The Poetry of Doug Tanoury

The Poetry of

Maria Jacketti

Stained Glass

For Efrain Romero, a Neighbor

It has been two years

now since

you added to the unspeakable colors

since you stained glass,

life melting into life

into such September azure

It has been two

since so many mirrors

broke

into patterns

that still break in my

head blood and poison

peanut brittle,

a world so local

I could touch you

but not break your fall

a world marked "fragile"

DNA blown to senseless seed,

mixed blood stained glass

crimson dust

over Manhattan

and us.

The Path Train Station at World Trade Center

2004

What is this scab

from which we emerge,

rising up from inside the ground,

sprawling out, gawking, passing by, daring to breathe

feeling the touch of dead hands on burdened shoulders?

Mute with passage, yet coded in the air: their subsumed cries

mix with traffic -

They are lost: we need a map.

We are walking in their steps,

and they are passing through us -

blobs of history, scratched records

in a society that has junked the turnstile -

everything can be rebuilt and remembered

and forgotten.

Remember Troy.

Layers upon layers of Troy.

They missed the train.

The "we" that they are has forgotten how to

secure passage to the other side:

nobody reads history/ everyone is

working overtime in buildings

that only exist on the other side -

the same escalator runs

with the haunted, cell phones ringing

a number that no one answers.

Pizza Hut Aliens

Twice that week, grandpa reported,

on the way to pizza,

hungry in the backseat,

that he had seen the ships,

his grandson had eyeballed them, too,

large ones, those mothers

of them all, around the moon,

of course, motherships, hives with a queen bee

perhaps something like Jane Fonda

in Barbarella - or maybe not. Maybe

a bitch of a bug with a taste for human caviar. And

then it occurred to me that

it is quite possible that the motherships

are our mothers.

Mother of God!

On the way to pizza, this was just another

report from the edge of senses

and vibration,

ordinary canned mushrooms, jejune

like all the last repasts that nourish us now --

only on the great pie - I waited for it to levitate

and the spin away off our table, out the door,

and up into the sky, but

we dined on it, half-normally, in the twilight

zones of Jersey City,

while the hierarchy,

the ones who seeded and engineered

this great joke we call Earth

in zoom-time

recorded it all,

playing their tiresome

peek-a-boo

who

Porcupines

make love

somehow

without

obvious injury -

they procreate, nest

and self-protect -

there are no mistakes,

just acupuncture,

love needles

Saint Anthony Song

Anthony I hope you are not

tired today -

the world is absented-minded,

we ask for your gumshoe grace

and what do we offer in return?

we spread your reputation, a medallion

of a secret -

I wear you, with invisible joy. Now

I pray for some tidy illumination

in this nest of chaos, my life! I pray that

my heart might organize

the head's palm-pilot.

If the Word has made flesh

then the Word has made flowers,

stone, eagle eyes, lightning memory.

the Word is also the alchemy of

ordinary things - lost papers,

phone numbers, cassettes of magenta

light, glinting howdy-do to all except me -

thingamabobs, so precious to the moment,

gone too hard to hide

and seek.

Fill in the blank.

A golden light gleamed

upon the obvious. A broom of angel feathers

to kiss away the muck. Where is it, where are you,

Saint Tony, my old friend, detective,

constellation of my double-troubled-toiled-and-bubbled

days?

Requiem for My Mother

I must mother myself now,

good-bye, Mother, live on,

live again in another body

live more happily

go to college, become a doctor

cure yourself

of all lives past

and perhaps one day when I am

gone from this body

and come again

I can be your child once more

and we will plant a garden

of everlastings,

on a planet that no longer

feeds on curses.

Knock, Knock:

Who's There?

Wolf at the Door

I'm a brick house

a big little house, a turtle of a house,

a castle in the trailer trash.

woof woof at the door

21 percent interest on my life,

compounded into my daily bread

no poor house to run to

woof woof, the wolf in big

banker's clothing. Dog with a deed

to be done. Dirty dog, wild in the vault.

Brickbats to the banks -

I'm hauling gold bricks on my back.

