Life pinned to a specific even luminous window---Katrinka Moore's DIMINUENDO, Carla Sarett's SHE HAS VISIONS, Marc Zegan's LYON STREET

Poetry is to me the most difficult of literary forms.I love the narrative form. Poems, like a thread meander through the pages. Life is pinned to a specific even luminous window of time and place--in a poem. 

Katrinka Moore's Diminuendo (Pelekinesis), Carla Sarett's She Has Visions (Main Street Rag), Marc Zegan's Lyon Street (Bamboo Dart Press) could not otherwise be grouped together, though all are narrative poems. Moore's work happens in a forest, with an unnamed protagonist who may be human or a sprite. Sarett gives voice to a love of perfection, a marriage so suited that its untimely end and the shock of grief relives the beauty. Mark Zegan's book looks at an eternal passage of youth in a city for all time.

DIMINUENDO 

Sensei  (first appeared in Otoliths).

Finally the milkweeds split    

and silk-winged seeds slow-

stream     breeze-borne

 

A few come to ground     burrow

doze until spring

 

Who can remain still

until the moment of action

 

Hesitation     an idea

in shadow     patience

of a tree     a boulder

 

Light     in its own time

falls and fills     fills

and trembles at the edges

 

How did Sensei teach

us     novices     to dance

I think she said     wait

SHE HAS VISIONS

Cactus Rose 

You knew the rock collector in me

 How I prized Black glass From volcanoes

Shimmering pyrite

And mica schist 

In The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence 

That lonely blossom Against all the wildness Made me cry 

Every single time We sat together 

Every single time 

My brother’s name 

Every single time 

Over and over 

Like the cactus rose 

We saw together 

When I was known

LYON STREET

North Beach

tonight, I’m a mourner
for when the keystone korner
was on vallejo
where I heard art blakey play
and denny zeitlin say
“I’m gonna do a little number
with charlie hayden on the bass”

tonight, I turn and remember
the spaghetti factory, one december
flamenco dancers stompin’ in the back
ruffled dresses, black heels goin’ clack
against the faded floor
memory a paramour
fadin’ in the mist

of the one I kissed
at the savoy tivoli
now, only reverie
lost in the grant street bustle
a schlock shop hustle
across from the post card store
selling remembrances of evermore

in the land where jack-o-lopes play
giant bunnies hop away
edgerton’s bullets stop, they say

as I try to grapple with what was that’s actual 
and what’s at best

blue smoke curlin’ 

at the old Trieste.