................................................................................................
The Poetry Of...
Karen Corcoran...............................................
Dabkowski..........................................................
Death and the Maiden
Robber on rollerskates
that's what death is reeling
around
and knocking us
behind
the knees
and laughing. Face like
a rabbit toothed bully,
broad and freckled. Heckler
of the way
we keep our campsite tied down tight, knowing
all the while
she is the north wind
magnified:
the hunter with the knife
no one can stop, and she has sisters
by the score. One can kill
by simply
opening up the door
you swore
you wouldn't; another one laughs while she's
in bed
with the one she took. That one
rolls the movie
I watch
inside a cuspidor, inside its own little glob,
and if you didn't know what to look for, you might
miss it,
but it's death
for sure, the same
as every dark
and poisonous secret
eats whatever light that might have
been, and seizes it as her
own. I watch him twist
and try
to get
comfortable, but the bitch
has serrated
edges
under
a cute
sarong,
and more
temper, methinks, than he ever
really bargained for except in scripted bits
for his own
enjoyment, ah, but you don't handle
death-
it handles
you.
Furies In The Box
Locked away
in a box with crooked sides
and a top with the name
of an old
department store
sits
the past. The box is black . The box is always
black,
but never
as midnight
pitch as what's
inside it
fanged and curling
as a warlock's nail, the tale
of the two little
rabbits
and the wolf, who's
back- he's always back, no matter
how many times the tape is wound, the wounds
cry out: the high and terrified bunny sounds
before they die,
and the teeth
are still inside,
and the fangs are horribly
red
so red, they color sleep, so I keep
them in a black
hat box
that nobody knows is there
but me
and the wolf, who
I'm
resembling
more
each
day.
Mutterings Under Breath
A driven
crazy heart
finished
its
verse
"forgetting, is
itself,
salvation"
then threw itself
to the sea
but the waters
gave back to the coast; found what it wrote
scrawled in a note that was in its pocket: "the water
won." And page
after page
the terns had taken
and filled the sky with blankest white: in
edible
words
and tears
tore
at the stars, invisible
in a heaven
held
for ransom
over interpretation and blindness
that can
see no other way but by extinction
of the
will, when the man will rend his shirt
and jump. From dusk to dark, the crazy heart
is tipping
toes
toward its own
ocean. We are sane
by dry
phalanges: only that
in a life
of bones and dirt
when a man will rend
his shirt
and jump,
when we flap
where the owl
won't go,
when the night rocks
noisily
in sleep, and the day is full of ever walking
a pilgrimage
we do not
believe in
anymore, but our tongues are black
with verse.
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