Patrice Boyer Claeys
Two Poems
The Sum of Destructions
Thank you, Jesus,
that is over—
wisdom too long neglected
chasing the dreams of men
protected by walls
with their mouths full.
They sang as they rounded up each interloper.
We all heard it—
music
of the lost world
citizenship
hidden
in the crown of the Statue of Liberty.
The words they spoke
slithering down
layer upon layer of dark deceit.
And yet, their voices sweetened the snaking air
and reduced everything else to blur and shade.
Many in the darkness
millions of us
teemed with an illness
dreaming of heroes—
the men
still promising
more than greatness
supremacy—
a way of living in America.
A drop of honey or of venom
we drank and waited for something to drop
out of a hat
those human faces
rapacious, moldering
selling door to door
an overdose of America.
*
And then it came to pass
all this was gone.
Lady Liberty
once more
bounced back but not completely.
This heavy, heavy head
sad
under its own misgiving
bent to the earth
spent
on the thick satin quilt of America.
Cento Sources: Theodore Weiss, Teri Ellen Cross Davis, W. D. Snodgrass, James Clerk Maxwell, Edward Thomas, Claribel Alegria, Liz Rosenberg, John Beer, Paisley Rekdal, Sophocles, Randall Jarrell, Javier Zamora, Keith Waldrop, Giannina Braschi, Connie Deanovich, Eileen Myles, Judith Askew, Patricia Spears Jones, Raymond McDaniel, Thomas McGrath, Alice Notley, Emily Carney, James Wright, B. H. Fairchild, Alexander Laing, Wanda Coleman, Edward Arlington Robinson, Philip Whalen, Elizabeth Alexander, Mark Conway, Cathy Song, Susan Stewart, William Archila, Tom Chandler, Arden Lavine, Jenny Bornholdt, Richard Aldington, Tato Laviera, Mason A. Freeman, Jr., Tina Cane, Christian Wiman, Allen Ginsberg, Blas Manuel de Luna, Mark Doty, Tony Hoagland.
The Little Deaths We Lived
1
After voting from sea to oil-slicked sea
this country
was a distracted vigil.
The evidence was everywhere—
President Emeritus
assailed the public with lies
plundered
America
just for aggravation.
As he grasped with bloody clutches—
Come on. Nothing. Can. Stop me. Now. Ohhh ahhh—
anger sublimated into a mask
the grim mask
of the protesting vacuum.
2
We have a heartache,
America.
We thought we were
a mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
whispers
Come, Pioneer.
But this is ambiguous
now—
no one answers, no one comes.
Cento Sources: W. S. Di Piero, Fred D’Aguiar, Julia Mishkin, Paul Killebrew, Juan Delgado, Josephine Ollitt, Thomas Merton, Fabio Pusterla, Walt Whitman, Charles Reznikoff, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Patti Smith, Mark Rudman, Sean O Coileain, David Lunde, Joy Harjo, Allen Ginsberg, Lenelle Moise, Emma Lazarus, Fay Dillof, Leah Umansky, Sandy Florian, Harriet Monroe, Gjertrud Schnackenberg.
—Submitted on 02/01/2021
Patrice Boyer Claeys is the author of The Machinery of Grace (Kelsay Books, 2020), Lovely Daughter of the Shattering (Kelsay Books, 2019), and in collaboration with photographer Gail Goepfert, Honey from the Sun, (Blurb, 2020). Her work has appeared in The Night Heron Barks, little somethings press, *82 Review, Burningword, Inflectionist Review, and other journals. Online at patriceboyerclaeys.com.
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Editor’s Note: The series title A River Sings is borrowed from “On the Pulse of Morning,” the poem read by Maya Angelou at the inauguration of Bill Clinton in 1993.
