After the Party

After the Party 

Blue beads dangle from your neck

like silent prayers

and you sit on the floor beside your bed

murmuring at your folded hands.

I walk in slowly so as not to move the air

that carries words

from your lips to God.

On the porch is the glider. 

Your grandma spent her last

years swaying and left her whispers

to hover by the oak. In those days

we said “cheers” for good-bye.

A breeze moves in. I love

your sapphire eyes

as the mountains

pour smoke across the valley

and ashes fall like gray snow

to bring forth winter

in the august heat.

We stand in this field,

staring down at the parched soil.

I think about September

when summer will have long since

withered the sunflowers

and turned their faces toward

the earth, leaving me alone

to weed this arid garden.

I need a potrait of you

to carry with me always.

I hold your face between

the sun and me to catch

the fiery outline of your silhouette

as it pours into my eyes

and burns your image forever

in the dark void

behind their lids.

                                           Robin Reda

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Driving Home from the Phil

Driving Home from the Phil 

Prokofiev has turned another song tonight

and communication lines run high along the road

carrying the voice in Ohms.  Over tarred poles,

the hanging line on crossbeams

like where Jesus’ arms would be. 

We count the churches too.  But mostly watch the 

oiled trunks.  Through compression

run the endless voices in the wire,

darting by each steeple’s likeness.

I don’t imagine you are thinking that exactly

as the Classical music station saturates our new Bug.

How the flutes seem to call and beckon 

through the Field Effect Transistors. 

But an early recording of Bartok

is playing.  Up ahead a few blocks we can see

the colored hope of strip malls, stranded amid

every denomination.  You are circling your lips. 

I can smell the red pigment. Staring all angles into the

lit vanity mirror.  You say, “Pull into Hank’s Market.

I want to get some wine.” In your den, the Gallo jug goes,

and you feel warm. And Charles Ives is telling us about

star spangled something old Kentucky home.  You unclick

your compact: ensign of a girl.  Next morning, Aunt Jemima

on low heat in a pan and stirring eggs in batter.  You’re so cute,

I mean with your hair all bed-thrown but you feel compelled to cook.

                                                             Robin Reda

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To he who has begotten a pollen-fall

To he who has begotten a pollen-fall

I

Your words are sea breeze in jelly jars.

But at the well, a girl who wants only water. 

Your grief is that she doesn’t know or care

about the salty air that moves on poems’ current. 

You may have seen the sun rising from the

flooded rocks. And you may prove anything

as the conclusion. But how you kept the

voice alive!  I could give you paper, ask you

to draw my worn Flamenco boots. We have

loitered in so many galleries. You sit on

the bar as the grainy 8mm runs, breaking

on a frame like a smashed refractor on

a streetlight. In the Express Checkout Lane,

you read the titles on paperbacks of

a thousand pages, wondering what it all means.

It is here you are about to buy tulips,

swipe your card and push red for debit.

Let the celluloid be your fever

who films the iodine of a morning kiss,

or frames the tense love where a fugitive

carves the Christmas turkey.  I confess,

I am one of these men whose Stratocaster

is blue, with fitful dreams of Eliot and his

monocle as he argues on and on.

                        II

Dear Henry Kissinger of Poetry:

Thank you for finding better things to

write about. Like the long war dead

lying in the grasses, the photojournalists

evacuated in choppers, leaving the rest

to you.

A soundtrack must be written of the

salt mounds. On every corner,

a control box ticks, changing the

traffic lights to colors of the bluest

meaning, suggesting we drive on

seaward under lily-centered moons. 

But as for you who loves the conjecture

of the sun rising from the well,

not only do I endorse you,

but I will let you divide by zero

to make your case.  And, this is only a

friendly reminder: As you walk out the

automatic doors of the supermarket,

holding the wet receipt and the tulips in

cellophane, their yellow powder ready to

diffuse, please remember to hand them

like spring to the clasping fingers of

your lover.

