Body Of Winter E-Book

Brian Prousky

• Herausgeber: Next Chapter
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

In these exquisitely rendered poems, people fall in and out of love, in and out of religious belief and in and out of accepting the distance between their imagined lives and the lives they live. They look back as much as forward and pick mercilessly at the open wounds of failed relationships. They inhabit geographies that are both their emancipators and captors. And they find joy, or succumb to sorrow, amid life’s inescapable ephemerality and fragility.

Breathtaking in its range of styles, Body of Winter, at its heart, is a vivid reflection of the best and worst of us all.

Leseprobe

Body Of Winter

BRIAN PROUSKY

Copyright (C) 2023 Brian Prousky

Layout design and Copyright (C) 2023 by Next Chapter

Published 2023 by Next Chapter

Cover art by Lordan June Pinote

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the author's permission.

Everything goes the same without me there.

– Robert Frost

For Lisa, Lauren and Jonah

Contents

I. Sunblind

Since I’m Adrift From The Principles

Your Love Grew A Tree Inside Me

Heading West

You And Me

I Wanted To Paint Like Sonia Delaunay

My Love is a Striped Little Bird

In My Twenties

In My Thirties

In My Forties

In My Fifties

In My Sixties

The Drought

Sailors’ Song

It Took Until You Were Gone

Six Empty Chairs

The Evergreen

If I Could Empty The Water From The Sea

II. Overcast

The God Who Listened

I Poured Everything into a Poem

We Wondered Where Our Acceptance Was

There Is A God

A Brief History Of Religion

Jacob Can Rest

The Insecurity Of Our God

She Couldn’t Free Herself

A Couple I Met In Phoenix

If She Was A Broom

A Proxy Partner

The Sun In A Lampshade

For The Poem

Things In My Office

The Evil Boy

Why Married People Have Affairs

We Were Shown Love

Abraham

I Was A Failure

III. Compasses

I Split You Crucifix

How She Wrote Poetry

Creation, A Theory

An Engraver’s Tool

He Tried To Write On An Airplane

A Clot Of Dust Unspooling

I Live Alone In A Lighthouse

I Commit to the Memory of Paper

Joseph The Poet

My Job

What Is Useful About A Poem?

Advice To The Poet

Reflecting On The Vulnerable During the Pandemic

Everything I’ve Learned, I’ve Learned Online

My Legacy

My Writing

Escape, Maybe

The New Prophet

The Right Choice

IV. Air Masses

Body Of Winter

Thoughts On My Soul

Leonard Woolf

It’s Raining In Fort Lauderdale In March

Parent’s Lament

Brian Prousky And His Life

Sterile Land

Abuse

August 12th, 1983

In The Morning, Staring In The Mirror

A Born Leader

I Am The Country

When I Lost The Harboring Mother

Beverly Street

I’m The Child

The Convalescent

I Was Thrown About

Only Oddbirds Land

My Country

V. Permafrost

For Two Years

The Wire Above The Abyss

A Funeral Service In Huntington Park Church

My Father Is Dying

Whatever You Are Is Impenetrable

Dying Is An Old Story

The Number Of Chances I Had

I’m Crying, Look Away

This Poem Begins And Ends Like Your Life

Father Tell Me

Last Poem

About the Author

PartOne

Sunblind

Since I’m Adrift From The Principles

Since I’m adrift from the principles

of worms and roots and anxious seeds,

of green stalks with tall aspirations,

since I can’t squeeze bleeding earth out of my pen

or raindrops with dark pupils,

since I can’t stretch my arms in the style of a waking bear

and tear flesh off a trembling morning,

since I’m a dry toad with a congealed tongue,

every daydream brings me to a place

where a pale sky shows through

a fading outline of the moon

and rushing black water

winds between gray lacquered rocks and smooth stumps,

seeping in marsh-beds of wild grass

and gurgling in mud.

I admit I can’t decide

if they’re imagined or familiar to me,

the bulrushes with indignant attitudes,

the deceptive tiny bugs

who dissolve in puddles,

the patient copper hawks who glide for hours

before diving at snakes,

the milkweeds with pursed lips and full cheeks

who explode in feathery tirades.

In every place I inhabit I strain to hear

the music of chipmunks

in squeaky trolly wheels,

swans drying their wings

in clapping blinds,

claws scratching bark

in wallpaper being stripped,

stampeding buffalo

in roaring subway tunnels.

I have come to realize

there is nothing more important

than to remember

the land that bore you desires your demise,

the bird who guards your nest and brings you your first worm

is a buzzard who dreams of harvesting your flesh,

the otter who guides you safely downstream

is a traitor leading you down a path of ambush

and the song of a cricket lulling you to sleep

is a summons to your predators.

I have come to realize

there is nothing more regrettable

than to forget

the surrender of a cornered deer

and drowning bee,

the tears of a hooked fish,

the pleading eye of a dry sunflower,

the scream of a weed when you pull up its roots

and blood in a lake

when you slice through its skin.

Your Love Grew A Tree Inside Me

Your love grew a tree inside me.

Roots grew into my legs and I stood resolute by you.

Branches grew into my arms and I embraced you.

Leaves grew into my fingers and I stroked your face.

Bark grew into my skin and I was impenetrable

and protected you from harm.

A canopy grew into my hair and spread over us

and kept us dry when it rained.

Fruit grew from me and we were never hungry.

Seeds fell from me and other tress grew around us

and we were never lonely.

In the winter, leaves fell from me and I made you a bed

and blanket and kept you warm.

And because I was a tree and had no heart,

there was nothing to break

and our love was forever.

Heading West

I saw black trains

that sped through blue air,

yellow fields bent by wind,

combines that flattened them.

I saw men in blue suits,

heard artless descriptions of sex

followed by admiring words

like, “Way to go!”

I saw swarms of black insects

like floating caves.

I saw small cities

thoughtlessly constructed

like children’s blocks

spilled on pavement.

I saw clothes on clotheslines

and women standing by them.

They stared at blue air

with ink in their eyes.

You And Me

You and me, free,

you and me.

You and me, like geometry,

you and me.

You and me, intuitively,

you and me.

You and me, a history,

you and me.

You and me, fadingly,

you and me.

I Wanted To Paint Like Sonia Delaunay

I looked out my window one morning

at the sun and sea.

The sun was orange. The sea was blue.

I ran onto a dock and untethered a boat.

The boat was red with a white sail.

It belonged to someone else.

In that moment I didn’t care.

I wanted to see simple shapes.

I wanted to paint like Sonia Delaunay.

An orange circle,

a blue square,

a white triangle,

a red rectangle,

a whole world.

My Love is a Striped Little Bird

My love is a striped little bird

have you heard

lightly she lands on a leaf

she’s quickly sated on opinions stated

so carefully I choose each word

My love flies in my window

you know

flutters beneath my sheets

her chirping is sweet but always repeats

I’m moving a bit too slow

My love is more practical than me

you see

building us a cozy nest

twigs and leaves she twists and weaves

the while I reflect and rest

My love will perch on my shoulder

I’ve told her