Pulling the Plug on Granny

From The Tots' Apocalypse

PULLING THE PLUG ON GRANNY

by Brett Rutherford

Grandma is in and out of it.

I come after school each day
to sit with her. Much as I
hate the smell of dying,
I know what I’m about

(and being only ten, they
pay no mind to my whispers
in granny’s ear,
and her whispers back). 

One  knob, we have found,
brings granny up
and almost herself;
another is lights out
and nurses come in
to clear the room.

All three of my Aunties
have found and copied
her original will.

On Monday Aunt Irma came
and guided Granny’s hand
to sign an amended version.

On Tuesday Aunt Thelma came
and guided Granny’s hand
to sign an even-more-amended version.

On Wednesday, Aunt Lena came
and guided Granny’s hand
to sign a thrice-amended version.

“There,” she called out
to one and all. “Now let her rest.”

Knob up, knob down.

I might be adopted,
or illegit-whatever,
but Granny and I
have something special.

I bring a brand-new will.

Knob up, and Granny signs it.

Knob down, lights out,
but not before she tells me, 

We’re done now, deary.
Just pull the plug.

 

Substitute Teacher Falls Down the Stairs

 From The Tots’ Apocalypse

SUBSTITUTE TEACHER FALLS DOWN THE STAIRS

by Brett Rutherford

Four trains she took
from Greenwich Village
through the burned-out slums
to a South Bronx public school.

She needed the work.
She really didn’t mind
for once she was in that classroom
to talk about writers and poems,
there was nearly always one pair
of bright eyes, at tears’ edge
to hear someone read to them
and tell them they had a voice
inside them, waiting to come out.

She really didn’t mind,
despite the leg brace
from childhood polio
that made each step forward
a danger-dance
with the last step ever.

Once, in mid-day,
when she had to the stair-up
star-down to the bathroom,
a strong hand pushed her,
and clatter-clack down
she tumbled, ten, twenty steps
before she caught herself.

Faces above leered down,
and laughter chittered.
She left, on account of
“Someone pushed me.”
Nothing was done,
on account of
“Cripples are always falling down.” 

No writers or poetry that day,
that week, or maybe ever.
The boys had found
a boiler-room hideout
where they smoked joints,
eyed packets
of suspicious powders
they were asked to sell,
and made up tales
of what they would do to girls
once someone let them.
In possession of fists
they needed nothing
from a book’s white pages.

No one would clatter-clack them
down any stairwell, ever.

 

What Happened to Nanny?

From The Tots' Apocalypse

WHAT HAPPENED TO NANNY? 

by Brett Rutherford

Nanny says “Dios!” a lot
and draws a little cross
in front of herself

She likes to play games,
even with grown-ups.
Just yesterday, a van
came up to the church,
and then another,
and another.

It must have been a game.
They all wore masks.
Nanny yelled “Dios!”
over and over.

In the game they played
they put a hood on her,
and then they took her away.

What funny games! 
Will she come back
with presents?

 

 

Get in the Nice Man's Van

FROM THE TOTS’ APOCALYPSE:

GET IN THE NICE MAN’S VAN

by Brett Rutherford

See the blue van
behind the playground?
Nice van. It smells
like cinnamon and candy.

If you like toys,
and candy bars
(the big ones!)
and some days even
an energy drink,

a hand comes out
from the cool dark
inside the van,
eyes and a smile

“I’m Jeffrey.
Here, have a sample.”

Three days you come back
and there’s always more.
You even go inside
for a free comic book.
He wants to know
your favorite,
for next time. 

He asks, “Do you have
a sister, maybe?
Is she pretty?
Next time, bring her.”

Get in the nice man’s van.
It’s really cool in there,
and there’s a box
from which you can take
whatever you want.

He tells you stories
about running away.
Lots of kids do it,
especially the ones
where someone at home
is always hitting them. 

So, get in the nice man’s van.
Rescue your sister, too.
Candy and comics,
and you might get to go
to an island. 

Child Patriots

 FROM THE TOTS’ APOCALYPSE

CHILD PATRIOTS

by Brett Rutherford

The Imam sends
the children of the poor
on a patriotic mission. 

DANGER! LAND MINES!
What does the “X” mean?
A thing we’re not allowed,
of course, is the thing to do! 

