AT THE POST OFFICE
"I'm the last leaf on the tree."
Tom
Waits
Looking for the old time post cards,
Marissa, the postal clerk
I've known for years, tells me,
We have what you're looking for
but they're not old fashioned.
Plain, but postmarked, I say,
I want to use the commemoratives.
Laying stamps out before me
I have all but Repeal the Stamp Act.
If you have Repeal the Election,
I'll take all of the sheets in the drawer.
Had I thought that rather than said it
in the hearing of the banal clerk in the next window,
had I thought it in silence,
the white misogynist's poisoned offering
Lock her up,
wouldn't be stamping me days later.
Jim Bodeen
2 Dec 2016
MEDITATION ON THE NAME ALEPPO
AFTER IT BEGINS SHOWING UP IN CHRISTMAS
CARDS
There is the Aleppo Boil,
lasting a long time
and leaving a deep
scar.
Wiktionary
etymology,
from Italian Aleppo,
from French Alep,
from Ottoman Turkish,
halep, from Arabic
halab,
of uncertain origin.
Folk etymology,
from Arabic halaba,
gave out milk,
coming from tradition
that Abraham gave milk
to travelers moving through.
Jim Bodeen
20 December 2016
BEFORE THE ROLLER SKATING PARTY IN UNION GAP
Did you see the video of your granddaughter
last night, looking at the stars? my wife asks
as I come in from shoveling snow to rest the back
and warm my cheeks while reading the news story
of county votes Statewide, looking at enrolments
in health care. It seems the poor have voted
themselves out of coverage. The writer for the Times
asks the question, How much are we obligated to care?
He resurrects sarcasm from Mencken:
Common people know what they want
and deserve to get it good and hard.
Shop talking journalists trace it all
to radiating fear and loathing against liberals.
On this day my granddaughter turns nine.
Jim Bodeen
10 December 2016
SATURDAY MORNING, TALKING WITH A NEIGHBOR
Blaze lives around the corner
in the next block, walks his dog, Luna
by my place while I'm out
shoveling snow. Give me a little Luna
light, I say, my glasses already dark
from an hour in snow. About that name,
Blaze, I say, can you say something
about those parents who named you?
I can, he says. Mom and Dad
are in Michigan. Dad was in school
studying philosophers. Blaze Pascal
is who I'm named after. Yes, I nod.
"Men never do evil so cheerfully as when
they do it from religious conviction.
Jim Bodeen
10 December 2016
THE WEEK THAT SNOW COVERED
up November, friends check in
with reading lists and detailed plans
to carry them deeper into the young century.
Flush with new books myself.
Early December, Guadalupe's name day
after the weekend, I can already hear
trombone and tuba marching
through dark streets.
Body of Water,
Dead Souls, Montale's
Complete, 1925-1977.
Elegance of designed dust covers.
A full year into following an old word:
Banal. Banalities. Poshlost
in Russian.
Melville's Clarel, longest
American poem,
threads needle towards 2020.
Jim Bodeen
10 December 2016
SHADOWLIGHT IN TALL TREES BEFORE SOLSTICE
Snow came with its beauty, but it came early,
and the cover-up was only partial. Going alone is
paradoxical,
as it includes mail, and while mail is no guarantee,
it is packed and cared for as survival gear.
Side light, then. Mid-afternoon, mid-December,
after big snow. Fresh snow.
Real cover this time. Astonishing.
Sunshine hike on skis, in Paradise.
Thighs talking to the eyes, who don't even try to listen.
Jim Bodeen
19 December 2016
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