Poems From Providence - The Poet's Press

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It is time for action — close down their TV ministries, bolt up their churches, put them in special camps, where they can await their rapturing without annoying the rest of us. Hurry along to your god, believers, to the one who made you in his smiting image! RETURN TO TABLE OF CONTENTS.
JUST REWARDS WELCOME TO HEVIN a sign in jagged lettering nailed to a gap-toothed fence. Chickens run to and fro on the dirt road. <strong>The</strong> smell of manure laces the air. I must be dreaming. No dream, comrade said an expressionless face behind wire-rimmed glasses. His hair was tangled, his T-shirt torn, his words a snarl of sarcasm and garlic. It looks like a farm. I thought — You thought Heaven would be a city, comrade? You’re in for a few surprises, then. Things have changed in the Afterlife. We angels are into collective farming now. This sector’s exclusively potatoes — you’ll be assigned here, until the end of the current Five Year Plan. But I hate potatoes. And I’ve never gardened. Of course you hate them. That’s why you’re here. Just make your quota for a couple years, maybe you’ll work your way up to fresh fruit — a little shade there, and no digging — or maybe a clerk’s job later if you’re lucky. I didn’t think it would be like this — not for me with a Ph.D. and all — I mean, am I really dead?
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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
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 and 60: (the fathers knowingly, in jest, th
Page 61 and 62: The does take bubble baths. At dusk
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: PLAGUE It is a plague — an epidem
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
Page 111 and 112: Time is an endless line wound in a
Page 113 and 114: A shaman sat here, useless for hunt
Page 115 and 116: AT THE COKE OVENS I wanted to see m
Page 117 and 118: I played here as a child, amid the
Page 119 and 120: Moving to field and orchard, Ben na
Page 121 and 122: 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
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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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