Five Poems by Stephen Anderson

 

Under the Olive Tree

 

 

What is your legacy, Federico García Lorca? 

Some say a stone marker under an olive tree 

outside Granada. (Your remains have eluded

everyone, and your death is but a mystery.) 

Was your assassin a vicious twenty-something 

minion of Franco with unquenchable bloodlust 

in his eye when he pulled the trigger that sent your

duende fleeing into blue heavens toward the Sun, 

maybe into the hearts and minds of other poets 

and playwrights attuned to fighting 

fascism and injustice? Did your bell toll a knell

a las cinco de la tarde, like that of your iconic

bullfighter, Ignacio Sánchez Mejías?

 

Followers hope that your spirit did not die with your 

body, that it flew like a bird and lodged deep within

humanity, much like a prolific rose of Sharon tree

sheds its seedlings to the earth to ensure its 

propagation, like the sound of a gypsy violin 

infiltrating the soul of the listener,

like the songs of Billie-who-sang-the-blues

that never, ever leave us.

 

 

                                  

 

Bandwagon

 

When my great, great grandmother set out

From Baden Baden, Germany on her way to 

The New World, one looking back at that can 

Only struggle to fathom her motivation and 

Intent. Why would anyone want to leave such

An idyllic place with its green promenades along 

The picturesque Oosbach River? It’s thermal springs? 

The beautiful scenery bordering it for miles around?

 

Questions arise: jilted maiden embittered and humiliated

By her patriarchal society? A catchy ad in a local newspaper

Promising great rewards for immigrants willing to risk

Everything in the expanding American frontier? Did she 

Leave traces of herself in ironed, neatly-folded clothing

As reminders of her missing status so that she wouldn’t 

Be forgotten? was she fleeing family complications as an

Unmarried young woman two months pregnant?

 

Geneological diagrams give only snapshots, but the 

True stories of our ancestors surface only as tapestries

Moth-eaten by time, most likely loaded wth mysteries

That could nourish our curiosity forever.

 

                              

 

 

Fortitude of a Modern-Day Godiva

 

The female in the picture – a younger relative–

Has her hands firmly gripping the steering wheel

Of the wide-bodied, vintage vehicle she got

From an elderly man eager to sell it for, one might

Say, a pittance, but that’s so typical of my niece

Who from the get-go as a child has had to navigate

Difficult life-maps: loss of trust from age six on; a whole

Parade of rocky, loveless relationships in sprees 

Of two, three, maybe even four, all desperate attempts

To shake, rattle and reform the angst of her existence

That had hardened her to heightened vigilance

And her secret stewardship of other disadvantaged

Beings that have somehow wandered into her

Life, in desperate need of her generous, very generous

mentoring and life-marshalling.

 

                                         

 

Resettlement

 

there was the time just off

my journey when I said things

to a peopled wall, with foolish

notions of human receptivity 

but the core resistance there

marched me into corners always

 

except for a rare soul here and

there with open-minded curiosity

enough to receive my story arc,

the tarnished versions too corrosive

for their perceived realities 

 

I did not mean to shake their minds

so, but the truth often has such strange

enchantments, such twists of things

made to dance to a new music

capable of changing the tide 

of humanity with its discordant tones.

 

                 

 

 

the fall

 

the memory of stone steps

descending into darkness 

and drizzle, the crunch of things,

 

an Icarus descent down to angels

waiting there in the shadows,

their arms raised to Heaven

 

and issuing secret prayers

for this aged body, one poised

for rehabilitation into an uncertain

 

future of temporary holds on all

things deemed important, a transitional

gimpishness of being without so much

 

but ready for the challenges of what

will be back up the steps to the house

that sent me

Stephen Anderson is a Milwaukee poet and translator whose work has appeared in Southwest Review, Latin American Literature Today, Verse Wisconsin, Foundling Review, Twist In Time, Tipton Poetry Journal, New Purlieu Review, Free Verse, POETiCA,REViEW, Life And Legends, Blue Heron Speaks, as well as in numerous other print and online journals. He was the recipient of the First Place Award in the Wisconsin Fellowship Of Poets 2005 Triad Contest, and he received an Honorable Mention in the WFOP’s 2016 Chapbook Contest. Many of his poems have been featured on the Milwaukee NPR affiliate WUWM Lake Effect Program. Anderson is the author of three chapbooks, as well as two full length collections, In the Garden of Angels and Demons (2017) and The Dream Angel Plays The Cello (2019.) In the summer of 2013, six of his poems formed the text for a chamber music song cycle entitled The Privileged Secrets of the Arch performed by some musicians from the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra and an opera singer. Anderson’s work is being archived in the Stephen Anderson Collection in the Special Collections Section of the Raynor Libraries at Marquette University. Anderson’s new full-length poetry book, High Wire, was just published in late 2021 by Kelsay Books.