Five Poems by Alan Catlin

 

“The woman had a tiny smile and an open umbrella”

C. Simic



Like a doll on wheels,

smears of rouge on

her cheeks and wax

lips that would melt

in the sun.



Her eyes are candy

cane colored and she

has hair like cotton fluff

spun into sugary strands

that hang down her neck,

disappearing inside a

Raggedy Anne dress.



I want to ask her

what the umbrella

is for but the local

bus arrives and takes

her away.




“When you play chess alone it’s

always your move”

C. Simic



No naked women across

the board playing white.



No Duchamp playing black,

hoping to expedite the checking

of his mate.



Just the men on their horses,

the bishops with their crosiers,

pawns in the field of battle

waiting their turn to die,

and the king and queen in

their proper places waiting for

what the night brings.




“Your invisible friend, what happened to her?”

C. Simic



They asked in such

a casual way I couldn’t

tell whether they were

truly interested or whether

it was part of the interrogation.



“I honestly don’t know.”

I said. It was true but no one

believed me.




“I left parts of myself-everywhere

The way absent-minded people leave

Gloves and umbrellas.”

C. Simic



The way they used to make

confetti from ticker tapes

of stock market updates

and scatter them out sky-

scraper windows on special

occasion parade days.



Or the colored paper kind

thrown at New Year’s Eve

celebrations in banquet halls,

open bars, and supper club

lounges where all the middle

aged married women, and

the single mother divorced

ones, used the occasion to

lean over the bar to kiss the

young man behind it, home

numbers and times to call

scrawled on napkins furtively

passed as they kiss, as her

unexpected tongue tickles

his teeth, their eyes saying,

“I’ve waited all year to do

this. Let’s do it again.”




The World Doesn’t End

after C. Simic



But prevails in free hand drawn,

flat earth, invisible city,

imaginary world maps.



Look closely at the places

people don’t go: the ice tipped

equators, sun baked polar

caps, the dry bone ocean floors.



No one invades anyone else.

What would be the point?

Alan Catlin has been publishing since the dark ages when folks cranked out homemade zines on mimeo machines which probably only makes me him older, though not necessarily, wiser. He has recently published a fictional memoir novel, Chaos Management with Alien Buddha and it is available on Amazon.  His most recent poetry book is Memories Too which is the polar opposite of Chaos and is available from Dos Madres.

World Doesn't End was previously published in an anthology by Bright Hill Press: Like Light.