Paloma Picasso Twilight
This poem began with death and destruction,
The sky filled with falling bombs, and the realization
That we create our own repeated disasters
Like Picasso persistently drawing doves,
Degas painting dancers, and Bach playing fugues.
In this poem that would paint the Guernica
Of me loving you, I remember gentle movement
In the kuka palm overgrown with bougainvillea
Just after sunset, and the soft rustling sounds
From the fronds as doves nest for the night.
Mark Rothko Orang and Lemon, 1957
Tonight, I thought of orange and was grateful
I am a poet and not a painter.
I find orange most poetic,
In all its shades and hues, it shines warmth,
Sweetness and the fresh smell of citrus.
I have this color in common
With abstract expressionist painters
And New York School poets.
Orange –
The summer sunset in Greenwich Village
And deserving of elevation to high literary status
On that basis alone, or perhaps more fitting,
Seeing a woman in a black evening dress
Turning her head in a way that swings
Her dangling citrine earrings
So they catch the light just so.
Pound’s Life
I described in great detail to her
how the sun was shining
on the Mediterranean that day,
as brightly as in an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel.
The light was brilliant that day.
I stumbled upon Ezra Pound’s plaque
on the wall of a narrow street in Rapallo.
surprised, I slowly read it, for I thought he had lived
in Venice, but now I find he was here too.
I told her of his war years, his capture,
how influential friends saved his life when
they committed him to St. Elizabeth’s.
She smiled as I told her the story of Pound,
and I was uncertain if she was smiling
at Pound’s life or
if she were merely smiling at me
telling her the story of Pound’s life,
but the answer eventually came,
for when she first sees me
on any given occasion,
with her mouth bracketed by
deep parenthetical dimples,
she always smiles at me
as if I myself am Pound’s life.
Republican Songs
A tall and handsome woman,
Fully tattooed across her neck,
Shoulders, arms and hands, she was
All the colors of a garden in Granada.
When she wore a sleeveless dress
And gestured when she talked, it was
A flight of light: a blur of reds,
A swirl of blues and flash of greens.
When she sang sad Republican songs from the
Spanish Civil War, her hands danced in slow
Gentle motions like Birds of Paradise
Touched by a tropical breeze.
Remembering Elephants
One summer the circus train came to Richmond.
And stopped downtown along the James River.
The animals were unloaded from the boxcars,
And I watched the slow exodus pass.
It reminded me of the story of Noah
Ushering the animals from the ark two by two.
Men were shouting and an occasional clanging
Of metal on metal coming from some hidden source,
And there were animal sounds that could not be identified.
When the elephants passed, I shouted:
“Free the elephants! Free them!” The handlers and elephants
Both ignored me as they formed a line and marched off.
And the site of them crossing the river, marching
Single file across the Robert E. Lee Bridge, each holding the tail
Of the elephant in front of them with their trunk.
The downtown skyline looked like a stage backdrop, as
They moved in a long line ordered by size, across that sad
Summer afternoon that I cannot seem to forget.
Naked Astrophysics
She wears and like nature herself, she is never Truly naked, but rather, always holds something Back that remains partially hidden and is never
Fully revealed.
A nude frozen for a moment in her bath,
Something Bonnard might paint, surrounded by Diffused colors of a Mediterranean twilight,
A soft blueness of a sunset tipped slightly toward The ultra-violet side of the spectrum that is more a Property of the atmosphere than of any
Physical light.
She is a singularity where sight, sound, smell
And touch converge with such intensity,
And forces of attraction are so powerful,
That space itself is warped until both the
Tanned public and pale private places
Of her skin become an event horizon, where
Time stops, and the memory of a lover’s smile
Lingers forever.
Doug Tanoury has been writing poetry all of his adult life and has very strong opinions about poems specifically and poetry in general. He lives in Detroit, MI USA with his girlfriend Michelle and my stepdog Lola.
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