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Best Poems From
JOANNE MONTE
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5.
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River
The river below us:
nitrogen, phosphorous, petrochemicals,
dioxin from the paper mills,
a rich buffet of metals digested
from the mines, and still we remain
oblivious to its symptoms
until a skull-and-crossbones sign warns
of the poisons that run the course
of its slim body, writhing like a patient
on a gurney, admitted for treatment;
warns too, of its offspring
in the waiting room: soft-shell crabs, oysters,
the striped bass, the silk fillet,
and the trout we want to bring home
to the sizzle of butter and garlic
and the fresh herbs in the kitchen.
And suddenly we are left alone
to recover mere memory: the river
we had swung across on ropes
in the dungarees of childhood,
splashing in its shallow gut; the river
over which we fought and killed
and for which we even died
the river we damned.
Joanne Monte
Read more: river poems, childhood poems, memory poems, home poems, alone poems, warning poems, running poems
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6.
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At a Sidewalk Cafe
An ordinary morning―
awakening to nothing but daylight
prodding through the eggshell-tinted blinds
and the warm quilts to be tossed back
in which sleepers all over the city
groan, burying themselves deeper
into the sheets of oblivion.
Downstairs, the sidewalk cafι beckons
with the daily choices to be made: trays
of napoleons, parfait glasses filled
with strawberry cream, and the two-sided list
of coffees that patrons pour over
in their passion: the golden warmth of hazelnut,
the richness of Colombian,
the full-bodied Java―
even that everyday flirtation with espresso
and its bittersweet aftertaste,
an attraction so innocuous it seems,
that I wonder what quirks of fate
endear us to our choices in the end―
however invariable the consequences.
Joanne Monte
Read more: city poems, passion poems, fate poems
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7.
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Eight-fifteen
(a.m.) the city
was split by lightning,
stripped down to bone, and tortured,
its flesh lashed by flames
suddenly
I was beggared,
wearing the rags of loose skin,
hanging like pockets lined with blood.
I could not see
the earth's incinerator,
its volcanic madness, blinded by hair,
burnt darker than matchsticks
and dusted with soot,
but I could feel
the meltdown in my fingers
like soft beeswax, clasping each other
as though desperate lovers
lovers in torment,
gnarled in the arms of war.
I had crawled
from among the dying,
the children curled like fetuses
in their mother's wombs, the unborn;
crawled from under the black rain
of suffering, the ill-smell of survival;
a disfigured hope
seen clutching the red-and-white hibiscus
from my mother's kimono
that became part of my flesh.
(Note: 8: 15 a.m., the time on August 6,1945 that the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.)
Joanne Monte
Read more: mother poems, city poems, war poems, children poems, rain poems, hair poems, red poems, hope poems, child poems
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8.
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For the Woman in Quandary
You stand on the porch
unaware of the woman you are,
the woman in quandary, the woman
from whom you must step away
and look for through a gray gauntlet of fog
that blinds you
to the direction and the distance,
the earth and its volatile mood swings.
Its almost a certainty
that it will rain wherever you may go;
the rain you dread having to dash into,
dressed as you are in your shiny black boots
and raincoat, toting an umbrella
that you trust to spring up and protect you.
How casually you had chosen it
from among the jungle prints, the arc
of rainbow colors, the royal plaids.
Unlikely that one would better protect you
against the rain darting in at angles,
piercing your bare skin like sharp pine needles,
or the one strong wind you do not expect,
leaving you to wonder just how much exposure
you are risking beneath that fragility.
Joanne Monte
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