The Geometry of Loneliness: A Sampler

Regret

It is a photographic ghost.

It is the demimonde:

the shady, trick-

turning stepsister

of the day-lit hemisphere.

It is the demiurge:

the cosmic used car

salesman at the heart

of all that is quotidian.

It is the iceberg's

sunken hull

that unrigs each day's

most seaworthy constructs.

It is the hair shirt,

the millstone,

the one catholic

and apostolic jail.

Originally published in Chelsea

Ecce Homo

Jesus has quietly installed himself

in a corner of the night sky,

beside the moon

that was his mother’s attribute.

In old prints, you see her ride

the scythe blade of the new moon

effortlessly as a child’s chrome scooter.

But she’s given all that up,

and so has he: the pomp

of the Ascension and the right hand.

Again, he is made man.

His limbs ache in the cold

quadrant where he finds himself.

That seeming star, just there,

is a falling tear. It maps his cheek;

he knows again the whip hand

of a black wind.

Originally published in The Raintown Review

The Air Plant

Like most people, you are not

beautiful or useful.

You survive.

The dry wires of your roots

only keep you from washing away

in your rainforest. The leathery fingers

of your crown are pale, shale-gray,

uncomely, unlike the bean-green

of the pineapple or the bromeliad,

your lovely cousins. Sea lily, brittle

star, you have been where it is warm

and green as any reef. And now

you live where there are seasons.

The boys from Maracaibo

and Valencia have come to take you

from your tree house, to live

with the gringos, in el norte.

We have all been like you,

reinventing ourselves from the ashes,

living on so little it is like a lie.

I am told you could live that way

for ages. Not you precisely,

but the "pups" you will suckle

on your withering tits, outdoing

even the black widow in suicidal

self-promotion. We'd all

like to go like that:

taken in the act, still high

with the sex, or big with seed

that will split us with its roots,

that will drop from us like blood.

Originally published in Snake Nation Review

The Jar, Part 2

With apologies to Wallace Stevens

Southeast of Knoxville, where I-40 curls

its scaly length around the tree-furred rocks,

it’s like some spooked snake’s liquid-swift furling

glide among a field of boulders pocked

with lichen. Here, you ride the snake’s broad back,

its single purpose, while the mountains frown,

indifferent as the gods. The pine and oak

up near the crest seem trivial—are grown

a petri dish concoction. Any sort

of jar would be as lost there as a painter’s soul,

no matter what its girth, or what its port

in air. A body hidden on the cold

north peak would sleep till June, under the snow.

Now ahead, around that curve, I’d take it slow.

Originally published in The Wallace Stevens Journal

Dahlias

A light wind takes the old woman's

handiwork in hand: Sunburst,

Star of Bethlehem, Grandmother's

Flower Garden--the quilts loll

on their clothesline, a rural

art display. My wife cursorily

takes in the big picture

each canvas unfolds--the play

of garish color within the straitened

four walls of an irrefragable

geometry. Then, like a connoisseur

getting down to where a painting

lives, she analyzes brushstrokes:

turns each quilt, numbers

for me the stitches per inch,

explains how, like a race driver

taking a curve more smoothly

than his peers, the winning quilter

stitches as evenly on the curves

as on the straightaway.

Later, we catch a glimpse

of the garden peering at us

from behind the line with each tug

of wind. Fifty dahlias taller

than our heads, on stalks as thick

as sugar cane or green bamboo,

the flowers in colors lavish

as the quilts'--lavender, carmine,

puce, lemon, candy-stripe--

the petals big nests

of compass points, pleasing

in their rough geometry.

We praise them all they're worth.

The woman tells us they were

even prettier before last week's storm

tore them up. Self-evident,

a broken oak limb tall

as a young tree lies across

her yard, the outermost branches

fingering the closed-in porch.

"Looks like God watched over you,"

says my wife, the connoisseur.

And the woman quietly assents,

the old house rooted to its slender

verities: the white cat

marmoreal on his stoop,

the dahlias tossing up

their thousand ragged stars.

Originally published in Blueline

New Oak Leaves

haunt streetlamps,

their wings

wet with light, paralyzed

in the orbits they describe

as if wishing for the light

from an incapable beyond.

As if those windows

the lamps cut from the dark

were photographs

that held them forever

to the flame of their desire.

Then you walk through

those windows into darkness,

and the avenue wheels

with the beat

and the echoed

beat of wings.

Originally published in Chelsea

©2005 Lee Passarella. All Rights Reserved. Contact Lee Passarella