31 May 2007

Notice to subscribers.......

I don't know why, exactly, but feedburner recently (twice) sent out a poem from last year. I'm not sure, quite, why this is.....but I do apologise.

Also.....for those of you who are Westchester residents.....check out the current issue of The Westchester Guardian (page 17). It's prose, not poetry, but I have (huzza!!!) half a page. Unlike the Times, they didn't edit me a bit!!

all best,

MaryAnn

McCarra--Poetry

Chamber Music

cutting clover in wide swathes, the
machine sputters and chokes, sighs and rests beneath the sun

how much better for the cows to
eat it, my blue-eyed boy, your
limbs mirroring mine as we walk along.....

four chambers, there are, four, and
each a room and place and time
unto itself entirely, the clock stopped
still in some, the ringing of the
hours halted, replaced by breaths, the
whispers marking time long since spent

each with their own inhabitants, these
boarders, pale chimera of what once was,
brought to life in an instant with a word,
a taste, a scrap of song the meat and
bread and wine to nourish the blood

a little longer
a little longer

the evening chorus in the green, in the green,
sun glistering down........
the blue darkens to dark, dark, the
sweetest song is a nightsong, the
dearest words those remembered.

15 May 2007

The Vig Has Come Due........

and with it the ringing of the
telephone, echoing within this cave
of plaster and paint, the moldings
straightedged to the corners

ringringringringringring
ringringringringringringring......stop and silence

hangs heavy in the room, burgeoning down upon
these stooped shoulders, it drips, like treacle,
to the floorboards, a mess, a mess again--
clean it up with rotten rags and white vinegar

in the land of cornflakes the queen of the
weiner (red hots, get your red hots, red hots here....
see them pan-sizzled, black with bacon drippings)
tap dances across the kitchen floor,
each tap a morse code, no more, no more, no more

she cannot frame the words ego te absolvo,
pax tecum, go and sin no more: the
damage is done---it growls from her
stomach like a bear chained and baited,
the wee ones in short pants pummelling the
floor, fast as heartbeats, soles worn tissue thin,
blissful in their baby ignorance

the answer is yet unanswered, yet it shall
come, come, come, sure as Christmastide,
plain as the face of the full moon,
written out in the pages of the Daily
News, the public, the private, the
lawyers letters---all must add up to
something, surely---the tottering figures,
that tower of babel
these debits and credits on creased
papers, the ant-like ink an insult
to good sense, but still, and always,
nil desperandum