For Dr. Seuss' Birthday

March 2nd

I am the cat inside the hat

Outgrown the hat, I'm still the cat

Wearing a hat that grips my brain

Migraine that pain, for a long age

I lived and almost perished on Spam -

Until I figured out that I am

Simply am

And all must obey

The she that is me

Even I must obey her

That purr

If anyone is to be free.

I am both bitch and witch

And fully clawed cat -

I am also rather fat,

But I am also quite cute,

My ass is lunar and quite perfectly moot.

I drag I sag

I may be honeydew on the verge of hag and

I see nothing distasteful,

Or even half wasteful

With such appropriate

Coronation -

I was never a chick -

Nor one to settle for just a quick prick.

Ah Sleepy Beauty

Awakes to her duty

Breaking all the laws

Of ancient menopause!

I make the prince wince.

Does he dare eat my quince?

Oh ye leprechaun wannabe, oh

Man --

And quite bereft of apples

Vegan I am

For once I almost perished on Spam.

If I were my student, toad-mouthed

And slug-brained,

I would not have the nerve

But not to disturb

She who has quested and

Never quite really rested....

The emergence of a goddess

So bitchy,

Should make them fall into their books

And grow rather twitchy,

But they do not yet realize that

-- I am both fruit and tree

Of all that was

and all that will be.

Oh who, oh who has dared? Who has

Shat in my hat?

Where is that rat?

That rodent of regret.

I smell you

And I will get you yet.

With

Those teeth, those darling paws

With clever and unforgiving jaws

- I am the cat that

- Unravels this yarny sphere,

Those strands of moth-eaten ill-begotten

Cashmere and primordial fear

Of what comes from the skies

The dogma that was a placebo

Of alien lies --

All that a loving school marm

Might be made to bequeath -

But to these mum-cuddly bastards I teach and

Pass on the street.

This hunger I feel

Is quantum real.

I eat the fruit

And recycle the rind.

Love is as lovey dovey does,

I am this moment, the future

And all that has been

And was.

Get down on your knees. Learn quick!

Worship me.

I am the queen bee

And you work for my hive!

Without me, without me

No one will survive.

From the old temple, I come,

not kind -

I devour the fruit

And recycle the rind.

Before Seuss

I knew the secrets words you fear:

I knew Zeus.

Eastern Green

Green,

we turn on the merry-go-round of karma,

one fat penny for an eon -

hop on my soul.

She- Wannabe-Buddha, on the petal

pink and baby blue horsie -

Shiva on his studly bronco -- two

turning like the do-wop of galaxies,

never quite catching up with each other,

although time might last forever, light years apart

in embrace, oh-so-hard-to-get

honeydew guzzling novios

of yin and yang -

Papa Brahma asleep at the controls,

with a carnie's smile.

America

You are lost

in Disneyland

without a credit card,

and Mickey is coming

with his troops to get you.

America, shine your tin cup.

America, bleach your smile.

America you need to wrap your enema bag

in a stain-resistant flag. And,

I tell you, my fellow Americans, that if Jesus

ran for President, in this very silicon moment,

not even the communist party would have him,

except perhaps for dinner.

Johnny Rainforest

is lost in Iraq.

He needs to make peace with the tree frog.

He needs to look into a jaguar

with his scabbed over third eye,

and translate the word "extinction."

If he could swim the sands,

perhaps eventually, he would find

a life raft and some intelligent winds

of mercy that might

navigate him to the heart of Gaia,

the real Commander in Chief.

New Ad in Seed Catalog of the Ages

Viagra is

the zucchini

among pharmaceuticals.

Aquarian Tale

Angel

fallen

from the tree of vampires

Angel

dreaming

of just a quasi-touch of Mary's

blue dress,

the hem's undone --

it might as well be cotton candy

in a hurricane -

and even though the whole planet

sings the bluest of blues,

he cannot reach the other side,

without her forgiveness.

About Maria

Maria Jacketti was born in 1960 in Hazleton, Pennsylvania. Her book length publications encompass the poetry of Nobel Laureates Gabriela Mistral and Pablo Neruda. She is also a recipient of a poetry fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Currently she serves as Creative Writing Program Director for Warnborough University online. Maria lives in Northern New Jersey with her husband, daughter, and six cats.

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