Alan Britt
Two Mules
The lemon note from an out-of-tune piano
inside an abandoned Victorian mansion
quivers the peeling timbers.
Piano ivory stained like mule’s teeth
just as mule enters with tail
swishing its next move,
flicking its dusty tail
twice for good measure.
Ah, the countenance of mules,
despite their hardships, for mules,
having been cloned from horses
and donkeys, possess a noble heritage.
Mules have endured third and fourth-class
citizenship throughout history.
Nevertheless, they lift their oyster eyes
as if to implore their tropical ears
toward a happy ending, otherwise prepared
for Armageddon as only mules know
how to unleash a nomadic fury
of genetic aberration.
From now on, we control our own shoulder straps,
mules say as they saunter in skyscraper
heels across cocktail darkness.
Before a bottleneck guitar, climbing the steps
of a four-story tenement, discovers
its first true love→pharmaceutical LSD.
Then city council folk below their puppet masters
arrive prepared to feed the jury bobbing like
koi in a cultivated pond behind a Palm Beach
oceanfront Cosa Nostra Cuban clone.
Meanwhile, watching from afar, Charles Baudelaire,
perhaps most underrated poet of all time,
enjoys nightly visits to mulattos, befriending old dogs,
and engaging glaziers shattering mirrors
on the soles of their feet.
Ah, Baudelaire, and, of course, Whitman (as in Walt),
two hybrids, two mules.
Go figure.
First Snow with An Echo of Keats
Falling in proverbial clumps of cotton—Styrofoam packing peanuts—or stuffing from child’s
teddy bear shredded by a pack of wild Republicans (Dems―lacking spines―cannot reach teddy bears
from top shelves of closets). Alas, it’s a veritable snow globe morning with globs of white poppies glued to leafless branches of forsythia & roses-of-Sharon, plus four-inch layers of ivory on each horizontal rib of the split-rail fence, power lines frosted, wisp of wind coughing pearl dust from nearby shingled rooftop as snowplow mimics a kitchen disposal, & empty pecan school bus crunches a side road.
* * *
Two days later muscular snow like icing—icing melted over patches of sunny gingerbread lawn.
* * *
The Moldau gives way to a Mozart suite with violins igniting piano bones followed by periodic punches of cello . . . piano icicles guiding a sleigh through snowy woods . . . icicles harnessed to red ribbons dotted with brass bells . . . icicles teasing violins like the tongues of Irish Setters yawning on tartan rugs before the bellowing square mouths of granite fireplaces . . . icicles lamenting the death of shadows . . . icicles that dream of Brazilian jaguars blazing from alto notes . . . each note steeped in a crystal beaker of the warm South.
Reading Poetry at The Jadite Gallery in Hell’s Kitchen
(For Pablo Caviedes)
Entering the belly of Hell’s Kitchen, overcoat flapping my knees, gloves cinched, woolen scarf thawing my throat, I enter the Jadite’s humid walls of imagination.
At the little bar serving seltzer & wine, red & white, in clear plastic cups, stands Pablo, face glowing like the full moon, eyes two creatures fresh from the Andes & smiling the way lightning smiles while illuminating the horizon.
Guests line the walls, angle heads behind other heads, & some relax cross-legged on the floor.
I commence, followed by Dió-genes, Vivian, Alex, Paul, Mike, &, finally, Bina, whose voice like a snowy egret ascends Hudson River fog at dawn.
Poems flutter like wild parakeets from St. Petersburg, Florida, 1969, plus Manhattan pigeons,
white-throated toucans, & condors released from indentured cages to land on hair, shoulders & laps
of guests who volunteered for temporary dreams within dreams.
Afterwards, enchiladas, nachos, empanadas, fajitas, quesadillas in sauces to nourish our souls, plus cervezas & more wine to cluster two tables below a corner window separating dream from reality, or what is often mistaken for reality.
Saturday Night with Lila Downs
Piano taps stained-glass notes, guitar weaves
paw prints through balding conifers that dot
the Siberian medulla oblongata, bass serves up
heartache with a side of mezcal & voice that
is Plato, Aristotle & Socrates combined with
razorblades dipped in duende slicing the fate
of seagulls struggling California foam.
Actually, the mask she wore didn’t do any of that.
What she did was drift into a seductive nightmare
called “La Llorna” while clutching a bloody placenta
with voice addicted to an undying faith in love.
Children frolicked a cataract moon.
♠
But, from her frozen garter lemón, tonight,
this feral voice seizes the scalpel cauterizing her
faith in love & raises it high above her grief
like a dagger in the hands of Shakespeare’s
many misguided lovers.
(coda)
Piano taps stained-glass notes, guitar weaves
paw prints through balding conifers that dot
the Siberian medulla oblongata, bass serves up
heartache with a side of mezcal & voice that
is Plato, Aristotle & Socrates combined with
razorblades dipped in duende slicing the fate
of seagulls struggling California foam.
Alan Britt has been nominated for the 2021 International Janus Pannonius Prize awarded by the Hungarian Centre of PEN International for excellence in poetry from any part of the world. Previous nominated recipients include Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Charles Bernstein and Yves Bonnefoy. Alan interviewed at The Library of Congress for The Poet and the Poem. He is the author of 20 books of poetry, his latest being Gunpowder for Single-ball Poems, and served as Art Agent for Andy Warhol Superstar the late great Ultra Violet while often reading poetry at her Chelsea, New York studio. Britt teaches English and Creative Writing at Towson University.