Lucía M. Polis 30 years
the poetry of

In Raskol’nikov’s first dream
he goes to his little brother’s grave.
He crosses himself, kneels before it,
kisses it.

              Holding his father’s hand
he passes by the kabák,
where they're all drunk, singing.
There, hitched to the heavy cart,

stands a gaunt nag, one score years
of age. They laugh at her, shout “Lash ’er!”
as Mikolka calls up one more lout
to her back.


                  “In the head! In the eyes!”—
they sing out, beat, whip her hard.
John Yossarian runs to her. He
won’t heed father, the elders.

John, he can only hold her.
Kissing her eyes, her muzzle, bloodied.
Unreal city! What’s left to him
but to wonder the Seven Hills

and watch the district’s iniquities,
its wanton frailties, its
lies and filth. As he stumbles
on Italian cobbles,


Alan Œdipuses / Lears
six steeds just because Dick can’t
make it with Jane (Judy? Joan?).
(God gives a lascivious moan.)

Robert Ross tries to open
the barn; Robert Ross tries to
keep them from harm; Robert Ross
can’t save the horses, and burns.

Evening sky creeps over town like plague
overripe. Caught in her freezing car,
the poet holds herself close, wipes off
her left eye, and then the right; then, types.

You’d think these were words from Sex Ed.:
      declension (n.)—unclenching, bending over
& conjugation (n.)—penetrating, entering;
                                       but no, apparently.

Instead, it is revealed to us that the former
is simply the variation of the form
of a word
              according to case, number, gender.
                                              (How boring.)


Consider the Rùsskoe slòvo for body:
                                              (It isn’t bawdy.)
It’s tèlo. And so,
                        about the body—o tèle,
                        to the body—k tèlu,
                        by using the body—tèlom;
         and so on—

It’s not quite your telos, my love,
but sometimes it gets you close.

This is not a poem about sawing two feet off
    a rotten beam.

This is not a poem about making notches on
    all four sides and smelling
    that sweet-scented stuff
    fall to earth in gauze.


This is not a poem about shivering in rain.
This is not a poem about
                        adjusting your arm
                   this way or that
                        and sawing
                   the beam, hard—

                   the beam that you thought
had supported everything or maybe just
this, here;
                   the beam that you believed
would be impossible to saw through
the beam that once felt so solid

                   but   then
                   crum
                   bled
                   to shivers
when all you wanted to do
was clear the moss.


This is not a poem about saving the stump
to burn in a fire,
                        soon.

This is not a poem about starting
    or keeping a flame
    or weeping for you.


This is not a poem about what you could
or could not be (we
    can can
                only as much
    as we can ken).
            And you know everything.
            And they know everything.
      So why then?


This is not a poem about sitting in a mudroom
on a broken chair,
nearly nude, not
writing
           a poem or not
writing a poem for you.

The street is dark
and the houses quiet,
supplicant voices
long gone.
The roses stand so still—
time too stands still, irredeemable;
it does not care
to know when
the almond bush blooms. . . .

My neighbour,
he greets me with his
hands; his eyes hold
fondly his dog
(she is silent).
She watches us with great care.
There is no burning bush—
just here, beside our two homes,
a comprehension
      at last. . . .

Nothing
is going to happen tonight.
My flesh
pandiculates.
I can no longer hear
at my back
a treacherous crack
of some tight seam; just here, at dusk I
watch happy boys
drift over the grass,

their eyes
filled with candy and
October dreams.

Since ancient past of times of old,
We have been numerously told
The rules for vestments to be worn
When one is dead or one is born

The boys then only light-blue had;
In frilly pink the girls were clad.
In youth, I thought this colour schism
Was taken straight from Communism.

the poet makes
the poet hard
to live

It is high noon in Baghdad.
To her empty living room,
Cappelbaum quietly hums,

    Sleep Country Ca-na-DA!
    Why buy a mattress
    a—nywhere else? ❇ding❇


When she closes her eyes,
Cappelbaum thinks she can hear
echoes of distant times:

    (Double your pleasure, double your fun—)
    Wait . . . what do you mean
    Barq’s has bite? When she


opens her eyes, she can hear
the zuhr from the muezzins’
duelling calls.

They are loud,
these voices,
and piercingly clear:

    Taste the rainbow!
    Roll up the rim to win!
    It’s the beer out here.