This Too Shall Pass
—last two lines by Anne Sexton
The sea knows it
as does the definitive
statuary/the nude
descending a stair-
case/a figure lounging
in a boat in an
impressionist painting/
the embalmer on his
cigarette break/the gossip-
filled parrots in the palms
of Sunrise Boulevard/
the weary tourist patioed at a café/
blood returning home/
the elf owl singing
from its nesting hole
in the Mexican desert
the least
Who come first
And the first who come
Last, or something
Like that.
Even the trees
Know it.
Headed There
Even then, I couldn’t understand
wishing on a star
when the sky bulged
with beautiful constellations.
The buddha says to watch
within—a chaos at ease.
A microsecond passes,
I’m in memory’s territory—
a glazed light over alien shapes,
the land always speaking to me:
arroyos, cactus, heat rising from earth.
I want to feel broken things—
shards from O’Keefe’s red rocks,
those crumbling adobe walls.
No longer live my life as a fist,
but as verb rather than noun,
be more than a walking womb
on these vagrant dirt roads.
Storyteller
Girl in a locked tower/rope of yellow hair
straw into gold/words into art—
the imagined.
Where we first gathered: grottos and caverns,
stories of the hunt on cave walls.
Monks adding sexual doodles to marginalia—
something can always be added—
their urges the real story?
And these children being tested,
losing their way/finding their way.
Hansel and Gretel: kicking the witch
into fire to free her brother.
What grownups didn’t admit:
these youngsters’ triumphs.
Crumbs the teller drops lead all the way
back to who we are,
for the story belongs to us now,
in our arms like our old selves.
The whole story is not whole:
parts mirror a larger story.
How critical each word is,
how one way or another we make
stories fit/many versions at home in each of us.
What we would be without stories—a persistent without.
Show me, fabulist, where to start.
I start anywhere/any ending does fine—
still, the urge for story and teller to be one,
where meaning won’t have to wait for the future.
I want the right path to the right cottage
in the deep wood of memory.
*
Marc Frazier has published poetry in over a hundred literary journals. A recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Award for poetry, he has also been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and two “best of the nets.” He’s published poetry, essays, flash fiction, fiction, book reviews, and memoir. His four books are available on Amazon Books. Marc, an LGBTQ author, can be found on his Marc Frazier Author page on Facebook and website www.marcfrazierwrites.com. X @marcfrazier45, Insta mcfj45.
New Critique 