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Poems
by Claudia Grinnell

Three Scenes

I. A Party


We pretend as if
we sighed and walk into the room,
hand over flowers
like weapons
in the anteroom of a Wild West bordello.
Rub our hands together,
a few more steps, the last steps
before a bathtub
of voices. Look around:
Ben's wife is blonder
than she could have possibly intended;
Jim's there with six girlfriends,
each a small chandelier-glowing,
circling, small-mouthed, like a fan
collapsing in the hand
of a French courtier. Some men
have already eaten their wives
before the flesh becomes too visible
or too gray; they nod towards each other,
smiling, chewing a little.


II. A Gathering

It would be too much
to call the clearing
between the high-rising buildings
a plaza. It would be too much
to call the men gathered there
protesters. It would be
too much to call
the preacher's voice sliding
up the marble and glass
     uplifting. It would be
too much
to find hope here
among the signs
will work for food
homeless vet
help. It would be too much
to turn
my head, to lie
beneath the blossoming magnolia tree,
to wait for the sword
to drop from my mouth.
It would be too much
to kiss the policeman's horse
and call it brother. It would be
too much to fix
a smile on my lips.
It would be too much to call
the margin
between waking and sleeping
life: there's barely enough
light to take a few decent snapshots
of men hunched over chessboards,
of men dropping quarters
into the preacher's plastic jar,
of men slipping
below leaves of grass.


III. A View

Unless you look
(closely)
you can't see the killing
of time: a spoon turning over
in a bowl of cornflakes,
a handful of razor blades
on a sink, a finely manicured hand
flipping through a book--any device
becomes an instrument
of destruction. And then
you can say:
that was a scene! Somebody
should write about that.
And then
you do: at the expense
of whatever lies dying
you hammer into words
(some)thing--ripping open
the buds of your flowers.


 

Credo

I.


I believe in blood
sacrifice
as does Anna,
the woman
who
on January 12th, 1996
climbs through a glass
window, onto a ledge
overlooking the city
     of Modesto, CA

     where
she hesitates a bit
before inching away
from the wall, clutching
a handwritten cardboard sign I believe
in blood sacrifice.


II.

Her death is no great import
to the nation or to me, personally,
but there she is--falling, rushing
towards death, her whole existence
     dragging
     behind her (smoke
     contrails) . . . I gather
her within me
as if in the ground. Stay, I say,
stay, drink, pray.


III.

My hand, bent arthritic but adorned
with the finest finery
hovers over the bill
allowing for mercy-then the quill
touches down. Anna, how close
you are!


IV.

The future has arrived
for Anna: her death
predicted by light pulses
accelerated to 300 times
their normal velocity
of 186,000 miles per second.

V.

The crows and starlings
that lived in 1996
are still alive today.
Minus a few
[degrees of freedom].

VI.

Strange, to hear the news
of my death.
But even so-
I blush and burn
fragrant oils,
bathe in yesterday's
hyacinth and remain
a wide-hipped woman
believing in
the letting of blood.




For The Whimpering. Dead.

I.


Carnivores are mammals
that eat the flesh
of other animals (don't drop
faint on me now):
man has dominion, let's face it--
he knows how to turn
when the compass points
south. And not to belabor
the point: last traces
of me(at) still stick
to your teeth. This hunger
for protein is less subtle
than thunder.

II.

Each projection distorts
shape and form. No sounds,
no mighty efforts because roses
     without thorns
are useless:
my lover will come
long before springtime,
will come
and surrender his tongue.

III.


This is not
the word
but the attempt
at the word.

 
IV.

The minute you introduce criteria
     for randomness,
you have rendered
its products nonrandom




Dynamics of Fluids in Porous Media

I.


The water was gray,
so was the sky.

II.


Clouds dragged,
fish hung suspended.

III.


Above all: the sun
waited to enter and mutter meaningless lines.

IV.


Below all: the whale
dredged the bay's bottom.

V.


The current, sloshing
black-green sea weed to shore and back.

VI.


Motion, coming and going-
twisting and untwisting and twisting . . .

VII.


Again. One gray bird
flies across the water.

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