Judith Barrington
Two of my poems in this issue were sparked by a group of poets I meet with every month. We have been trying out various forms, taking turns to choose. The villanelle ("Imaginary Islands") was a form I've used often and love; but the palindrome poem ("The Surface, The Light") was a new adventure. I first came across the form through the work of Peter Pereira, a wonderful Canadian poet I read with in Vancouver BC. "The London Bombs" is a form I copied from W.H.Auden's famous "September 1, 1939," which is written in 11-line stanzas, roughly trimeter, with irregular rhyme.
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Imaginary Islands
St. Brandan's, Atlantis, Macy's and Swain's
are islands that never stayed still on the map:
a shape in the mind is all that remains
though the sailor who saw one would rack his brains
to remember the moment he threw up his cap
and shouted Land Ho! at Macy's or Swain's.
Cartographers drew them beside their new names
as a circle or crescent, a leaf or a cup
but a shape in the mind is all that remains
of that rock that loomed from torrential rains
or parted the clouds then slid back through the gap:
Was it Macy's, St Brandan's, Atlantis or Swain's
or some other echo a body retains
from those months in a warm sea, rocking asleep?
A shape in the mind is all that remains
as we boot our computers and run for our trains
or finger brochures for a long, slow, sea trip
to St. Brandan's, Atlantis, Macy's or Swain's
in search of the shape which is all that remains.
– previously published in the anthology, The Long Journey: Pacific Northwest Poets
The Surface, The Light
The surface, the light, green ceiling over my head:
I was really close to drowning, bubbles from my nose
rising toward the world I left behind. Was it true
about seeing your life pass in front of your eyes?
Whoever made up that story lied.
I wasn’t twirling gracefully in the current
with hair floating away from my staring face;
it wasn’t like a movie filmed in a pool,
luminous weed lurking in innocent water, but
something was dragging me down by the ankle.
I opened my mouth and swallowed a piece of the ocean.
I wanted to yell for help but no one would hear so
I kicked off a shoe and grabbed the water by its neck
wondering if this salty world was a dream.
Wondering if this salty world was a dream,
I kicked off a shoe and grabbed the water by its neck.
I wanted to yell for help but no one would hear, so
I opened my mouth and swallowed a piece of the ocean.
Something was dragging me down by the ankle—
luminous weed lurking in innocent water? But
it wasn’t like a movie filmed in a pool
with hair floating away from my staring face.
I wasn’t twirling gracefully in the current—
whoever made up that story lied
about seeing your life pass in front of your eyes.
Rising toward the world I left behind, was it true
I was really close to drowning? Bubbles from my nose:
the surface, the light, green ceiling over my head.
The London Bombs
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.
- W.H. Auden
This time it's early July
and more than six decades
have loosed a spate of speech
where once grave tongues were tied.
Death's on the lips of each
smooth-talking TV head
projecting sincerest concern
at the camera's red-hot eye.
A rotten smell pervades
the air; only the dead
can catch the spinning lie.
Survivors poxy with soot
stumble into the light.
Photographers flash at the mask
of a swaddled face, white
like the bandaged Invisible Man
except that the left eye's covered,
the right a mystery. One foot
in front of the other, huddled
into a stranger, she asks:
What happened? Don't worry, love,
he says, hop into the van.
Deep in the earth: dig
and sift and chase off rats
in hundred-and-ten-degree heat.
Up top: flowers, photos
of lovers who'll never be found,
handbags, odd shoes, a wig,
sunglasses, half-burned hats.
Rumors swirl around
as dust wafts from the feet
of doctors, policemen, cats
from the tunnel, triumphant crows.
No good asking Why
do we never learn? or What
makes the young men suicidal?
No good bemoaning the hate
afflicting not just the idle,
the disenfranchised, the poor—
before each and every war
some poet has seen the signs,
and sat at a table, his cry
crafted too soon or too late
into useless shapely lines.
I watch a small brown dog
trot past the yellow tape
of the crime scene, cordoned off
in front of the station. The shape
of attention, the hopeful wag,
the whiskery head, cocked
to one side, all tell a story
of daily meeting and greeting.
But now, with his front door locked,
it’s Buzz off dog! and Sorry…
He’s joined the ranks of the waiting.
The dense commuters come
into some new kind of life—
strap-hangers said to be stoic
(or brave or merely numb?).
Which wrist, veined like a leaf,
which muscled calf, which ear,
will rip or burn in the thick
of the next explosion? Fear
is quiet. The human race
hurtles through tunnels, its gaze
averted in its bandaged face.
– previously published in Cuthroat Vol. 1
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Judith Barrington is a poet and memoirist who has published three collections of poetry, a prize-winning memoir, and a text on writing literary memoir which is used all across the United States and in Australia and Europe. Her most recent poetry book is Horses and the Human Soul. Her memoir, Lifesaving, won the Lambda Book Award and was a finalist for the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for the Art of the Memoir. She is well known as a writer and much sought-after as a teacher. She is a web mentor for the University of Minnesota and offers workshops at many conferences and writing events in the U.S. as well as in England and Spain. Judith grew up in England and moved to the United States in 1976. She has lived in Portland, Oregon since then, returning to Europe to give readings and workshops every year.