: waiting for the bat, the creeping m
Page 39 and 40: I waited, I waited — He never arr
Page 41 and 42: THE ARGUMENT “Two decades ago tha
Page 43 and 44: AVOIDING THE MUSE Silent this voice
Page 45 and 46: The clouds make way, open a blue do
Page 47 and 48: WRITER’S BLOCK For Barbara A. Hol
Page 49 and 50: This state of things will never do!
Page 51 and 52: BOARD GAME It is a game that never
Page 53 and 54: CREATION REVISITED 1 According to U
Page 55 and 56: But now the horizon rages with whir
Page 57 and 58: Is it invisible, this imago of Wint
Page 59: (the fathers knowingly, in jest, th
Page 63 and 64: ECLIPSE How like the moon, that sul
Page 65 and 66: EDGAR AND HELEN Edgar Allan Poe and
Page 67 and 68: 2 Moon and the flames of candled gl
Page 69 and 70: 3 Coffined in his sleepless rooms,
Page 71 and 72: One truck hurtling toward gates lik
Page 73 and 74: These crows are not informers. A sh
Page 75 and 76: eside him, “Comrade, what if I cr
Page 77 and 78: And then he will send them away, do
Page 79 and 80: You have become an allergy, an anti
Page 81 and 82: IVAN GROZNI Ivan Grozni Tyrant of t
Page 83 and 84: Yet who are these ghosts that crowd
Page 85 and 86: dust devil’s playground when all
Page 87 and 88: Winter is honest, at least, the bui
Page 89 and 90: all now are only names in peeling p
Page 91 and 92: PLAGUE It is a plague — an epidem
Page 93 and 94: JUST REWARDS WELCOME TO HEVIN a sig
Page 95 and 96: Stalinists and Maoists, Progressive
Page 97 and 98: THE EVANGELICALS ARE COMING! Who ne
Page 99 and 100: BLUMENSTÜCKE The parlor frowned wi
Page 101 and 102: The combinations were shocking as s
Page 103 and 104: ROADSIDE VIEWS It is the way of tra
Page 105 and 106: RUINS Passing the gutted neighborho
Page 107 and 108: WATER SPRITE Who made you, this ful
Page 109 and 110: 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
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I miss that tree. If one of the gra
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You did not know the gourd was holl
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who lured me with promises and sea-
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In the scant shade of his splintere
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It was you who raised the child in
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GANYMEDE 1 Night after night the pa
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2 The boy felt the tense of lightni
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Beauty too soft for marble, subtle
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5 He summons the troupe of ageless
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The boy did not resist, but let his
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8 Ganymede thinks only of Zeus. No
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10 I like to think of the gods stil
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THE RANSOM OF GANYMEDE 1 THE TEMPLE
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2 THE SIBYL AT DIDYMOS It is a plac
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“What would we shepherds want wit
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With this, the Sybil collapses unco
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enduring the seismic embrace of her
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Yet Hera hesitates. She knows the G
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and there, trembling and pale, the
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3 GANYMEDE’S PLEA Ganymede offers
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a plaything, upstart and crude. Jea
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“It’s really a mercy I turn the
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T H I N G S S E E N I N G R A V E Y
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2 SACRIFICE Before a cenotaph in ci
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(Silt, fish, flotsam flow from Youg
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4 NIGHT SHIFT At two in the morning
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They watch for a long time, wait fo
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An ectoplasmic virgin blushes, aver
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for this night of nights, summer’
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8 SALEM At Salem the burying ground
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9 THE FORGOTTEN GRAVESTONE At Swan
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THE McWILLIAMS’ COFFEE TABLE So t
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SCENES FROM A MEXICAN VAMPIRE MOVIE
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3 Things go wrong at the American b
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Never knew what hit them or how a b
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Who wrote the note? The blonde on t
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T H U N D E R P U S S: I N M E M O
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We keep our vigil against the time
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yet terrified, into the hands of th
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nothing would daunt your interest i
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I watched you dreaming: the twitch
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7 We became one person, shards of t
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It was not done in a daze. The sun
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A T L O V E C R A F T ’S G R A V
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2 We stand about, a handful swellin
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Earth reels beneath our feet into t
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5 Later a golden moon lifts up, swo
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LOW TIDE “The tide was flowing ou
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Then why should a fireball plummet
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In the stillness of museum night, t
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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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