Spera - The standing wave: poems

THE STANDING WAVE

POEMS

GABRIEL SPERA

G ABRIEL S PERAS poems have been published in Chicago Review, Crazyhorse, DoubleTake, Epoch, Folio, The Greensboro Review, Laurel Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Missouri Review, New England Review, Ontario Review, Poetry, Prairie Schooner, and Southern Review. His work also appears in The Best American Poetry 2000 and The Poetry Anthology, 19122002. Spera grew up in New Jersey, and was educated at Cornell University and the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. He lives in Los Angeles.

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The National Poetry Series was established in 1978 to ensure the publication of five poetry books annually through participating publishers. Publication is funded by the late James A . Michener, the Copernicus Society of America, Edward J . Piszek, the Lannan Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Tiny Tiger Foundation.

2002 C OMPETITION W INNERS
Julie Kane of Natchitoches, Louisiana, Rhythm & Booze
Chosen by Maxine Kumin, published by University of Illinois Press

William Keckler of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Sanskrit of the Body
Chosen by Mary Oliver, published by Viking Penguin

Eleni Sikelianos of Boulder, Colorado, Footnotes to the Lambs
Chosen by Diane Ward, published by Green Integer

Gabriel Spera of Los Angeles, California, The Standing Wave
Chosen by Dave Smith, published by HarperCollins

Meredith Stricker of Carmel, California, Tenderness Shore
Chosen by Fred Chappell, published by Louisiana State University Press

Some of these poems first appeared in other publications as listed below:

Chicago Review:

Beach Bum; Corcovado; Without a Sequel

Crazyhorse:

The Monarchs of El Rosario; Snake Farm

DoubleTake:

Idle Hands

Epoch:

Jos Mendas

Folio:

After the Peace

The Greensboro Review:

Travelers Advisory

Laurel Review:

The Bats; Mosquito Spawn

Michigan Quarterly Review:

Leopard

The Missouri Review:

The Aerialist; Midway; Tarantula

New England Review/Bread Loaf Quarterly:

The One That Almost Got Away

Ontario Review:

Vacation in Stone Harbor; Work Boots

Poetry:

Balkan; In a Field Outside the Town; My Ex-Husband; Sushi

Prairie Schooner:

All the Rage; Cleanliness; United Parcel

Southern Review:

The Mission Olive; Moon Jelly

Its time, the day says, as it
always does, the coming rains
will rake them from the tree
if you dont first, the olives,
huge from months of purpling
like a hammerers ripe thumb.
The lawns peppered already
with the seasons first windfall,
the flagstones bludgeoned where skins
have split open under feet
that track the ink indoors.
So I hobble, earths butler,
up-ladder to the trees great
relief, a plastic bucket
to receive the days take.
My hands small tongues grow blacker
in swallowing the dark fruit
dangling like gems of tar or
opulent mussels clustered
to some sea beasts restless
green and silvered mane. They thunk
into the pail like days
into a lifetime, bearing
down with the full heaviness
of their hidden gold of oil.

But though theyve stuffed themselves
with sweet sun, still they taste
foul as bilethe faithless man
would surely chuck them. But
the patient man knows every
bitterness has its cure.
One fruit growers handbook,
printed 1908, suggests
a broth of pot-ash lye, or
a months-long soaking in pure
well water, but the method
I favors even older
than these words, passed down by a
people who knew how human
were the gods in all things, how
easy to manipulate.
Do nothing, they say, but leave
the new moons to wrinkle
in a colander, pomaced
in a mound of plain sea salt.
In two weeks time, theyll forget,
as we all do, the source
of their hearts pitched burning,
lose it in the harsh tears
their bodies will rain as they
soften into succulence,
helpless to resist the sweet
waking of their pearl-black flesh.

Last weeks rain has by now settled
and cleared in the wheelbarrows kettle,
and the gardens grown hard enough to work.
And bowing to the handles,

I see them, ripening like questions
hung from my own reflection,
pimples forming in the waters skin,
rash-red and sickle-shaped, suggestions

of the measlers theyll become. And they panic
as I start to lift, the titanic
sloshing whipping them to frenzy.
They curl up like fingers, manic

with beckoning, mad for life. But my work
wants a wheelbarrow. So I jerk
the handles up and out they pour. No matter
theres a citys worth welling in the murk

of lost pails and rumpled plastics fogged
with algae, plumping like the waterlogged
bodies of the drowned. In time, theyll burp free
from the water, take to the air, and dog

my dancing arms to exhaustion, guided
by breath trails and sworls of infrared,
embodying a hunger so perfect, so complete,
it cant even wait till Im dead.

I cross the bridge, a walking
supper dish, a bowl of blood
that draws these shadows from the river,
swooping and crumpling through dusk.

They strafe my head, nibbling
not my neck, but something near itits
the mayflies doubting round me
on wings the color of moon

across water, succulent truffles
of the air. How they give themselves
selflessly to myth, these caped
bugbears, brooding in attics and sultry

crevices by day, buckshotting forth
to cram their jowls with soul-white moths.
My skin goes milk and vinegar
at the merest thought of them,

denned in, groping and yammering
in the smother and flap, and yet,
glimpsed here, flashing like memory,
pure quick black against the dark,

in fact they flutter like the ligh
bounced into an overhang of leaves
above a koi pond, rapturous in their
breakfast acrobatics, further proof all

darkness ends in light, and the meekest
spirits will rise and sally out on the most
improbable of wings. If there is more
than hunger and striving and sex and sleep

I havent known it, yet here
I am, in all wonder, the fleet brutes
squalling round me, moving visionless
in darkness, trusting, shouting as we go.

A vitreous humor, pulsing in the nether, a living study