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Maureen Doallas


Brokered Words

The frost hasn’t finished
with the kill. There’s time,
 
still — to feel the ground
give while you silver full
 
into too-late middle years,
your nights, murmurous
 
discontents, startling
their way into your deepening
 
sleep. Claim what is restless
to last, even as your sight
 
like a snow cloud thickens,
and your breath, exhausting
 
its missed but heart-paced
rhythms, catches on these,
 
my brokered words of love.

This poem was first published by John D. Blasé at The Beautiful Due.

A Fault in the Light ~
A Contemporary Ghazal ☊

We sat, stilled, your aura all that shined through Gaia;
we snatched at the light, once given now taken — quicksilver.
 
We wanted to imagine stars mapped inside shiny scallop shells,
trade Venus for the light that had lost its source in Athena’s storm.
 
We wished the sun’s cast of Hades booted from our memory
and a squiggle of moon’s light to shadow our quiet remembering.
 
We waited for Apollo’s signal, his streak in the sky the end twice marked,
and the light in our eyes to hold your going, sweetly, softly.
 
If we could feel how Aurora, even now paling, might warm our skins,
we could store light deep, among myrtle wreaths, heart’s own guide.
 
We woke with the hawk’s cry rising, clouds clearing, roe deer grazing,
then discovered too late how the light withheld brings rain.
 
But for the slant and the slipping through of shades let down
we never would recall the way light fell on your brow that morning.
 
We watched the alchemy — electricity through Mercury, fluoresce,
and spelled the fire of Hephaestus cooled, the light run through the flame, expired.
 
If not for the glare of regret, the stinging crook of loss Ares carried on dulled spear,
we would fault the light dressing us down, before the darkness ever welcoming.
​
​

Beat Work

A good cop never wants
to be taking
 
a code 7 at the scene,
needs his eye
 
for detail, a body
to put a finger on.
 
No house mouse,
a good cop wants to collar,
 
be a closer, stake out
truth from lie.
 
The right tactical
gear to ram
 
a bolted door, a warrant
to search and seize
 
keep a good cop in the bag,
not chasing lost time.
 
A good cop learns to know
a stalker’s MO,
 
track a snitch’s mate
and motive, probe
 
a person of interest
with a history
 
and time to give
up a statement.
 
Even when things go
sideways, a  good cop
 
never goes down
not knowing where
 
the bright blue line’s
been drawn.

Inside Serra

       ...you always have to find where the boundary
      is in relation to the context...

                               ~ Richard Serra
 
You could be polished,
put on a shiny face
 
but for that alchemical mixing
of oxygen with the elemental,
 
leaving you earthy and russeted,
uncosseted: more your own style.
 
Your steely Cor-Ten skin corrodes
Itself eating browned orange to amber,
 
a matte time duly applies
to tone your iron-ored heaviness
 
as you tilt and sway for emphasis.
I see you for what you are,
 
a hulking tactile multi-ton torque
shedding one look for another.
 
That spring at the Dia, a train’s ride
out of New York’s claustrophobia,
 
your massiveness moved me
inside your insides. I could
 
have come unfurled,
climbed your walls curling
 
and sinuous and closing in
the farther I go in. Your curves
 
wrap their sinewy rustiness round me,
impressing on me their muscle
 
meant to make me weigh
the arcs of meaning you achieve
 
even while standing perfectly still.
Your path takes me deep. Not
 
till I look up do I get how
the dark and the light work in tandem.


​

Precious Few Words~A Villanelle  ☊

            I have few precious words to grind,
            to work through meaning cold lips deny.
            It's time, you said; you changed your mind.

            I urge you stay. You rush to go, to put behind
            my mourning long from quick goodbyes
            that leave no precious words to grind,

            to parse how love could track so blind
            and barbed to make me red- and redder eyed.
            It's time, you said; you'd changed your mind,

            found others do where no oaths bind.
            To me your promise once gave lie,
            such precious word I grieve to grind.

            No riddle solved, no reason find.
            This heart you took and broke; but why?
            It's time, you said; I've changed my mind.

            From you I turn; I speak, unkind.
            This bitterest root I plant yet cry,
            Leave me some precious words to grind.
            No time, you said; I've changed my mind.







Picture

Consider the Pomegranate

All I have is a voice / To undo the folded lie . . .
            ~ W. H. Auden, “September 1, 1939”
 
1
 
Consider the pomegranate
            this winter, peeled back, crimson-lipped
 
against gleamed teeth, each an ivory-handled knife
            slashing to pith, loosing the fruit’s elixir,
 
staving hunger freed. Persephone’s mouth Pluto stained,
            sealing her fate that she might mime not
 
spring but his own Hades six months of twelve.
 
 
2
           
Think of the Nile, candles on the water,
            luminaries jewel-cut, heat-polished,
 
fit to a crown for mourning’s wear. What fabled
            kohl-eyed queen might stake, her sinuous
 
path to desert ends. Sphinx her secrets none
            betrayed, the asp held high and striking quick
 
her favors’ protests, white jasmine veils so summoned, stilled.
 
 
3
 
Regard the signs that bullets make
            of dreams still falling in Cairo’s streets,
 
rejoined on a bridge of martyrs, relayed
            in Alexandria split seconds before white smoke
 
succeeds the sound of metal against dry bone pierced,
            pieced, and quelled.  What round of arms
 
in arms begins with chanting sweet street songs.
 
 
4
 
Imagine the taste of orange crossed
            with pomegranate, scarlet-jacketed,
 
seed-plucked, the juice half-blood-blushed, too
            soon anti-oxidant thin, a watered-down
 
wine dizzying bandaged heads held where desires
            mapped before lockdown, fidelity trapped in gesture,
 
rock and stick in hand, breach barriers in season’s coldest month.
 
           
5
 
See who cannot be counted, their numbers
            tolling with every step advanced
 
before spinning turrets, their breaths, hoarsely formed, rising
            as hints of their morning selves, revealing code
 
in a fluttering of hands, tri-colored flags making
            their own love poems, streaming as water in a garden
 
in Babel, wind on the bridge carrying hopes like confetti.
           
 
6
 
Fix fast. The pomegranate once straight razor
            slashed becomes itself in pieces. Passed
 
hand to hand in Tahrir Square, its sections sweeten
            lips’ loudest demands, bear fuel for the burning
 
on the ground; its skin, peeling away, discarded
            with the silence remanded in evening prayers
 
no longer holding firm.

Mosque

If His name
hallows
 
Between pews
at Red Fork Baptist
 
In Tulsa
reverberates
 
Within Prince of Peace Lutheran
in Springfield
 
Is held out
as a sign of hospitality
 
By the ministry
of Paradise Valley United Methodist
 
In the Arizona desert
gets uttered
 
In new forms in Anaheim
where Unitarian Universalists
 
All stand for Love
comforts silent monks
 
Of the Buddhist Bhavana Society
who chant in Pali
 
Four hours southwest
of Pittsburgh, in West Virginia
 
Centers worship by Friends
at the Meeting House
 
In Baltimore
Gathers the Catholic faithful
 
At his table in the Shrine
of the Immaculate Conception
 
In Washington, D.C.
and is spoken

in Spanish at Trinity Episcopal
in Iowa City
 
If masjid for mosque literally
means “place of prostration”
 
For Muslims who revere Mary
Mother of God
 
And mention the name Jesus
25 times in their Holy Qur’an
 
Then who, if not we,
extends an olive branch
 
Whispers  “Peace be with you”
and  breaks bread
 
Across the divide?

***

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