John Poch
The Work, the Opera
Here’s to me world, I swear
past four o’clock and then some
from the open window.
I almost sing to my singing,
but then one can be too tender.
Still, opera exists!
I’m going to be reckless
with my clothes as if I owned
my own low-lit runway
and a postmodern photographer
to boot and yet be civilized
and use the hamper.
Come the other tomorrow again,
even bolder, I might just fling open
the old shutters, and by old
I mean worthy of their cracked paint
and rusting hinges dangerous
and flaking out onto real Romans
below. For now, the moss-encrusted
roof tiles go on for miles
and the women opening their shops
this afternoon fling the yoyos
of their voices while they sweep
awake the poignant doorways.
The children passing speak
to prove that candy can talk,
and then they fade around
a corner like lesser saints
in a painting into a form,
a chiasmus, perhaps,
or a shadow of the cross.
The marble stoops don’t care
for poetry. They don’t yearn for us
like gravity or young girls
in skirts looking for trouble
or wait like curtains for wind.
They merely rest on other marble
on other layers of it hauled
by slaves and dull donkeys
before an obelisk some royal
someone dug up and treasured
the inscription no one could read
and would erect amid a plaza
or marble for others to speculate on.
I speculate I’ll drink a cocktail
with my friend here in an hour,
something we have named
Beatrice in Red which beat out
Lost in the Woods, Mistaken.
Imagine Dante laying out
his clothes for the evening
with some expectation
of her gaze which has a voice
and sings an aria to the marble.
John Poch lives in Lubbock, Texas, where he teaches poetry and literature at Texas Tech University. His most recent book, Fix Quiet, won the 2014 New Criterion Poetry Prize.
Return to January 2017 Edition
Here’s to me world, I swear
past four o’clock and then some
from the open window.
I almost sing to my singing,
but then one can be too tender.
Still, opera exists!
I’m going to be reckless
with my clothes as if I owned
my own low-lit runway
and a postmodern photographer
to boot and yet be civilized
and use the hamper.
Come the other tomorrow again,
even bolder, I might just fling open
the old shutters, and by old
I mean worthy of their cracked paint
and rusting hinges dangerous
and flaking out onto real Romans
below. For now, the moss-encrusted
roof tiles go on for miles
and the women opening their shops
this afternoon fling the yoyos
of their voices while they sweep
awake the poignant doorways.
The children passing speak
to prove that candy can talk,
and then they fade around
a corner like lesser saints
in a painting into a form,
a chiasmus, perhaps,
or a shadow of the cross.
The marble stoops don’t care
for poetry. They don’t yearn for us
like gravity or young girls
in skirts looking for trouble
or wait like curtains for wind.
They merely rest on other marble
on other layers of it hauled
by slaves and dull donkeys
before an obelisk some royal
someone dug up and treasured
the inscription no one could read
and would erect amid a plaza
or marble for others to speculate on.
I speculate I’ll drink a cocktail
with my friend here in an hour,
something we have named
Beatrice in Red which beat out
Lost in the Woods, Mistaken.
Imagine Dante laying out
his clothes for the evening
with some expectation
of her gaze which has a voice
and sings an aria to the marble.
John Poch lives in Lubbock, Texas, where he teaches poetry and literature at Texas Tech University. His most recent book, Fix Quiet, won the 2014 New Criterion Poetry Prize.
Return to January 2017 Edition