Checkmate

The rook,
last soldier standing in an interminable chess match
between Neo-Confucian bureaucrats
The mandarin leans in,
runs a thoughtful hand through his beard
Liquid Eastern eyes survey the battlefield
and with fingers like skittering spider-legs
he makes his move
Checkmate!

Clunk.

Fast-forward
to a late September 4th of July--
we got rained out this year, we had to reschedule--

Pile into a blue Ford pickup from 1984,
baby backpacks and yellow Labradors
and head for the hills

Winding up through a fireworks display,
shower of autumnal sparks,
multicolored spurs in a game of
psychedelic jacks,
through the Roman candles and Catherine-wheels
to see him
See him standing there,
out of time and out of space:
a castle in its corner in a medieval game,
a north woods Steely Dan allusion
or an oblique Wild West reference
to Le Morte d'Arthur

The Labrador shakes himself,
muscular trunk rippling,
water-droplets flying
He's been entertaining himself
in a spring nearby
while the rest of the pack ascends
the spiral staircase and gazes
out through the looking-glass
onto a wide green country.

September 2010

Phonebanking

I recently received an email from the Young Democrats at my university, enjoining members of the group to come out tomorrow night and help make campaign phone calls to other South Dakotans.

I do not, in principle, have a problem with this. I'm all in favor of getting out the vote and raising civic awareness, although sometimes I do wonder whether, instead of asking people to vote for their candidate, campaigners ought maybe to spend their time helping people and, y'know, giving people a reason to vote for their candidate instead.

What bothered me about this email was the following sentence: "Scripts will be provided so do not worry about not knowing enough about the candidates."

If you're going to make phone calls for a candidate, it seems to me you ought to know enough about that candidate to explain your support to someone else in words that aren't, "Well, she's a Democrat." (You can replace that with "Republican", "Libertarian", or whatever other party identification you like. The song remains the same.)

Old Black Lightning

Old Black Lightning, where are you a-going now,
feeling yourself to be a lion?
Hey now Old Man, Mane of Midnight!
Why be you a-roaring now?

There are tubers in this place,
succulent gourds, teardrops to
keep us from the heat of the day,
shimmering like a translucent curtain
of sandy glass

But in that great old voice of yours
you call upon the spirit of Lion-that-is
and Lion-that-has-ever-been
and Lion-that-will-ever-be,
their plenipotentiary, in thundering embassy

In that great old voice you impart to me
there is game nearby,
eland and honey-dewed desert antelope
Feeling yourself utterly to be a lion,
you let me know that Life is near.

September 2010

The sky is a linen bedsheet

The sky is a linen bedsheet
It was new once, crisp and white,
but now greying, fading
from excessive agitation,
rumpled on a bed hastily made up--
Jesus, is that the time?
My professor is going to kill me!--
wrinkles pregnant with precipitation
The air is full of that selfsame smell
that detergent manufacturers try so
hard to reproduce
with names like Clean Breeze
and Renewing Rain
But no compound concocted
in a laboratory in New Jersey could
compete with that bouquet,
fragrant with rain
and je ne sais quoi,
as if all the life in the world were,
at that precise moment,
being born again.

September 2010

The Emperor of Glenn County Takes a Bride

Paper lanterns and candy-canes

enwrapped in lightning bugs

An oriental sky in pinks and powder blues

presides over four hundred waiters

They cross the square in synchronized formation,

pirouetting like porpoises

diving through a sea of floral-print brocade and white linen,

claret and Chardonnay bubbling in their fish-tale wakes

The Son of Heaven descends from the pavilion

with his empress, newly-minted

The waves perform the three obeisances

and nine kowtows

as wine-white carbonation effervesces skyward.

August 2010