Let’s go explore.
Oh, look, a field!
Maybe a cow
will be there to see.
Maybe an apple
will fall from that tree.

 Skip rope, play ball.
Jump up and down!
No, over there!
Johnny found something
metallic. Let’s go and see.
Jump up and down
to shake it free!

The Imam writes a poem
about how boys become
red flowers blossoming.

 

 

Trance Editing

TRANCE EDITING 

Two solid days
I thrived on tea and tofu
trance editing the pale pages
in spiderweb lettering,

the notebooks of Barbara Holland,
three decades buried
in a Philadelphia basement<
from yellowed pages,
her blocks of script
pained out despite the strokes
that had filled her readings
with more pauses than words.

More than a hundred
“almost poems”
are here before me.

Some need only
to be unfurled,
re-breathed, parsed out
into the short-lined
stanzas she favored.

Others abruptly break,
or offer words not known
in any human language,

or end in a way
that I can almost hear
the words that ought
to follow on. Dare I?

I trust the Muse
we both adored, the one
who comes at midnight
and through whom
we felt written through.
Such words are not work
any more than breathing
is a forced labor. Just let
them happen, and trust
that all will go well.

Some of these fragments
are glorious, like
Elgin marbles; some
are mere ideas, an elbow
in my ribs to spur me on;
some sputter out. 

Near the last page
of the last wire-bound
notebook, the light
of dawn illuminates
three hairs
the binding caught
as the poet turned
the pages over.

They stand on end,
three brown, one gray.
What zephyr breeze,
or what electron tension
keeps them aloft,
cat-whiskered,
I do not know. 

My work is done.
Will I be thanked,
or blamed? Who knows?

 

Request for a License to Kill (Satire)

 The following is a satirical poem. Do not send officers to my house!

REQUEST FOR A LICENSE TO KILL

by Brett Rutherford

To whom it may concern:
If you are fool enough
to sell me a long-gun
and bullets, be warned.
I have a list, and on a day
ordained by lack of tea
and one too many migraines,
I just might, I just might.

My hypothetical kill-list includes:
Owners of car alarms that will not stop.
Yappy little dogs, on sight.
Dowagers drenched in rose water
who spoil my opera experience.
Ash-spewing pretzel vendors.
Young men who smoke cigars in public.
Hip hoppers with their stupid rhymes.
The beggar who told me
“You have stolen wealth
      in your pockets.”
Anyone with a law degree.
Anyone walking a pit bull
     (unless it is biting a lawyer).
The unseen passengers of stretch limos.
Mimes, clowns, and poodles.
Any baby carriage
that emits a howling noise.

Oh, and for good measure:
Anyone else
who asks for a license to kill.

The Flatiron Medusa

 

by Brett Rutherford

     In memory of Barbara A. Holland

If Athena had Medusa’s head
adorning her shield, what then
served as the Gorgon’s aegis?

Lo! on the flat-face Flatiron
façade, the sculpted visage
of each of the snake-locked
sisterhood, now terra-cotta
petrified, sits in a cameo
frame, a necklace of birds.

First glance, they seem
the overlap of leaf, acanthus,
but no! I say they are wings,
pigeon and dove and crow,
grackle and sparrow and tanager,
their pinions petrified
as they were caught in flight
by the Gorgon’s penetrating eye,

and here arranged
in orderly geometry, wing
overlapping wing, no feather frayed.

Clouds drift across
Medusa’s vacant eye.
Euryale, her sister, sleeps.
The stare of unforgiving
Stheno no longer mortifies.
Their serpent turbans
may frighten owls; no mouse
dare crawl upon the cornice.

Pedestrians, still buffeted
by vectors of wind
colliding at Fifth and Broadway
are too wind-tunneled there
to crane an angled glance
at the scowling trio.
Who hears
the faint hiss of serpents
when steam erupts
from beneath the pavement?

Rays from their eyes
bounce harmlessly off
the billboard demigods
posing in their underwear,
the unmanned dirigible,
the thousand glass panes
that only reflect back
their paralyzing gaze.

Bats flit
across Medusa’s cornea.
A bead of ice
obscures her iris.
A claw, tentative, seeks out
a pigeon nest
bestride her serpents.

If these three cry out
amid the tumult of traffic,
no one will hear.
If these three weep,
the acid rain
will cancel tears.

