Brendan Constantine
The Epigraph
It’s the rhyme of authority,
the sudden flashes in darkness,
the way its particular lightning chooses things
to illuminate,
the response from the crowd,
the children especially,
the way the mother sings to the eggs,
the time it takes for them to hatch
& consume their paralyzed hosts,
the heat of its days, the effect on the houses,
the pictures conjured by its smell,
the colorful ethnography of the cave paintings,
still legible after thousands of years,
the tuneless humming of its machinery,
the way its technology was unthinkable a month ago,
the primitive design, the sleekness,
the luxury of its fur,
the incriminating flourishes; stolen, blatantly stolen,
the heaviness of its fruit & clumsy
Jurassic flowers
the way it spooked my parents,
the fact that it’s here at all,
the ease with which it comes, like an ambulance,
the way it always resembles itself
despite repeated fractures,
the sense that it’s under restraint,
that it’s dying,
the wild notions that always lead back to it,
the one thing it proves despite what it says,
what it says
Poem Made from Letters Written
by FranceEye (1922 – 2009)
I believe I'm awake but who knows? I need a sheep dog
to herd me back to sleep. Foggy as I am these days,
I can't even remember -
does your dog ever get a chance to work?
I watched a sheepdog working once, a dog whose owner
was a woman who'd been a rodeo performer. She kept sheep
just for her dog to have something to do.
I envy your cicadas. My night sounds are someone's TV
some rooms away & a neighbor yelling. Not sure
if it's male or female but the yell usually starts out,
"WATER,"
then a mispronounced "AGUA" ("AGH-WA"). It progresses
through "NURSE" to various nurse’s names. Right now
it's on "DEBRA!"
I'll have to ask my friend who works tending
mentally challenged adults, if he couldn't use a sheep dog
in his work. Wouldn't that make for pleasing scenes?
Of late I have found myself nostalgic for the days of ice
and horse turds by the curb. My mother allowed us to suck
the ice, saying that the dirt melted off.
Never mind,
soon I'll be elsewhere, in all probability a better ‘where,’
though I’ll miss the woman who runs this place - she walks
around all day in sockless shoes & rolled-up pant legs,
watching everything, & everything runs like clockwork.
Two Tens and a Half
The statues on the patio are smoking:
Orpheus, Aphrodite, Hercules & the lion
are leaning back on their plinths
with cigarettes of some un-chiseled brand.
Their white eyes appear to take in
everything but each other’s eyes;
like people who work in emergency rooms,
people in parades. They smoke
to get it done. St. Francis looks on
from the garden; holds up his hands
in a shrug. On each palm there’s a stone
bird & on each of these a live bird;
they notice only the lion.
Poem Made From Lines Spoken By Jayne
I saw the weather yesterday I recorded it
this is it right now what’s that movie
where the dead guy asks the other guy
to write his book
rain’s coming
in the land of the blind the one-eyed man
chooses the drapes
this is it right now
God damn black feathers everywhere
sorry
but it’s such a ‘guy thing’
the one-eyed man
the dead guy the other guy the blind
I saw yesterday recorded it this is it
black rain’s coming in drapes everywhere
I’m just warning you I’m gonna’ have
a glass of wine
Bio
Brendan Constantine is a poet based in Hollywood. His work has appeared in Ploughshares, FIELD, Ninth Letter and other journals. His most recent collection is Birthday Girl With Possum, (2011 Write Bloody Press). Mr. Constantine teaches poetry at the Windward School and Loyola Marymount University Extension in west Los Angeles.