May 1: Balloons, Molly Peacock, "My Vast Presumption"

As we drove up to Howell High School this evening for the dance competition, there were balloonists getting ready to take flight.  The baskets were still anchored to the ground, but it was apparent that they were about to climb into the atmosphere.  They were billowing striped reminders that summer is just around the corner.

I am not too adventurous.  I don't think I would voluntarily go ballooning.  If the opportunity ever presented itself, I would need medication and alcohol to take advantage of it.  But I can certainly admire the spectacle of other people taking to the heavens.

Saint Marty prefers to be a little more grounded than that.

My Vast Presumption

by:  Molly Peacock

The balloon ride was his birthday present
three years ago.  He never cashed the ticket,
I know, because periodically I'm sent
reminders in the mail.  "I didn't take it,
not yet," he said for nearly a year.  We don't
bring it up any more.  I thought I'd try
a rescue, thought I should--the mire he was in,
his father, his job.  Since we were kids, a lie
was a sin, still is.  He's my favorite cousin.
I'd love to see him way up in the air
billowed over the farms below, the red stripes
teetering from cloud to cloud, from when to where,
far away from bleak here.  "I'm not the type,"
he finally said from his own balloon,
never waving, since never leaving home,
the faintly hysterical first good-bye,
"See you again, soon!"

Up, up, and away

April 29: Grading All Weekend, Molly Peacock, "The Fare"

I have been, once again, grading all day.  I will be grading all weekend, as well.  Poetry portfolios.  Book reviews.  I'm just hoping to carve out a little time for pleasure.  A steak dinner.  A little shopping.  Some pleasure reading.

Speaking of pleasure reading, how about another poem by the Poet of the Week?

Saint Marty needs a poetic pick-me-up.

The Fare

by:  Molly Peacock

Bury me in my pink pantsuit you said--and I did.
But I'd never dressed you before!  I saw the glint
of gold in your jewelry drawer and popped
the earrings in a plastic bag along with pearls,
a pink-and-gold pin, and your perfume.  (What's this?"
the mortician said . . . "Oh well, we'll spray some on.")
Now your words from the coffin:  "Take my earrings off!
I've had them on all day, for God's sake!"
You've had them on five days.  The lid's closed,
and the sharp stab of a femininity
you couldn't stand for more than two hours in life
is eternal--you'll never relax.  I'm four hundred miles away.
Should I call up the funeral home and have them removed?
You're not buried yet--stored till the ground thaws--
where, I didn't ask.  Probably the mortician's garage.
I should have buried you in slippers and a bathrobe.
Instead, I gave them your shoes.  Oh, please
do it for me.  I can't stand the thought of you
pained by vanity forever.  Reach your cold hand
up to your ear and pull and hear the click
of the clasp hinge unclasping, then reach
across your face and get the other one
and--this effort could take you days, I know,
since you're dead.  Let it be your last effort:
to change my mistake and be dead in comfort.
Lower your hands in their places
on your low mound of stomach and rest, rest,
You can let go of the earrings.  They'll fall
to the bottom of the casket like tokens,
return fare fallen to the pit
of a coat's satin pocket.

Haven't failed anybody yet this semester

April 28: Lawns, Molly Peacock, "Cutting Tall Grass"

I dislike my lawn.  If I could afford to cement my front and back yards and paint them green, I would.  That way, all I would have to do to clean my lawn is drag out the hose and wash it down.  I do nothing to cultivate lush grass.  Yet, for some reason, my lawn always seems to thrive.  And it pisses me off.

I have killed much vegetation in my life.  The pumpkin patch I planted one year yielded only one, cherry-tomato-sized squash.  Last summer, I over-watered several ferns at my friend's house and turned them into tumbleweeds.  Easter lilies might as well stay in the tomb under my watch, and poinsettias never see Santa Claus.

No part of Saint Marty's anatomy is green.

Cutting Tall Grass

by:  Molly Peacock

I love the sound of lawnmowers each year.
There's a woman in her workpants smelling of
gasoline and cut grass, wiping a smear
of grease on her head while blotting a swelling of
sweat from her head under her plastic visor.
I'm not sure whether she loves that machine.
Short grass is none the wiser for the razor,
so the love of mowing it is love of sheen.
But one must love the vehicle, the sun,
the bugs thrown up behind and the swallows
snatching bugs at the wheels to love a lawn,
the old grass spewn in the bleak shadows,
the new grass smelling of wet and slight rot,
to love to live between what is and is not.

My idea of a healthy lawn

April 27: Poet of the Week, Molly Peacock, "Simple"

Well, it's Monday.  Time for me to bestow upon another lucky poet the title of Saint Marty's Poet of the Week.

I was paging through a book by Molly Peacock the other night, and I came across a poem that reminded me why I love her so much.  I remember the first time I read the poem below.  It kind of opened my eyes to the possibilities of poetry about spiritual or sacred subjects.  How the best poems push the boundaries of acceptability and end up in a completely holy place.

I want to write a poem like Molly Peacock's "Simple" one day.  It may take me a lifetime, but I'm willing to wait.

Saint Marty is a patient guy.

Simple

by:  Molly Peacock

When the wafer dissolves on my tongue I won-
der what part of the Lord I have eaten,
His scrotum molecularly recon-
structed in a pale disc, or a wheaten
flap of armpit?  Perhaps internal organs
vaporized to universal atoms
from the thorax of our Lord.  Others had plans
to preserve the saints in bits, the phantom
of Anthony's larynx in a ruby vase,
Agatha's breasts in cold caskets, the flesh
reserved.  I only eat our Lord and mas-
ticate the host, the church a creche,
and I in my stall not even knowing how
to blow glass housing for a saint or wield
a hammer with my hoof, unable to bow
or scoop breasts into a box.  The world
transubstantiates me to animal
evolving in reverse:  soon I could be a lizard
on the wall of the manger, in time once-celled,
perhaps a single cell of the baby Lord,
perhaps His tongue, so what I chew a symbol
I might at last become:  simple.

A simple poem