The Consultation

by Brett Rutherford

Miss Schreckengost,
the principal, my parents,
and my small self
stand in the third grade
classroom. What trouble
am I in this time? Did
the comics I draw
and circulate among
the tittering students
offend someone?

“We called you here,”
the principal says,
bass voice held down
to an unfamiliar whisper,
“to talk about your son.
He's too young to take
an IQ test, but he,
I assure you, is way
beyond our teaching.

“He could skip two grades,”
Miss Schreckengost says.

“Or even three,”
the principal asserts.
“He really belongs
in a private school,
a place for young geniuses.”

My parents say nothing.
Then “Private school ...
you have to pay for that.”

“Yes. But for the best.
We don't know what
to do for him, except
to let him roam the stacks
of the town library
and read what he wants.
Do you have books at home?”

“Not really.”

Sliding to save the day,
the principal back-tracks.
“Well, it is said
that jumping ahead
can interfere
with any child's normal
development.”

“Oh, we wouldn't want
that. He should be normal.
Normal is best, isn't it?”

“Very well, then,”
the principal sighs.
“But while you're here
there's one more thing.
We had to move your son
to the third row, right here,
since he can no longer see
the blackboard. Glasses,
eyeglasses he needs.
You must attend to this,
and right away.”

Another silence.
My father assents and asks
the name of an eye doctor.
My mother just says,
“Glasses. My god,
he has to wear glasses.
Going around
with glasses.
I'm so ashamed.”

I stood,
the object talked about
praised and condemned
in short order.

No one asked me
what I thought
or what I wanted.

As we walked home,
beneath my breath, I said —
“The slings and arrows
of outrageous fortune.”

Autumn in Alexandria

by Brett Rutherford

There is one who waits for me,
sheltered from wind and wave
behind a Corinthian column.
The priests have gone,
the lamps have died:
all fled the thunderstorm in fear.
Across the way, librarians
have shuttered knowledge up
against the idiot howling
of intemperate weather.
Every dog is in a ditch
while untethered cats
cling to the upper limbs
of the pliant willows.
Nobody has any business
out of doors; nobody,
that is, except the one who waits.

I watch, snug and safe,
from my high window.
He seems to have lashed himself
to that pillar of solid stone.
Marble will not bend or sway,
and in its leeward shade
his cloak hangs limp; he leans
as though he had nothing to do
but to await my arrival.
(I dare not go. Bruises and breaks
at my age are dangerous.)

Storm without name,
three hours now
the rain has been horizontal,
the roar of wind a long,
monotonous engine.
I, who am of tempests
tossed often enough,
feel a kinship with thunder
and its maker. One thing
alone I ask of you:

Lift up that column,
that patient loiterer,
and the stone he stands upon,
into some calm place
above the cloudy rage.
In stillness keep him safe
until your blow and bluster
recede to nothing,
until the floods flood back
and storm drains regain
their proper direction,
until the cats regain
their dry-fur dignity
and the dogs resume
whatever it is
dogs do of a sunny day.

Two eyes regard me
from out the thunder-head.
“You are a fool,”
the demon says.
“What makes you think
you are the one he braves
the elements to see?

Did your poems win
his favor?
Does he pass your books out
to one and all,
call you his friend and mentor,
implying more
to those who mark the pause,
and the sigh,
each time the syllables
of your exalted name
depart his lips?”

“Of this one I am sure,”
I protest. “Spare him!” —

“Shelter he took,”
the sly one assures me,
“just where he knew
you would see,
and be tormented so.

“On other nights he lurks
on the unlit stairway
behind the library,
not for you — fool! —
but for the first who comes
and extends a hand.” —

“No, he is noble. Poets
he loves above all!” —

“Two moons ago he let himself
go home with some astrologer,
and then a geometer who said
he had the most appealing angles,
and then with a captain just back
from Rome with Rhenish wine.” —

“I’ll not hear this! Gossip vile!” —

“Most of your scholar-rivals
frequent that place at night,
and most have noticed him,
and he, them. He uses your name
to make acquaintance, you know.

“Now, look, Callimachus,
there comes Lysander,
leaning against the gale
and making his way
to the sheltered columns.”

