Two Poems by John Casquarelli

 

answers move the silt downstream

 

this highway is beat-up concrete we pass at eight-thirty cool morning toward the Dakotas

free of billboards and advertisements and you say “Go away, I’m seeking truth.”

so we drive on

puzzled

willing to get lost in some farmer’s backyard

discuss memories, birth control,

and I confess to being an unfeeling, ignorant clod, a sort of trousered ape to whom it is obviously a waste of time to take an interest in anything higher than Lady Gaga's underwear

isn’t it enough to know the engine is flooded?

but, of course, that’s technology

it’s so simple when you see it

barbed-wire fences

locked gates

signs that say NO TRESPASSING

fewer trees and a sudden feeling of being a spectator amid the rattles near cottonwoods

after a while we whisper to mountain sunlight

run down each other’s ghosts

move to the bed by the window

I read a sentence or two from an old butterfly journal

afraid that voices will be silent if I let them

as soon as the wind stops

we rest our heads on the sleeve of my jacket

think of the empty road in the photograph

“Is there anything more,” you ask,

“besides one tiny refuge of scrub pines and mosquito repellent?”

familiarity makes it hard to see

past shady curbstone behind hotel

where you can throw a penny onto a small green plain

reach some temporary goal

that explains how much better it is to travel

than to arrive

 

Line is

 

a breath

before you glance

scarlet branch

on white wall

smile

because you were

plucked

and

eaten on sweet bread

 

you are spine

wrapped in

skin’s image

form bone

flute cadence

let loose

rain water

watch

the woods

fill up

 

merge sound

picture

whisky

convey a bow of

burning gold

sword in hand

speak through

some

other character





John Casquarelli is an English professor at Boricua College in New York. He received his M.F.A. in the Creative Writing program at Long Island University. He was awarded the 2010 Esther Hyneman Award for poetry. His work has appeared in several publications including Downtown Brooklyn, Kinship of Rivers, By The Overpass, Brooklyn Paramount, Pulp, The International Rebecca West Society, and Sun’s Skeleton. His first full-length book, On Equilibrium of Song, was published by Overpass Books (2011).