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From Tom Clark’s introduction to Open Eye, published by Skanky Possum Press
Marcia Roberts’ work reminds us that poetic object histories tell in fragmentary ways, offering their accumulating evidences to the steady compassionate gaze of the open eye. The meanings thus presented stay open-ended, finally to be arranged not by the discovering poet but by the reader-observer, to whom the privileged work of interpretation and judgment is reserved by an act of reticent deference on the poet’s part. to understand Vikings we examine remainders tweezers of bone fragments of glass round stone circles mark most graves only the influential rest in ships 
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Aubade to Many Valentine birds pair on this day when Roman martyrs pass away your arrows dance and fix distress lose track steal dreams Cupid dances the jitterbug skirts flying you ignore bullies Roman Pan sacrifice night save victims though your voice fades and music swallows Greek Eros reports of Venus and Mars and Venus and Jupiter she is your friend a piece of gum passed from one to another forgotten like shaved armpits silence in death the cue reads fade to darkness it is now February 15 in Dublin |
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When I Am a Desert
sandy and cold
when you are a desert
blooming in yellow
when we return to lands of
Johnny Jump Ups and Pasque flowers
my love it will be a cold day in hell
our faces eyebrows and lashes frozen
our layered bodies cry and warm
*
in Syria pulses race no rain
falls only bombs to bend homes
break families no ancestral language
on cave walls can speak horror or blood
of missles in night air children disheveled
towns leveled
when I am a desert
sandy and cold
children die treasures lost
the remaining pick up their rags
and go their way
*
this steak is not enough for six
I tell her we must buy more
these people are hungry
sandy and cold
when you are a desert
blooming in yellow
when we return to lands of
Johnny Jump Ups and Pasque flowers
my love it will be a cold day in hell
our faces eyebrows and lashes frozen
our layered bodies cry and warm
*
in Syria pulses race no rain
falls only bombs to bend homes
break families no ancestral language
on cave walls can speak horror or blood
of missles in night air children disheveled
towns leveled
when I am a desert
sandy and cold
children die treasures lost
the remaining pick up their rags
and go their way
*
this steak is not enough for six
I tell her we must buy more
these people are hungry
Hard to Tell what can be truth the squirrel jumping onto the roof sounding like a larger animal & we have no way of knowing what animal it is or if it’s on the roof or in the attic & Paris mourns & we are splintered & my past doesn’t seem so important anymore |
Doctor Hannah and The Checkup Blues you have notosis, Grandma there are dragons in your ears she measures me when you get to eight that means STOP go on down the dusty road by smutty corn he loves you, mama he loves you no matter it’s dark it’s blue fingers pluck chords we sing the blueshoeblues notosis paint fumes in my nose I cut along trim he rolls blues down the dusty road when you get to eight STOP Grandma, will you leave me? I say no
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Your Voice in the Rain
is Circus red, blue and green circles or three roars close adobe walls creaking, dark vigas remembering what it was that made you love me, remembering blue niles along the way oak suckers popping up in the Garden your dancing slow - you who fly and shake the hands. of you. of you. I am. of you. iris and lilacs. |