                                    Robin Reda

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To he who has begotten a pollen-fall

To he who has begotten a pollen-fall

I

Your words are sea breeze in jelly jars.

But at the well, a girl who wants only water. 

Your grief is that she doesn’t know or care

about the salty air that moves on poems’ current. 

You may have seen the sun rising from the

flooded rocks. And you may prove anything

as the conclusion. But how you kept the

voice alive!  I could give you paper, ask you

to draw my worn Flamenco boots. We have

loitered in so many galleries. You sit on

the bar as the grainy 8mm runs, breaking

on a frame like a smashed refractor on

a streetlight. In the Express Checkout Lane,

you read the titles on paperbacks of

a thousand pages, wondering what it all means.

It is here you are about to buy tulips,

swipe your card and push red for debit.

Let the celluloid be your fever

who films the iodine of a morning kiss,

or frames the tense love where a fugitive

carves the Christmas turkey.  I confess,

I am one of these men whose Stratocaster

is blue, with fitful dreams of Eliot and his

monocle as he argues on and on.

                        II

Dear Henry Kissinger of Poetry:

Thank you for finding better things to

write about. Like the long war dead

lying in the grasses, the photojournalists

evacuated in choppers, leaving the rest

to you.

A soundtrack must be written of the

salt mounds. On every corner,

a control box ticks, changing the

traffic lights to colors of the bluest

meaning, suggesting we drive on

seaward under lily-centered moons. 

But as for you who loves the conjecture

of the sun rising from the well,

not only do I endorse you,

but I will let you divide by zero

to make your case.  And, this is only a

friendly reminder: As you walk out the

automatic doors of the supermarket,

holding the wet receipt and the tulips in

cellophane, their yellow powder ready to

diffuse, please remember to hand them

like spring to the clasping fingers of

your lover.

                                 Robin Reda

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At the Arboretum

At the Arboretum 

The koi glide in a

swell, where the

water is calm beyond

the veil of falls.

We hold fingers into

ripples to catch

the orange and

white. The smell of

bottlebrush pollen

is sweet yet hay-like on

the hanging air.

The cosmos stand purple

on their stems,

an aestivation 

crowning the powdery

yellow in their centers. 

I flick an ant off the

blanket’s fraying edge.

you said your grandma

bought it at Gimble’s

during the depression,

a floral print with a

black-rimmed hole on my

side where your grandpa

had fallen asleep smoking.

                            Robin Reda 

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Errant Post

Errant Post

Mostly it’s the beautiful accident from

which the somnolent child is freed, the

photosensitive wavelength that bombards

the retinas, even through tortoise Wayfarers. 

But also, it’s the toothbrush Kathy gave me. 

It stands on its heel on the red windowsill

of her kitchen. Its wet vibrations have just

cleansed the consonants from my mouth,

leaving me this myth of vowels to expel, 

my mouth hollow or dark like a giant shadow

on the moon.

But also, it’s the fact that we are left behind,

my razor on the sink, the shaving gel lost in the

pantry with the cans of fruit. I dream a mailbox

with a red flag.  It reads, “Brautigan” in faded

letters.  It’s huge like a Quonset hut, as if he

were planning on sending out a long manuscript or

expecting a big check. We have no mailbox, just

a rusted slot through which a phantom might slide

a note. Or like between the clumsy rocks at Stonehenge, 

something postmarked from the Pleiades. 

                                             Robin Reda

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Jitters

Jitters

The whistle on the burner will be

crying in a second.  It threatens

with little gasps.  I kill the flame,

leave the bag to steep as I wander through

the front room.  I don’t know how

to read the leaves.  They will only turn

the water red.

Lisa thinks she’s pregnant –has since

we returned from Vegas.  But

we attend dance school just the same,

learning to Swing as if we are in Paris

in the ‘30s.  I look out the linen drape.

It is unusually gray for late April.