“Lysander! The worst
of the worst! A greeting-card
scribbler of maudlin verse!” —

“Look! He has reached your friend.
They converse.
A hand is extended.
A hand is taken.
One cloak covers two.
They drop out of sight.” —

“Ah, well,” the demon jeers.
“Any poet in a storm.”

Equinox, An Autumn Poem

by Brett Rutherford

The whole planet lights up.

It has a smoke.

It doesn't care

if it dies, lives

for the moment.

Peat, lumber, coal,

fracked gas and petrol,

dead leaves

and human ash

inhale and ex —

drill, baby

coughing its

sputter clouds,

smoke rings

to its last gasp,

melt-stained

with receding

glaciers, pimpled

with eruptions

of nickel-dime

volcanos;

killing its pets,

and setting fire

to its parent forests,

it is an addict,

indifferent;

its breath reeks,

the doom of carbon

exhuming itself

from the fossil record.

Is this what happens

on every Blue Planet?

Preface to "Emperor Li Yu, A Life in Poems"

by Brett Rutherford

TO THE READER

After almost two hundred years of glory and accomplishments, the great Tang Dynasty of China collapsed in 907 CE. The culture of Tang lingered on in the Southern Tang kingdom, however, ruled by three generations of the Li family. In Southern Tang, the grand traditions of art, music, poetry, and painting thrived, and Buddhism flourished.

Li Yu, the last ruler of Southern Tang, did not inherit his father’s military inclinations, and when he assumed the throne at a young age, the realm was shrinking as provinces were ripped away by rival states, the most rapacious of which was the new Song dynasty. Tributes, gifts, and hostages made the tension between Song and Southern Tang more and more fraught with peril.

A poet, dreamer, and pacifist, Li Yu was totally unsuited to rule in a time during which China was being split into “Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms.” Isolated in his palace compound, he devoted himself to writing poetry, and enjoyed not only the favors of his Empress and concubines, but also entered into a scandalous love affair with his wife’s younger sister.

Li Yu invited poets and artists from all the war-torn states to Southern Tang, where he housed them as honored guests in their own palace of the arts. More and more Buddhist temples and monasteries dotted the landscape.

The poem cycle, Emperor Li Yu, A Life in Poems, relates the tragic fate of Li Yu, his Empress, and the “other woman,” the kind of royal soap opera that fascinates because the outcome is the end of an entire nation. Only 39 poems of Li Yu survive, and every word of them has been woven into this narrative cycle. They are regarded as among the saddest and most emotional poems written in China, and they are sad because this poet, who had everything a mortal could wish for, lost everything.

Captured by the Song armies after the siege of Nanjing, Li Yu became a state prisoner, shown off and ridiculed as a former king and would-be emperor. When his new poems offended the Song Emperor, he was ordered to drink poison.

 

Under Every Bed

by Brett Rutherford

In high school years

my slave duty each night

was washing dishes.

An AM radio my only

companion, I sang

along with Beethoven.

When the plug was pulled

because Westerns prevailed

in the TV room, I sang

anyway, inventing whole

symphonies as I went.

An open window

above the steaming sink

sent my voice out,

where a thin man

full camouflaged

and ready to battle

the Communister

Atheist hordes, leaned

to listen. That year,

I fueled his worst

fantasies. First off,

I taught myself

Cyrllic and bellowed

out Russian folk-songs.

Volga Boatmen for you,

and for John Birch, too!

Kalinka, Kalinka,

and Stenka for good measure.

This drove him mad,

so that he sent his sons

to lurk beneath

my bedroom window,

listening to hear

my secret broadcasts

to Leningrad.

Comrade Krushchev,

coordinates here

for the Nike missile site,

just as you asked.

On Friday nights,

the radio was back

in my control.

The Pittsburgh station

marked shabbos

with cantor songs.

"And now,

cantor Richard Tucker

sings ..." and I,

as best I could,

in my best tenor

sang with him.

Out the window

went my mangled

mock-Hebrew,

and just below

the open window

the man in camouflage

said to his son,

"God damn, I told you.

Russians are in there,

and Jews, too!

What are we going to do?"

