The RetroLounge Daily Poem Thread (Sun 3/11/07)

[RetroLounge]

The Butterfly Graveyard

I have grown old in this city, on this lake,
on the banks of words. I’ve walked
its beautiful cruel chemical lawns,
given up on perfection, accepted
handseled molecularity. Entrances & exits
are always colder, nearer to doors & outside
than to ins. The earth’s a greenhouse.
Here people bend under invisible knapsacks of grief,
visit butterfly graveyards with their Jeffrey Dahmers
& Father Groppis, with their corner taverns and church bells.
On hot days in Lake Michigan bodies bob & emerge
against horizon-sized ore boat backgrounds.
Ghosty empty plastic bags somersault in lake air,
wind snap catch in trees. The city
is clearer with Calatrava’s bus shelters
and wings. Maple seeds make black roofs gold.
The lake is generous with stones
and a horizon of language, tugs, & ghostships.
Look! The lake folds over us in our sleep
drowns us in brave weeping vowels.
Before I was born, I buried people I loved.
In the morning lake a dead father’s
yellow, palm-tree-covered bathing trunks,
a dead mother’s blue petalled bathing cap.
In a story from my childhood, one brother
holds an entire sea in his mouth,
while his siblings scavenge the seafloor.
I have always lived on this lake.
Butterfly Graveyard
It is in my breath.

Susan Firer

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Susan Firer was born and has lived most of her life in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She has authored three collections of poetry, all on display here: My Life with the Tsar and Other Poems (1979), The Underground Communion Rail (1992), and The Lives of the Saints and Everything (1993). The last-mentioned collection was the 1993 winner of the Cleveland State University Poetry Center Prize. It has been praised as an exploration of "the rituals, feelings, and language of a Catholic childhood" and as a probing into "the mysterious images of own history--parents, children, music, the seasons, and the curious lives of the saints." Firer's poetry has been published in literary magazines such as the Chicago Review, Cream City Review, Iowa Review, Ms., and in anthologies such as Best American Poetry of 1992. Susan Firer received her Master's degree from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, where she is Assistant Professor in the English Department and where she teaches courses in creative writing and women's studies.

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RL

If you have a request for a certain Poet, post their name in the thread and I will find a poem by them and post it...

if you want to see some of my poetry, see the blog at:
http://www.myspace.com/retropaul

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. My dear Retro........

Isn't it funny how some poems are so very accessible, and others aren't?

And this one is a ton of work!

Still, the images are compelling, and when I have more energy, I'll try again to figure out just what the poet means by it.......

Thank you.....:hug:

[wildhorses]

2. peg is right

could read this one over and over again...thanks

Before I was born, I buried people I loved.

each word is a gem in this whole poem

thanks for introducing me to susan firer