My lava lamp glows on the mantle,

promises with pink wax

that Chaos is contained within the glass.

I suddenly realize I’ve left my cup too long.

The tea will be dark and bitter.  I will

pour the honey which always starts out poignant,

then enters the cup and becomes undefined.

                                            Robin Reda

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Finding the Null Set

Finding the Null Set

Emptiness is the most peaceful feeling

and I lie beneath the oil painting of

abstract spines.  My door is closed and

the purple lily has started bending on

its stem.  My dresser bears a cheap Christmas

tin that holds change left on a latte or a can

of shaving gel.  When I roll coins,

there’s always a copper slug and a

peso that I don’t know what to do with.

For some reason, I can’t bring myself to

toss them.  My inheritance from my Grandfather

stands beside the tin, a plastic burgundy box with

cracked hinges containing a broken watch

from the ‘50s.  It was never actually

willed to me.  It was sitting in a drawer

and I thought to take it, use it for display.

It’s the only thing I got, while cousins ended

up with diamonds and real estate.  But

Nothingness is pleasant too.  The local oldies

station keeps the Doo-wop rolling and I can

hear the tears of Levi Stubbs, his back bent slightly

with burden.  I stare at a plaque from the school

where I worked as a janitor.  “10 Years Loyal Service”

I drift, my ears below old pillows, dreaming

a woman whose face is unperceivable,

Her posture is soft.  She does not look at me or speak.

This dream fades and I sink into unconsciousness,

the kind that comes from finally letting go.

                                             Robin Reda

“Finding the Null Set” was first published in Lynx Eye, Vol. 9, No.4, 2002, Scribblefest Literary Group 

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For Anne

For Anne

Peacocks have fled the arboretum and

wandered through the cull de sacs of

stuccoed homes. Just as your pretty foot

has stepped on a plot of green dycondra,

and your camisoles have blown across

the yards. Wait and see how the click

of the six-gun’s fetlock is intended for

the oily-blue bird, how moonwalks

can no longer be accomplished.

There was a time when your

small black shoes were not dusty,

but waiting in the foyer for a pony ride

to the Milky Way.

And the novel colors on the picture tube

boasted the fanned-out tail of the network’s

logo, caught by the silver rabbit ears

of the TV.

The first man on the moon was

in his mirrored bubble whose reflection

showed the video camera that

shot the broadcast as he stood there.

And then later, wasn’t it Phyllis Diller in

feathered stoles? And weren’t cowboys

shooting with revolvers at the sandstone

that revealed just glimpses of a hat’s

curved brim?

Wasn’t it lawnmowers on Saturday morning 

across from the arboretum, where the radiance  

of a thousand suns had burst into the sky?

And on your father’s feebleness? After all,

he stood there unshielded from the gamma rays,

pulling the motor’s rope over and over in the grass.

And where your sight was wavering

on your forgiveness of someone.

                                     Robin Reda

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Where You Are –Contemporaray Poetry

Where you are 

Something about the feeling

of being suddenly complete,

the last thing Heather said and dragged

her bow through puddles of dusk,

the dank melody that answered Venus

with reflections of bone. To candles

she played the night, moaning arc

across an open string, the rich wood

asking rosin which way to oscillate–

undecidedly.

She played the orange slag

dumped into the dead river.

Played the steam rising off the banks,

lifting until it barely

fogged the stars.

And then there was the moon

that couldn’t turn the night around,

the sirens whose loudest squelch couldn’t

suffocate disaster and you teetering

between certitude and confession.

You are–

the revolving doors of the Harmony Arms,

the pure math of melody,

and then –the marginal equation.

You are in the shadow. I find you

shrugging-off your stoic grief that

Shostakovich saw-cut the cello.

Your cradle;  the cup in which you lie,

window-walking downtown,

hair-blown in the brisk Melrose flurry,

wearing last night like a snood.

                                         Robin Reda

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