Things We Don't Do

 by Brett Rutherford

Go to church?
We don't do that.
No money to give;
nice clothes, never.
Father an atheist,
Mother afraid
of the taunts
of the church ladies
about her family,
the things they did
in that shack in the woods
when men came calling.

One summer they let

a church put on

some Bible classes

at the schoolhouse.

I was sent. Bright books

of Bible stories laid forth

Old Testament and New.

I asked too many

questions, mostly about

dinosaurs and other planets.

They sent me home,

asked that I not

come back again, ever.

Things we don't do

include bicycles,

new shoes, clothes

from a big store,

and Boy Scouts

because all that

took money.

I found a copy

of the Boy Scout manual.

Cover to cover I studied it,

envied the boys

those tent nights

and knot-tying skills.

Nowhere was where

we went all summer.

Once a museum

glimpsed from the car;

once or twice

a beautiful house

blurred in passing.

Ten aunts and uncles

never visited,

cousins unmet.

I did possess

a chemistry set,

with not much left

of its supplies.

In the dark cellar

I did my best

to create monsters.

At school,

it was assumed,

as I soared in reading,

that I must come

from the finest family,

that wealth surrounded

a seven-year-old

already reading

Faust and Hamlet.

It was my game

to let them think it so.

People Like That

by Brett Rutherford

Wednesday at noon
the sirens went off.

Miss Schreckengost
herded us down
to the musty cellar
where we were talked to
by the school nurse
one week, a soldier
the next, on what to do
if there was a flash,
a mushroom cloud.

Russia was far,
but over the Pole
the bombers might come.
Our Nike missiles
sat ready and armed,
but just in case,
we needed to know
to duck and cover,
take shelter, wait for
the Geiger counter
count, the all-clear
siren, the hope
that our teeth and hair
would not fall out,
that cows would yield
safe milk to drink
that did not glow.

Back in the class,
new maps arrived.
USSR in red
as big as Europe,
no, bigger.

Miss Schreckengost
sends us to
My Weekly Reader.

There are new words.
"Atheist" is one.
"Atheist," she said,
"does anyone know
what an atheist is?"

No one spoke.

"Anyone who doesn't
believe in God
is an Atheist,"
the teacher explained.

"That's me!" I thought.
I raised my hand
to proclaim it.

Behind me, a voice,
a fellow student,
muttered darkly,
"People like that
should be killed."

I lowered my hand.
Two lessons learned
that day.

Rhyme Not for the Sake of Rhyming

by Brett Rutherford

What can I say

about poems that rhyme?

Rhyme in mid-line,

or lines apart where least

expected, are fine:

they are like accidents

of digestion, a dash

of pepper. I like, too,

a final couplet, the way

Shakespeare tells us

a scene or speech

has reached its end.

A bow. Applause.

But as for rhyme

at ends of lines,

onward, onward,

plodding, plodding,

pendulum regular,

forced search

of dictionary

all too evident,

jack-hammering,

a thousand times,

no! English is not

a rhyming language.

Drunk monks

and college students

corrupted Latin

with rhyme; then from

Italian it leapt the channel

to infest like unwelcome

caterpillars. Be gone!

Not only has rhyme's

ship sailed, it floated

back, a rotting hulk,

seaweed and barnacles,

seagulls and slime,

fouling our pure waters.

For we who have lived

since Whitman,

rolled to the flow

of beat poetry,

inhaled long breaths

and the abrupt

leaps of improvisation,

rhyme is child's play,

the delight of idiots --

the glue that holds

a song together,

admittedly -- but not

what makes a poem

a poem. Free verse

is tightrope walking,

no net below.

Politics As Usual

by Brett Rutherford

From its dark cage

one bird goes forth.

An eagle waits

to swallow it.

Eater, eaten

share the same sky.

Night over all,

the earth forgets.

From its dark cage

one bird goes forth.

Hide in a tree!

Creep under leaves!

Construct a nest!

Do anything

except that climb

to high cloud-top!

Does it listen?

No. Up it flies!

Eagle takes all.

One feather falls.

Night over all,

the earth forgets.

Epigrams on Prophets and Such

by Brett Rutherford

1.

Beware the bearded men

who say they know

Everything.

2.

The headless chicken

has found the ax.

3.

Who knows more

about purity

than an unwashed monk?

4.

