georgic; the transfiguration; state of the union

By: Steve Barichko

georgic

i begin as a giant priest

swinging smokeboxes among rows of temples

the combs are for cutting out for dripping into mouths

the drones don’t mind the queen wingless and asleep

her head daubbed in blue she is year zero

fewer things than i think are ruby breasted

mostly birds stilling themselves in the nearby brush

eating the soldiers on patrol in one mouthful

the sound of my twenty two lifts them from their perches

some flush and circle back as though tethered

what coward shoots a wood duck in the back as it drops

wings out to its mate’s lower perch in the trees

i follow its chest swelling and thumping in a leaf pile

make out eyes that have been watching me approach

with a look of betrayal i thought only people had

next hunting trip i turn the gun on myself and fire

in eagerness to prove i am not afraid

and that having deduced my omen fate will not take me

right then anyway but i had palmed the round

i am that sort of coward

banished to the exhaustion of older girls

repetitions and ratios of campfire apple pie

the one who slips the pans onto the embers has red knuckles

tells me smart runaways wait until summer

they pack watermelon and fried chicken and nothing else

i say to no one teach me the trick to slipping past

small-town cops and rows of trees all stapled no trespassing

the answer came when a stray collared one-eyed dog

kept pace with me for twelve miles even after i slipped him free

it had been days since i called anything by a name

the transfiguration

i am a plus one at a wedding in santa fe when i look at the familiar ditch

of her spine she sends me up to our room i check my horoscope i am still moored

to nostalgia for lost futures i could be a suzerain if i learned to be my own other half

so i take and eat both tamales saved in the mini fridge grab the complimentary book

of vagina poppies and check my bank account before going out for mezcal

three drinks under the big moon the mesa has invaded my new england sensibility

thumbing through high gloss repros i am ready to offer cut poppies to my feminine half

stem first down my throat like copulation

like a bleached longhorn skull every orifice a vase

state of the union

they’re rebooting

old sitcoms

boy bands

have reunited

after fifty years

they’re exhuming neruda

maybe

he really was poisoned

everyone is texting

an ex or two

reading hometown obituaries

buying crayons

and coloring books

making too much

sourdough bread

masturbation

still ok

columbus decapitated

in waterfront park

jefferson davis

noosed face up

on monument avenue

seven cops

beat a black grubhub delivery man

on a bicycle

police chief at press conference

and i quote

despite

what cutting edge

phrenology

tells us

the race kidnapped

oppressed

for four hundred years

has been aware of it

this whole time

so manhattan

white flight

met opera bankrupt

the magic flute

orpheus

all sorts of good heartbreak

lost

on bad perfume

summer homes

nyt arts section

othello

still white

stream him at home

dean and deluca

will overnight

a cheeseplate

sorry still

no haircuts

wear a mask

jogging

with your dog

fourth of july

cancelled

god cancelled

groups of seven

or more

flirting

at a night bonfire

hazy

humid and windless

everyone

four beers in

cancelled

shoot bottle rockets

into trees

alone

where did you get

professional stuff

the size of cantaloupes

rough and rowdy ways

unstoppable

james taylor aged out

took only one year

seventy two

hair white

nearly gone voice shaky weak

unsure eyes welled up with

happiness of dementia

he knows

the crowd is there for him

doesn’t know why

beyond decay is the ear

for counterpoint

harpsichord fingers

still there

beyond decay age seventy nine

what the hell are you

bob dylan

at the tulsa rally

they like their punchlines

without jokes

do mattis

do fauci

fuck windmills

we’re hiring the karate kid

to fight kung flu

don’t say their names

if they could talk

they could breathe

air force one

is thirty years old

time for an upgrade

they want to defund

the military

but our new bullet casings

will sprout

kentucky bluegrass

when they hit

the ground

---

Steve Barichko loves eating food cold and was the voice of Jafar in Aladdin II. His work has most recently appeared in FeedLit Magazine. He is a 2020 Pushcart Prize nominee. Find him on Twitter and Insta @stevebarichko.

Interview with the Poet:

Cathexis Northwest Press:

How long have you been writing poetry?

Steve Barichko:

Since about 2005.

CNP:

Can you remember the first poem you read that made you fall in love with poetry?

