The Studio
Coyotes on a torn paper hilltop howling at the sun, a blaring red stamp
A circular pond with animals feeding in droves around it, brown, pink, yellow cheetah, bare trees full of lime colored birds
A wooden ladder that swings down off its hinge
A huge room without bolts or nails, full of ghosts of friends (makers of poems)
Turquoise and black at battle in square shapes and ends of blades interlocked off-screen
Reams of paper in boxes (perfect, blank) next to ladders leading out the roof
Rodin’s sink crusted over with plaster, dry wrinkled hands resting on threshold
Seafoam green door, withered markings, golden deadbolt, depression glass tomb
Spilled green wine teased into gargoyle, his eyes are seething, his ears are burning
Aquarelle
Bent at my
desk
in pieces
in starlight’s
wire clutch
the eye is caught
staring into splinters
like the warble of
the dove at the start
of rain, and the curve
of the cane
to follow its script,
the lord of
the nadir is
the black sun,
a hot whiskey
with anise wash,
small circular brush
to lash and gather
to be trans
not destroyers
continuous snowfall
recorded, crystals
tapping colors
out from their centers
my idealized
voice in fact
a ruin
I can’t freeze
lines together
any longer
I need hot flowers,
figures ripped
loudly from
their boxes rather
off balance
crumbling smoke
losing the light
lifted
Three Landscapes
(LA Odyssey)
I almost insist on the words
as doors left swinging
from the force no one saw
A wrap around hotel
with empty courtyard
boarded up, sprayed white
Hiding Out.
Nick is too kind
two black
and slowly moving marbles against flesh
Sara, a model of containment
Brian is luminous (all eyes)
twin fires beyond the pit
that only crackles green
brighter than the edges of the neon
lining Fairfax
Family Books
The Films of Robert Blake
We score a trim ocean blue
windbreaker
and Dinosaurs of the Land, Sea & Air
I slipped away from the bench
when they brought
the car around
My black hobo sack abandoned
and thought a bomb. I was seamlessly high on my air heels and driven
away to where the camera could not follow
(Tyler, Texas)
Two out-of-towners
in the sharp grasses
white churches
not a hair feels out of place
They say the next county over
from Smith is wet
You go around Ben Wheeler
Through dumb-fuck White House
Back over Black Beauty Ravine
Drink till mothers due
back at the home (for memory care)
for a random viewing of Eastside-Westside, 1949
(Where Stanwyck and Ava Gardner step into the same picture)
Finally alone together
more arrowhead hunting
We are fuses left scorched under lavender skies
where Karen Carpenter’s longest note
is broken in half.
Near dark
I shot what I thought
was a long stick
and didn’t check back for two days
It was a water moccasin
head all blown off
and caved in
slick as snot
(In and around Port Angeles)
Crescent was the lake
And Air-Crest
A motel
Mind stuck at my sources
A flimsy strip
Of rooms
Painted,
spotless insides
A blossom curled to its drink
in the glass jar
fluid as past saviors and poet
explorers
Philip
With the shade
of Miss Kids
“Any rough land rises with light”
a peeling red house
rotten wood trim
It felt empty from across the river
I was a giant
Bent at the waist
With massive reach
(Through lines of rain)
combing knots from the fog
clear down
through the pine
tiny points
of bloody
lime ink rejoined
every image
meaning light pressed
the day long…
menacing chord
congested
hall of mosses
bump
and narrow bridge
I fell out alone and
So solid
Reciting my crystalline
little head off
in slick
and banded verse
“O the air
from the valve
that burns
which glyph”
November 19, 2016
for Joanne Kyger
(1)
Poetry is the part
that no one sees
clip the flower
burn the brush
watch rain stream
down
the moon viewing
window
six drops fold together
then glimmer
burn a stick of Autumn Leaves
crack the screen door
write longer
have beams shooting
out and over
the blessed
bountiful body
Do not revisit
poems the next day
they have already rejoined the actual
matter
daily music fallen
back into the fabric
to acknowledge mastery
would violate her
flexibility
even further terms (the heat
and shape of the mountain)
(2)
Bring
the outside in…
the gray continuous
tangle of moss
posing as a mandala
burning the
sudden white
tiny
cracks
in between
outside
—
These poems and the following interview are the second in a regular series guest-edited by Jennifer Elise Foerster.
—
Cedar Sigo was raised on the Suquamish reservation near Seattle, Washington. He studied writing and poetics at the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado and has lived in San Francisco since 1999. He is the author of eight books and pamphlets of poetry, including Royals (Wave Books, 2017), Language Arts (Wave Books, 2014), Stranger in Town (City Lights, 2010), Expensive Magic (House Press, 2008), and two editions of Selected Writings (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2003 and 2005). He is the editor of There You Are: Interviews, Journals, and Ephemera, on Joanne Kyger (Wave Books, 2017). He has taught workshops at St. Mary’s College, Naropa University, and University Press Books. He just moved back to Washington with his partner, where he continues to write and teach.
—
“Aquarelle” and “Three Landscapes” were first published in Royals (Wave Books, 2017)
Featured image: Suquamish canoe in Agate Pass, early 1900’s (photo courtesy of the Suquamish Museum Archives)