Going Back

photoart: ralph murre

Going Back

by Marc J. Frazier

Can a chair hand made from poplar make me whole?

We scour for the one-of-a-kind, crafted with the visionary’s eye.  

Spirits reach out in Lick Creek, Nauvoo, New Harmony.

At dusk, we join deer drawn by trust into open fields—

no moment more vulnerable than when one stares, waiting.  

I scent out a psychic, who will know me as placeless, know me by smell.  

None materializes as we dodge bats outside our cabin, 

many versions at home in us.  

We drive deeper into summer.  Signs along dirt lanes: 

Half Day Hollow, Quarry Heart, Clover Dell.  

Time has gutted roads, our memory—that farmhouse on Inverness Road?  

I join your search for a long-ago lover’s home.  

Each looks at me like the Tarantula Arms where Blanche lured her prey.  

Between fields of corn and beans, it is easy to forget—

mind blank as the anonymous face of an Amish doll.  

In this country, now and then are the same, 

women so calm I want to lie down, sleep like a baby 

before them, sit and work something with my hands, 

eyes grazing prairie, until it and myself are perfect.

~ first published in Spoon River Poetry Review

AUGUST AGAIN

photo: ralph murre

AUGUST AGAIN

by Marc J. Frazier

Husks of insects scattered in the grass,

a memory fights to be freed like this:

the long road to your sister’s farm—it was August then too—

that morning you consoled her,

weaving her loss into your own thick skein of trepidation.

It is difficult to swallow.

Dust devils swirl on the dry lawns.

The locusts drone.

This is no place for words to take root.

What you want to say lies inside—as infertile as her womb.

What is our biggest enemy you wonder.

Even in dreams her face turns towards you—a flower to light.

How many times do we choose the right word, the right gesture?

This will do for now, you decide.

But this is what you want for her:

a swarm of children heated from play

who find her always there, transformed into light itself.

They grow around her.

~ first published in Permafrost

Anomalies

photoart: ralph murre

Anomalies

by Marc J. Frazier

…for everything flowers from within, of self-blessing;

though sometimes it is necessary

to reteach a thing its loveliness…

—Galway Kinnell

In the endless mall of Florida—a French patisserie run by French people. 

Birds flit for crumbs. 

Sherbet umbrellas beckon Town Cars of the aged to dock nearby. 

Scents of hibiscus, sunset-hued blossoms of tropical vines blend with that of yeast, humid asphalt, and Estée Lauder. 

There is no one left to love. 

Sometimes the evidence is overwhelming. 

Sometimes I wish a gull will miss landing on its piling. 

The real truth is that nothing mitigates. 

Lonely birds call through a pink dusk. 

If I could name the flora and fauna, I could cope with uncertainty.

I could walk outside to a gator in the pool. 

Surprising things happen. 

A double murderer was just arrested in Chicago where he’d lived as a poet for twenty years.

I have to write so many words just to survive. 

How many will it take to endure?  To be happy? 

The many places I’ve been make me like every place less. 

I love the romantic excess of Spanish explorers: cities of gold, fountain of youth. 

Here the old grow younger or think they do. 

Who am I to shadow conquerors? 

Sometimes a clean, well-lighted place is fine. 

Sometimes nothing is enough. 

Always that restlessness in the stalls. 

The need to be touched. 

The need to be reminded of my loveliness. 

As if I am one of the few who are chosen. 

Carlos Fuentes described Frida Kahlo with her jangling jewelry and intensity as her own opera. 

At times I am so tame I wonder if even the trained can prepare me for a return to the wild. 

At times the Leo in me sees the world as collateral. 

A woman in a poem hopes in the growth of two dozen seeds. 

The man thinks she expects too much: “To grow her a whole new life.” 

What can I expect here beside the ocean?

I do not ponder the damage done—a cul de sac of regret. 

Loss. 

Not everything happens for a reason. 

I hear orchids grow in wet seclusion. 

Stones are silent by choice. 

Water builds only to lose itself. 

Blue calms my tendency to wander, to see other sides. 

Life, like anything, is a habit, can be found almost anywhere, can happen to anyone.

~ first published in Rhino

Sjogren's Syndrome

artwork: ralph murre

Sjögren’s Syndrome

by Marc J. Frazier

Anything

begins with water:

the mouth of the Euphrates,

villages, city-states, empires,

all our ideas

gathered, passed

down, one place,

another, now

and later.

And stays alive

as well:  cell,

tributary, heart.

The body

a creek bed thirsty

for a few drops

to roll eyeballs around in,

to swallow so naturally

air is gourmet.

Surface leaves, twigs,

plants dried up like the privates,

their ache for this element.

The need not to always reach

deeper.

~ first appeared in The Spoon River Poetry Review