21 February 2006 | Vol. 5, No. 4
Cadenza for the Production of a Love Poem
Wet heat and
night drops from fat grasses
growing wild. Sometimes
a product or a sum gives us some
thing we never expected—
Take this scene:
Wind wings its loss
at the soles of
atheist coffin workers
who dig for
free and grin
in dew-light.
Can I find love
in that? Under or
behind the wings'
flutter? If I brush your cheek
with this finger
you'll still not know
the real poems I
had stashed for you
in that box.
"Like" and "as" chirp from the North,
synapses from the East,
and paint from the South.
West is auxiliary—
meaning rests her weary head there
and I'd make love to her
like wind does to Tigerlilies
when a window opens because
someone wants to lean
out and get a better
view of a half-wolf
strutting through a housing development,
and behind your back,
on a table, you neglect
to see the lilies quiver
from the openness.
And they are.
For free in
a dew-light grin
we feel like this: Something
summed-up and produced,
black-boxed and finished,
yet in the half-light
of the production, (a moon
or lantern) we remember
preparing for bath and bed,
watching each's geometry
projected against the wall
by flame; climbing a cemetery fence.
It is in the preparation, the digging,
and not the dug where we brush
love.
About the author:
Chad Faries grew up in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. He is a PhD candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee where he is managing editor of the Cream City Review. He has translated poetry from Serbian and travels to Eastern Europe extensively. He has published interviews, essays, poems, and photographs in New American Writing, Afterimage, Phoebe, Prosodia, Mudfish, Barrow Street, Oxford Magazine, Left Curve, Yefief, and others. His poems have been translated into Serbian and Romanian. His manuscript, Measuring Clouds with a Stick, was a finalist for the 2000 Academy of American Poets Walt Whitman Award.
For further reading:
See the complete list of work by Chad Faries at 42opus. Browse the contents of 42opus Vol. 5, No. 4, where "Cadenza for the Production of a Love Poem" ran on February 21, 2006. List other work with these same labels: poetry.