At the Ruined Monastery

 

by Brett Rutherford

     After a painting by Kaspar David Friedrich

Hell’s eye, the whole horizon,
stares back at me,
an ovoid glow,
a foggy cataract.

Demons regard me
through gnarled elms
November has stripped
into a warlike barricade
fit only for crows and hawks.

Of that proud monkish pile
one arch alone remains.
Glass shards adorn the ground
(work of the King’s men
to abolish all Popish pride)
leaving intact a skeletal
lead lattice-work,
a perfect tracery
of Goth geometry.

Do the dead beyond
train telescopes
upon the hooded pilgrims
who come in adoration
of the Sublime in ruins?

They search in vain
for a crucifix aloft
or even a trinket
of saintly yore.

Here in this misty clime
that only tourists visit now,
no word of Latin sounds.

One muffled bell I hear,
a groan, a sigh — but not
from this side. Only the dead
would have the monks return,
and only those already dead
require a bead or candle.

Most who come now,
in cowled mockery
of the sainted past
are tourists. The arch,
the trees, the eye of Hell
are background for self-
portraiture.

The dead watch.
The living mill about,
take selfies.
“A shame the English
let things go this way,”
one says. Another, to me:
“This ought to be a poem,
you know, about us
being here.”

Hell shrugs. Sky’s eye
bursts out in sunny rays.
The spell is broken.

The Night the Maenads Killed Orpheus

 

Finding the head of Orpheus. Painting by Gustave Moreau.

The wild women who worshiped Dionysius on hilltops, in rites forbidden to men, after the excesses of their ritual and drug consumption, would rage down from the mountaintop, ripping up trees and foliage, tearing wildlife from limb to limb, and demanding sexual favors from any hapless male they encountered. Their cry of Evoe! Evoe! evoked the primal dread of serpents, and the raw power of uncontrolled lust. Orpheus, the legendary poet-king who had gone to Hades in an attempt to bring back his dead wife Eurydice, spent his latter years in a state of madness, and was said to have pursued only the love of young men until the dreadful night he encountered the Maenads.

THE NIGHT THE MAENADS KILLED ORPHEUS

by Brett Rutherford

     While Maenads cry Evoe, Evoe!
     That voice that is contagion to the world
          — Shelley, Prometheus Unbound

Who does he think he is,
this Orpheus? What brought
him, anyway, to be
in the very woods, at night,
through which we rage
in Dionysian revels?

He was asking for it.
Pale, in his thin robe
at risk of a night-chill,
strumming his lyre
to moon and owl,

did he not see
our hilltop circle
all lit in flames.
Was he not warned away
by the shrieking
of Evoe! Evoe!?

Who does he think he is
when we come raging down?
We tear up trees
with the strength of Titans.
Who dares, on seeing us
naked, refuse to pleasure us?

We tear him limb from limb.
Flesh parts so easily.
Bones are nothing
when Maenads rend them.

Here’s one white hand
to press to my bosom —

I have the other, the one
whose callus’d fingers
plucked melodies
at Hades’ gateway,
ah, play me now! —

I have the head,
that tousled hair
in  raven locks,
that mouth, oh kiss
it sisters, pass it round<
till it grows cold
and its lips are bitten bloody! —

I have the best part!
I ride, sisters, I ride! —

Oh share, do share!
There is enough for three! —

Who did he think he was?
And why was he here,
mouthing his half-formed
soliloquies, mourning, perhaps,
his long-lamented wife,
or making an epigram
about some boy he met
in the marketplace? —

who but an animal
among us animals,
a twitching thing
good only for mating
when the god commands?

When, in the morning,
the horrified villagers
discover the ruins
of shattered oak trees,
a disemboweled boar,
the antlered head
of a downed deer,

they might guess whose
were the severed hands,
whose torso, gored,
shows an unbeating heart,
whose sandaled feet
were tossed to treetop

but they will not be certain,
for the head was never found.

That beauteous visage
was set afloat, upon
the wood-framed lyre,
upon a brook, whose flow
goes on to river and sea,
the head from its corpse
forever parted.

Strum, lyre,
sing on, o blackened tongue,
a serenade to sea-nymphs
in the direst of Dionysian
refrains: Evoe! Ah, Evoe!