SB:

I can’t. But I know that Latin American and Spanish poetry was what hooked me first, so probably something by Pablo Neruda. Something from his 100 Love Sonnets. Or Lorca--that one that goes “the light of understanding has made me more discreet.”

CNP:

Who are your favorite poets? Any specific poems?

SB:

Jim Harrison has everybody beat. His poem “Barking” is probably my favorite poem. He is probably the best ghazal writer in the English language. That book of ghazals of his that’s out of print--you see it on Amazon for like two hundred bucks. Captivating book. I dropped a chunk of money to have that one. Anne Carson is another favorite. No one is doing what she’s doing. She says that good art finds a new way to make the mind move. Her whole book Plainwater. Or Red Doc.

CNP:

Can you share for us a little bit about your writing process? Any specific rituals that get you in the zone?

SB:

My process is very chaotic and probably unhealthy, because I’m never not in the zone. I dont have trouble getting in. I have trouble getting out. I spend the whole day running images, lines, and words through my head just twisting and turning them over and over. It never stops. I have to have things that help me disconnect or turn it off. Reminds me of how Miles Davis said the music in his head never stops.

So I have a notebook that goes with me everywhere and that contains everything. Whole and half lines, chunks of finished stuff, headlines from New York Times articles that I like. Names of paintings. Tweets--Twitter has some great unintentional poetry in it. Words I like. It’s all in there. Free writing. Stuff that just goes nowhere. And all of that among pages of the poem I’m actually working on at the time.

CNP:

How do you decide the form for your poems? Do you start writing with a form in mind, or do you let the poem tell you what it will look like as you go?

SB:

I want to be a form poet very badly. But I suck at it. I love the idea of ghazals but I’ve only written one or two that don’t feel forced. I love forms like pantoums and sestinas and all that. I love how they operate. But everytime I do them, you can see the seams showing. It’s forced and poorly made. I haven’t figured out the trick to it yet and maybe I won’t.

In the more general sense of how something looks, the poem absolutely dictates what it’s going to look like. I don’t know how it works but if you’re paying attention, you can feel how it should go. Double spaced lines, long lines or really short ones, couplets. I do all those and it’s never on purpose. It’s never something I set out to do. It just feels right.

CNP:

Any advice for poets who have yet to find their voice?

SB:

Read a lot. And not just poetry. I learned more about poetry from my short fiction class at a magnet school in New Haven than the poetry class they offered there. It was taught by a Hemingway scholar, and reading those short stories gave me my ear for language in my poetry. I was raised in a Fundamentalist Christian household and absolutely carry biblical cadence with me. So you don’t need to read poetry to find your voice or your ear for what works. You just need to absorb everything that comes to you and you cobble together what you like.

The other piece of advice is much shorter and I’m real proud of this one because I like to think I invented it. I have absolutely learned over the years that what separates really serious poets from amateur ones is ruthlessness and the ability to accept that you’ll never get it right the first time. A great writer writes 11 pages, throws away the first 10, and publishes the last one. A bad writer publishes all 11.

CNP:

What is your editing process like?

SB:

I’m a compulsive rewriter and reviser as I go. Rarely is anything ever finished in one cohesive first draft. I have tried to work other ways and I just can’t. Open my notebook and you’ll find a poem written and rewritten, spanning pages and pages. Always to the part I get stuck on or don’t like, and then you’ll see it rewritten to that part over and over with a whole bunch of shit all around it or things changed as I’m trying to get it right. There’s whole pages of just one line I’m working on being written and rewritten. That’s just how it goes. If I get really fed up I’ll shelve the poem and come back to it, or I’ll figure out how to get myself over that hurdle and move on to the rest of it if I have more ideas. The rewrites get cleaner and cleaner as the pages go on and eventually I’ll have a workable full version, which, if I’m lucky, I’ll just tinker with a little bit here and there, rewrite a couple more times whole, and it’ll be done.

CNP:

When do you know that a poem is finished?

SB:

When you have a solid draft you can write and rewrite in your sleep practically and get to the point where you’re just spinning your wheels and tinkering around and none of what you do seems to be bettering the work. Leave it for a day, come back and read it, and you’ll usually find that it has been trying to tell you it’s done. You can always tinker but that doesn’t mean you should.

But also, you sort of never do know. Some never feel done even when they’re done. Maybe that’s because good poems open a door and let you walk in instead of presenting you with a brick wall. Some you just have to choose to let go.