Who takes your tithe,

touches your ten-year-old.

5.

Two in the bush

is the root of all evil.

6.

An egg

requires no catechism.

7.

Would you teach a tree

geometry?

Literary Epigrams

 by Brett Rutherford

1.

A lonely bear

took in Jayne Eyre.

Reader, she married him.

2.

Your grandmother was eaten

by one Virginia Woolf,

and now she waits for you.

3.

Ed Poe is lonely

in Asbury Park.

His TV is dark,

nothing to see

with Snookie gone.

A crow drops by

(his only friend).

"Is she alive, or what?"

he moans, bereft.

The bird replies,

"Fuggedaboutit."

Roadside Encounter

 by Brett Rutherford

Two strangers sought

in friendly jest

to topple me.

The first I fought,

a trial hard won.

I left him staggering.

Upon me came

the second one.

Strong he, I fell.

"Well have you done

in honor's way

and strength of arms.

"Sex," then, he said,

"you must endure.

This have I earned."

At it we went.

As he was fair,

it pleasant was.

Upright again

he laughed and said,

"Home must we go,

"a round to drink

in Mother's house

not far from here."

"Her name?" I asked.

"Hela she is,

the dead her realm."

"Cold fare, dim light,

struggles by night,

grim brotherhood.

"Queen of cold wastes,

she waits for thee.

We brothers two

shall now be three."

Written While Dying

 

by Brett Rutherford

     Emperor Li Yu (937 – 978 CE)

Now I am dead.
There is no other way
to write this poem
except backwards.

Because Taizong
resented my last poems
(who would not yearn
for what he has lost?) —
because I am said to be
all things considered,
a better poet.

Because I cared less
with each day’s passing,
wife torn from me,
a weeping shell of herself,
since she was raped
by the Song Emperor.

Because I will not address
that personage correctly,
because I am now called,
not former Emperor, not King,
not as Li Congjia, the name
my father gave me,
the name to which
all people and foreigners
knelt and kow-towed,
but by an epithet:
Marquis of Wei Wing
(Lord of Edicts Disobeyed). 

Now I am dead,
because my generals came
with warlike strategy,
and I dismissed them,
preferring my evenings
in the Poets’ Pavilion,
with painters and artists
who fled to me from
every other kingdom.

Now I am dead,
because my captive brother
summoned, implored,
my travel to Song’s capital,
and I went not. Instead
I sent poems and art,
the best ambassadors
of peace and accord.

Now I am dead.
No armor did I don,
no chariot ascend
when the invaders came.
I was in the temple,
composing a poem,
surrounded by monks,
incense, and prayer wheels,
when they broke in
and seized me. Where
was the magic, then?

Now I am dead,
because wise counselors
wanted me strict, cruel
and cunning, like those
who raced to crush
our borders. Refusing,
I sent them home.
Some killed themselves
in honor’s name.
It was I who killed them!

Now I am dead,
who tried to have
one woman as wife,
and her younger sister, too.
As for the two women,
one died, and then I married
the other. Is that not honorable?
Did I not carve,
with my own hand
two thousand characters
on the Empress’s tombstone?

Those who forbade my love,
and my second marriage,
I sent home to their villages
to live until their beards
touched ground.
Now their ghosts haunt me.

Now I am dead,
because I drank a cup,
an overflowing cup
of heart-warm wine,
best of the southern
vineyards, I was told.

Because my dishonored wife
put her pale hand
upon the celadon vessel
to taste it first,
and a soldier pushed
her aside and said,

“This wine is for one,
from the Emperor’s table.
The Marquis only must drink.” 

“I am not thirsty,” I said.

“The Marquis must drink.
I must say at his table
that you have tasted it,
and in full proof of pleasure,
have drained it to the dregs.”

Now I am dead,
because the willows of home
have wept two years for me;
twice have I left unswept
the tombs of my fathers;
twice have I failed to lift
up in the dead’s honor
a flagon of chrysanthemum;
and twice has the Lunar Year
come and gone in a place
that no longer has my name.

Peace be to you, Song Emperor,
and to all peoples. I am still
King of leaves and petals, Lord
of moonlight and sudden breezes.
Who will they read
a thousand years from now?

Now I —